The trouble with cars
Well, I said this month would be car maintenance month.
Four nice shiny new tyres plus fitting plus whatever other surcharges they tack on: $544.
200,000 Km service, including ultrasound analysis of the fuel injection (!) and numerous other tinkering: $842. (But it does purr like a kitten now.)
A tank of petrol: $62.
But I’m still better off than my sister, who had a prang in her car. She was okay, but shaken. The car has an $1800 dent in the front bumper/headlight/etc. And while the insurance company will cover most of it, she’s going to be left with the $400 excess, unless they can track down the other driver, who witnesses confirm was at fault and did a runner.
If you drive a 1990ish white sedan with a licence plate which is similar to (but not) EEU 832, you’d better give yourself up before she finds you — she’s mean when she’s angry.
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The truth behind cattlemen?
According to a sticker left on the glass partition of a now dis-used office at work, “Mountain cattlemen care for the high country.”
The other week I was chatting to a friend about the issue of the Victorian Government banning livestock grazing from the Alpine National Park.
Apparently the image of the mountain cattlemen — all Akubras, Drizabones and horses — doesn’t quite match up to the reality. In actual fact they tend to arrive with trucks of cattle, unload them all, let them eat all the grass in the area, load up and drive off again.
It’s a long way from the Man From Snowy River image they promote when they ride through the cities hoping to influence the populace.
Admittedly, this view comes from national park advocates. But it leaves one thinking that often things are not what they seem.
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Things that make my life easier
Some random things that make my life easier:
- The dishwasher. Run it every few days (when full). Cool.
- RSS. Lets me catch up on news and blogs in seconds flat.
- The 8:06 and 8:17 expresses. Bentleigh to Parliament in 17 minutes. If there’s a faster way into the city in peak hour (barring helicopter) I’d like to hear about it. Shame they’re the only two that fast – most trains take closer to 25 minutes.
- Internet banking. Without it I’d be spending half my life in queues at the post office or the bank. As it is I only do so when I need stamps.
- Weather forecasts. These days they seem relatively accurate. Less guesswork about taking a jacket or brolly. Can get ‘em via mobile phone, TV teletext and web, which is good, as I invariably miss them on the TV news. (But I don’t understand why overseas web companies are unable to source accurate weather forecasts… in Centigrade.)
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ANZAC Day
It’s ANZAC Day today.
This is the cenotaph in Bentleigh, with fresh flowers placed there on Sunday. Most suburbs and towns around the country have something similar.
One of these days I’ll rouse the kids early and get us all up to the Shrine for the Dawn Service. I did go one year. It was cold, but worthwhile.
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Zooooooom!
It seems the state government has decided to reveal all the possible locations of mobile speed cameras for the first time.
I know other juristictions have done this kind of thing before, but I don’t quite see how this is a good thing. Doesn’t it just give lead-foot motorists (and there’s plenty of them out there) the all-clear to drive fast where they think there won’t be any cameras? Mind you there’s so many of them you’d have to be a brainiac to remember where they all are.
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Music, Foreigner and WarGames
Saw a guy on the train with an old-style portable CD player. ‘Cos, you know, digital music from real CDs have a warmth that MP3/AAC on iPods just can’t match…
Watched WarGames again the other night. As Marita commented, no wonder geeks like it — geeks get to save the world. (Though they almost destroyed it in the first place.) Call me slow, but I hadn’t noticed before that one of the missile operators at the start is played by none other than the late John Spencer, better known as Leo McGarry in the West Wing.
Quick review: Foreigner by C J Cherryh — I have to admit, I found this book hard-going initially. I think it’s the style of it versus the style of my reading. I don’t tend to read for long periods of time. It’s generally 15 minutes on the train, rather than an hour or two tucked up in bed, and this book didn’t suit that. But particularly towards the end, it was rivetting stuff. Apart from what would happen to the human character, his whole thinking of himself and the other humans compared to the… well, alien nature of the aliens was very interesting.
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Followups
There’s a lot of great comments that present themselves from readers on this site. Allegedly in the innanet industry this is what the marketing types call user-generated content or some such. Whatever, but it shows what highly intelligent people you all are.
My old school mate KTK remarks that obscure names are an advantage for being found in Google (and I suppose being able to obtain your own name.com like I have). The Age this week noted a private investigator who advises the opposite: “Change your name to something generic” if you don’t want to be found.
Susze comments on people who work in shops saying “You right there?” When I worked in a shop, I’d vary between “Can I help you?” and “Are you right there?” to stave off boredom from saying the same thing repeatedly, and depending on how much I felt like serving the person (including whether or not they looked like they knew what they were doing, finding what they wanted).
Philip was one of those who commented on a better way to strike matches to avoid them breaking: pushing the head along the box. I’ve been doing this now, and it seems to work in most cases. I previously held the match at almost a 90 degree angle to the box.
If you’re wondering the posts that have attracted the most comments are: April Fools’ Day 2004, When I bought the house, the rapidfire quizzical What kind of person are you? and The bathtub of mystery. (If you run WordPress, here’s how to see this for your blog.)
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You’re right
“Sorry.”
“No; you’re right.”
I’m not sure where I picked it up, but it seems to be a new speech pattern that’s entered the language that makes much more sense than the higher-profile “Yeah, no, yeah.”
If someone says sorry, but it’s for something they really shouldn’t be apologising for, I won’t say “That’s okay”, because that’s like saying it was their fault.
“You’re right” conveys that they either they’ve done nothing wrong, or at least that whatever happened was a genuine accident.
So to the guy who didn’t see me and walked out of the gate with a ladder, blocking the footpath for all of 5 seconds as I was trying to walk past, it was nice of you to say “Sorry”, but you’re right. No blame apportioned. Have a nice day.
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