SBS seem to be showing a Miyazaki film every Wednesday night. They screened Porco Rosso last night, and Laputa : Castle In The Sky is on next week. Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli has been the Japanese version of Disney for the last two decades, so if you (or your kids) have never heard of their animated films it’s well worth watching a few.
Hey moron! Yes, you, the idiot driving the Metro Shuttle bus, rego VJD-576, at 5pm today. You drove down West Terrace in peak hour traffic tailgating, gesticulating and indicating like some freaking maniac. You nearly ran up some poor bastard’s tailpipe. And in two kilometres you managed to gain a whole two car positions — congratulations!
Tonight I set up some automated transfers in net banking, and also registered at www.telstra.com and www.agl.com.au. Now every single one of my regular bills has an automated payment.
Overdue bills have long been the bane of my existence. While I’ve become more organised with bills in recent months, it’s still frustrating when one slips through, because I’ve found most companies follow this bill resolution script to remind customers about a bill :
1. If customer has no phone number, despite providing an email address and postal address, go straight to step 3, do not pass GO.
2. If customer can’t come to phone, refuse to explain the reason for the call to the person answering. Go to step 3.
3. Customer marked as “uncontactable” and kicked over to Debt Recovery.
I realise I can get people authorised to act on my behalf over the phone. I’ve tried this before in the past - the process is not pleasant, and sometimes they lose the authority record, or it expires after so many months or years.
It’ll be interesting to see whether automating all the bills will help - I suspect there’s a chance a failed transfer will escape my attention, and I won’t discover it till the bill is well overdue. I think the last missing step is for an automated email or SMS service attached to your netbanking… something to email you or text you with the information that “Transfer X of $Y to ABC has failed/succeeded”.
The other day I heard a true story that originated from a car wash owner. Indigeneous Aboriginals have been arriving at his car wash in their brand new (but dirty) 4 wheel drives. They then proceed to open all the doors and windows, climb back in and push the button. They’ve found it’s a great way to wash the car both outside and inside, the whole family and all the pets too!
It was hilarious in the telling, but it’s actually a sobering clue to a larger problem.
“AUSTRALIA’S corporate watchdog is investigating major financiers, including the Commonwealth Bank, over a scheme that allowed poor Cape York Aborigines to be given car loans of up to $30,000 despite earning as little as $200 a week.”
There’s a surprising amount of wealth locked up in some outbank communities thanks to native land titles and the income from mining rights. Many individuals in these communities are not experienced in managing money and budgets, and don’t appreciate the reality of a car loan.
“One Pormpuraaw family recently had their Toyota Land Cruiser repossessed and valued for a tenth of its original purchase price, leaving them tens of thousands of dollars in debt to the financial institution that lent them the money.”
You get the impression the owners don’t understand the depreciation in value of their new car. Out there you can buy a $300 bomb, thrash it about the paddocks, fill it with soapy water and probably sell it again for $300! If you do the same to a $30,000 Land Cruiser, it’ll be worthless before you know it.
It makes you wonder - do the banks figure that by getting enough individuals in the community into debt, they’ll have a legitimate claim to the land?
Scratched CDs and DVDs - a fact of life if you rent, borrow, or lend them to friends. I’ve seen this remedy pop up in a few places : boil them in a pot on the stove for a minute or so. This heats the plastic in the disc and smoothes out the scratches.
Anyone tried this? Seems too easy to be true… but then again, I’ve seen remedies involving baby oil, toothpaste and floor wax. Currently my technique is to wet the DVD upside-down beneath the tap, keeping the top label dry, and then find the softest towel in the house to wipe it down from centre outwards to the edge. It doesn’t remove scratches, but it helps gets rid of that grotty rental gunk (what on earth do people DO to them?!)
Hmmm… reckon Blockbuster would notice if I boiled their DVDs?
Last night I decided to upgrade my broadband to the new ADSL2+ technology. As a pleasant surprise it turned out to be an instantaneous online upgrade, because Internode had already taken the liberty of moving my humble 512/128kbit plan over to their brand spanking new DSLAM.
My downloads are around the 500KB/s mark… about 4000kbit/s or 4Mbits/s. My theoretical speed (2km from exchange) should be double that, but I haven’t tried tweaking it or touched any settings in the router yet, I just rebooted it on my way out the door this morning. Even this current speed is 8 times faster than my old connection. It’s not just the downloads but the uploads that are boosted - Remote Desktop absolutely ROCKS now. I can finally use a connection with more than 256 colours!
How’s this for a story?
