The scream
There are times when I’m feeling stressed, usually about multiple little things at once, that I just want to scream with rage. Open the release valve and let out the stress. Daltrey WGFA to the power of 10.
You can’t really do that of course, not in a built-up area. It’d have the neighbours (who are terribly nice, and look out for one-another) ringing the police.
Here’s a business idea: someone should set up a screaming facility.
In the city, it would be a sound-proof room, where you could scream your lungs out and nobody could hear you. Possibly padded walls if you wanted to vent your anger in a physical way too.
In the country, it might be a remote spot, out of hearing of any other human, and where the animals weren’t going to be bothered, where you could go (alone presumably) and scream for a while.
Would it work? I think it might be very therapeutic for me at times.
(Apparently Munch’s The Scream is still copyrighted, otherwise I’d have illustrated this post with it. But I don’t want to get stressed by copyright violation.)
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I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
Having had a week when a car window motor broke down (cha-ching, $520 thanks) and my fridge went on the fritz (TBA), it was good to let it all go with a concert on Sunday night,
It’s probably easier to just dump the Twitter posts, with a few extra notes here and there.
18:05. Riding bumblebee tram to Grand Prix. Hopefully will have missed most of car race, but have ear plugs ready if not.
The cars were bloody noisy. And fast. I can’t see the appeal, to be honest.
It took a while to find the concert site. Not helped by the complicated pedestrian pathways, and the maps, which don’t show the bridges over the track.
19:02. Finally found premium concert entry. Would it kill them to have more signs? Dallas Crane on now.
Around this point Tony SMSd to say keep the Twitter updates coming, which I’m afraid just encouraged me.
19:31. A few poms in the crowd reminiscing about their last Who concerts during interval.
19:35. That must be Roger’s mic, lots and lots of tape around it.
19:46. Oh yeah
– Love the instrumental bit of this.
19:50. They call me the seeker.
20:00. Pete joking about their ages. Should buy the new album. Oh yeah, who are you?
– It was something along the lines of claiming their first albums had been released when they were 12, and the latest when they were 92. They also took the mickey out of the Grand Prix, which was pretty funny.
20:14. It’s only teenage wasteland
20:23. I’m out of my brain on the train
– Their gunzel song. Accompanied by sped up vision of old railways. Honestly.
20:33. You better you better you bet
20:34. Your dog keeps licking my nose
20:48. And I get on my knees and pray, we don’t get fooled again
– Earlier I played this on CD in the car. My kids were remarkably tolerant. It may well be my favouritest song ever.
21:05. Encore. I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
– Adam replied suitably: I look pretty young, but I’m just backdated.
21:11. He’s a pinball wizard. Townshend is god.
21:21. OMG. They just played the whole overture from Tommy. That was fantastic.
– Wait. Was it actually Underture? Or a mix of the two? I need to dig it out again. And also a bunch of other semi-obscure Tommy songs. I don’t know if all of the crowd appreciated it, but I certainly did.
21:35. And an acoustic number to finish off.
The second song of the new album. A bit of a whimper of a finish to be honest, and the thing with Roger holding a cup of tea didn’t really work IMHO.
Great concert though. They can still play. Zak Starkey does, I think, play drums better than his dad. (No, I didn’t Twitter every song…)
Eleventy billion people stomped off out of Albert Park to the tram stops. I ended up on a tram to Malvern to catch a train home. It’s just a shame most of the PT effort goes into the CBD to the track, whereas people going in other directions get little in the way of extra services. Probably encourages people to drive into the CBD, which is crazy of course. Still got home before too long.
My hearing hasn’t fully recovered just yet. Hopefully soon!
Others who Twittered from (or near) the concert included: Amy Fulton Scott Sutherland Marti Travis White Myf Warhurst Francis Leach Richard Buckley
- Herald Sun: Who’s roaring guitars?
- Brisbane times: review of Brisbane concert
- Newcastle Herald: review of Hunter valley concert and slideshow
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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Is going to the Grand Prix just for the post-race concert the equivalent to reading Playboy for the articles? ‘Cos that’s what I’m doing. I don’t know if I’ll bother looking at the cars whizzing round and round, but I’m really looking forward to the music.
