I'm Extremely Busy and Important - You'll Need to Buy Another Phone

Did Chief Engineer Scotty instruct Apple how to estimate back-up times?

For those of you who've never watched a Star Trek, the starship Enterprise would suffer some battle damage, Kirk would straighten his lustrous hair, snog an alien hotty and radio down to the engine room,

“What's our status, Scotty?”

“Well Captain, the trans-warp inverters are verted, the dilithium crystals have thrown a shoe, all the weapons systems are pointing at each other and life support has just started a long, flat beeping noise at an old lady. We'll not be operational for at least 24 hours.”

“You have 13 minutes.”

“Right you are, Captain!”

We've all marvelled at the Windows download progress bar that will say, “ten minutes remaining” for two hours, but the Apple back-up smacks it out of the ballpark for hysterical overstatement, followed by a picket-line, a meeting and then a return to work with a revised estimate.

“Apple Manufactured Phone, Captain Grey Area here. How long to back-up?”

“O.M.G. You just won't believe how many folders there are in my own retarded filing system and then there's the music and these photos and that video and some games and... oh crap, is that really email? How old are you?”

“None of your bee's wax. There's a clue. I used that phrase.”

“Well, I can tell you that this is going to take at least 16 days. No, five days. No, six hours. Yeah. Six hours.”

“Really? That's where we've settled? Six hours? Can I quote you on that?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Six hours and not a jot le... finished.”

“Yeah. Thought so. God-damn drama queen. Now, if I could get you to...”

"Bup, bup, bup. I have important updates."

I Swear I'm Not Doing a Period Drama

It’s absolutely amazing how impressions that are a long way off the mark can be made - and how indelible they will inevitably be.

Yesterday, I traded a Ford Ute for a Jag. At the trading yard I needed to take the remaining 1% of crap that I wanted from the old car to the new one before doing the paperwork. Stuff like the eTag, the old directory and some other items:

1) A doctor's bag. I had a birthday recently and at my request Emergency Contact gave me an antique doctor’s bag. They are unusual in a world full of synthetic back-packs. They are leather, which I like. They have big, gaping mouths that make it easy to fossick around for leads and cords and PC bits and pieces (which I do daily). They are big enough to take a laptop, paperwork, a tablet, and sundry crapola and sturdy enough to keep all that junk protected. They are lockable. They are uncommon and practical.

2) A walking stick. A few years ago, I fractured an ankle. I was on a walking stick periodically for a couple of months as it mended. I haven’t used the stick for years and had forgotten that it was rattling around under the passenger seat of the ute.

3) Dark grey suit. I arrived at the dealership from work, wearing a muted, conservative grey suit.

So, down at the car yard, a tall man in a grey suit, carrying a walking stick and doctor’s bag, got out of a Ford one-tonner, walked over to a Jag and started loading the kit into it.

They yardies stared at me, unable to decide if they were watching the weirdest episode of All Creatures Great and Small or an elaborate car-jacking.

(I wasn’t as amused at their infernal gawping and, removing my monocle with as much dignity as I could muster, I poked one of them in chest with the stem of my hickory pipe and gave the unprincipled scoundrel a piece of my mind.)

The Fourth Law Of Robotics. (We're happy to help little robots that help themselves)

Curiosity landed on Mars yesterday. I guess he’s on the run after that nasty “cat” incident.

I love a Mars robot rover. I love a little thing beetling about on a distant planet, chirping to itself, picking up rocks, looking at them and then chucking them over their shoulder like Wall-e did with the diamond ring because the box it came in was more interesting.

I also feel for them a little. Don’t you wonder if they might get a little cold and lonely, out there, all by themselves?

Sojourner, who landed in the late 90s, has officially had his case closed with “communications lost” stamped on the last page of his personnel file. It’s more likely he went a little crazy and switched his own radio off, preferring to be a hermit rather than continually hearing orders from the voices in his little mechanical head.

Spirit got bogged*. He landed on Mars in 2004 and like the brave trooper that he is, he trundled around looking for Sojourner for nearly six years before he came to a dead stop in a sand pit. He is going to present a puzzle to the aliens who explore our solar system when they see a little robot that had somehow managed to cross interplanetary space, only to become baffled by some sand.

