Sorry that it’s a bit quieter than usual around here today. I’m tired and had a few other things to attend to, but I should have more time tomorrow.
Right now though I’m going to nap for a few hours. If I don’t, then I will crash and burn by about 9pm, which would mark 42 hours of being awake. I’ve done a four day stretch before out of necessity, and that nearly ended badly…but I was properly rested when I started that one. I’ve been short on sleep for most of this week, so I expect to sleep well tonight.
I’ll need to sleep well tonight and tomorrow night if I’m going to have any hope of surviving finishing up at 1WAY FM at 11 o’clock on Sunday night and then being back there around 6:30 on Monday morning.
By the way, apparently other people notice that I’m tired because I speak more slowly. I notice that I’m tired when I can’t make sense of my blog posts!
That was the first night ever (as far as I can recall) that I have been unable to sleep at all, due to concerns over whether I made the right decision in taking another week with 2QN, and how exactly I’m going to get there. My conversation with myself at one stage considered how much I may need to leave behind if I’m forced to take the “two buses and a train” option, as I would not be able to take my usual amount of luggage. The notion of leaving my laptop at home seems logical under those circumstances, but that could just be the lack of sleep talking.
None the less, onward and upward for another day. I will be interested to see if a lack of sleep affects me in a similar way to how it allegedly affected Karl Stefanovic earlier this week.
And all of a sudden I’m reminded of a great song which 2CC are using in their promo for their overnight programming. Talking In Your Sleep by The Romantics
You’ve probably heard the news about Karl Stefanovic on the Today show on Monday morning. Following on from a late night at the Logies, Karl had his usual early start on the Today show, but was somewhat more happy and spontaneous than usual, prompting speculation that he was drunk at the time.
Having watched both the Today Tonight story, and further raw footage over at livenews.com.au, I have to say that I believe Karl’s statement that he was not drunk, merely tired, as I don’t think there was enough slurring for him to be drunk…in fact I’m finding it hard to find any slurring.
Perhaps Karl downed a dozen cups of coffee…regardless of the cause, I thought Karl’s performance was well above his normal standard, and is well worth repeating, even if slightly toned down. Happy and spontaneous Karl is much more interesting than normal Karl, especially at 6am.
Livenews.com.au have some raw footage at http://livenews.com.au/entertainment/stefanovic-apologises-for-postlogies-today/2009/5/6/205461 but I can’t find a way to embed it here.
I’ll be in Deniliquin from May 18 to May 22, although I dare say that transport is going to be interesting seeing as I’m car-less at the moment (although being car-less does have its advantages…one of them being that I get to invoke my passion for ranting about buses).
You can expect some news headlines from Deniliquin, Echuca and surrounds to to appear here over the course of that week, much like they did last time, although what else I will do with this blog during that week remains a mystery, much like what I’ll do when I come back to Canberra, but such is life I suppose.
I have enjoyed working with James Scott on the 1WAY FM breakfast show this week so I will consider, if James is interested, turning that into a more permanent arrangement, although if I do that, then I doubt that I will continue doing the morning show as well…it’s just too draining spending five hours (give or take half an hour) on the air and then spending more time producing the show for the next day, especially when I’m doing it on a voluntary (read: unpaid) basis.
I wonder if anyone has noticed that my quiz questions mostly come from me hitting the “random article” link on Wikipedia over and over until I find an article from which I can form an interesting question. Today’s questions “Bayble Island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland is actually two islands, so why is it referred to as a single island?” and “who is the Prime Minister of Poland?” might have been a bit of a giveaway on that front.
Tired, rambling and having trouble spelling, time for bed I think.
A Texas man has pleaded guilty to threatening to kill President Barack Obama and blow up the Mall of America in Minneapolis.
Timothy Ryan Gutierrez pleaded guilty on Monday to a charge of making threats by e-mail. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors have dropped a charge of threatening to use an explosive.
His attorney says the 21-year-old Gutierrez could face up to a year and a half in prison when he is sentenced July 31.
The total time in jail could add up to about two years if he receives the full sentence as he has been in custody since January, but I just don’t think it’s long enough to act as a proper deterrent.
Like them or loathe them, our elected officials need to be protected from these nutcases in order to maintain some sense of democracy, and to protect the people who have the courage to actually go through with the whole “standing for election and doing the job of running the country” thing. Personally, I’d say this should receive a five year sentence at a minimum.
On another note, I wasn’t aware that “threatening to use an explosive” is a criminal act unto itself. Surely there has to be some malice involved for it to be a criminal offence? Otherwise wouldn’t a lot of our miners be criminals?
I’m too tired to work that one out right now, so if anybody would like to clarify it for me, that would be wonderful.
At this moment I find myself stuck in a bind waiting to hear back about a job application…I should hear back today, and if I get the job then I will have some ongoing employment which should fit around a study schedule later in the year (update: this just turned in to a newly invented second round of interviews, which delays my answer on the following sentence end update. On the other hand, 2QN just asked me to come back for a week…I can’t do both, and I can’t answer 2QN until I hear back from the job application.
I’ve also been accused being somebody that I’m not today, which was interesting, but not amusing.
The fact that I’m physically drained and tired doesn’t help things.
On the bright side, the 1WAY FM shows have been going well, and I’ve received some very good feedback today.
Is it time that ACTION bus drivers stopped being allocated shift buses and took whatever bus was available?
For the last few days, the bus which I catch in to 1WAY FM in the morning has been late, this morning by ten minutes…and why was it late? Because the driver had to move six other buses at the depot in order to pick up his preferred bus. (After I mentioned this on-air, we received a call from an ACTION driver claiming that the other driver was fibbing, as there is only ever a need to move one bus in order for drivers to get to their own bus. This doesn’t alter the validity of my point though.)
