A few weeks ago I brought you the story of proposed changes and slashes to ACTION bus services and staff. I had planned to bring you an update sooner, but information coming from inside ACTION was unusually quiet following the stopwork meeting on Friday July 7.
Thankfully the noise levels have returned to something near normal since then, and I have more information for you.
The TWU has been providing the same public statement every time they’ve been questioned since the stopwork meeting, basically they are saying they will not accept the proposed reversal of the full-time/part-time driver ratio, they will not accept cuts to services, and they will not accept cuts to pay or job security. Effectively, they reject the proposal in its entirety.
Anybody with a tiny bit of common sense when it comes to negotiations would know that this is a silly and implausible position…if you’re not willing to give a little bit then you won’t receive anything. Thankfully my sources within ACTION are all saying that the TWU’s public position does not reflect their true position, my sources tell me that the TWU plans on accepting the removal of supervisors at interchanges, in exchange for (mostly) not losing drivers and services.
Here is what I said about the proposal to remove supervisors from interchanges in the article linked above.
ACTION also plan to get rid of supervisors at interchanges, effectively meaning that drivers with faulty ticket machines will not be able to get a replacement at the next interchange and will instead lose revenue by being forced to give customers a free ride all day. A lack of supervisors also means ad-hoc cleaning services (people do occasionally become sick on busses…and you can’t expect people to use a bus which contains the end result and stench of such a thing) and various other essential services will disappear. This probably also means there will be less people on hand to assist confused passengers.
I have discussed this at length with a few drivers and I have learnt a thing or two about ACTION supervisors. Once upon a time ACTION supervisors would monitor the busses as they entered and exited the interchanges, keeping track of whether the busses were on time or not. Recently, the onboard ticket machines have taken over this role. Devices have been placed in the ground at interchanges which identify the interchange and bay number, and the onboard ticket machines record arrival and departure times on a cartridge, which is later analysed by a computer at head office.
This has relegated supervisors to the roles of customer service and general ad-hoc maintenance arrangers. Technically these combined roles could still be called “supervisor”, but in reality they would be better classified as some kind of admin person, ACTION insiders are indicating that superviosr numbers are in surplus of requirements, some will be axed, whilst the others will be redesignated as admin officers.
It looks like the TWU will agree to that, as long as no drivers are forced to retire or move to part-time shifts, and services during the middle of the day and weekends are not severely affected. This appears to be workable considering that ACTION plan on reducing driver numbers from 810 to 796. It does appear that the proposed reversal of the full-time/part-time ratio was a bargining chip from the department of Territory and Municipal Services.
At this stage there doesn’t appear to be any conclusive information about weekend and night services, but I will let you know when there is.
This week the award goes to the first Australian band to reach gold record status in the US…I am of course referring to the Little River Band. Unfortunately choosing just one feature song proved to be an almost impossible task…and with so many songs to choose from I could easily just do a text dump of the lyrics of each and every one of their songs, but in the end I did manage to limit myself to one song…don’t be surprised if the Little River Band return here in a couple weeks with another feature song though!
The feature song this time is “The Night Owls”…sounds like a good description of my radio listening habits actually!
There’s a bar right across the street
He’s got a need he just can’t beat
Out on the floor, he shuffles his feet away
He’ll get the girl ’cause he looks so fine
He’s gonna win her every time
He knows he will, he’s dressed to kill
He’s a night owl
Move on
there’s a heart of a night owl callin’
To belong
she’s cryin’ in the night
Be strong
and find the heart of the night owl fallin’
Stay up till dawn
until the night is gone
What will become of the restless kind
Where do they go when they’ve done their time
Wearin’ their hearts out on the line
for all to see
Must be the gypsy in their soul
They have a need to rock and roll
They always will
they’re out there still
They’re the night owls
Move on
there’s a heart of a night owl callin’
To belong
she’s cryin in the night
Be strong
and find the heart of the night owl fallin’
Stay up till dawn
until the night has gone
There’s a bar right across the street
He’s got a need he just can’t beat
Out on the floor he shuffles his feet away yeah yeah
He’ll get the girl ’cause he looks so fine
He’s gonna win her every time
He knows he will, he’s out there still
He’s a night owl
Move on
there’s a heart of a night owl callin’
To belong
she’s cryin’ in the night the night goes on and on
Be strong
find the heart of the night owl fallin’
Stay up till dawn until the night has gone
Serial detractor Sam Granleese (we previously met Sam here) has sent in an email titled “Good News”
Hi Samuel,
I wrote to you a few months ago declaring your website to be the most trite piece of word-vomit on the known internet.
Upon returning, it is good to see that nothing has changed. You are still trying to lose your virginity by going to www.tammin.com, you are still a freak and you still have nothing interesting to say about anything.
Congratulations!