So Spirit and Sojourner are out there somewhere, having been reclassified as stationary communications beacons or just plain MIA and I see that Curiosity is as large as a decent sized car. That got me thinking.

I am particularly good at remaining stationary inside a vehicle for long periods. All I’d need is a nappy (well, maybe two) some sandwiches and one of those Bladder Buster cups with the straw. The straw is not idle whimsy, it’s a safety device. I’d need to keep both hands on the wheel during re-entry. I’ll go out into the desert in a small vehicle and round up your escaped robots and I won’t even bitch and whine and then go and become Darth Vader afterward.

*(Now something is missing. All the people round here are too bony for kissing. Sing it like the Mentals. It’s more fun that way.) 

Scold The Phone

At 5.30 this morning, my “smart” phone won an iPad. I think my smart phone is pretty dumb:

·         It didn’t turn itself onto silent while it was out there entering its number into strange competitions. The answering SMS alerted me to what it was up to

·         It entered into competitions in Great Britain, where it is unable to go and collect the prize

·         It doesn’t have hands, so what is it going to do with an iPad?

Schoopid smart phone.

… and, I’m pretty sure my Blu-Ray Player has been returning movies late to the rental place.

Ute Racing - The Next Step

As we all know, ute racing is the greatest thing to happen to Australian motorsport since that kangaroo bounced across the track at Bathurst and got reduced its composite atoms. Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong and I can back it up with a subtle blend rhetoric and violence. But the organisers of ute racing have not quite thought it through.

In case you didn’t know, ute racing is so good because the guys drive like they stole the vehicle. I have never seen such insouciant disregard for the laws of physics or personal safety. The weight distribution means they’ve got an insane amount of power over a set of wheels that are barely attached to anything. It must be like driving a sperm. I can only assume the drivers are confident they can nick another ute in time for the next race, because the one they’re in isn’t going to make it.

But, why not go all the way? When they prang, I wanna see tools and cement flying out the back. I wanna see guys in hi-viz vests getting pinned by ladders that come spearing off the rooves into the car in front. I wanna see arguments for whose got the job, when two towies arrive at a crash site at the same time.

The Spore Score

In Sydney, as in other parts of the world, the weather has stopped being the weather and has become non-stop-acts-of-a-petulant-god.

It rained a bit recently. When I say a bit, I mean the Malaysian I know is starting to feel at home. If Malaysians don’t have concussive rain fall on their heads on a semi-regular basis they dry out and crack… true story, anyway, it rained so much it broke my car.

My car had a sly leak that I fixed using nothing but neglect. For the first couple of years, whenever it rained, I’d get a pool of water in the left or right foot-well. I couldn’t find what was causing it so I did what any good Australian male would do and ignored it. Well, not totally ignore, I’d chuck an old t-shirt into the puddle, let it soak it up and then wedge the shirt into the tray cover to dry out on the way home. My non-existent car washing regimen then came into play. It turns out that if you let enough leaves and compost collect in the nooks and crannies of your car, they will seal up leaks. This was all undone by Sydney’s recent deluge, though. It rained enough that it cleaned my car. Now it leaks again.

It rained so much that Emergency Contact and I are going to die like Brittany Murphy. Mould has appeared in places that mould shouldn’t be, like inside.

Washing Machine

Emergency Contact and I were recently given a washing machine. The one we had was working ok-ish but the gift one was considerably newer and is a dryer as well. Dryer and washer all in one means one less white-good in a small flat. Front-loader means space to put your washing basket on top. Given means we don’t pay any money. Win win win.

(For those about to warn me about dryers - yeah I know. Sydney electricity prices are about to go up by 1000 per cent and they use more power than a fun park and wear out your clothes and will give your cat fleas and will attempt to annex the neighbour’s laundry and are the root of all evil. We use it six times a year at most and usually because we have no dry sheets and it’s bedtime… in winter.)

