Time for another weekend of my footy tips. I’m going to try and prove that my good result in the NRL last weekend was not a fluke, this weekend is a short round which means I have to tip even less matches correctly to get a good score! I’ll also try to get my overall AFL score to go up again.
NRL Round 13 Rabbitohs v Panthers Raiders v Eels Roosters v Cowboys Warriors v Storm Knights v Tigers Dragons v Sharks
AFL Round 11 Bombers v Eagles Hawks v Swans Lions v Bulldogs Blues v Power Crows v Cats Saints v Kangaroos Dockers v Tigers Demons v Magpies
1.45pm WTF? We had the whole office outside in the cold mate, very unimpressed….. Whats the story samual?
Well, 1:45pm was accurate when I left for Mt. Ainslie…unfortunately the time blew out to about 2:15. There were an awful lot of very cold people on the top of Mount Ainslie, and worse yet, due to the altitude of the plane, it looked just like any other plane to the naked eye.
That being said, the cameras picked it up pretty well, and Channel Nine (who seemed to be the only television station up there) may have some good footage on their news bulletin tonight.
I’ve cropped those images so that you can actually see the plane without squinting, however you can get a slightly larger version if you click on them.
As quickly as the plane came, it went again. One quick lap of Canberra was all we got. Mind you, it was that far behind schedule that it’s probably not even back in Sydney yet.
So, to all of you who froze because I was relaying the 1:45pm time, I apologise…I hope you have a heater nearby, I know I need one.
Hello to everyone who is landing here today for details on the Canberra A380 flyover. The details are in the post below this one, however I will outline my plans for coverage of this event today.
Around 1PM the plane is scheduled to take off from Sydney Airport, I will be monitoring the media for information about any delays. If there are delays I will inform you, otherwise I will be heading to the top of Mount Ainslie.
1:45 (or whatever time it gets here): A380 will be over Canberra and I will get some photos, if time, weather and flyover route permits, I will also get some video of the plane.
After this I will come back here and post whatever photos and video I have of the flyover.
Apparently the enormous Airbus a380 will fly over Canberra at an altitude of 5000 feet today. I’m not currently sure what time this will happen, but I will be sure to have the camera ready.
Update: Looks like the A380 will leave Sydney around 1pm for its flight to Canberra and back. I’m still pursuing details of the Canberra flyover. End Update
Further Update: With thanks to Qantas Corporate Communications I can inform you that the A380 will fly over Canberra at an altitude of approximately 5000 feet (1524 metres), around 1:45 this afternoon. This will occur after the A380 flies over Sydney Harbour at about 3000 feet around 1:15pm. The plane isn’t scheduled to land in Sydney until 3pm, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the A380 does a couple laps of Canberra.
Approximately 200 Qantas corporate customers, frequent flyers, media representatives and staff will be the lucky people to go down in history as the passengers on the first flight by the Airbus A380 to carry passengers in Australia. I’ll wave to them, I wonder if they will wave back?
Many thanks to Qantas for their quick response to my request for information. End Update
10:20am Update: Obviously this story is a high priority for me today! I’ve been informed by someone in the know that the aviation industry is experiencing some delays in Sydney today due to the weather. No word on whether that will affect the A380 flight, however I’m sure the media will be sure to tell us if it is late leaving Sydney. End Update
Earlier today Mr. Robertson asked the Abester how many fingers were being held up by the aforementioned Mr. Robertson (I'll dispense with the convolution now).
I have always found that 17 is the best answer to that question. 17 is a prime number so I can't be accused of seeing double or triple, and it's not my fault if the person holding up their fingers can't see their extra digits.
The other answer which I find useful is "why are you asking me, you're the one who put them there".
Regardless of the line I use, I generally get labelled as difficult and get left alone.
It amazes me how long this story has taken to reach fruition. I was first alerted to this story at the end of February by a former work colleague, however I wasn’t sure of my own non-disclosure obligations from when I worked for Telstra through a casual employment agency last year. So, rather than making a public announcement at the time, I filled a few local media people in on the details. Nothing much happened on this story for a while so I didn’t continue to pursue it.
Yesterday the story rocketed back in to life when Telstra announced that they are going to close 13 call centres across the country. (Telstra press release) (Article on news.com.au)
Details of what is actually happening in Canberra are scarce, but 2CC news are reporting that Telstra are claiming 35 jobs will be lost in Canberra. The reality of it is that 75-80 jobs will be lost in Canberra as Telstra are only counting permanent staff, not the staff employed on a casual basis by third parties, which in Canberra means the staff employed by Julia Ross Hot.
