This is something we only get the chance to say every four(ish) years, so… Happy Leap Day!
Enjoy the extra day of summer. (If only, for those in Melbourne, it actually seemed like summer.) But remember… if today didn’t exist, it’d be the weekend already. (Hmm, not sure that’s right, is it?)
The top ten Daniels, according to Google Australia (which shows pages from worldwide, but skews slightly in favour of Aussies):
1. The biblical Daniel.
2. The accompanying Book of Daniel.
3. Daniel Boulud’s Restaurant Daniel in New York City.
4. The Daniel Morcombe Foundation, working for protection of children from abduction.
5. Daniel Measurement and Control of gasses and liquids.
7. Harry Potter’s Daniel Ratdcliffe
8. waferbaby.com … whatever that is — it’s being rebuilt. Someone’s blog, apparently.
9. Daniel Boud, who appears to be a photographer. Or if he isn’t, he should be — the pics on his site are excellent.
10. 16th century mathmetician Daniel Bernoulli
And me? Turns out I’m number 11. W00t!
And where do I sit in the world ranking of Daniels? (According to the Google Rank Checker, I’m down at 819th on Google.com)
Any interesting finds searching for your name?
“What is this ‘One Way’ of which you speak?”
(Picture snapped on their second revolution of the car park.)
Why don’t I listen to the collective wisdom of those who comment here? Last August, Highriser Andrew commented: “Plan now for hot water service replacement as they never break down when it is convenient. If you don’t, the temptation to just replace it with the same is great.”
Last night, it broke down. When describing the symptoms over the phone to the plumber this morning, he confirmed that it is kaputsky.
Origin Energy say they can set me up with an entirely new solar (gas boosted) installation for $2045 (after rebates), which seems pretty good.
Having checked with a couple of plumbers, it would seem that this is actually quite a good offer, and because they do heaps of them, I was a bit more confident their prowess. Let’s just say I liked the cut of their jib*. So I went ahead and ordered it.
The catch? About two weeks waiting. That’s a long time to go without a hot shower and/or boiling kettles for baths, though my sister for starters has volunteered use of her shower. (I didn’t have a shower today, and spent much of the day at work wondering if I smelt. Nobody on the train backed away from me, so hopefully not…)
Hell, it can’t be any worse than the Great Shower Rebuilding of 2001, or the gas crisis of 1998 (following the Longford explosion)… when there was no gas for cooking, either.
But ho boy, I wish I’d done this a month ago.
So much for upgrading my car right now.
(By the way, of the other goals on that list of home projects, I’ve completed precisely none of them, though some have progressed as far as investigation. The bathtub needs a complete new coat of paint. The insulation is actually not too bad at all for effectiveness/thickness.)
*An expression that seemed to work its way into conversation a couple of times last weekend.
PS. 11pm. You know, the more I think about it, the more I suspect doing it this way was a dumb idea. Oh well, even beyond geek pride, I’ll really appreciate it when the solar panels eventually get fitted to the roof and the whole thing is running.
In December a friend of my sister passed away, leaving her husband and their two young children. Their friends have started a fundraiser to help him cope with the costs of raising his kids: Help Sam And Charlie.
Why is it that some oldsters seem determined to jaywalk?
In fact it could be my imagination, but it sometimes seems the less agile they are, the more likely they are to jaywalk. The other evening in Glenhuntly I saw a lady who was struggling to merely push a shopping trolley, and she decided to try and get it across Glenhuntly Road (a mere 100 metres from the traffic lights), and then down a sidestreet… not on the footpath mind you, but along the roadway.
On Centre Road and on Jasper Road I regularly see the oldsters crossing a few metres from the traffic lights. Sure, they don’t usually have shopping trolleys, but they often seem to be less fleet of foot than most.
Maybe it’s just what they’ve done for the past X decades, and they haven’t quite registered that the once quiet road is now chocka with cars.
Certainly I can understand the frustration of waiting for traffic lights. Some of them have been designed by traffic engineers who were determined to waste as much pedestrian time as possible. And I can understand why sometimes you want to be taking the most direct route across a road, especially if it’s a quiet one and you don’t walk very fast.
But in busy traffic, and if you’re not as nimble as you once were, why do it? Unless you have a death wish, use the freaking crossing, that’s what it’s there for!
As for this guy who drives his motorised wheelchair down the Nepean Highway — well it’s not actually the first time. I saw someone doing the same a couple of years ago, and called Triple-0. I wonder if it was the same guy.
Keating! — the musical. It was great. Very funny script, great cast, great band. Really good. I’m still chuckling over the election night coverage bit. Highly recommended, but if you’re pondering catching it, get a move on: apparently it’s only on for another fortnight.
PS. Interestingly, we (in our late-30s) were among the youngest there. No shortage of oldsters present — some of whom seemed to have problems climbing the steep steps of the Comedy Theatre’s balcony. It was almost enough to make us feel guilty for having seats in the balcony entrance row.
Rather delighted about Craigieburn — MP3, 9 seconds, 147Kb.
(I guess they got the lady back in to record that extra word for the lexicon last year)