Now I can understand if his shift had required him to pick up a bus with a bike rack, but that was not the case, and with ACTION progressively rolling out bike racks to all buses, surely it’s time for the days of the designated shift bus to come to an end.
Drivers may protest, and understandably, considering that many drivers become quite attached to the characteristics of their particular bus…but they get assigned a different bus just about every time there’s a minor change to the timetables anyway, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s time that ACTION start treating the buses as public property, and not the property of individual drivers, and make drivers take whatever suitable bus is available, in an effort to keep services running on time, and improve the overall quality of the service.
And who knows…perhaps if the buses were on time, more people might catch them? Jon Stanhope, are you listening?
I spoke with ACT Treasurer and Deputy Chief Minister Katy Gallagher about the ACT budget on the 1WAY FM morning show today, and the interview is now on the 1WAY FM Interviews podcast feed.
ACT Treasurer and Deputy Chief Minister Katy Gallagher at 9:20 to talk about the ACT budget.
More on the ACT Infrastructure Tax being passed on to customers by Telstra.
The spammers are adapting their messages for the rising unemployment levels.
Maritz baked yesterday’s food with a slight modification…and some sentence which doesn’t make any sense.
A quiz or two.
And more.
The 1WAY FM morning show: 9am-11:30am on Canberra’s 91.9 and 94.3, 1WAY FM.
It’s nearly time to catch my bus to go home, and I’ve been up since 2am so I should probably get a little bit of sleep, but the question is do I follow up my interview request for tomorrow morning’s show before I have a nap, or after? And if I decide on “after”, then the odds are pretty good that I’ll be woken by a call from the office of the person I would like to interview, or that I’ll sleep until it’s too late to contact them.
Then tonight…dinner at home, or dinner out? If I go out for dinner, will I get home in time to get any meaningful sleep before I get up to do show prep?
At least one decision is clear, I’m not walking home today. Sunday night, yes, but not today.
It looks like the Chinese have come up with a novel approach to stimulating their economy:
Local government officials in China have been ordered to smoke cigarettes to boost the economy.
Officials in Hubei province have been ordered to puff their way through 230,000 packs of locally made cigarettes worth £400,000.
The edict threatens to fine officials who “fail to meet their targets” or are caught smoking rival brands manufactured in neighbouring provinces.
[..]
“The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax,” said Chen Nianzu, a member of the Gong’an cigarette market supervision team.
So, stimulate the economy, use the tax revenue on the impending smoking-induced health bill, and some population control through shorter lifespans all in the one measure!
Imagine what would happen if the Australian government tried to suggest something like this…there’d be more than a simple story in the “quirkies” section of the paper, that’s for sure.
The interview from the 1WAY FM morning show with KXNT reporter Julianne Thomas regarding the voter registration fraud charges in the US is now online on the 1WAY FM podcast feed and is included below for your convenience.
Unfortunately due to an equipment failure the interview with economist Savanth Sebastian from CommSec will not be podcasted.
Katy Gallagher handed down her first budget yesterday, and on the whole I have to say that I think she has got it right.
I don’t agree with everything in it, but in difficult economic times, Katy’s approach of “wait it out and see” seems to be the right one, and a much better approach than Wayne Swan’s apparent “slash and burn” approach to the federal budget.
Katy’s approach has been backed up today by the US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who says the recession in the US will end this year, as long as they don’t have any further major dramas.
The ACT budget has a forecast deficit of 247 million dollars, with deficits predicted until at least the 2015-2016 financial year. Predictions like that always amuse me slightly because elections before then could change the government, and the plans going forward.
None the less, if the economy does improve before next year’s budget, as Katy Gallagher believes it will, then it should be a fairly smooth road to recovery. However as her critics have pointed out, if things get worse, then we will be in for a huge slash and burn budget next year and the year after.
I think Katy has it right, but time will tell.
As for the contents of the budget, the emphasis on increasing rates, parking fees and bus fares instead of cutting services seems sensible, but it does raise a few questions. For one, if the government are trying to push people on to buses, which their expensive new express bus service is aiming for, and which I think will fail miserably (as I have previously mentioned), then why are they increasing bus fares instead of car registration and driver licence fees?
Admittedly government owned parking meters will cost more, but this is hardly an across the board deterrent for drivers, especially with the prevalence of free parking in the parliamentary triangle.
Apart from rising bus fares, there’s no respite for cyclists. The free rides on buses for cyclists will end.
I also have to wonder about the new mental health unit for Canberra Hospital slated to cost 9.7 million dollars. We already have a mental health service at Canberra Hospital, and various mental health services spread through Canberra, and they don’t seem to communicate properly. Surely it would make more sense to consolidate management of these services to improve service standards, rather than spending money on new services.
I also note that there are still no bus services for the beleaguered residents of Hall and Tharwa, and nothing slated for Williamsdale despite the possibility of infrastructure out there. Yet the Alexander Machonichie Centre Of Respite For The Criminally Challenged has its own bus service. Go figure!
I’m not convinced that all the spending priorities are correct, but I think the overall sentiment of the budget is correct at this time.
It’s unusual for me to praise Katy Gallagher, but on this occasion I think she has made the tough decisions, and got them right in the process.
A look at the ACT budget.
Julianne Thomas from Newsradio 840 KXNT on the US activist group ACORN being charged with voter enrolment fraud at approximately 9:30.
Savanth Sebastian, CommSec economist talking about interest rates (and hopefully a comment about budgets and the economic crisis) at approximately 10:30.
An email from Maritz who seems to be confused by television cooking shows.
Telstra decide to pass on the cost of the ACT Government’s “Network Facilities Tax”.
And lots more.
The morning show: 9am-11:30am on Canberra’s 91.9 and 94.3 1WAY FM