Posts filed under 'Samuel News'
If you’re driving home at 4:20am, what’s something that you wouldn’t want to happen?
How about your car making a loud banging noise and stopping working? That was on your list? Good, because that’s what happened to me.
Car is driving along (albeit making an awful racket which will be checked out on Monday when it gets serviced) and then “bang…clunk” it sounds like something has either blown up or fallen out or both. The battery warning light flickers, then the car stalls and just keeps rolling, and there’s the battery warning light as well as some other warning lights.
I slowed down and moved the car on to the nature strip…its inertia just managed to carry it up on to the nature strip. I got out and walked back down the road to see if something had actually fallen out…no sign of anything, so I returned to the car. Hmmm, strong burning smell, get out and take a quick look around…that looks like smoke, “wonderful, just what I need”. Rush back to the cabin and collect the handful of personal belongings which are there, move to a safe distance and call the fire brigade and accidentally give them the wrong street name.
Fire brigade turn up quite rapidly, obviously they worked out that the cross street which I mentioned doesn’t actually intersect with the street that I claimed to be on. They investigate and find that, whilst there isn’t a fire, something definitely burnt and caused some smoke…the spark plug wiring has had it.
They disconnect the battery, advise me to lock up the car, take down my name and I get a lift home from a friend who shall remain anonymous for now.
On the plus side, the car is about two blocks away from the mechanic that it has an appointment with on Monday. Logistically that will be interesting, but it’s better than halfway between Canberra and Deniliquin. It’s probably also a good thing that it happened when I wasn’t in a hurry to get somewhere.
I’ll deal with the “now what…” questions after I’ve had some sleep. Good night everybody.
Samuel
January 3rd, 2009 at 05:27am
I’m heading back to Canberra this afternoon and should arrive at some stage tonight. At this stage I intend on taking the longer and more scenic route via Echuca and Albury, although that may change.
It may interest you to know that on Monday evening I decided to drive to Echuca and ended up buying petrol (at 111.9 cents per litre, three cents cheaper than in Deniliquin) while I was there. 57.63 litres of the stuff to be precise. It had been exactly 660KM since I had last filled the tank, and apart from a small amount of city or town based driving as I left Canberra, drove through towns and a small trip in Deniliquin, it was all highway driving.
57.63 litres to travel 660KM works out at 11.452368558042686100989068193649 kilometres per litre.
I will be topping up again before leaving Deniliquin, so it will be interesting to see if I am able to get back to Canberra on one tank of petrol if I take the longer route via Echuca and Albury which is about 663KM or 57.89 litres based on the above calculation. If the calculation is accurate, then I shouldn’t have any problems getting back to Canberra on a single tank of petrol.
And for those of you who are wondering, yes this does mean that I will be back on 1WAY FM’s breakfast show tomorrow morning.
Samuel
December 31st, 2008 at 11:04am
I left home around 3:30am and decided to head over to Weston to the Caltex which is usually the cheapest Caltex in town. There was also a nice fog which turned out to be much thicker than I expected.
I also forgot to take a 4c discount voucher with me, so ended up paying 98.9 cents per litre for 50.56 litres at a cost of $50.00
I left Caltex Weston at 3:55am and decided to take the slightly longer route via Albury (it adds about 10KM to the “medium distance” northern run via Narrandera, which is in turn about 40KM more than the short run via Lockhart and Urana) as I haven’t travelled to Deniliquin via this route before, so it would make for an interesting change…and I had plenty of time. Depending on how I feel when I leave the town, I may decide to take a longer route home.
I pulled over and stopped for a nap for about an hour and a half about twenty minutes before reaching Gundagai as I was overcome by a sudden tiredness. I stopped in Gundagai for breakfast for half an hour. These were my only breaks along the way.
I was also stopped for a random breath test in Holbrook, while I was listening to Jason Morrison interviewing Alan Jones about his operation to remove a brain tumour, on 2GB’s “Highlights of the Alan Jones Breakfast Show, with Jason Morrison” podcast.