It has not been plain sailing though, getting, and getting used to, a new washing machine. If Blonde Powerpuff Girl happens to read this, don’t worry, I love having it… now… and am deeply grateful, but that doesn’t make for a blog.

I could carry our last washing machine by myself. It was a mid-sized Fisher & Paykel of 5.5 kg washing capacity and was largely motor and drum. Lifting it wasn’t the easiest job in the world, but I could get it in and out without help and I reasoned that, with the advancement in tech, this new jobby would be lighter again.

I was basing this on my experience with fridges. Our 30-year-old Kelvinator (built to work for at least 30 years) weighed as much as the moon, and the modern Electrolux replacement is twice the size but less than half the weight. (I’ll be interested to see how long it lasts though.)

I was warned that my homespun theories on weight were not entirely accurate, and these days I listen to people when they warn me about things being heavy. I’m not as bullet-proof as I once was so I enlisted the aid of Gooby for added brawn.

With complicated post-work travelling arrangements in place, I met Gooby and we bolted over to grab the machine. But the first attempt didn’t work because of a crossed wire in communications. The owner wasn’t in. That forced Gooby and me to go home and play video games and eat Toobs. Not a total loss.

Second attempt was the next day, but Gooby couldn’t be there, so I went back to my original position of “how hard can it be?”

I’ll tell you. The new washer-dryers are as heavy as a bad acid trip and twice as difficult to keep a grip on. You see, it was raining and I was wet which meant that every time I came into contact with a bit of detergent, it got slipperier and slipperier and it was a shiny metal white-good with no handles to start with. The original owner couldn’t help because he had a broken knee and EC had decided the appropriate removalist outfit was thick soled wedges and a low cut, long dress. Nothing for it but to quickly enlist the help of a mate, Mr Who, who happens to live around the corner.

Mr Who appeared in 30 seconds which was good as there was a time element to all of this. The original owner was also moving out of the place while we were standing there, and was not going to take the machine with him. A fairly new washer-dryer left on the side of the road in Glebe was going to last as long as it takes two uni-students to say, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Mr Who was very helpful at the pick up end, but he had places to be immediately after and couldn’t come to the loading-in end. I had to re-enlist the help of Gooby to help carry it into the flat, but at least the machine was in our possession and it could happen at our convenience.

So, the machine was in the ute and it was raining. Guess what I had padding the machine? A mattress. (Yes, I’ve gone back to owning a sodden lump of mattress in the back of the ute. How I missed the good old days.)

After that it all went rather smoothly. Gooby was gettable on the way through and other than severing a couple of his fingers, the machine slotted into place with fairly little fuss.

We had a new washing-drying machine. Yay. It arrived in a bit of a panic, but as the kids say, “It’s all good.” The hoses fit, the outlet hose went nicely into the tub, the filters were clean and in good nick and the holy crap look at all those dials. How the hell do you make this thing fondle your smalls? I didn’t see a single diagram that made any sense. I bet I knew where the instruction book was, too. In a soggy box outside an empty semi in inner-west Sydney. I was going to have to use my brains. As the newly re-soaked mattress in the back of the ute demonstrated, though, my brains appear to have shrunk in the wash. Stand back.

First, to the internets. So many related models had their instructions on PDF, but not our model. I read around the subject as much as I could stand before pernicious boredom set in and I said to myself that I was pretty sure I knew what I was doing.

Three loads of ruined clothes later and I decided I didn’t entirely know what I was doing. The colours were running. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw modern clothing dye run. What was going on? Cotton setting. Middle of the range 60 minute wash. That ought to be right.

Still, faint heart never won clean undies. Again I gingerly put on a wash with identically coloured items and chose the cotton setting and decided to give them a nice long 95 minute soak and wash.

I stuck my head into the laundry about an hour into the wash and could feel the heat pouring off the machine. It was fantastic. Not only does the machine spin like it wants to grow up to be a large hadron collider, it likes to generate similar temperatures. Another load of ruined clothes. This was getting embarrassing so I decided to work a bit harder at finding the instructions. After finding out what the model was called in other countries, I finally tracked down the instruction book and downloaded it.