Telstra have decided that they don’t want any call centres with less than 200 employees, unfortunately the Canberra Broadband Helpdesk, one of three in the country, and one of two to be closed, employs about 75 people.
This is not Bigpond support which is contracted out to Teletech, but instead is the wholesale line fault division. The basic role of these staff is to log faults reported by ISPs and schedule technicians to attend to and fix the problems, these staff also run tests for technicians, allocate new resources (exchange ports etc) to fix problems, and escalate issues which are more complex and require phone lines or other equipment to be replaced.
The three call centres often struggle under the load as it is, there is no way known that Brisbane can handle the load, which means problems are going to take longer to fix as it will take longer for appointments to be arranged, technicians will spend more time on hold waiting for tests (therefore getting through less jobs each day…and getting paid less now that most of them are contractors paid on a per-job basis), and followups will be almost non-existent.
If you think the need for these call centres is offset by the number of people who are now on DSLAMs (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers) owned and operated by ISPs other than Telstra, think again. The only thing this does is change who maintains the exchange equipment…there is still a big heap of copper wire owned and operated by Telstra, and this tends to have more issues than exchange equipment. The impact of ISPs running their own DSLAMs on the workloads of these call centres is minimal, although it does increase the buck-passing a bit.
Conveniently for Telstra, the closures tie in with an asset consolidation they are in the middle of. For Canberra, this means the two buildings they own on Northbourne Avenue (the one with their logo, and the little one next door) will be sold. The staff who aren’t losing their jobs will be moving to a new building in Symonston before the end of the year.
The information I have is that, if probed too deeply about the local job cuts, Telstra will unfairly blame the ACT government. Apparently they were in “negotiations” with the government earlier this year for office space in Civic (a commodity the government don’t have at their disposal), in exchange for a guarantee about the number of staff Telstra would employ. The negotiations, which were never really serious, went nowhere, but telstra may use the ACT Government as a scapegoat if the pressure gets a bit too much for them locally.
Incidentally, if you have noticed a thing that looks a bit like a phone tower on the roof of Telstra’s taller building in Dickson, don’t be too concerned about it. Telstra’s actual phone tower is further down Antill Street, at the back of the swimming pool carpark, roughly between the tennis courts, putt putt golf centre, and storm water drain. The thing on the Telstra building’s roof has nothing to do with mobile phones.
I don't know if you saw ABC Television News last night or not, but I saw one of their updates and was, unfortunately, not surprised by one of the stories.
The press release doesn't mention how much warmer it was, just that various places didn't have their usual cold temperatures, and a few were actually cooler than usual.
ABC News took a different angle…according to them the temperature was two degrees warmer than usual, and the cause? Climate change of course! Never mind that a two degree increase in temperatures as a result of climate change in the space of a few months would not only be unprecedented, but completely contradict the entire "carbon levels equal temperature" nonsense.
I'm just waiting for the end of winter when we all get told that it was a bit colder than usual, and it's all due to climate change. They will probably tell us some nonsense about how all that ice that melted because of global warming during summer and autumn made the water and therefore the entire southern hemisphere a bit colder during winter.
By the way, when you get a chance have a listen to the 3am news from 2UE…that silly story about some nutter from CommSec saying we should sell Australia Post to prevent climate change, then another person saying that the government needs to spell out their policy on selling Australia Post before the next election. Oddly enough, Senator Helen Coonan did that yesterday.
And today, apparently, is World Environment Day, which inevitably means yet another excuse for a bunch of nutty press releases from people who claim the Black Mountain will soon be under water (yes, somebody did suggest that to me the other day…I think they were joking, but knowing the way these things spread it will probably be the headline some time in the next year).
Here is the list that you wanted of regional breakfast hosts:
2BH – Graeme Maxwell-Jones (although their website still lists Stan Zemanek as a presenter, it could be out of date) Great Lakes FM – If anybody can make sense of their website they are doing well http://www.greatlakesfm.org.au 2LT – Paul Wise (According to Jock's Journal) 2NM – Rick Manchin (apparently with a lucky five dollar note and a cactus) 2ST – Barry Mac 4BU – Trevor Leutton (another website featuring Stan) 4KZ – Paul James 4RO – Michael J Bailey (according to their newsletter on the Rockhampton Chamber of Commerce website) 3YB – Jon Vertigan, using the name Verto
Late last night while I was preparing for work (I could be more graphic, but for your sake I won't be), I noticed that yet another button had gone missing from one of my shirts. I am starting to wonder if my washing machine is hungry, and if so, are the buttons really all that tasty? Have you ever needed to feed your washing machine in order to stop it eating your buttons? If so it would be really great if you could let me know what your washing machine likes to eat.