I arrived at the hotel in Deniliquin at 11:50am which, once the breaks are removed, makes a total trip time of 5 hours and 55 minutes. The total travel distance was 564.2KM, and therefore the average speed of the journey was 95.357746478873239436619718309859 km/h.
Samuel
December 29th, 2008 at 06:04pm
I’m in Deniliquin again and was going to write a couple things yesterday afternoon but decided to have a nap instead.
Unfortunately I left the camera at home so I’ll have to wait until later in the week to post the photos I took the last time I was in Deniliquin.
It’s a slow news day here…and it looks like a slow news day in Melbourne and Albury as well as 3AW’s morning show is having a lengthy chat about “the evils of four wheel drives in urban places”. I think one of the emailers got it right that it depends on the driver…I know a number of people who drive four wheel drives in urban areas, some are good at it, and some should walk.
As for Albury…stay tuned because I’ve got a story that I noticed on page three of this morning’s Border Mail coming up shortly.
Samuel
December 29th, 2008 at 09:49am
If the title sounds familiar, it should, it’s a quote from Sir Humphrey Appleby’s Christmas message.
It seems an appropriate title for a post which is a bit of a reflection on the year that has been and the year that is ahead (although I’m not convinced that it is possible to reflect on an event which is yet to occur). I started to think about this a couple weeks ago when I noticed that Mark Parton was trying to get people to give their year a rating out of ten…I’m not really convinced that such a thing is possible as a year is such a long time and so many things happen that I just don’t think that I can really weigh them all up against each other to come up with a definitive number.
It has been such a strange year with a number of ups and downs along the way including a few points in time where I nearly didn’t see the year out (well, I still haven’t, but I think you get my drift). The latter half of the year has probably been better overall than the first half, but the highs and lows have been much more pronounced.
If I remember this year for one thing, it will something that I don’t want to write about for fear of incriminating myself…at least I don’t have to worry about it any more. I might feel like writing about it in a couple years…three years sounds like a good number, and I’d be interested to see the resident conspiracy theorist who thinks I don’t exist try to work this one out…the clues are all there if you look hard enough.
Anyway, as I mentioned at the end of the breakfast show on 1WAY FM this morning, and alluded to yesterday on this blog, the year ends for me on a tentative note. The brief summary of it is that I have somewhat willing become unemployed, although the longer version is much more interesting.
Regular readers would probably recall that in June I resigned from my job with AussieHQ. What is less well-known is that I took up a similar job with AussieHQ in late August, a move which, in hindsight, may have been a mistake. It was definitely a mistake to ignore my option about a week later of submitting an application for a journalism job at Capital Radio, although a number of bridges would have been damaged beyond repair had I been successful with such an application.
I should make it clear that I don’t have any problems with the people at AussieHQ. They are a group of thoroughly decent people…you would have to be decent to take somebody back a short time after they resigned. When it comes down to it, I’m sick of technical support. I’ve convinced myself that I’m not sick of it enough times to know that I am completely and utterly sick of it (he said as he publicly killed any possibility of a last resort job in some other technical support position with another employer)…there is only so much of dealing with other peoples’ problems that I can take.
Last week, the week that I spent in Deniliquin, proved to me just how much I was deluding myself to think that I was making some sort of wise decision by staying in technical support. I absolutely loved my week at 2QN, and I recall saying that, if they would have me back, I would love to come back.
Things became a bit difficult on Monday afternoon when I was asked to come back. I knew at that time that taking another week off from my stable, if boring by comparison, day job would be damaging to my chances of retaining said day job, so I initially turned down the offer to go back to Deniliquin on the grounds that it just didn’t look like it would be workable. At the same time, I was being offered a change of pace in my day job…A PR role, seemed interesting and deserved consideration, and I was reasonably excited about it, but I wasn’t comfortable with the reasoning behind my decision to turn down the time in Deniliquin.
My options, as I saw them, were to accept the Deniliquin offer, or accept the PR offer…continuing in tech support was not an option, and to compound matters, I needed to make the decision by about 6am.
