Bog Water

I'm for drinking recycled water, by the way. I mean, do people think birds and fish and things don't already crap in the dams.

9 News had a poll which showed only 55% support; but it was a phone in-poll which means the more motivated people (the ones who are against it, given that President Pete's decision means those who are for it have lost motivation) have more incentive to ring and vote. Clive Berghofer
probably voted a thousand times.

9's just done a story on Vista. Given that they're in partnership with Microsoft at Ninemsn, it's not surprising that they gave it a positive review. But we can do without the falsehoods in the story, thanks - 95% of computers use Windows, ha!

[END]

Government also stops caring about its heritage

Another government department name change that escaped my attention last week -- because, let's face it, it's not very riveting stuff -- was the name change from the Department of Environment and Heritage to the Department of The Environment and Water Resources.

So, in one reshuffle, that's multiculturalism AND our heritage gone.

Also, that brings the total of departments with the acronym of "DEWR" to two. Although they added the word "The" to the name, so maybe they want to be "TEWR"

And in an update, the DICs at Immigration have allowed some agencies to use the acronym DIAC. I don't have a pronunciation for this one yet, although "DY-AC" seems to be the only thing that would work.

I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath.

[END]

Immigration department to change name to a bad acronym.

Public Servants tend to refer to their own and other departments by acronym. Thus the (old) Department of Family and Community Services was referred to as "FaCS" (FACKS).

Now that they're Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, one person I know insists on pronouncing FaCSIA as though it were spelled fascia (i.e., FAY-SHA), but most people still just call it FACKS, or FACK-SEE-A.

Whether or not the D -- for 'Department' -- is pronounced depends on whether or not it makes a good acronym. Social Security was always called "DSS", not just the "SS". If the D in FaCS had been pronounced, the acronym could well have sounded very much like "The effing Cs".

Still, the Department of Primary Industries and Energy has -- or at least had -- an acronym (DPIE) that is pronounced "Dopey", so not everyone thinks about the acronyms before naming the department.

And it shows. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DEE-MA) has changed name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. It won't stop them being dicks, though.

[END]

RSS feeds and new Blogger

If anyone monitors this by RSS, you might have noticed that the feed has gone weird recently. I'm going back through old posts and putting labels on them and the feed updates with the latest one I've done, no matter when it was originally published. Hopefully, this post will fix things up.

But if not, meh. I'll be doing it for a little while longer, but I'm not going to do them all. I think.

And, yes, I did send him Hindu Love Gods.

[END]

This is so disgraceful, I'm going to have to use the c-word

Centrelink.

There, I said it. I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've used it here.

If you go into Centrelink to lodge your dole form and you have what used to be known as a 'breach' - they have some new-fangled euphemistic phrase for it now, 'participation failure' or something - they won't process your form. They tell you that no one in the office can help you and they send you over to a phone to call some other place. The problem is you can't get through to the other place; you sit listing to hold music for a half an hour, or sometimes an hour and a half.

Sometimes there is someone in the office who can help you, but instead of getting to see them, they make you go over and ring them up. They make you sit out the front of the office talking on the phone to someone hiding in the back of the office.

You have to do this, or you won't get paid. Ever.

Centrelink used to pride themselves on 'customer' service. Now it seems they just don't care. They used to want to help people, now they make you talk to people sitting 10 metres away from you by phone. I'm sure it's so the staff don't get to see the people on the other end as people, just annoyances they can hang up on if they feel like it.

This is symptomatic of the contempt in which the Howard government holds unemployed people. It matches the contempt in which they hold employed people. (c.f. WorkChoices.) If you aren't an employer, they don't give a crap.

[END]

21st Century Etiquette

If you buy someone a CD, is it okay to rip it before you give it to them?

LATER: Thanks, Syme; just the answer I was hoping for. (See comments.) I don't think my brother would mind, after he doesn't believe in paying for music anyway. It's easy to tell he's never forked out money for a recording session or to get a CD pressed.