And for those living in Victoria, may I just tell you how grateful I am for all of you helping to subsidise my concert ticket. Well, that is, apparently upwards of $30 million goes to the whole event, so I figure at least some of that must be helping to pay for the concert.
It’s certainly the first time I’ve seen banners featuring The Who logo up around town…
And the band came to town earlier this week in a blaze of publicity.
I don’t care if they’re old fuddy-duddies, there’s a bunch of songs I can’t wait to hear live… including Pinball Wizard, Baba O’Riley, and of course the one that started it all for me, Won’t Get Fooled Again.
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Three-sided street cricket
It turns out there are actual documented rules for street cricket, which is popular on the sub-continent.
But at my place we’ve got our own version, which has evolved into a limited overs format that suits a short game after dinner for the three of us, though of course occasionally neighbours will join in.
6 balls per over. If there’s only three of us playing, this means the wicketkeeper and bowler swap after each over. The “pitch” is between the middle of our driveway and the middle of our neighbour’s driveway.
To make it fun and ensure everyone gets a good go at batting, each batsman gets at least two overs when they can’t go out. During these overs the batsman also can’t get run out; if this happens then the run doesn’t count.
On or after the 12th ball, the batsman can go out.
Overs for each batsman are limited according to the length allowed for the game. Four overs in total, with three players is about a half-hour game.
If the ball is knocked into a temporarily or permanently inaccessible spot (eg down a drain, into a hedge) then the batsman may earn a maximum of three runs, but he has to run them. (This whole game is to get all of us to have more exercise, so it’s not an automatic score.)
Cars stop play temporarily, of course.
I think that was all the rules. We don’t do LBW or wides or no-balls, at least not yet.
The result from last Thursday night’s game: Jeremy 10 runs, Daniel 8 runs, Isaac 6 runs. I think we were all bowled out; I don’t remember.
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Extending Sydenham to Sunbury
There’s a debate raging about whether or not electric trains should be extended to Sunbury. Some Sunbury passengers are arguing that they want to keep V/Line services.
There might be a bigger issue here: whether Sunbury people want to be part of suburban Melbourne or not. I gather that came up at last night’s public meeting.
It’s of course totally understandable that if you’re happy with your V/Line train, you wouldn’t want to change it. People quite rightly value the express ride, the comfy seats, and the presence of conductors.
But while Connex-bashing is a very popular sport, some of the arguments don’t quite stack up.
V/Line trains do not stop at all stations. “If electrification occurs, the trains will stop everywhere and add 15 to 20 minutes,” Mr O’Farrell said. — The Age
In off-peak hours, the quickest V/Line trip seems to be Sydenham to North Melbourne in 19 minutes. The off-peak Connex time is 27 minutes.
Interestingly in the middle of peak hour, V/Line trains from St Albans to North Melbourne take up to 22 minutes, just one minute less than the Connex trains, no doubt due to network congestion. Even if you added extra stops at Sydenham and Keilor Plains (at a minute per stop, which is the benchmark), it would only be 3 minutes slower by suburban train.
So, it appears the maximum difference is 8 minutes, but at peak hour it may be as little as 3 minutes.
And the (slightly) longer trip time is compensated by shorter waiting times. In peak hour currently 10 suburban trains arrive at North Melbourne between 7:30am and 9am. It’s half that on V/Line, and if the project went ahead, those V/Line trains would become suburban ones. Off-peak there are 3 suburban trains an hour, vs 1 per hour on V/Line. So switching to suburban trains would mean about three times as many services, both in peak and off-peak hours, for Sunbury.
Sydenham suburban train users also have a quicker trip for those heading into the loop (but a bit slower for those wanting Southern Cross).
“They (V/Line) don’t have the number of cancellations and they don’t have the delays.”
Interestingly this turns out not to be true.
The latest figures for February show Connex out-performed V/Line on the line, in delivering services (98.9% to 96.2%) and on-time performance (90.2% to 82.1%). Of course, February was a real mess for both operators, with heat and fires and lots of equipment failures.
But in fact, every single month for the past year, Connex has out-performed V/Line on these two factors.
(Figures compare V/Line Bendigo, which includes Sunbury, and Connex Sydenham services. “On-time” is the usual weasel definition: within 5 minutes and 59 seconds.)
It’s worth noting that some Sunbury residents do want electrification, as is shown in the online discussion on the Sunbury Leader web site.