I consulted with some people for “external advice”, including Tim Malone who happened to relieve the other difficulty in the consideration, the small matter of the 1WAY FM breakfast show. I received some useful advice, but ultimately I had to make the decision for myself, and when I came to the conclusions that:
1. PR isn’t a role that I can see myself enjoying for an extended period of time, and
2. Radio is where I really want to be
The decision became obvious. The only remaining concern was that the Deniliquin job may have been filled by one of the casuals who live a lot closer to the town that I do. By 9:30am I had an answer, I had the job.
That afternoon I was asked to resign from AussieHQ, a request which was more amicable than I was expecting. Refusal would have been an option, but I doubt that my application for unpaid leave would have been granted, and I would probably have been fired for failing to attend work for a week, so the resignation is probably the better option. It also means that AussieHQ can employ someone else who will hopefully enjoy the job more than I did.
I enjoyed the job for a while, quite a while in fact, and I usually found something to enjoy each day, but the days of going to work and enjoying most, if not all, of a shift are long gone. The opportunity to move on is a welcome one.
So, moving in to the new year, I find myself in a bit of a pickle. As of the close of business on Friday the 2nd of January, I don’t have a job. I have about a week and a half of leave to be paid out, and the few days of work in Deniliquin to be paid, and of course the week just gone in Canberra as well. What happens after that is a mystery.
A heap of radio jobs were advertised just before Christmas, so I will have to follow those leads, although if I’m lucky I might find that an existing contact has a position, even if it’s casual or part-time.
At this time I’m more than willing to move if a full-time position is available. Moving for a part-time job would be a decision to be dealt with on its merits. Ultimately it’s a great opportunity to move on, without needing to worry about the stability of an existing job.
I’m approaching the new year with cautious optimism…for all I know it could come crashing down in a big heap, but with any luck it will turn out better than before, and everything will be good. “Bring it on” I say!
Samuel
December 26th, 2008 at 04:37pm
Sorry, this cold has been knocking me about a bit and hasn’t made sleeping any easier, hence the lack of posts here of late.
Anyway, a bit of news for you. As I alluded to during a conversation with Mark Parton on 2CC about leap seconds this morning, I’m heading back to Deniliquin next week. There are a number of factors which have made it a much more difficult decision this time around, but I believe that it’s the right decision.
This does mean that I won’t be hosting breakfast on 1WAY FM next week, and the small number of pre-recorded segments which I have set aside for next week will just have to be held over for a week.
In regards to the question of airchecks from my last stint in Deniliquin, a small number of them will be placed in the Aircheck Sunday roster for the new year, so you will be able to hear them.
For those of you who are wondering, Maritz will not be filling in for me next week. I will try to find some time to write some content. Maritz continues to write emails to me, which I am attempting to reply to with a “proper English” translation. It’s not as easy as it looks sometimes.
Finally, I must remind myself to post the few photos from last week. It’s probably one of those “eventually” things.
Samuel
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:54am
But I think I’m coming down with a cold…actually, scrap the “think” from that sentence.
I came back from Deniliquin via a different route to the one that I took to get there, and unfortunately I didn’t check the odometer reading before I had to go elsewhere, nor did I remember to get my exact time of arrival, so unfortunately I can’t provide accurate time, distance and average speed calculations.
Anyway, thank you to Maritz for filling in for me, I hope you all enjoyed her company.
I’m going back to sleep now. I’ll have more to say later.
Samuel
December 21st, 2008 at 06:17am
And here I am in Deniliquin. I arrived at 2pm, having left home at about 7:15am to fill up with petrol at Caltex Braddon and then embark on the journey. From Caltex Braddon to Deniliquin was 533.9KM and I left Caltex at 7:23am, so the average speed of the journey was 83.64KM/H, however when you consider that I stopped in Gundagai and Jerilderie for approximately 30 minutes per stop, the average speed of the journey was actually 99.18KM/H.