Sam
I decided, with some trepedation, to visit the website he mentioned so that I could work out what he was going on about…it turned out to be the website of some singer I’ve never heard of before. I still can’t work out what he is going on about…I don’t find her in the least bit attractive.
On the bright side, it would appear that Sam is still wasting his time reading websites of people he doesn’t like, and making sure that they know about it…either that or he secretly finds this site so interesting and entertaining that he has to make sure he gets to take part in the fun and excitement…I’ll let you decide.
Next email is from “bob759” (sorry for bundling you into the same post as Sam Granleese) who writes
You said “I (generally) can’t check the website, or update it, from work”, does that mean you had the day off yesterday as you updated the blog many times
No Bob, I scheduled the posts to appear throughout the day…that is my standard practice for all but the most urgent posts as it keeps the site “ticking over” and means I don’t post five things at once, which effectively buries most of the posts for the majority of readers who don’t often venture past the first post. For the record, the majority of those posts were written in the wee hours of Friday morning, with one written earlier in the week.
There may have been an extended website outage this morning from 9:25am to 10:55am Canberra time (11:25pm Friday – 12:55am Saturday GMT) due to a major power outage in Orem, Utah where this website is hosted. At this stage I’m not sure whether this website was completely down, intermittently down or not down at all, but I do know that about half of the Bluehost servers were down.
Bluehost CEO Matt Heaton wrote to customers a short while ago:
This evening (July 14th) from about 5:25pm-6:55pm many of our servers were offline causing significant downtime for many of our users. The outage was due to a severe power outage in the north end of Orem, Utah where our servers are located. We do have UPS backup as well as diesel generators, but at about 5:30 they finally gave out. The power outage
was for much longer than that period of time, but the reserve power was eventually consumed in its entirety. When it rains it pours.
The Bluehost Forums elaborated a bit, saying that the cooling systems in one of Bluehost’s buildings failed during the power outage, and naturally you can’t run a room full of servers in a rapidly heating room and expect them to continue working.
I suppose that I could look through the logs and work out if this website was one of the severely affected websites or not, but it doesn’t really worry me all that much. Based on statements by Bluehost support people on the Bluehost forums, and the one which follows from Matt Heaton’s email to customers, it would appear that Bluehosy have learnt from the incident and are in the process of improving the contingency systems.
The downtime is extremely regretable. We apologize profusely for the inconvenience to our customers and in turn to those who were trying to visit your sites during the outage. With the fixes we have put in place in the last few days coupled with other upgrades you should experience MUCH better uptime in the future.
Thanks for you patience,
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com
These things will happen, and in my experience Bluehost is much better than many other hosting providers out there. I trust that they did all they could to keep the hosted websites up and running whilst ensuring the safety of the servers, and that they will learn from the experience.
A couple nightsa go I had a dream that I was out the front of the ACTTAB headquarters in Dickson…I saw 2CC presenter Mike Frame’s car parked out the front and decided that, seeing as Mike was there and ex-2CC presenter Kevin Woolfe works for ACTTAB these days, I would go in to the office and pay them a visit.
I went in the front doors and up some stairs, after which I was standing at a reception desk, behind the desk was a large open plan office where a lot of people appeared to be having a celebration of some sort. A lady came over to the desk and informed me that Kevin and Mike were in a meeting, so I left, only to find that the street I walked out on to was Bunda Street in Civic, a few kilometres away from the street that I walked in from…and I went out the same door…
These are the results from last weekend…these are not the results from the tips I lodged this morning, all of which are still to be played. It was quite a decent weekend for my footy tips, hopefully the ones I lodged this morning will be even better.
It’s funny what you can see when you’re in Dickson around lunch time. I was having lunch in Dickson on Wednesday when a group of people from ACTPLA (ACT Planning and Land Authority…you may recall them from this post and this post) walked past me. Just like last time they made eye contact and seemed to halt their conversation…then as they walked directly past me they all started muttering something about the Fyshwick Epicentre debacle, they appeared to be muttering something about it being a good thing, but I suspect they were merely making silly comments in an effort to make me write incorrect information…after all, they appeared to recognise me (and not for the first time).
It was only a few minutes later that minister for planning (amongst other things) Simon Corbell walked past…about twenty questions crossed my mind, luckily for him he was talking (or pretending…it is hard to tell) on his mobile phone, and I was too interested in my lunch to be bothered asking a pointless man a set of questions to which he would only give pointless answers anyway.
I used to work for the ACT government…I’m glad I don’t work for them any more.
This week’s Friday Funny comes from Dave Smith of Plain English Campaign fame. Dave has sent us two interesting additions to the gobbledegook archive.
The first one is from an advertisement for a pen.