It made for quite interesting reading.

All those numbers at various places around the dial were not times, like I was used to with the old washer. With most old washers, the more you wound the dial around, the longer the wash.

No, no, no.

Those numbers were temperature settings. Like any good little plague-era washerwoman, I was boiling our clothes.

Once I knew that, I went back and looked at the dial and realised that those cute little symbols down there at certain intervals weren’t Galactic Empire Tie-Fighter Squadron Decals, they were snow flakes. I bet snowflakes mean a cold wash.

So, the washing machine is in, I know how to use it and everything is yay. I wonder if it should be making that noise…

Time Flies Like An Arrow, Fruit Flies Like A Banana And My Clocks Are Up To Something

My analogue watch and clocks are playing silly-buggers with me.

Whenever I glance at them, they realise they’ve been caught, stop their second hand from going backwards, and start them going around clockwise the way they should. It usually takes them one second to realise they’ve been sprung. I’ve never seen them take two, and sometimes it’s a little under a second.

What I can’t work out is how they are managing to keep the correct time at all. And don’t you go telling me it’s some optical watchimacallit. It’s real I tells ya and if you haven’t seen the effect, it only means your clocks are less rascally than mine.

Open Letter To Toyota

Dear Mr Toyota,


I have enjoyed many of your products for many years and in general find them a byword for reliable motoring, if not actually a life changing experience. But I have to get something off my chest.

You have built into your newer cars warning sounds designed to stop me from killing myself. In fact, you have built in noises that are designed to stop me from even mildly inconveniencing myself and you should not have done this.

Let’s go through three examples:

1)   The beeping that tells me the key is in the ignition and the door is open. 
Yes, I know. I did both those things. Is the warning to stop me from shutting the key in the car? I can’t lock the car without that key, so what’s the point? If it’s to stop me from walking away from an unlocked car with a key in the ignition, well, if I am daft enough to do that a chime is not going to help. I’m guessing the type of person that walks away from a car in that state probably wouldn't have worked out what the noise was about anyway... or even heard it (looking at you, wrinklies). If the answer is to stop yoof easily stealing the car, well the type of people who need to go joy riding are not going to choose a 1.8 litre Corolla to re-enact Ronin. What’s the harm in it, you ask, Mr Toyota? Maybe it will save just one person some embarrassment, you think? It ruins things, Mr T. I have been in the middle of nowhere, I mean somewhere  we've not seen another car for hours, got out to take in the view (or a quick piddle on a tree) and the car stands there in the glorious, empty, vast quietness carrying on like Pac Man. STFU you styooopid little drama queen. Look at the naicha. Look at it. Does it need your input? NO!


2)   The beeping that tells me I have turned the car off with the headlights still on. 
Why can't the car turn them off automatically when the key is pulled? I’ve owned other cars, quite a good deal older, that had no problem with this simple task. The Toyota has sensors and doohickies all over the place that allow it to carry on like a pork chop, why not do something useful with all of that technology?


3)   The beeping that tells me that someone, somewhere, hasn’t got their seatbelt on. 
On the face of it, not so silly. There’s no argument from me about the efficacy of seatbelts. But, I do have a gripe about what the car considers an animate or inanimate object or indeed, what this situation is really about. It gets all Florence Nightmare when I’m trying to take home two bottles of mineral water. Two and a half litres of water is enough to make the seat think there’s an unrestrained child in the front. This sensor needs to be cranked up to not start complaining until there’s about 30 kilos sitting there, and it needs to detect breathing. Anyone who’s putting a person lighter than that or not breathing in the front passenger seat of a car is not operating within the bounds of polite society and a cute little beeping noise is not going to be the thing that makes them straighten up and fly right.

So, Mr Toyota, think about who you have attracted to buy your car. They can afford it. They are conservative and experienced drivers. They are the type of people who have reflexively put on seatbelts and taken out keys for many years. These safety “features” do not help, they are the type of thing that makes them rethink buying the brand next time. These people have enough aggravation in their lives and, to them, peeping machines rank with crying children on international plane flights. They can't do much about it, but they do start to get gun-shy.


