I’ve given notice on my rental house (by registered mail to avoid any problems like previously). Moving day is Monday the 24th of October — one month from tomorrow. I’m hiring Gronow’s again — they were good last time.

Also sorting out dates for services and things. Should be no problems with power/water, but the comms… egads. ADSL moves take 5-10 days after the request. The request can be until the phone connection is on. The phone connection can’t be on until two working days after the request goes in. The request can’t go in until the previous tenant has moved out/disconnected their line, which I guess means on settlement day (October 13th). And that’s if it all goes smoothly. God help me if it turns out the new place is on pair gain or something. I haven’t added up all those days yet, but I’m betting there will be some time (gasp) without broadband.

Another timing issue is the local council elections on 26th November. I’ll be in the same (sacked recently) council at both the old and new addresses, but I’ll be changing wards. The elections are well after I move, but the electoral roll closes on October the 7th, before I move and before I settle/own the new house. Hmmmm. I think I’ll just send the form in early October, and assume it takes them at least a few days to process it and send out the new voter registration card etc.

Meanwhile… if web sites were people, they might want to stick with the sunny weather, but they’re not, they’re just bits and bytes zooming around on electronic boxes. This weekend, my web provider is moving servers from Brisbane to Canberra. The servers themselves won’t move, but my site will. They don’t expect the site to be down, but to help moving stuff across, they’ve asked for all interactive features to be disabled from Friday night to Monday morning. So comments will be switched off on all posts tonight; back on Monday. So hold that thought!

Update Sunday 9:45pm. All finished now, comments available again.

I got a survey to do in the mail. Not one of those silly lifestyle surveys, preparing you to be bombarded with advertising, but an anonymous university-based one: the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes.

It was interesting stuff. It asked about my views on such issues as immigration, education, government spending, the war in Iraq.

And thrown in the middle were two questions that really threw me. See if you can answer them, without cheating, without reaching for a reference book or Google or Wikipedia:

Bushrangers roamed the countryside during the early period of European settlement in Australia. Please write the names of four bushrangers below.

and

Outlaws were also common in the United States of America in earlier times. Please write the names of four outlaws below.

I found this very tricky, could only think of three bushrangers and two outlaws. And when I checked after writing in the answers, found two of these to be wrong (one bushranger misspelt, one outlaw was a good guy, not an outlaw).

What will come of the survey results, I don’t know, but I won’t be totally shocked if in a couple of months, I open the newspaper to find a headline reading something like “Most Australians can’t name four bushrangers”.

Had a guess? Okay, now check your answers: Australian Bushrangers; US outlaws.