BOTH. LESS AND MORE
Its clear lines and minimalist design provide it with an unmistakable look. It is daring, and different. So that your writing instrument not only carries your message, but lives it
The second peice of gobbledegook is an email sent to staff at the University of Illinois
An emergency IPL of the ACCA is required to resolve a problem with the channel
path configuration within the Iceberg units. Following the Iceberg to EMC test yesterday, the vendor failed to correctly reset the hardware configuration within the Icebergs. Correcting this problem requires an IPL of the system. The ACCH is not affected as only the paths from the Icebergs to the ACCA were in error. Currently we are experiencing degradation in batch processing and TSO response times on the ACCA. In addition, online systems are beginning to feel the impact. The IPL will begin at 09:45 and should be complete within 45 minutes. We will send an announcement when the system is active
And as a bonus, we even have the reply to that email
Dear AITS Security:
I am sorry you have to IPL your ACCA to resolve the CPC of the Icebergs and
degradation of the TSO as a result of the EMC test, but am relieved that the ACCH
is not affected.
Here at GSLIS we sometimes have to R our S’s to up our MTBFs, but this is rare
due to the HIQ of our ENV and the LD of our DataFlow on the 100BT HPs.
We will be waiting with bated breath (BB) for your upcoming ASA (Active System
Announcement).
Sincerely yours
Do you have something you would like to contribute to Friday Funnies? If so, send me an email at smoothwallsamuel@gmail.com. All contributions welcome!
By now I suspect that most of you have noticed that I have been absent from this site almost all week…a number of you have emailed me about that as well, and I haven’t quite got around to answering all the emails yet, but please do keep them coming.
To summarise the common questions and answers, yes I’ve been away from the site, no I haven’t left the Internet, no you may not take over the website (you know who you are…), yes I do have a good reason for not being here, no it will not continue during your vacation next week (again, you know who you are), and yes I’m very glad you’ve enjoyed reading the archives.
I will elaborate on the reasons why I haven’t been here much lately. Firstly, work is keeping me as busy as ever and I (generally) can’t check the website, or update it, from work…that is no excuse though. The main reason behind my absence is that I have recently been suffering from back and shoulder pain which has, at times, rendered sitting an impossible task…I have had some treatment for this, and will have some more, some adjustments have been made to some seating and sleeping arrangments and I am now, for the most part, feeling much better. Unfortunately though, the entire incident has cost me a lot of sleep, and I have been unwittingly catching up on the lost sleep.
So now I’m back, my sleep cycle is cactus for the moment, but that gives me an opportunity to get to work on keeping the site up to date whilst I mend my sleep cycle.
Another question that people continue to ask is if there will be any more episodes of Samuel’s Persiflage. I can assure you that there will be, the next episode is in planning at the moment and is expected online by the 20th. I have had a potential guest pull out for the moment due to his own work commitments, but he will probably appear in a future episode…right now I’m concentrating on securing guests for this month’s episode.
There have been a couple emails about the lack of photos of late. Regular readers may recall that my camera developed a nasty “black semi-circle in certain corners” fault, the camera has recently been sent off for repairs and should be back soon…which is just as well as I have a few things I would like to take photos of.
I continue to receive emails about various upcoming (and overdue) posts, including Blog View Stats, Canberra radio ratings, ACTION changes, etc…they’re coming, please be patient.
I would like to thank everybody for their emails, I should reply to most, if not all, of them within the next 48 hours.
This week’s award goes to City Boy and the feature song is “5.7.0.5”
Five seven o five
But there’s no reply
Five seven o five
Got myself just one more dime
But will the operator hold the line
When my ears keep telling me
There’s no reply, no reply
I pick up the telephone
I go crazy when there’s no one home
I feel cheated and small when
My number’s on the wall of her room
Call me soon
Hey operator
Five seven o five
But there’s no reply
Five seven o five
Why do you keep me hanging on the line
I can’t believe that there’s no one there
Is this a private number love affair
With your phone booth lover
Still waiting on the wire, high wire
I saw the light shine behind your door
I heard the party on the second floor
But you only pretend that you’ve been
Visiting friends from abroad, tell me more
Hey operator
Five seven o five
But there’s no reply
Five seven o five
Why do you keep me hanging on the line
Mysterious people I can’t believe what she done to me
It’s too late now
It’s all over town
Five seven o five
But there’s no reply
Five seven o five
Can you hold the line
Well it would appear that it has done the rounds at ACTPLA’s Dickson office. On Thursday, when I had some spare time on one of my breaks, I went for stroll down Challis Street in Dickson, one of the buildings I walked past was that of ACTPLA where about five or six ACTPLA staff were discussing something and making a fair bit of noise in the process. As I was approaching, one of the staff noticed me and stopped talking, she started staring at me, and three of the other staff did the same, the group started mumbling to each other and watched me walk past.
When I got to the end of the block I had a look back to see what they were up to, they were continuing their discussion and keeping an eye on me. As I looked back, one of them suddenly stopped looking at me, whilst one of the older men continued to watch me.