However, I’m not here to just whine. I’m here to provide answers.

Right there on the dashboard next to the radio volume dial, put the car volume dial.

If this opens you up to possible liability issues, particularly in America where they sue as a kneejerk overcompensation for stupidity, we can get around that. Make the option a mechanic’s only override that can be done at the shop. We sign a liability waiver and they turn off the sounds.

You see, the final thing I find so annoying about this, Mr Toyota, is that you are currently in the middle of your umpteenth recall for life threatening safety issues in your cars. Get your own house in order before you go shorten my life with all your nagging.

Love from Grey Area.

The Road Worrier

I feel I have joined a select group. Traditionally, rego time is a period of great angst and financial battering for me. I have owned old and, how should I put this politely... idiosyncratic cars for most of my driving life due to either a misguided sense of style or outright poverty. But this year marked a real turning point. Total cost for repairs and rego check for 2010? Thirty Three Doll Hairs, baby!

I do have some suspicions as to how this came about though, and my first port of call would not be the flawless mechanical nature of my ride.

Emergency Contact and I went away for a three day weekend and I dropped the car in to the mechanics for said period with the intention of picking it up the day after my return. Phone numbers were noted with the promise of contact if anything cataclysmic needed doing to get my car through the inspection.

Four days later I came back, sauntered into the mechanic’s office (seriously, how do you get grease on an overhead fan that is four feet out of your reach?) and girded my loins for the news. There had been no phone call, but that doesn’t guarantee a thing.

They could say anything at this point: “Yeah mate, we just went ahead with it ‘cause it’d be a write-off if you didn’t get it done. Three thousand is pretty good for a new big end,” or “Yeah mate, I was just about to call you actually, all the tappets are rooted and we’ve gotta get the head off. You still wanna go ahead with it?”

But no! “Thirty three, thanks pal,” said my mechanic, handing me the keys.

I played it really cool at this point. My jaw dropped and I yelled, “You’re kidding?”

He paused and said, “Damn. I should have stung you for more.”

I paid the bill, and walked out to find the car. It was exactly where I had left it four days earlier, covered in rotting flower blossoms, driver’s seat in my position (not the position a five-foot-tall mechanic can drive it in) and to really put the seal on my suspicions, a spider web between the steering wheel and indicator...

And to all those who would accuse me of being a potential menace on the road due to mechanical neglect - Thirty three schmackos!

Spanish No Fly

The Spanish air-traffic controllers have given up controlling traffic. They all had a sick day at the end of last week and that left some people stuck in airports. I know how a bug can rip through a workplace come flu season, so I’m not going to say it’s impossible that every single one of them felt a bit crook... across the country... all at once.

From the ABC News Website:

The government declared a state of emergency for the first time since 1975, putting controllers under military command with the threat of jail terms for refusing orders.

Air traffic controllers claimed that Spanish troops forced them to work at gunpoint, but the local press and people were unmoved, given that the average controller earns close to $300,000 a year.

I have found that people who are in a position to hold a lot of other people to ransom in order to secure a pay rise can engender a bit of resentment. I was a bus driver in a town where clearing your throat close to a union rep’s loudhailer would bring politicians running with cheque books. It felt nice to be wanted but even I could see that some of the boys were 'swinging the lead'.

But, if there’s a group of people I wouldn’t want working at gun-point; if there was a team that I would want to arrive to work with a certain enthusiasm for their task and a relaxed and competent outlook, it would be air-traffic controllers.

Baby, You Can't Drive My Car

If you thought that the world of insurance was a bizarre and unfathomable nest of fear-mongering leeches, well, you’d be right. I’m not here to make you feel better about that, though. I’m here to add to the confusion and doubt.

I rang my insurer to pay the insurance on the ute, and noticed that Emergency Contact is listed as the other regular driver. I can see that there might have been a time, in the past, where I had romantic visions of teaching her how to drive a manual car and maintaining a healthy, loving relationship. I’m all grown up now.

