Ah, the things one finds on the internet. I don’t really even remember what prompted my session of googling myself other than the fact that I was going to go to sleep and got sidetracked. Anyway, after skimming a dozen or so pages of results which were largely filled with automated MP3 indexing websites which have latched on to one or more of my MP3 files, and finding that I was wished a happy birthday the other day on a decent number of McPherson Media (publisher of the Deniliquin Pastoral Times and a heap of other local papers) newspaper websites, I stumbled upon Google’s “Realtime Search” which seems to scour Twitter and other social media services. It produced this interesting result:
The Twitter account which published that either no longer exists or has changed name since then (I’d suggest the former seeing as a search of Twitter for my name doesn’t yield this result), however I’m pretty sure that I know who wrote that.
So, to that person, yes, you do, but that’s partially my fault for not informing you on the one occasion that I was in your town (assuming that you’re still in that town), although I wouldn’t have had time on that occasion anyway as I was there on business.
If you still want to meet for coffee, I’ll be in your town on the 20th and 21st of this month, albeit with a limited amount of free time. If this interests you, email me.
Regardless, it’s nice to see that you’re still around. I hope things are going well for you. And don’t worry, it’s not that much of a shift to be understanding me more, because my perspective has changed a bit over time as well.
If the rest of you are still reading at this point, take this as a lesson in data retention on the internet. Stuff sticks around long after you think you’ve removed it.
I know how quickly these things can spread, so I’m going to clarify this one now to avoid any possible unnecessary confusion, concern or alarm.
Yes, there was a serious accident on Horse Park Drive in the early hours of this morning. No, it wasn’t mine.
I did run off the road while avoiding a kangaroo on Horse Park Drive in the wee hours and my car has sustained some damage which is now the insurance company’s problem, however I was unharmed in the incident, thankfully. I expected the whole thing to end very badly, and given the location and exact events, it could have been much much worse, so I’m thankful and lucky. The short version is that, in the process of avoiding the kangaroo, my car slid off the other side of the road, turned 180 degrees and skidded backwards for quite some distance through the grass and bushes, somehow (thankfully) avoiding the larger bushes and trees.
I feel very sorry for the people involved in an accident on the same road about an hour or two after me, as detailed by the Emergency Services Agency:
5:45am Saturday 19 March 2011 – Serious motor vehicle accident in Gungahlin ACT Ambulance Service and ACT Fire Brigade are on scene at a single vehicle accident on Horsepark Drive Gungahlin.
Intensive care paramedics are treating a total of three patients including one trapped by confinement in the wreckage.
Firefighters are currently working to free the person.
6:15am Saturday 19 March 2011 – Update – Serious motor vehicle accident in Gungahlin Firefighters have extricated a male from the wreckage following a two car collision not single vehicle as first thought.
He is being treated for suspected chest and leg injuries.
Two other females patients from the same car have been stablised on scene by intensive care paramedics with suspected abdominal injuries.
All three patients will be transported to the Canberra Hospital in a serious condition.
The occupant or occupants of the second vehicle left the scene before ambulance and fire brigade arrived.
I would be interested to know where exactly on this road the accident occurred as mine occurred in the stretch of road which has been rather poorly resurfaced recently, creating a very loose and somewhat slippery surface…not good for avoiding animals on a road which is notorious for crazy wildlife.
My thoughts and prayers are with the people involved in the serious crash. It is certainly not a good morning for that road.
Hello from Deniliquin. Unlike my previous trips to Deni, this time I am not here for work (although if the opportunity arises, I’m not likely to pass it up) but rather I am on leave from work and have come over to here for some relaxation.
I was last here in September of 2009, back when the drought was still in full swing. It was quite extraordinary to drive here and see all sorts of creeks and wetlands which actually have water in them…I’ve never see water in many of the places which now have water…that’s not to say that they’ve never had water, of course they have, otherwise they wouldn’t have been named as creeks and wetlands, it’s just that for me, having only been here in drought, the change is quite remarkable.