The trip was quite enjoyable thanks to a podcast followed by an iPod in shuffle mode, and the fact that I got in to Gundagai right on schedule to hear the 9am news on FM 94.3 Sounds Of The Mountains, in which I heard one of my sport bulletins for AIR News. I also stopped a bit west of Wagga Wagga to take a photo of a sign which interested me due to it containing the names of two people that I work with in Canberra. I also made a note of a few things that I would like to take photos of on the way back to Canberra.
I didn’t travel via the shortest available route in terms of distance, but I did enjoy the drive anyway, although my GPS got a bit confused in Wagga Wagga at a point where a traffic island ended…its instruction to me was “Turn right, followed by, make a u-turn”.
Based on what it was displaying at the time, I think this was supposed to be followed by “turn right” again.
Anyway, I’ve been up since about 11:30am yesterday, so I should probably get some sleep. I have more Internet access than I was expecting within the hotel, so you will probably hear from me a few times during the week…and if you live in a town where AIR News is broadcast, you’ll hear me tomorrow morning presenting the sport bulletins.
Must sleep now for a little while as it will be dinner time in a few hours, and The Bill will be on ABC1 shortly thereafter.
Samuel
December 13th, 2008 at 02:57pm
As a regular customer of Michel’s Patisserie in Cooleman Court I have a coffee card on which every eighth coffee is free. The total number of coffees on each card is 24, so the last time I started a coffee card I had it dated so that I could keep track of how long it takes to finish off a card.
I started the card on the 9th of November and finished it today, the 8th of December, which is 29 days, so slightly less than a month. It’s an average of 0.82758620689655172413793103448276 coffees per day.
On my list of strange things to do one day, is to sit down in Michel’s Patisserie at opening time, and drink coffee after coffee after coffee all day and see how many I can drink. Bad idea? Probably, but it would be interesting to see if I manage to do better than I did the last time I tried to drink an inordinate amount of coffee.
Samuel
December 8th, 2008 at 04:06pm
Last night I came across a rather unfortunate sight in a carpark. A pigeon, with no tail, and seemingly unable to walk, was stranded in the middle of the carpark.
The pigeon, as much of a pest as its species may be, was clearly distraught, and I couldn’t leave it there to face its fate. The poor little thing didn’t really want me to come anywhere near it at first, but eventually allowed me to pick it up (albeit with a failed attempt at escaping later on, resulting in a nasty crash landing).
Eventually, after finding a box for the bird (thanks Nick), and calling the RSPCA, I took the pigeon home for the night and placed a bowl of water and some oats (due to a lack of bird seed) in the box with the it. The RSPCA asked me to bring it in this morning, which I did, and after a quick examination, they determined that it has a pelvic injury, and there is nothing that they can do for it.
As much as I’m sad that the bird will have to be put down, I’m pleased that it will be put down in a humane manner, rather than being left to its own devices to be attacked either by a car or a cat. It is nice to know that the bird’s final moments will be peaceful.
Samuel
December 7th, 2008 at 03:08pm
As I noted earlier this week, from the 15th to the 19th of December I will be working for 2QN and Classic Rock in Deniliquin.
As it happens, 1WAY FM’s breakfast host James Scott will be taking leave for four weeks starting on the 15th. Obviously I won’t be in town during the first week of his absence, however from the 22nd of January until the 9th of January I will be in town and filling in for James. This will include Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
So, it’s a week of news in Deniliquin, during which I will be taking unpaid leave from my “day job” in Canberra, and then three weeks of Breakfast on 1WAY FM, which conveniently coincides with shifts which don’t occur during the morning at my “day job”.
I might be pushing myself a bit to cover a breakfast show and maintain my “day job” for those few weeks, but I think it will be fun. I’m considering putting in for leave for late January or at some stage in February anyway…but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Samuel
December 5th, 2008 at 07:15am
There’s a headline which proves that I should not be the director of tourism and marketing for the Deniliquin Council!