So, I asked the lady on the phone how much cheaper my policy would be if I was the only named driver. She took EC off the policy – and it came back $35 more expensive.

This just goes to show what gross miscarriages of justice there can be when a piece of software gets to run an algorithm on real life variables, like, “Who would you rather be driven around by: This guy with 15 years professional driving experience with no tickets or at-fault accidents, who has driven anything from motorbikes to articulated trucks; or Doctor Cloth-Eyes over there, throwing her coffee into her lap for the umpteenth time while driving on a freeway she swears she has never seen before in her life, but just happens to be the one that goes to her work?” (Yes. Emergency Contact has a PhD. Yes, her eyes are only painted on.)

What was trebly galling was it appeared while we had been talking, Emergency Contact was deemed to be getting safer. I asked the insurance lady to be put EC back on the policy and it came out two dollars cheaper than the initial quote.

Somebody needs a good kick in the actuaries.

Sirius Cybernetics Corporation - Safe For Now

A surprising number of people say to me, “What’s your take on domestic robots?”

They do this because I outed myself as a robot-vacuum-cleaner owner a while ago and people want to know how it‘s going.

Owning a robot vacuum has almost nothing to do with an obsessive cleaning compulsion, but a lot more to do with me being disappointed that I don’t take holidays on the moon or go to work riding a jetpack. My science fiction future just never eventuated and I eke these little bits of future-joy from wherever possible. (Also, if you are proper OCD about cleaning, a little robot vacuum is going to suck at sucking.)

Rather than giving advice on which model to buy based on electronic room-mapping or randomised, bump-turns to room volumes, I like to illustrate the state of the art with the following:

One day, I came home and was startled to see the balcony door open. I quickly went through the house to check if all the important stuff was still there. Telly. Check. Phew. Computer. Check. Sigh. Emergency Contact. Not there. Let’s put that on the backburner for now. Stay focused and frosty. Laptop. Check. Phew.

I couldn’t see anything amiss and just put it down to one of us absentmindedly stepping out and leaving the balcony door ajar and the wind did the rest.

Several days later, I was emptying the robot vacuum and it had sticks and leaves in the hopper. Pieces fell into place and I realised that robot had pushed the door open and gone out onto the balcony to loyally go about his cleaning business, vacuuming a cement, outdoor surface.

I was impressed. It showed that the sensors supposed to stop him from throwing himself down a flight of stairs, really work. The bottom of the railing on the balcony is way too high to have stopped him from going over the edge, so it was only his little, downward-pointing, electronic eyes that gave him vertigo. I do like to imagine what the suicide note would say if did chuck himself off, though. “Don’t blame yourself. I just wasn’t cut out for the domestic life.”

Anyway, he dragged himself back inside, over the door-snake and took himself back to his little dock to charge up and doubtlessly get a little indigestion from the surprising meal he’d had - And this is really where we are at with domestic robots.

He left the door open. He spent time vacuuming something he shouldn’t. He can’t reach up and do the cobwebs between the bookcases. He drags a sock around for a while, gets it hooked on the telephone lead, pulls the telephone off the shelf and then pushes it under the telly. Then, with a triumphant whistle, scoots off and gets baffled by a rug with tassels.

And most importantly, robot vacuums don’t save any time whatsoever. If you’re like me, you have to follow and watch the little thing doing his stuff ‘cause it’s so damn cute.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For... A New Tune

I can understand how it is that Mr Whippy might be reluctant to change his tune - but the time has come when he has to or he is a dead man.

The one in my neighbourhood can be heard for hours at a time. He is within earshot for so long because of the numbers of ovals and fields in my area. There’s also something about the topography that guarantees that for the entire time that he’s out there noisily and repetitively begging, I get to hear it.

In some things, tradition is important. I can’t actually think of any of those things right off the top of my head, but I am reliably informed that this is true and I will yield to wiser minds than mine. But if tradition is the argument for keeping the tune, let’s look at the sense of sticking with Greensleeves as the anthem of Mr Whippy.