The water does have its downsides…the various bugs and critters have been able to breed and, among other things, there are grasshoppers everywhere. I’ve chased about a dozen of them out of my hotel room tonight and I still have a couple left, but I’m willing to let them be for now as they are much less jumpy and chirpy and annoying than the others were. That said, I have located the Mortein and may need to use it by tomorrow.
Other than the novelty of the bugs, the weather does make this feel like a holiday. Normally the weather in Canberra and Deni is fairly similar, just with slightly warmer temperatures at times in Deni. Right now it’s almost ten degrees warmer in Deni than it is in Canberra and the expected temperatures are quite different for today as well: 31 for Deni and 25 for Canberra. That may only be six degrees, but it’s two notches of difference on the Samuel Comfort Index™.
I have some plans while I’m over here (I keep trying to type “down here” before I realise that Deni is virtually due west of Canberra, and I’m always having a go at 2UE’s John Kerr for referring to trips from Canberra to Sydney as “going down to Sydney”…I think it’s working as he said “going up to Sydney” last night) but not many, and really I’ll just see where the mood takes me.
On my previous trips, I often posted statistics about the trip, however I didn’t keep accurate stats this time. What I do know though is that I left home and 8:15am and got to the hotel at 2:15pm, with stops in Gundagai and Jerilderie for morning tea and lunch respectively. I probably spent a tad under five hours on the road in total. For much of the trip I was listening to the private webstream of my hobby radio station at home which was playing the third hour of John Laws‘ show from each day of the week as well as Rush Limbaugh‘s Week In Review. I had workable 3G mobile coverage for most of the trip, although it was a bit patchy between towns from Urana to Conargo. I also listened to Casey Hendrickson’s podcast, The Burning Truth and a little bit of music…and of course I listened to a bit of both 2QN and Classic Rock.
Anyhoo, I should probably see about getting some sleep while the sun is napping, although it could be difficult considering that I had a sleep when I got here.
I’m often jokingly told by people around my age that I come across as being a 70-year-old due to large differences in interests and views, and today I have to wonder if they might be on to something it terms of early-onset dementia, for last night I had quite the senior moment.
I had made myself a cup of coffee and retrieved a punnet of blueberries from the fridge, and was preparing to watch a DVD. I had placed the DVD case on my chair and went back to the bench to collect my coffee, which I did and brought it over to my chair. I then returned to the bench and collected the blueberries and put them on the arm of my chair.
I then went over to the television and turned it on, followed by the DVD player which, rather than turning on with the power button, I turned on with the “open/close” button, which both turns the DVD player on and opens the disc tray, saving me from an extra button press.
I went back to my chair, picked up the DVD case and took it over to the DVD player. I went to open the DVD case when it suddenly occurred to me that I was not holding a DVD case, but rather a punnet of blueberries, and that it would probably not be a good idea to place the blueberries in to the DVD player.
So I took the punnet of blueberries back to my chair and was going to pick up the DVD case, but it wasn’t there. This was baffling as it has been there only a couple minutes ago. After a quick search, I found it…it was on the bench. It seems that on my way back to the bench to collect the blueberries after delivering my coffee to my chair, I had moved the DVD case for no apparent reason.
Nattie, who was in her bed at the time, was watching me and giving me a rather odd look. I suppose that from her perspective it did look rather odd that I was walking back and forth across the room and moving objects around many more times than was necessary.
My very own senior moment. It’s not the first, and it won’t be the last, but it’s certainly the most amusing of them to date.
The Australian Medicare system provides a rebate for visits to Optometrists for eye checkups, with a full examination being allowed once every two years, and a partial checkup more often (I think the rule for this is annually, but it might be more often).
Up until recently I was seeing my optometrist once per year in the week leading up to Christmas, with a full examination of my eyes taking place every two years, and a partial examination on the off years. In 2008 however, I completely forgot about my checkup as I was busy with other matters and didn’t see the optometrist until February 2009. Last year I saw the optometrist for my partial checkup in January, and this year I confused the last two years and thought I was due for my full checkup this month. Until today I hadn’t had a chance to make the appointment, so I went in today and found out, to my horror, that Medicare can not cover such a checkup until mid-February, due to my last full checkup having occurred in mid-February of 2009.