I was going to wait until about 9am to post this, but seeing as I just told John Kerr and half the country about it…I’ll be spending the week in Deniliquin, starting at some stage, probably around midday on Sunday the 14th of December, (unless I decide to leave Canberra on the Saturday instead…assuming that the hotel have a vacancy for another night) and working at 2QN and Classic Rock FM filling in for newsreader Graham Munson from Monday to Friday.
Google Maps thinks it will take between 6.5 and 7 hours to drive there, depending on whether I go through Albury or Narrandera, although it does tend to overestimate the travel time for such trips. That said, with a couple stops along the way, it could be very accurate.
It should be a good week, and I’m certainly looking forward to it. The only downside that I can see to this is that I will have to miss out on a Christmas party on that Sunday, and I won’t be in town to panel the final Open House show of the year on 1WAY FM. I won’t have to miss the show entirely though as Vision, another station who take the show, have a repeater in Deniliquin. I suppose that blogging could be problematic during that week depending on what Internet access I have…suddenly I’m pleased that my laptop has a standard modem built-in, and Internode offer ten hours of complimentary dialup access per month with their ADSL plans. Such access would feel like I was waiting for somebody to send me a copy of the Internet on floppy disks via Australia Post, but it would be better than nothing.
Anyway, as I said, it should be a good week. I’m excited about it.
Samuel
December 2nd, 2008 at 03:20am
That might be one way to describe the latter half of last week and the weekend. Two friendships which appear to have disintegrated, another friend who I fear may be on the edge of self-harm, a job under threat, and one dead kangaroo.
Of the two friendships which appear to have disintegrated, one doesn’t bother me too much simply because I never really thought it was a particularly strong or close friendship anyway, but the other one, which was a very strong and fairly close friendship (from my perspective anyway) hurts. I’ve probably spent the better part of the last day or so trying to work out exactly what happened, and whilst I’m no closer to working out the reasons, I can see that there have been subtle hints left for me for some time now, and I just missed them. I think the friend was too polite to just drop me there and then, and has been trying to get rid of me gradually, and has now been a bit more blunt about it.
As much as I would like to know the reasons behind the collapse, I’m not going to bother asking. In some ways I think it would be better if I just stop thinking about it, although I will admit that it is very difficult.
As for the “job under threat” and the friend possibly on the edge of self-harm, the less I say about any of that publicly at this stage, the better. These are things which need to be worked out away from public scrutiny.
And the dead kangaroo, I can’t help but feel very sorry for the poor thing. All that it wanted to do was cross the road, I couldn’t stop in time, and now it’s dead. What’s worse is that it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone for one of my “I need to unwind” drives. It wasn’t a very mature kangaroo, but it was one of the more sensible ones, it was actually trying to get out of the way…I pity it due to the sheer amount of terror that it must have been feeling in it’s last few moments of life. I suppose I can take some comfort from the fact that it died virtually instantly once hit, and that it didn’t suffer, something which is fairly obvious from the fact that once I got out and checked on it, it was dead, with a large amount of blood covering the road from its head wound.
I know that roos get hit by cars all the time, but I can’t help but feel sorry for this particular roo. I suppose I’m lucky insofar as my car only suffered very minor damage (a small dent and a bit of missing paint as far as I can tell). Regardless, it’s got to be amongst the most typical, but worst ways, to cap off what has already been a spectacularly awful few days.
Samuel
November 24th, 2008 at 03:13am
Midnight to 8am: Work…stayed until about 10am because, well, coffee is at its best when its cold
10:30am: Walkies with Nattie
11am: A short nap…but no, not happening, can’t sleep, too many thoughts, and it’s too hot to sleep.
11:45: Depart for 1WAY FM
Midday: Various bits and pieces at 1WAY FM, including a drive to Curtin for lunch…I haven’t had a sandwich from there for ages. Spot ACTION bus 854 leaving Woden…I haven’t seen that bus for nearly a year and now I see it five times in the space of a week? Regardless, it’s their best bus…I should buy it when they eventually sell it.
3:50ish: Leave 1WAY FM with the intention of finding a particular dirt road just past Gungahlin which I found once, and haven’t been able to find again. Decided to take the “scenic” route through the CBD and Northbourne Avenue.