[END]

ABBA, Buck's Fizz, Morrissey???

Morrissey is reported to be in talks to write England's next Eurovision entry.

[END]

Blogtagging?

Hmmm, I'll have to investigate this.

Because someone's linked to me on their site, I'm supposed to write down five things that people don't know about me and then link to five people who aren't linked to by the person who linked to me, is that about it?

I'm the sort of person who lets chain letters die, did people know that?

[END]

Christmas Greetings

I'm a slack bugger and I never think to send out Christmas cards until it's way too late. So thanks for the cards, those who sent them.

Merry Christmas, y'all

[END]

How to make it rain

1. Plan a BBQ

2. Leave the windows open when you go to work

3. Leave something not quite waterproof outside

[END]

Meta Haiku

five, seven and five
is the structure of haiku
nature is mentioned

[END]

Misc 061124

- You've got 10 friends?

- I hope the CD arrived, I never heard.

- It's only half-time, but what a bunch of crap. Apparently, you can't lift your foot while kicking the ball, because if someone runs into you, you'll get sent off. Also, as a keeper if you're committed to diving at someone's feet and you're late and you try to make yourself into as small a target as possible so as not to interfere unduly with the attacking player, what the hell else are you supposed to do?

- My new bike is just being registered, I should be able to fall off that one very soon. (I bought one of those bright yellow safety vests; let's see the next fucker try to say he can't see me.)

- Oh, get it now, we're allowed to have penalties given against us, but not given to us.

I was at the dawning of the new era last week, Frank Farina's first match as coach. (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.) There was a girl in front of me who seemed to spend the whole game texting; my god, watch those thumbs move! All these young kiddies will end up crippled, unable to use their hands.

Well, gotta go - it seems like social club/poker night is ending early for Boycat's Mum. I'll have to watch what I'm sure will be a depressing end the the Roar game when I get back from the city.

[END]

Misc 061108

We can all forget about horse-racing for the next eleven months.

Yep, the bike's a write-off. The radiographer who did my chest x-ray (for my asthma) gave me a new way of looking at things - he's a biker rider, too - instead of thinking that no-one can see me, think that they can see me but everyone's trying to kill me.

Dog bites Man? Saddam found guilty, sentenced to death. The reason for the question mark goes back to the origin of the phrase "dog bites man" - dog bites man isn't news, man bites dog is news. But the verdict in Saddam's first trial is news, even though it's news that almost everyone would have guessed.

[END]

What do you get if you cross a 50cc motor scooter with an old model Ford Laser?

Pretty much the same as last time.

I'm frickin' cursed.

Same type of accident - someone in a car "just didn't see [me]" and pulled out across my path. This time, I didn't get the bike caught between the wheel and the car; I hit the panel behind the wheel pretty dead-on.

So, this one, I hit straighter. I don't seem to have anywhere near the bruising that I had last time, but this time I hit more with my knees than my upper legs; but the bruising, although it is much less than last time, is in almost the same places.

I haven't been to the doctor. Luckily (!?!) I already had holidays booked for next week -- yep, this happened at 4.55pm on a Friday afternoon before a week off -- to watch the U.S. mid-terms, so I don't need a med cert and I don't hurt too much. I'm planning to go to the doctor next week anyway, since I've done four of the five pathology tests for my asthma, so if anything still hurts unduly I'll talk to them about it then.

At least I can cancel the bike service I have booked for Tuesday.

The bike might not be a write-off. The front wheel doesn't seem to have been knocked out of alignment like last time. A lot of the plastic panelling has been destroyed, but there's funny stuff, like the front headlight assembly is hanging by its electrical wires but nothing actually appears to be broken - the bulb is intact and the casing isn't busted either.

But I'm getting really sick of this.

I think I got off really lucky this time, even though I was probably going faster; but, next time I could get crippled. Which is a shame, since climate change is so obvious that even the four-eyed fuckwit acknowledges it now, because I'm thinking of giving up the bike unless driver attitudes to those of us on two wheels change really quickly.

