DNA quote
A letter from Lola Jones in this morning’s Age has this quote:
We don’t have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.
– Douglas Adams, May 2001 (Video)
I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about this, but this is a view I’ve had for a long time.
It comes down to this: the good news is nothing we can do will destroy the planet. It’s just a big rock. It will survive. The bad news is we can do plenty to make it bloody miserable, or even impossible, for us humans to survive.
Brief things
Computer: I like it when computers reach the point at which a good upgrade is cheap, quick and cheerful. In this case on my two-year-old box, tripling the RAM cost me $45, tripling the hard disk space cost $130. And as the new disk is faster than the old one, I’ll take the opportunity to re-install everything onto it, and clear out its sinuses in the process. … Would have helped if I’d bought the correct hard disk cable, of course.
Cluster headaches: They came back for autumn, but the medication has pretty much got them under control.
Solar hot water: It’s been a year since I got solar hot water installed. From a user point of view, there’s absolutely no difference. By the time it reaches you at the tap, it’s just hot water. I’d love to tell you it made a clear and noticeable difference to the gas bills, but looking through them, I’m not seeing it, in part because water, heating, and cooking is all tied up in there, and also apparently (at least according to some BOM figures I cast my untrained eye over), 2008 was slightly colder than 2007.
The toe: It’s healing. Most of the swelling has gone, but it’s still a little uncomfortable to walk in shoes.
Star Trek: Booked for Sunday in Gold Class. Looking forward to this.
My little toe
On Wednesday morning, after hopping out of the shower, I banged my foot on my bedroom doorway.
It made quite an impact, and has been hurting ever since. I saw the doctor yesterday, and he says there’s a probable fracture in my little toe which will take a couple of weeks at least to fully heal.
It’s certainly got a handsome bruise, and every time I try and walk on it, I get a painful reminder about how vital the little toe is to the foot. Thankfully I’ve been able to work from home for a couple of days.
Fortunately unlike Maisie, pictured here in 2005, it’s unlikely the toe will need to be amputated.
But the lesson here is that it really pays to look where you’re going.
Which way?
And now for a vital question.
Hanging down away from the wall? (over)
Or facing the wall? (under)
Or do you just not care?
Which way do you put your toilet rolls on the dispenser? Leave a comment.
Me? Always hanging away from the wall, as God intended. And if I find it (at my house at least) hanging the wrong way, I’ll turn it round.
Update 6pm. It seems most people do like I do. Some do the opposite. Some of those cite friction. FRICTION?! You’re kidding me. It’s not like you’re going to start a fire.
And Brian notes this page, which is utterly brilliant. Seriously, definitely required reading.
Update 17/4/2009: Added “over” and “under”, which is more common terminology for this most vexing question.
The car and the fridge
Just when I thought my finances were more-or-less under control, March brought a couple of major unexpected things breaking down.
Electric car windows are nice to have. But one stopped working a couple of weeks ago. This involved using sticky tape just to keep it from descending by itself and staying open to the weather. Cost to get it fixed? About $500. Turns out those car warranties provided by used-car dealers are pretty specific… if it’s a fault in the engine or otherwise making the car go, that’s fine, but windows? Nup. Ka-ching!
Then the fridge stopped last Thursday. The ice-cream melted. I tried the things suggested in the manual, in particular vacuumming around the back to clear the dust out. There was heaps of dust. So much dust it made clunking noises as it flew up the vacuum-cleaner tube.
It didn’t help. The repairman came on Tuesday to tell me it was the compressor. And it would cost five or six hundred dollars to fix. Sigh. (And there was a $95 charge just for the privilege of being told that.)
The points for getting it fixed: less cost than a new one; less waste of the rest of the fridge.
The points against: it’s already almost twelve years old; no guarantees something else wouldn’t break. And the clincher: he couldn’t do it that day anyway, and he wasn’t even sure if they had the parts in stock.
And I wanted a solution quickly, because using an esky with purchased ice in it works okay for a small amount of stuff, but is not my idea of fun.
So I decided to buy a new fridge. Turns out Choice in November had a survey of fridges, and my mum had the mag handy. Most of those at the top of their results are Fisher and Paykel. The repairman liked Westinghouse or Kelvinator (apparently both made by Electrolux). So I had a quick look online at prices and compared models.