Well, that doesn’t work for me as I can’t book that far ahead with certainty due to the fact that my work roster, while somewhat predictable, may not follow the standard rotation through all the way to mid-February and, aside from that, the roster beyond this week was not published when I was at work late last week, and I’d be surprised if more than next week’s roster or, at a stretch, the following week’s roster will be finalised by the time I get in tomorrow.
I would very much like to get back in to the routine of seeing my optometrist in the week leading up to Christmas, and I certainly don’t want to wait until February to see the optometrist as I’m quite certain that I am due for a new prescription for my glasses, and I wish to discuss the idea of contact lenses, and would very much like to do this ASAP, in fact next Tuesday would be very good for me. Now I could, under Medicare, have a partial examination now, and a full one in February, but that seems like a waste of my time and my optometrist’s time, and would probably result in me not having a full examination until December, which would put me a long way behind in my eyecare.
So, on the spot, I decided that it was time to initiate some private-sector, free-market action. I enquired as to:
a) the price of a full examination
b) if the optometrist would be happy to see me as a cash-paying patient rather than a Medicare patient
Not surprisingly the answer to the second question was “yes” and to my surprise, the cost of seeing the Optometrist without the interference of the government’s red tape is a mere $65.
And so, I am now booked in for Tuesday. The entire conversation from the time of my two free-market questions onwards took about a quarter of the time that the conversation did while we were discussing Medicare options.
Now I could, if I am so inclined, return to having Medicare pay for my visits to the optometrist in December, or I could pay by cash and avoid the hassle of all of the government’s rules and regulations. I would also feel better paying on the spot as this money would then go directly to my optometrist, rather than him having to wait for it to arrive in the government’s intermittent bulk payments.
I expect that I will continue to pay with cash. In fact, I see no good reason to return to having Medicare pay for my visits if I can afford to pay for them myself. It is similar to how I did not take government payments while I was unemployed or intermittently employed as I was able to manage my budget to not need the support of the government, and it was my aim to remain independent from government funds for as long as possible.
I see this as an extension of this philosophy, and a way to liberate myself from government regulations which create an unnecessary complication in my life.
I honestly don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier.
Good evening. When a new year greeting starts like that, you know that it’s late. Let me start by wishing you a happy new year. I hope that 2011 is good to you.
I’m not usually one for New Year’s Resolutions, however this year is different as I do have a couple resolutions for the year. Firstly though, on the subject of new year greetings, I was quite amused by the greeting offered up by Spring Valley Hospital Medical Centre, Las Vegas, Nevada. This cute little jingle encapsulates a wish which I also have for you.
We wish you a happy heartbeat
We wish you a low cholesterol
We wish you a good blood pressure
And a happy new year
[..]
We wish you strong blood vessels
We wish you a happy heartbeat
And choose Spring Valley Hospital
For a happy new year
Unfortunately I do have to add a sad note to this audio. The ad came from a Thursday recording of Fox News 1280 AM and 102.3 FM KDOX in Las Vegas which is where Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd resurfaced back in August. Unfortunately KDOX have decided to change format and have become an oldies music station, meaning that Casey and Heather once again find themselves out of work. Not a great start to the new year, but there are other prospects for this talented pair, and I wish them every success in the future. I’m sure that they won’t be out of work for long.
Anyway, on to resolutions, and this year I have a couple. Firstly, I intend on finding some sort of useful therapy. Long-term readers would be well aware of my battles with depression and, more recently, anxiety. There are a few things which I either haven’t been able to get over, or haven’t been able to manage properly, and these are causing ongoing issues for me, especially in the form of anxiety. I have decided that I should seek out some sort of therapy to help me deal with these issues, and get back on top of my game.
My other resolution is to bring this blog back to its former glory…in other words I’m resolving to blog more. This probably goes hand in hand with the other resolution though, as the primary reason for my lack of blogging in my lack of enthusiasm, which is tied to everything else.