You can't slam on the brakes doing 53km/h on the little wheels on a scooter. You'd be just as likely to end up under the car as on the bonnet. And unfortunately, these people pull out when you're so close to them that the instinctive reaction of letting go of the throttle doesn't help much. The only solution is that people will have to start SEEING US.

I propose mandatory jail time for anyone who is at fault in an accident involving a bike. Not that any legislation would have to be passed; just proposing it should do the trick.

So, it might be goodbye to my 3l/100km transportation device.

[Although who am I kidding? They'll either fix the bike or replace it again and I'm still paying for it, so I'll use it rather than have it sit in the garage while I walk a mile to catch a bus. ]

[END]

Too much mull at the ABC

[END]

Drug-Sniffing Dogs - more false positives

The police did another one of their highly ineffective "harass the hippies" drug-sniffing dog sweeps in the Valley last weekend. Again, the police report a startling amount of false positives:

"During these searches the drug detection dogs indicated that 75 people had been in contact with or were at the time in possession of illicit drugs. From these indications 22 people were charged after they were found to have illicit drugs on them while a number of others admitted to police that they had consumed drugs earlier in the evening," Supt Carew said.

If all of the rest of the people had consumed drugs, then I wouldn't say there were false positives; but, if all the rest of the people said they'd consumed drugs then the police would have said so. They quite like giving exact numbers, even when it makes them look very bad.

This 30% success rate is even worse than last time.

[END]

Misc 061013

The Queensland Roar looked pretty good last night, but Tom Willis should not be goalie. And it's not just his creepy resemblance to Tom Cruise. He just doesn't inspire confidence. And it's not just because he fumbled the ball into the path of an attacker with less than a minute gone, it's that he appears likely to do this often. Maybe I'm judging him unfairly in comparison to Liam Reddy who has impressed me with the way he dives into the fray; and he's got the best hands in the league statistically.

Another meaningless opinion poll came out today. Apparently 7 out of 10 people think Howard will win the next election. That's all well and good, but firstly, what people think is going to happen isn't worth anything and secondly, we don't have a presidential election system. So this survey is even less meanful than the "preferred Prime Minister" stuff. I don't think that trailing in the preferred PM polls has ever stopped anyone whose party won more seats from becoming Prime Minister.


And here's some stuff from September 25 - lost in drafts again:

Dog Bites Man: The Chamber of Commerce and Industry say that any Labor changes to IR Laws will be bad for Australia. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

Iraqi Govt removes Saddam trial judge: Iraq's Shiite-led Cabinet has removed the chief judge in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein, accusing him of being biased towards the defendant. - They only want judges biased against the defendant.

Argentines don't like Hewitt says Nalbandian: Don't worry, David. Australians don't either.

[END]

I think the radar was malfunctioning...

...or this is what the apocalypse looks like.

[END]

Qld Roar, Looking Very Poor

Or are Melbourne really that good?

They played us off the park: it's never good when it seems like there's twice as many of them as there are of you in the midfield.

What formation are we playing? This team is - formation-wise - unrecognisable from last week's team which played Adelaide off the park. Why don't we just play our own game instead of worrying about them? Bringing Murdocca on allowed them to have a bit more of their normal shape, except the defence then forgot what it was supposed to be doing.

We need Dilevski on more of the time. At least before the game is a lost cause.

The second penalty was crap. McLaren won the ball.

So back to my original two questions, I think it's a bit of both. We were poor and they were good. Remember, we were in close second after four rounds, but the teams that we'd played were in fifth to eighth at the end of round four. Since then, against the 'top' teams, we've won none, drawn one, lost one.

[END]

Some Pics

Salamander Bay, NSW, August 2006

Vega$

Mondrian's Church

Small Child hit by Lightning

More photos below the fold...

Note: Does not have 'Resort' in title; okay for work function

Lawnmower-powered Bicycle

Accident Ahead

[END]