If there’s one thing I hope to instil into my kids, it’s not to be sheep.

This means not assuming everything they hear is true; thinking for themselves; not believing the spin. Questioning and challenging authority where it is appropriate.

Not following the trends blindly. (Maybe I can avoid them getting hooked on the teenybopper music.)

And it means not following everybody else across the street without looking first. If you’ve ever watched the people crossing Flinders Lane on the western side of Swanston St, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Heaps of people just wander across, whether the light is green or red, with no regard to any stream of cars that might be approaching them.

Baa!

Crash — Superb drama. More than a little unsettling at times, but not a total depressionfest. Some Pulp Fictionesque dialogue and interconnecting story threads that reminded me a bit of Lantana. Nobody really gets off scott-free in this movie, and it really makes the point that none of us is totally good, or totally bad. Great stuff.

Unbelievably, just hours after lamenting with Marita about how some of us in the Bowen family are prone to upset tummies, I felt the same myself. The Bowen belly had struck yet again, though not as badly as some other times. This comes after my sister and her toddler were struck down with something last week.

Why are we so delicate? Beats me.

So having lost a couple of hours’ sleep overnight, I elected to work from home today (I didn’t have any meetings with anybody scheduled, and it saves about an hour in travel time — gawd bless remote access). Thus most of the day was spent coding in my trackie-dacks, and at one point retired for a quick afternoon snooze.

I’m sure I recall reading about studies which showed working from home could be more productive than going into the office. Even with the model working environment described above, I seemed to get plenty of work done today.

Holeproof brand socks aren’t really holeproof. They get holes just as much as any other brand of sock.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve done something of a purge of socks with holes in the toes. I had plenty, and I have a sneaking suspicion that many of them were Holeproof brand.

I didn’t even keep any as “emergency socks.” Sometimes you just have to be ruthless (and hope you have enough new ones to cope).

There appear to be some people manually leaving comment spam here. It’s written to look relevant to the post it’s on, and includes a link to one of a series of near-identical web-sites obviously set-up just to get attention from search engines, eg a “Splog.”

Now hear this: If your comment leaves a URL that goes to a site that looks suspicious to me, I will be either removing the URL when I approve your comment, or at my exclusive discretion, deleting your comment altogether.

• Numerous spam comments containing obviously automated irrelevant comments and lots of links get deleted anyway.
• My other comment rules are here.
• Post on this type of human comment spam at geekrant.org, including examples of the sites involved.

Damn it was cold this morning. Before leaving for work, I made sure to find my gloves and scarf for the walk to the station through the fog. (You remember the scarf, right?)

Off to the Bell Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet tonight. Not sure how I wangled seats in row AA, but looking forward to it.

PS. Saturday morning. R&J was great stuff. A few nice modern touches. Reminded me of my Shakespeare parodies, of course. Thoroughly recommended.

He was standing by the payphone outside Bentleigh Post Office, as I checked my post box about 45 minutes ago. He might still be there now. Asking passers-by for money to make a long-distance call, regarding his father, who had passed away.

Was he telling the truth? I don’t know. I told him I had no coins — which was true. He asked if he could borrow a $5 note, to pay back tomorrow when his pension arrived. Yeah right — you couldn’t use that to make a phone call, and I’d never see it again. “I’m sorry,” I said, as I walked away.

But he cut such a pathetic figure. I hadn’t seen him around before, trying it on. Perhaps it was true? How gutted would you feel if it were you, needing to make that phone call in that situation? Yet I wasn’t willing to just hand him my mobile phone.

I went home with my groceries. Karma. Guilt — despite my usual policy of never giving to beggars; giving to charities who are in a better position to know who’s genuine and who isn’t.

No coins in the house. Maybe I could offer him a payphone card, and see what he said?

I went back out. Had a look. He was still there, asking people. I went to the newsagent to buy him a payphone card. They were shut. Went to Coles. No, they said, they have prepaid mobile phone cards. They suggested a post office (shut) or a 7-11 (miles away; I was on foot). Went to Safeway. They don’t sell them anymore either. Nowhere else was open.

Now I’m back in my warm house. I’m sorry mate, I can’t help you. If you’re genuine, then I hope someone else can.

I rarely read the paper in great detail, except perhaps on Saturdays when I have the time. I value the content, and I value the fact that my subscription money is helping support a competing newspaper to the top-selling Herald Sun, but I probably get more value by reading The Age’s web site than the paper edition.

So is it worthwhile having a subscription? I did look at the various prices for different days, but assuming I wanted a paper copy at least on Thursday (for the Green Guide), Friday (for the EG) and Saturday, there’s no easy option that would cost much less than the $6.25 per week I currently pay. I can always ring up their automated hotline and suspend delivery if I don’t want it on a particular day, so if I had the energy I could do that every week to avoid getting copies from Sunday to Wednesday.

Perhaps, as the electronic delivery medium becomes better/more portable, and the cost of distributing it approaches zero, they’ll offer good quality electronic subscriptions that pay for the content, rather than the delivery of masses of paper onto my driveway every morning, most of it destined to be recycled without being read.