This bloke Frank drives into town to run some errands. His woollen shirt and nylon jacket have been rubbing against each other all day, slowly building up static electricity. He walks into a building, and the charge in his clothes is enough to ignite the carpet which bursts into flames. Apparently unaware of the panic in the office, the bloke returns to his car, where his shoes scorch the floor. He’s a bit puzzled by this, so when he spots the firefighters swarming all over the building he just left, he goes over to seek their help. They rip the jacket off him and find it contains a static charge of 40,000 volts. The guy was on the brink of spontaneous combustion.
A fantastic tale, you think? It happened in Warrnambool last week. Story here.
We went to La Guillotine last night for my sister’s birthday. French restaurants are a rarity in Adelaide which is surprising considering the contributions they’ve made to cuisine - heck, they invented the word.
La Guillotine has been operating in Gouger Street for more than 20 years and apparently they specialise in excellent omelets, though we didn’t try any on the night. Feeling adventurous, four of us chose the Casserole d’escargots for our entree. It turned out to be delicious, though we felt the dish was overwhelmed with garlic and mushrooms. It proved difficult to get to the basic texture of the snails. Another escargot choice on the menu would have been useful, allowing us to sample different recipes.
The staff were attentive and the wine cellar well stocked. The atmosphere of La Guillotine is very provincial French, and several devices of that name are displayed as part of the decor, blades hoisted high.
For mains I decided to finally try the famous Boullabaisse - a heavy broth containing fish, prawns, mussels, and a quarter crab. The soup was very tasty and packed with flavour, however the shellfish - the crab in particular - had a mushy, bland texture that sometimes comes from being frozen. At nearly $30 it represented the most expensive dish on the menu, and given that most of the bulk came from the crab and pieces of bread, I felt there could have been more of the delicious tasting broth.
For a native meat not normally part of French cuisine, the Filet de Kangourou (kangaroo fillet with a cherry & port wine glaze) turned out to be the most acclaimed dish at the table - it was succulent and rare, and beautifully presented. Another attractive dish only recently added to the menu was the chicken breast stuffed with avocado in a cream sauce, well received by my sister and my mum. Flea reported that the Confit de Canard - duck leg served on mushrooms with an orange glaze - was delicious. The pork fillet turned out to be alright but left my father wishing he’d tried the rabbit dish, Lapin a la Moutarde.
All in all, a pleasant and professionally run restaurant and at under $50 a head including entrees, sides, wines and coffee, an enjoyable experience that won’t demolish the wallet.
We tossed and turned quite a bit last night - we’d had a smaller dinner than usual and I was conscious of wanting more food at the time I went to bed. It made me realise how unused we (and I imagine most people) are to hunger pains.
We’re so accustomed to keeping up a steady flow of fuel to our bodies, and it’s so easy to procur this fuel. If you’re short of time, away from home, or can’t cook for some other reason - no matter where you are, there’ll be half a dozen takeaway shops in the vicinity.
When I go shopping and I feel hungry or thirsty, I know I’m going to be home within a couple of hours. So I suck it up. I’m not gonna die there and then! I’m always dumbstruck when I see people suddenly go “oh, I’m thirsty” and plonk $3 down at the nearest cafe for a coke or iced coffee. Even the water bottles in the same fridge cost as much because it’s not the goods you’re paying for, it’s the convenience. Add that up every time you go out - and it’s a symptom of our quick-fix mentality.
So carry water with you, your body and your wallet will thank you. Oh, and sleep hungry once in a while… you’ll appreciate the meals you do have, and gain a better understanding of the portions you need, not the portions you want.
Was trying to remember the title of a great sci-fi story I read many many years ago. I googled and googled but came up with nothing, so I put my question to the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup.
The story goes that in the far future computers are processing the
votes to install a new government for the planet (or galaxy). Using
advanced algorithms the computers have been able to predict all the
billions of votes, so that it all comes down to the actual vote of one
single man… the story follows this man during the day as he makes his
momentuous decision.
Literally within minutes, the answer came back : Asimov’s “Franchise”. I love the internet!
Surprisingly though, I haven’t been able to find the full text of this story online (keywords : Asimov Franchise Muller Multivac). It was written in the early 1950s and I thought the copyright period was 50 years. Hmmm … I just found an old comment in alt.books.isaac-asimov : Somewhere between 2042 and 2067 — depending on where you live — all of Asimov’s copyrights will expire and all his work will be up for grabs. It will be in the public domain then and no longer under copyright.
D’oh! No wonder Project Gutenberg didn’t have ANY of his works.