4:10ish: Ambulance rushes through Civic, northbound on Northbourne, nearly flattening a pedestrian in the process.
4:15ish: Something’s going on at the Lyneham flats…previous ambulance is leaving the scene, there’s another one on-scene and four, maybe five Police cars. I decide to park a couple blocks away and investigate on foot.
4:20ish: “Probably a stabbing” crosses my mind, but the roped off area seems a bit big for that. Police are interviewing a couple people at the scene. I call 2CC to report it.
4:28: Converse with 2CC’s Mike Welsh about incident. Am prompted to find out more.
4:30: Approach Police for more info. Get an “alright, we’ll see what we can do”.
4:32ish: Get the “stand here and wait for a bit” line
4:34ish: “Police Media will be here soon, they’ll be able to chat with you”
4:45ish: “We’ve issued a press release, Police Media will be here soon”. It was a stabbing after all.
4:45ish: Advised that 2CC newsroom will take it from here. Notice RiotACT’s Johnboy taking photos.
4:55ish: Forensics and Detectives have arrived, and finally I can get across the road with this traffic. Notice Adam Lavelle circling above in the ATN Cessna.
5:05ish: Notice what appears to be unmarked Police cars, with uniformed officers in them, pulling in to a nearby unit block. Leave area. Camera crew on-scene…WIN or ABC?
5:10ish: Decide not to find mystery road today, and instead head to 2CC studios. Stay there until a tad after 6pm. Interesting tidbit of unofficial and unusable news comes through about stabbing. If true, victim is very lucky (yeah, sorry, can’t disclose it yet).
6:20ish: Yeesh, there are even more Police outside the Lyneham Flats now than there were earlier.
6:30ish: WIN News top story is stabbing, but sounds like they did a quick re-write of the press release. No footage.
7pm: ABC News…stabbing not in headlines, odd.
7:10pm: Stabbing story gets a run with footage…so it was an ABC film crew after all. ABC declare that a woman is “assisting with enquiries” while showing footage of the loud, slightly agitated woman from the scene.
7:15pm: Discover that billing system at work has incorrectly charged $50 to my credit card. Must deal with that when I get to work.
7:30ish: Time for some sleep…err no, time to write a blog post and then either sleep or have dinner. Either way I need to be up at about 11pm. On the bright side, my weekend starts at 8am tomorrow, so I can sleep for as long as I like tomorrow after work.
Samuel
November 13th, 2008 at 07:57pm
The hourly coffee tallies so far:
1pm: 1 coffee
2pm: 4 coffees
3pm: 2 coffees
4pm: 1 coffee
5pm: 1 coffee
6pm: 1 coffee
7pm: 1 coffee
8pm: 2 coffees
9pm: 1 coffee
10pm: 1 coffee
11pm: 2 coffees
12am: 1 coffee
1am: 1 coffee
Total: 19 coffees
And with that, I’m aborting the experiment. I don’t think I can possibly drink another coffee…the mere thought of it repulses me. I suppose the fact that I was already feeling pretty lousy before I started this didn’t help, I now feel a lot worse, and I can’t wait until the end of my shift so that I can climb in to bed and sleep for hours and hours and hours. As much as I probably shouldn’t write this publicly, it’s been that quiet at work tonight that I did take the opportunity to nap for about an hour. The floor is very uncomfortable.
I think I’ve been coming down with something for about the last week. I’ve been persistently tired to the point of almost sleeping more than I’ve been awake, I’ve had a headache that hasn’t gone away for the last three days, I’ve had almost no appetite and in general I just haven’t been feeling well. As I’ve been working on the relatively quiet night shift I’ve been dragging myself in to work each night, but I’m starting to think that I’m going to struggle to even do that.
Oh, and for anyone who’s thinking of trying to beat my coffee-drinking effort…don’t, seriously. It’s a really really bad idea. Just as there is a responsible service of alcohol system, there really should be a responsible service of coffee system.
Samuel
November 10th, 2008 at 05:06am
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