The tiny writing being used by Fox for their Tennis coverage is unfortunately not unique to Fox. I've never quite understood why Tennis always attracts such minuscule writing, but it doesn't bother me as I can't stand Tennis for any longer than about 20 minutes at a time anyway.
Incidentally, I would be happy to have Peter Costello as prime minister, but only if he continues to the treasurer. Unfortunately I don't think anybody else in either the government or the opposition has the credentials or ability to handle the economy as well as he has.
It’s taken an awfully long time, a failed format change and an unfortunate failure of their AFL coverage, for 2CA to realise that in order to get people to know that you exist, you have to tell them that you exist.
2CA have launched a competition in conjunction with The Canberra Times to find “The Best Songs Of All Time”. Admittedly the list will be skewed towards 2CA’s target demographic and be more likely to feature older songs than newer songs, but for my taste in music that is a good thing, and we’ve already got plenty of lists skewed towards newer music on some of the more youth focussed FM stations.
The final list will be published in The Canberra Times on Thursday, and counted down across the upcoming long weekend.
Sadly some people just can’t accept that not everything is aimed at them, and even whinge about them after leaving town. It seems that Capital Radio Network hater Johnboy from The RiotACT can’t even ignore The Canberra Times or 2CA now that he is hundreds of kilometres away. Instead he is trying to sabotage the entire promotion by getting as many people as possible to submit a vote for a band that very few people have ever heard of, it might be a good band, but the fact of the matter is that most people have never heard of them, which is a stark comparison to the bands 2CA will be likely to feature.
I’m no fan of the local ABC radio station, or the music they generally play, but if they were to run a similar competition I certainly wouldn’t try to sabotage it…I would ignore it as much as possible and probably mumble about it under my breath…but there is no way I would try to sabotage it…but then again, I don’t post when I’m drunk.
Back to 2CA for a moment though, it’s good to see them advertising their product again, hopefully they will continue to do so as they are, in my opinion, an awful lot better than their nearest rival station, Mix 106.3. I’m glad that more people will have the opportunity to experience it now that they have been alerted to the presence of 2CA.
And for those of you who are wondering, 2CA are 1053 on the AM dial.
I used to watch a lot of television, now I watch very little because most of it is, in my opinion, junk. A lot of people absolutely love television these days, so I’d be interested to see what you think of the overall quality of television programming.
Last week I ran the following poll:
Who would you vote for if the federal election were to be held today?
Well, who needs NewsPoll when you’ve got the much more reliable SamuelPoll? It’s either proof that NewsPoll are wrong about a Labor landslide victory, or I’m having too much fun running these polls.
It is very interesting to note the difference between the results of this poll and the results of NewsPoll and others though.
This week the award goes to ELO, and the feature song is quite excellent, which makes it quite appropriate for use during the credits of the excellent documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.
The feature song is Mister Blue Sky
(Morning, today’s forecast calls for blue skies)
Sun is shinin’ in the sky
There ain’t a cloud in sight
It’s stopped rainin’ everybody’s in a play
And don’t you know
It’s a beautiful new day (hey hey hey)
Runnin’ down the avenue
See how the sun shines brightly, in the city
On the streets where once was pity
Mister Blue Sky is living here today (hey hey hey)
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
Hey you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, Mister Blue Sky’s up there waitin’
And today is the day we’ve waited for (ah ah aah)
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
Hey there Mister Blue
We’re so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you
Hey there Mister Blue
We’re so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you
(Mister Blue Sky, Mister Blue Sky)
(Mister Blue Sky-y)
Mister Blue, you did it right
But soon comes Mister Night, creepin’ over
Now his hand is on your shoulder
Never mind I’ll remember you this..
I’ll remember you this way
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long (so long)
Where did we go wrong?
Hey there Mister Blue (Sky)
We’re so pleased to be with you (sky)
Look around see what you do (blue)
Everybody smiles at you
Ba ba ba ba ba ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba
Baah baah
Ba ba ba ba ba ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba
Baah baah baah