And it’s not all about the current users — it’s also about attracting new people out of their cars and onto the trains. Previous experience has shown that when electrification arrives, with more trains (especially outside peak hours), more capacity on those trains and services that run later into the night, 7-days-a-week, patronage goes through the roof. The Craigieburn extension resulted in patronage growth of 250% in just the first year.
In the case of the Sunbury line, it’s also about better using the track capacity on the line. Whereas the electric trains are carrying around 1000 people each (far from ideal), some V/Line trains are carrying only about 200 to 250 people each. And because the four AM peak trains originating at Sunbury serve only two stations (Sunbury and Digger’s Rest) and then run express much of the way, they use up a lot of track capacity. Replacing them with electric trains would add capacity to the trains and to the track, and based on current usage should actually get the numbers per train back down below the “desirable” 798 figure.
All that said, it’s totally understandable why current Sunbury train users don’t want a change. Connex has a reputation that is not entirely undeserved.
And nobody can deny that on V/Line, the seats are nicer, more comfortable, and the conductors are good for passenger service and security.
What should happen is a better quality of service on the suburban trains. Ensure there are staff on all the stations from first to last train, more TravelSafe staff on the trains, particularly in the evenings, and make sure that the trains and stations are kept clean. These things, along with better reliability and higher frequency services would help ease the pain for current Sunbury train users, as well as bringing lots of new people onto the rail system.
And that’s the bottom line, isn’t it?
(Not that I expect to convince the Sunbury people who don’t want it.)
Sources:
Performance: V/Line archive / Connex figures Feb and Jan
Train loads: DoT passenger surveys, May 2008
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Patter
If you’re in customer service it’s good to have some kind of patter worked out to keep your customers entertained. Bad to use the same line twice in one session though.
This is why spam fails, actually. One might take notice of a single reputable-ish-looking email, but when a dozen show up at once, it’s easy to see what’s going on.
(How many damn emails have I had purporting to be from menshealth.com in the last week?! Oh, and Pfizer.)
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Working the queue
McDonalds in Elizabeth Street — at least at busy times — appears to now have someone who takes peoples’ orders while they’re still in the queue. The order is keyed into an electronic gizmo, which presumably goes into the Maccas computer, and the price of the order is quoted to the customer, and a ticket with a reference number is handed over. The customer then queues, hands over the ticket, pays, and they get their order.
Is this a more efficient use of that employee than getting them to actually staff another register and serve people in the conventional way?
Perhaps not. Joel Spolsky noted critics’ views of a similar phenomenon in Starbucks:
Expediters are not really there to see to it that a customer’s order is filled more quickly, they believe. Rather, expediters exist solely to prevent people in line from giving up and wandering off, maybe to go to the Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner. Once a customer places an order, the logic goes, he or she feels an ethical obligation to wait for it to be filled, no matter how long the process takes. Expediters are there to lock in that order as soon as possible.
Interesting. Whether that’s the philosophy behind the Maccas lady working the queue or not, I don’t know, but it’s not clear to me how it was the best use of her time. Though perhaps there’s no space for another register?
(OK, OK, I admit it: I went in for a Filet’O'Fish. I was hungry and in a hurry, OK?)
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Ring tones
I switched my geeky Galaga ring tone back to a standard ring (Nokia’s “bee”) the other day, when I finally came to accept I just couldn’t hear the Galaga tone outdoors. Also it appears my model of phone can’t handle starting quietly and getting louder with an MP3 tone.
Apart from my own utterly superb choices in tones, there’s all sorts of stupid ring tones out there. Occasionally on late-night TV, you’ll see ads for some really moronic ring tones. This one was for a wacky accented voice saying something like “hahahaha, I kill you!”
(I don’t know if this one is still on air; I grabbed this still a couple of months ago.)
Who buys this crap? Who would actually want that as a ring tone, unless they want to flag to everyone around them that they’re a complete moron?
And more importantly, do the people that buy this crap know what they’re getting themselves into?
Read the small print. You’re not just burning good money getting a crap ring tone, you’re actually signing yourself up to their ringtone “club”, which costs you $9 every week, plus another $3 for each other moronic sound/ringtone you grab.
How is this not a complete ripoff?
Why on earth would anybody agree to this?
Then again, if you’re stupid enough to want this ring tone in the first place…
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