It just occurred to me that I opened this post with “good evening” and it is now morning. I suppose that’s what happens when one gets excited and sidetracked by a series of thunderstorms.
Is it just my imagination, or has the term “carrot and stick” suddenly become extremely popular in the last few days. It seems that I can’t go for more than 12 hours without hearing it somewhere, whereas previously I would hear it once every few months.
Is is just me, or are other people noticing this as well?
Well, considering that my last post before disappearing for quite a while was one about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I could claim that I was kidnapped by the UN and somehow managed to survive their attempts to brainwash me in to believing that:
1) There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
2) Global warming will doom us all
3) The IPCC is not one of the most flawed organisations ever to grace the planet
4) Wasting Spending all that money on UN paychecks programs is really worthwhile.
Thankfully such torture was not used on me…although if it had been, I might be able to explain this sudden urge to support Ban Ki-moon’s campaign to become the first President of his namesake satellite.
So where have I actually been, well for the most part I’ve been working. Work, sleep, eat and procrastinate pretty much sums up the last few weeks, although I did have a day off for Lord Monckton’s Canberra lecture (I didn’t fact-check the CT article did I? Another one for the pile of stuff I really should get around to doing I suppose) in the middle of one of the weeks where I was working more hours than usual.
I’ve also discovered that, since the concussion from my robbery and assault last year, I have needed more sleep than I used to require. It used to be the case that I could still be mostly functional on almost no sleep in a four day period…alas those days appear to be gone and I now struggle if I’m awake for a 24 hour block. The upshot of this is that I am awake less by necessity, and something on my list of commitments therefore had to fall by the wayside. That something, especially when I was working more hours for a few weeks, was this blog.
I’m not satisfied with that though and thoroughly intend on continuing this blog, just probably not as actively as I used to.
As for that announcement which I was going to make…well it ties in with this really. I’m leaving 1WAY FM and this coming Sunday night will be my final shift. I have a few reasons, but the most important one is the fact that I just can’t continue to work on Sunday night, struggle to get to sleep when I get home, and then work again in my “day job” on Monday morning. It does help a bit that my “day job” shifts have been altered so that I no longer work a full day on Mondays, but it doesn’t solve the problem of me working on auto-pilot zombie trance mode and needing to go back to bed after work.
I’ve enjoyed volunteering at 1WAY FM, but I just can’t continue with it…not when it is eventually going to result in me falling asleep at my desk and spilling coffee on equipment. This decision was not easy, as I quite enjoy what I do at 1WAY FM, but it is the right decision.
Where I’ll next pop up in radio land I have absolutely no idea and, at this very moment, I’m not really looking. I do need a bit of a break, although as usual I have some ideas (rarely do I ever run out of ideas) and it will be interesting to see which ones make their way in to reality.
Do you know what I think the most annoying aspect of being human is? No? Well I’ll tell you…the need to sleep.
I came to a few realisations last night which have been a long time coming, and I’m rather glad about it because it means that my goals and direction in at least the short to medium term, are now much clearer and more realistic. Alas I can’t explain it here right now because certain formal processes need to be initiated first but I intend on making an announcement on Monday or Tuesday.
Alas between that and my need to sleep, I didn’t actually get any of my three planned tasks (including the promised blog post) done last night…and for the record I’m now existing on about 15 hours of sleep since 8am Tuesday.
I’m working all day today, so I’ll see how I go tonight…assuming that I don’t just crash out after work, that is.
I thought I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but it looks like I only posted the link on Facebook.
Lord Christopher Monckton is in Canberra today and will be appearing at the National Press Club between 3pm and 5pm, courtesy of the New South Wales Farmers Federation, presenting a lecture entitled “Why a Royal Commission must urgently review climate change science”.
Update: Sorry, it’s sold out. End update
The cost is $20 per head and afternoon tea and light refreshments will be available. I honestly don’t know if there are any spots left, however if there are any left, I expect that they will go quickly. The people to call in order to book are the New South Wales Farmers Federation on 1300 794 000. I’ll give them a call myself after 9am to check if there are any spots left, and update this post accordingly.