I then continued on my way and went back to my office.
It is worthwhile noting that ACTPLA are yet to update the street signs after the name change they forced on the road I mentioned in the previous article (linked above)…how long does it take to produce ten or so road signs? Were they discussing that in that meeting I walked past? What’s the bet that they get the signs wrong when the put them up?
2UE’s general manager, Ian Sheppard, has quit. His decision comes hot on the heels of last week’s sacking of at least nine 2UE staff which, according to insiders, was yet another decision from Southern Cross Broadcasting in Melbourne.
Ian Sheppard, who only last week presided over the sacking of at least nine 2UE staff, some of them having worked at the station for more than 12 years, today fell on his own sword.
The announcement came at a short staff meeting at around 12:30pm where Sheppard was reported by insiders to have said, “I can no longer work at a radio station where there are so few staff”.
According to Southern Cross Group GM, Graham Mott, who will take over management of the station in the short term, Sheppard was offered a job at Channel Nine. He told radioinfo, “Ian Sheppard has done a wonderful job here at 2UE in all his years as both Sales Manager and more recently General Manager. We’re very sorry to see him go, but it’s a great opportunity for him at the Nine Network and we wish him all the best.”
His resignation has come at the end of a tough week for Sheppard. Having had to sack a slew of staff on Friday, on Tuesday, he had to endure a very public taunt from Ray Hadley, on rival station, 2GB. In a spray that also targeted Bill Caralis and John Laws described Ian Sheppard as being, “So lightweight he keeps his office windows shut in case he gets blown away”.
Graham Mott will once again commute from Melbourne until a suitable replacement is found.
Reading between the lines there, it would appear that Ian Sheppard is sick of Melbournites making decisions for a Sydney radio station, and who can blame him? 2UE’s ratings have slipped considerably since SCB Melbourne started interfering in their operations, and Ian Sheppard has consistently been left with the job of answering public questions about each and every change. Will SCB learn from the loss of a very talented manager? I hope so, but I’m not holding my breath.
I had a sleep when I got home from work yesterday, during which I had a very disturbing dream.
In the dream I was on late shift and finished work at 7pm, I left work and walked towards the bus stop (a five minute walk), about half way to the bus stop (near a car park) I noticed two people following me and catching up to me, as they got closer it became apparent that they had knives and their intentions were clear…the dream was not clear from there on but I know that I was attacked. The location of the attack was the footpath near the Dickson Woolworths carpark. You would expect a nightmare to end there wouldn’t you? But no, it kept going.
In the dream I went into a state of shock for the next few days, the next thing I remember is being at work three days later and just realising that I didn’t remember a thing about the last 72 hours, other people in the office were asking me if I was OK as I had been looking a bit vague.
The dream continued, this time I was in Belconnen at the bus interchange and I spotted the two attackers again walking towards me…I don’t know what happened from there as the dream changed again, this time I was walking somewhere in a shopping centre when I realised that I had left my radio on a bench, so I walked back and picked up my radio and walked off, a man at one of those charity stands grabbed me, detained me, and accused me of stealing the radio, he then called security who recognised me as the son of a shopping centre employee. My family then appeared and identified me and my radio. I have no recollection of being released, although I do recall that the bloke at the charity stand was one of my attackers, even though I didn’t recognise him as one of them at the time.
Finally, the dream ended.
Interestingly, I have two late shifts next week. Also, I have a clear recollection of the attackers, both were in their late teens/early 20s, both of medium build. One had dark hair and was about 180cm tall, he was wearing a dark t-shirt and dark pants. The other had light hair, about 170-175cm tall, wearing a dark jacket and dark pants or jeans.
It would be nice if I don’t have that dream again.
This week’s Friday Funny comes from Charity in Sydney.
THERE WAS a man who fished every day and always came back with a good catch. Eventually, the game warden decided this guy must be doing something illegal. So the warden put on old clothes and made friends with the man. “I’ve noticed you always catch fish,” the warden said. “Can I go out with you?” The fisherman
shrugged. “Sure,” he replied. “See you here at 5 a.m. tomorrow.”
The next day, they went fishing together. The fisherman steered his boat into a remote part of the lake, then stopped. He opened his tackle box, took out a stick of dynamite, lit the fuse and threw it into the water. After it went off, dozens of stunned fish floated to the surface.
The warden was astounded. “I caught you red-handed,” he said. “I’m the game warden, and you’re under arrest.” The fisherman said nothing. He reached into his tackle box, took out another stick of dynamite, lit the fuse and handed it to the warden. The fisherman then asked him, “You going to talk or fish?”
Do you have something you would like to contribute to Friday Funnies? If so, send me an email at smoothwallsamuel@gmail.com. All contributions welcome!
