Over the holidays
Over the holidays, I became a bikie:
… discovered the truth about Roger Ramjet:
… and took a ride in a harvester:
Tags: farms, motorbike, Roger Ramjet
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Server admin again
Fiddling with the server.
Hold your thoughts until I’m done and I re-open comments.
3pm. Move done, re-delegating. (When you see this, it’s reached you.)
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I got a Myki, and it only cost $1.3 billion
I tried Myki for myself on Saturday in Geelong. Bought one for the promotional price of $5 in the special Myki Shop in Ryrie Street and hopped on a bus to the station.
(HQ available if you click through)
Some brief notes on it:
- It worked as advertised. Took $1.80 from my initial $5 balance
- The scanners are slow, much slower than your typical big building door scanner, which does the equivalent job
- The bus driver seemed delighted that three passengers in a row all scanned successfully, commenting “beautiful!”
- As a first timer, I accidentally waved the ticket at the screen initially when getting off the bus. Apparently I’m not the only one who’s done this, though I guess it’s a mistake you’d only make once. Though I wonder how much time others would take to work it out.
I’ve since gone onto the web site and registered my Myki and looked at my transactions. The web site needs some work.
- Despite a lot of the literature (including the ticket) giving the myki.com.au address, this doesn’t actually work. You have to go to www.myki.com.au
- The registration page is pretty clunky
- It doesn’t show you any detail of the transaction except the time and cost. Useful information like the zone(s) or route(s) you used aren’t shown.
I know it’s only the equivalent of beta testing, but given they’ve already pushed it into Geelong and Seymour, with Ballarat imminent, I’d have thought they’d have pretty much perfected it by now.
And while I think it’ll be handy (if it works properly, and if the current design flaws are fixed), I still don’t think it’s worth the huge cost. (At $1.3 billion, which includes building it and running it for ten years, it’s costing every man, woman and child in Victoria about $260 each.)
And I maintain that if they keep scan off, it’s going to cause chaos on Melbourne’s trams at busy times.
Previously noted problems with Myki
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Muckup day FAIL
It seems some students at Xavier went over-the-top in their end of school celebrations, ties used as G-strings, with one student injured, food fights on trams, jumping on cars, firecrackers let off at Balaclava Station, and all year 12 classes cancelled. (Some newspaper reports say the entire year level was suspended, but the principal was on radio on Wednesday morning saying this wasn’t strictly true.)
I don’t think it’s really that difficult to come up with pranks that are highly amusing, yet don’t injure anybody and cause no permanent damage to anything. Longtime readers may recall I wrote about the Year 12 prank I participated in, dumping loads of bean bag beans around the school hall… which when we were caught, resulted in us having to vaccuum them up.
Other stunts I saw and heard about from my time at high school in the 80s were using traffic cones to divert traffic through the school; various banners flown from nearby buildings; a fake school newsletter issued to all classes (I still have my copy somewhere); shaving cream liberally applied to buildings, clothes and on cars; and apparently once at Melbourne Grammar a teacher’s car was disassembled, moved to an upstairs room and put together again. Though that last one may be merely urban legend.
All it takes is a little imagination, and a wish to amuse, rather than annoy.
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Twitter Updates for 2008-05-04
- BEHOLD! I AM CREATOR OF WORLDS! (for kid’s school project) #
- Looking forward to seeing tomorrow’s paper. #
- New road cash five times funding of rail http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/05/04/1209839456871.html #
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New Year’s Eve thoughts
This NYE, I’m not out and about. So instead, amidst the chaos and heat of today, here are some random thoughts (including some attempted ideas for blog posts during the year that never got past embryo stage).
I’ve seen two Dymocks bags disintegrate after being kept for a few months. It’s great that they biodegrade rapidly, but don’t try and reuse them for long-term storage.
Why do some people turn on their indicators way too early before making their turn; in some cases before the street before the one they’re going to turn into?
Likewise, how do some people leave their hazard lights flashing as they drive down the road? Do they not hear the click… click… click?
Why do a few people run along the platform after the train’s stopped, to choose the optimum door, even when it’s not crowded? Even when it’s a newer model train where you can easily switch carriages? Just get on board, we’re late already!
That some people sit in their car, parked, with the engine running and the aircon on, on a 20-25 degree day, is a sign that petrol is still too cheap.
Why do some people pay over the odds to live in areas with good public transport, then never use it? (Because no matter how they travel, they know such properties are better investments, that’s why.)
What gives? “Safe” brand recycled tissues have returned to the supermarkets… just as the “Naturale” recycled brand of napkins has vanished! Why do we get the choice of either/or, not both?
Ian Henderson is very straight-faced on the ABC TV news. But his appearances on ABC radio 774 at about 5:45pm each weeknight are a stark contrast… there’s humour, comment, opinion… everything you don’t get from him at 7pm.
Someone told me this at dinner the other night, and Wikipedia confirms it: The countries that have not adopted the Metric system are: Liberia, Myanmar and the United States.
That’s all for now. Happy New Year.
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Ex
Manchester Lane, four years later. She looked about the same. Some bloke on her arm. Both smiling.
Don’t know if she noticed me noticing her as we passed. Didn’t say anything, just kept walking.
Glad she seems happy. Me too.
PS. It was an ex, not the ex.
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A moment of tenderness
A little kid (maybe 3 or 4) had come off his scooter, in the school playground. He was sprawled on the ground, crying. Somewhere, his parent was seeing off an older sibling. I looked around, but couldn’t see an obvious candidate.
Before I could see if he was okay, a bigger kid with a Grade 6 shirt on reached him and helped him up, looking him over. “You’re okay” he said softly. “You’re all right.”
The crying seemed to drop to a quiet whimper, the little kid got up, and the bigger one glanced around for the youngster’s parent, as a couple of other concerned kids looked on. They seemed to have the situation under control, so I walked on.
Kids at the school are used to dealing others outside their own age group — they have a “buddy” system where grade 5s and 6s team up with Preps. Seeing things like this, the benefits are pretty obvious, though I once encountered a kid from another school, on the train, trying to explain the concept to his cranky grandmother, who was the epitome of cynical. I hope we don’t all get like that as we grow older.
But seeing this kind of thing happen gives you hope for the human race.
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