I’ll be there, and I’m still trying to arrange a short interview with Lord Monckton. Somewhere along the line there was a communication breakdown regarding this, so I’m making a last ditch effort to arrange this today. Hopefully I can get this off the ground because I would love to interview Lord Monckton; I have some questions to which I would very much like to hear his answers and, above all else, would like to make short audio interviews a more regular feature of this blog…having Lord Monckton as the first would be an honour and a privilege. Update: Not locked in, but a window of opportunity has been provided. Many thanks to the organisers for their prompt reply this morning. End update
Anyhoo, more details about today’s lecture can be found here, and if you’re attending then I look forward to seeing you. Feel free to come up for a chat.
The desire to turn simple two word phrases in to convolutions such as this:
I hereby submit to you, with all due consideration being given to the applicable current portion of the generally recognised and accepted uneven segmentation of the present day as it stands in the local area and prevailing local language and culture, having taken in to account the possibility and applicability of laws surrounding any necessary adjustments, be they positive or negative, to the generally measured equal segmentation of the day which is most commonly portrayed outside of military circles in a manner which only allows for half of the available segments, a generally positive and potentially presumptuous communication relating to the perceived state of mutual and personal affairs (bearing in mind that not all factors have necessarily been included in the formulation of the view of the perceived state of the aforementioned affairs) containing an inherent desire to open a mutually convenient and multi-directional dialogue, without inferring any guarantee that, with the benefit of hindsight, such dialogue will necessarily be viewed as having resulted in the overall increase in the knowledge of subjects discussed either personally or as a collective.
Anyhoo, I thought I’d just pop in and say hello. I do plan on writing much more (in a more comprehensible form than what I wrote a few moments ago) before Christmas…but my plans have a habit of remaining as plans and not turning in to actions. We’ll see what happens.
Physically I’m here, but I think my brain is elsewhere as I am still very tired. Thank you to Maritz who held the fort for a little bit longer than was arranged, Maritz will be back on Monday with her weekly column if all goes to plan.
That is the first time that I have been completely off the radar for quite some time as I did not take my laptop with me to Melbourne, and I am continuing to live without a mobile phone. I even forgot to take a watch with me, so my sense of time was non-existent. More on that later, as that topic will take a while to to write.
I’m just going to pluck the quickest blog post off my list of things to write, and publish that for you. I’ll be back later today with more items of interest.
And with that, I’m back. The whole catching up on sleep and getting my energy back thing has been a limited success, but I am now back to being able to put my thoughts in to writing without having to spend a week working out how to word it, so we’ll call it a success.
I’ve got a lot to get through, and seeing as blog posts with multiple short stories in them seem to be the flavour of the trimester on about half the blogs I read, and it’s convenient in this case, I’ll bite and run such a post here.
***
Sleep? Hmmm, well it’s 3:32am as I type this and I last finished sleeping at 8am yesterday. You do the math. That said, in the last few nights I have had dreams where I:
1. Was in a repeat episode of Third Watch. Nobody could be bothered attending to the emergencies as they all knew that the people survived the episode, so why bother risking injury doing the stunts again?
2. I plunged to my death in a taxi, on a wet night where the left half of the road had been washed away. A very vivid and disturbing dream.
3. KXNT’s Alan Stock was elected as Chairman of the Nevada Action Committee, although what this actually achieved is beyond me, because the only thing he was required to do as part of this job was take five minutes out of his show each morning to read the KXNT phone number over and over and over and over and over (we’ll come back to this in five minutes when he’s done with the phone number)
***
Speaking of KXNT, their traffic bed (the music they play under their traffic reports) is one of the bits of music which I managed to get stuck in my head this week. I also managed to get the First Option Mortgage jingle stuck in my head for three excruciating hours, and get it stuck in somebody else’s head simply by mentioning it on Facebook. Apparently it’s called “ear worm”. I also had another song stuck in my head, but I dare not try to remember what it was lest it happen again.