Some things I learned about or otherwise considered:
- Old fridge 505 litres. It was actually too big. I’ve never used that much space. Time to downsize slightly, by perhaps 20% — no more.
- Old fridge had freezer at bottom. Choice notes that this is a tad more convenient, but less energy efficient, by about 10% it looks like.
- Mind you, freezer at the bottom models all seem to have a higher proportion of freezer space, which may be important for some people.
- I didn’t want stainless steel, or lots of gadgetry. As the repairman reckoned, just more things to break down.
I spotted a good price on a Westinghouse in The Good Guys catalogue, and went looking, aiming to buy that day. Unfortunately I couldn’t find their Brighton store temporary (due to a fire or something) address, in no small part because their web site map claimed they were near JB Hifi.
I did find Retravision instead, who had a nice F+P model at the right size, also on sale. Checked if they could deliver it quickly, and they said yes.
Sold. Plus delivery fee, and extended warranty, about $1300. Ka-ching.
No wonder I think I’m broke. (I suppose I could have looked for something on eBay, but like I said, I wanted this problem fixed fast, and hopefully it goes for at least another twelve years before I have any problems.) I’m not really broke of course, but months like this, with major expenses, mean the things that I had on the plan for the house go temporarily out the window. It’s enough to want a session in the scream chamber.
I actually thought the washing machine would be the next to stop. It’s about 15 years old and has started making a more noise during the spin cycle than it used to.
Oh, I didn’t check where the fridge was made before I bought it. All other things being equal, obviously nice to buy Australian made and support local jobs. Turns out it was made at Fisher and Paykel’s factory in Cleveland, Qld… which was due to close last month.
PS. Dear Good Guys, your web site map being wrong lost you that sale. (I’ve let them know.)
Passive cooling
I wouldn’t pretend to know a great deal about house design. But obviously it’s more energy efficient to design a building so that as far as possible, in summer it is kept cool by shade (rather than by air-conditioning) and in winter kept warm by the sun (rather than by heating). Apparently this is called passive solar building design.
A friend of a friend lives in a highrise (built late-1990s, I think) where there’s no shade on the north-facing windows, and the air-conditioning needs to be run even on cool days. I can’t imagine what it was like during last week’s heatwave.
In contrast, my house (circa 1930) has eaves over the windows. I can’t quantify how much it helps keep the house cooler (or at least less hot), but this photo of one of the north-facing windows, taken at 3pm on Friday, shows clearly how the eaves keep the sun away.
Recycled tissues are back
I wrote in December that recycled tissues had disappeared from the supermarket shelves.
I did find an email contact for ABC Tissues (who make the Naturale brand) — they told me to expect their recycled tissues back into Woolworths/Safeway stores soon, in a new packaging.
Last week Flerdle commented that they’d been spotted in Brunswick. I still haven’t seen them in my local though.
But yesterday I happened to explore the new Carnegie Central shopping centre, which has a shiny new Woolworths supermarket. (Yes, the changeover from Safeway has officially started. It’s odd though, having a new store so close to the existing Carnegie Safeway, which is still open.)
And they had the tissues in stock.
Mind you in the mean time I’d made an effort to use hankies more than tissues, to help my depleted stocks last a bit longer. I hope/suspect the energy involved in keeping the hankies clean is less than it takes to produce the recycled tissues.
Still, it’s good to have the tissues available again, as I just can’t see the sense in chopping down trees to put my snot on.
How to get into a hammock
I’ve wanted a hammock for ages — ever since I moved in and found hammock hooks fitted to the back veranda. And finally this Christmas I got one, thanks to Marita.
Alas it didn’t quite fit the hooks, so I trotted off to Hammock HQ today at the Victoria Market to get the requisite extension bits to make it fit. Got it all home and set it up.
I concluded that the easiest way to get into it is to put one leg on either side then do a kind of Haka-like manoeuvre and plant your bum in the middle, before putting your legs in, fidgeting around and trying to relax.
There’s just nothing dignified about it.
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But once you’re in, it is very relaxing. The sun was a bit bright today and I had to get a hat, but once I did, I swung gently in the breeze while reading a book, and then put the book down and dozed off for a while.
The only catch was my legs felt a bit stiff when getting up again, but apart from that it’s very nice. I’ll be spending more time in the hammock, weather permitting.