***
Frasier and Seinfeld repeats at 7:30pm and 8pm weeknights respectively on Go! Channel Nine receive my perpetual thanks for this.
***
There was some Bollywood movie on SBS Two the other night. I watched ten minutes of it near the beginning during which time the married couple managed to patch up their differences, and the wife declared that she didn’t really care about her husband’s flaws anyway. How they could drag that about the next three hours is beyond me, and I’m glad that I didn’t stick around to find out. The ten minutes was good for a laugh though.
***
Cisco have calculated (which is probably code for “guessed”) that the average broadband Internet user downloads 11.4 gigabytes per month. I average 20-25GB per month and will probably start doubling that in the not-to-distant future if one of my household projects gets off the ground.
***
Facebook have decided to preserve the accounts of deceased members, minus status updates and other “sensitive data”. This intrigues me as I have often thought about what would happen to this site and my other online data if I were to cease existing for whatever reason. I would like to keep it all online permanently, but am yet to find a viable solution. The National Library’s PANDORA project archives the essence of this site, but seems to have a lot of broken links and missing data, which is hardly surprising given the sheer size of this site (6.97GB and growing). Preserving this site is a work in progress…I suppose I’ll just have to stick around for long enough to ensure that it happens.
Anyway, if and when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I’m happy for my Facebook account to be preserved as some sort of shrine, but I don’t want anything to be removed from it. How does one go about sharing this wish with Facebook. One’s will?
***
Speaking of the dead, Yahoo have finally killed off Geocities. I’m glad that I was reminded of this imminent death the other day, as I had one page on there which I needed to save. I’ll republish it on here at some stage.
***
Monash Drive has been removed the ACT “National Capital Plan”. The proposed road had been slated to run along the foot of Mount Ainslie behind Hackett, Ainslie and Campbell, roughly in-line with the already cleared sections which the high voltage power lines use. Politically, the road was never going to happen, which is a pity because it could have reduced a lot of congestion, especially in the years ahead.
***
We’ve been following Barack Obama’s approval ratings here for some months now using the figures from Rasmussen, who had the polling figures closest to the outcome of last year’s election. That said, the other polls are interesting as well, especially when you consider that in the Gallup poll, Obama has recorded the worst third quarter of an elected president in recorded history. A nine point drop in his approval rating in the space of three months.
***
The White House have declared war on FOX News, claiming that they’re not a news organisation. The White House clearly can’t tell the difference between news programming and opinion programming, even when it’s pointed out to them. Funnily enough though, the other networks have defended FOX. Late last week, White House officials tried to ban FOX from a White House Press Pool interview session, but the other networks wouldn’t have a bar of it, quite clearly telling the White House that “if Fox can’t be a part of this, then none of us will interview your chap”. It worked, and the White House backed down, for now.
Here’s the point. FOX out-rate every other cable news network consistently, partially because of their news programming, and partially because of their opinion programming. People want to watch it. The White House don’t like the opinion programming as it is often critical of the Obama administration, unlike others such as MSNBC whose opinion programming often favours the Obama administration. The other networks know that if they let the White House exclude FOX, then they are all trapped in an unwritten “do as we say, or we cut your access” agreement. It is an attack not only on FOX, but on every other network, on freedom of the press, and on freedom of speech.
Glenn Beck, on one of FOX’s opinion shows, put together a rather amusing piece on the War On FOX which had me in hysterics when I first watched it.
One wonders if people would have voted for Obama’s “new era of bi-partisanship” if they had known that “bi-partisan” is defined as “the other side will do as we say, therefore we all agree”.
***
The ANZ Bank have a new logo, and a TV ad which looks strangely familiar…I’ve seen the whole “life juggled above head, but we can make it easier” ad before, I just can’t remember where. Anyway, the logo, is it just me, or does it look like somebody chucking a tantrum after being kept in line for an hour?
***
Channel Seven have announced their new digital channel, to be called “7TWO”, on (you guessed it) channel 72. I’m not in the least bit surprised that regional affiliate Prime aren’t putting it to air straight away, I mean Prime own the “6” channels in digital TV land, and it would look rather silly have 7TWO on channel 62. I suspect that Prime are working on their own branding of the new station…PRIMExtra perhaps?
***
RIP Don Lane, one of the great entertainers, who passed away at the age of 75.
***
Remember when the Large Hadron Collider was about to be turned on for the first time and people were afraid the world was going to end? It amazed me how many people who believed that, were subsequently placated when it was turned on, broke down, and the world didn’t end. The whole cause for concern was for when it would finally reach the actual colliding stage, which it never did.
733-KXNT, 733-5968, 733-KXNT, 733-5968 (Alan’s still going…)
***
Clive Robertson filled in for Tim Webster on 2UE and 2CC’s afternoon show yesterday. What a relief! Tim Webster, as much as like him personally, has bored me to death of late…I can not listen to his show any more, I just can’t. Tim is much better suited to a news-based show than the lifestyle-amalgam show that he is now presenting. Clive, however, suits the format perfectly, and is brilliant afternoon entertainment.
Memo to 2UE for next year’s lineup: Breakfast with Mike Jeffreys, Mornings with Stuart Bocking, Afternoons with Clive Robertson, Drive with John Stanley, Nights with The Two Murrays, Overnights with Jim Ball.
***
And now at 6:18 it’s time for KXNT’s traffic and weather together on the eights, here’s Tate South (finally, Alan’s morning Chairman task is finished, which means that I can wrap up this blog post).
***
There was an ad on TV last night for that boat from Victoria to Tasmania and back, in which they advertised the rate for taking your car with you as being an “each way” rate (eg. “x dollars each way”). Sorry, but does that mean it’s the return rate (you can travel each way for this amount) or the one way rate (each way costs x dollars)?
***
Congratulations to Chris Matlock, KXNT’s Radiostar competition winner for this year. I listened to the entries of the 20 finalists when I was last in Deniliquin, and Chris was my favourite from the start, so I was very pleased to see him win. Chris will have his own show soon, apparently, and will start off co-hosting with Ciara Turns on “Sundays with Ciara” on Sunday, November 8 between 10am and 1pm. That will either be 4am-7am or 5am-8am Monday, November 9 in Canberra, depending on whether daylight saving has ended in the US by then.
***
And finally, Lord Christopher Monckton spent much of the latter part of last week and the start of this week outlining the issues with the proposed Copenhagen climate change treaty which, don’t forget, is designed to stop a warming which hasn’t happened in about the last decade. The main points:
1. The setting up of a world government, with binding power over all countries.
2. Some peculiar scheme to send all the money from the western countries to the developing countries, to pay for some supposed “climate debt”.
Glenn Beck interviewed his lordship last week, which makes for very interesting and enlightening listening.
Part one:
If you ever needed proof that the whole global warming thing has everything to do with social change, and nothing to do with climate change, you now have it.
I’ll be back in a few days. Right now, despite having a growing list of things that I would like to write about, I just can’t manage to get started, so I’m not going to try for a few days. Columns from contributors are also suspended until further notice.
If my life were a television soap opera, the title of this episode would be “a bit out of it”. I’ve lost count of how many times I have said that today.
The doctor proclaimed that I’m fine after looking at me in one of his trademark five-second colsultations, but I’m not convinced that he took the possibility of concussion in to account. I am still “out of it”, I’m struggling to concentrate, my sentence structure is fairly horrendous and my ability to type letters in the correct order is not all that it should be. I’ll give it some time, but if this keeps up, I will be seeking a second opinion.
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to passing to the police on to the details of the calls made from my phone after it was stolen. Yes, these thieves were of the thick variety. Some sleep would also be nice, but is proving to be elusive.
The ANZ Bank have a new logo, and a TV ad which looks strangely familiar…I’ve seen the whole “life juggled above head, but we can make it easier” ad before, I just can’t remember where. Anyway, the logo, is it just me, or does it look like somebody chucking a tantrum after being kept in line for an hour?