Mr Whippy’s target demograph is not a hidebound bunch. I reckon a good proportion of kids who want an ice-cream (when they find out what all the noise is about) are hearing Greensleeves for the first time. Also, as I have illustrated before, kids are idiots. I don’t think it’s Greensleeves that elicits the Pavlovian badgering of mum and dad the next time they hear it. It’ll be a far simpler stimulus response, like, “Noisy, jangly truck equals choc-top.”

It’d be an improvement for the older group as well. A change is as good as a holiday and if I heard another tune out there, I’d be more inclined to go have a look, just to see what it was. If the truck came around playing “Ready to Rock” by Pianosaurus, I’d be hoping it sold beef jerky and cold beer. I’d then probably buy a sorbet anyway, simply to make pulling on my pants and running out into street worthwhile.

Imagine the cross promotional opportunity young, up-and-coming bands and Mr Whippy could get into.  He plays their music and every time they’re on telly, they slip in some endorsement like, “Yeah, thanks for that Fuzzy, now we’re gonna rock out with our choc out.”

At the outset, Greensleeves is a strange choice. It’s a teeny bit depressing. I had to learn the song at school and here’s the first verse:

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously
For I have loved you well and long (cor)
Delighting in your company

It’s a she done me wrong song - unrequited love and all the fun that that entails. To me, that doesn’t scream “gimme a frozen yoghurt with sprinkles!”

There is also some speculation that sleeves are made green by having a little rumpy pumpy in grassy fields. Apparently, a green dress was code for promiscuity. Now, when it comes to ancient ideas of prudery and prurience I am not a traditionalist. In fact, more power to you if you like to put out, but that’s not really an integral part of unloading dairy whip in a sugary cone and probably not an appropriate message for the kiddies. Why not “Ice Cream” by Muscles? This features the undeniably catchy hook “Ice cream, is gonna save the day… again.”

For the foreseeable future, I think that Mr Whippy is going to keep the infernal tune, and this does make him easier to identify and deal with. Future Mums and Dads, the first time your little cherub asks what the noise is, explain, "Why darling, it's Mr Whippy. He plays his music when he's run out of ice cream."

Kids Are Stupid

I was watching this kid the other day and she was cute, but a dummy. She was all excited about the two-dollar-ride-around-in-a-circle thingy. Merry-go-round is over-selling it. It was a Wiggles brand shopping centre ride and if you were two-years-old, you got in a little vehicle and circled at knee height, at walking pace, in a three foot radius. Happy as a clam, this idiot was. Clapping her hands, big smile, bashing the steering wheel like me in Saturday morning traffic. Then she got out and sat in an even more comfortable stroller, that moved at exactly the same height and speed except unrestricted by a central pivot… and went all morose.

If someone offered to push me around in a padded seat to get the shopping done, I certainly wouldn’t want to jeopardise the arrangement by getting all excited by an inferior mode of transport. No thanks. Good as gold here, with my little sunshade and rain cover. Push on, Macduff.

Rate Yourself, Then Buy Tickets

A colleague posted me the below link.

I Write Like

What you do, is you put a chunk of your writing in there and it “analyses” it and tells you who you write like.

I think scientifically it’s as meaningful as generating your porn name, but it does have that self importance factor that all rampant egotists can’t avoid.

I gave it three goes before posting this blog.

About Shanghai Ball, it told me I write like J.K Rowling (show me the money)

On All Roads Lead to Pollution, it thought I sounded like Isaac Asimov (show me the money)

On Long Way to The Mop, it accused me of sounding like Jack London (show me the… morphine)

I gave it a passage of Oscar Wilde, and it decided he could've made a passable living as a ghost writer for James Joyce.
 
Good one.

Quitting Time: The Mother Of Invention

An Australian might call this, “Bodgying something together”. An American might call it a “kludge”. Whatever its name, I always imagine the self-satisfied handyman standing back, surveying his work, and muttering the phrase uttered since time immemorial; “There. Better than a bought one.”

I took this photo when I was in Texas a couple of years back and I came across it recently while I was cleaning out a drive. (Water restrictions don’t let you hose down your drive anymore.)

This piece of genius was in the computer room of a middling quality hotel I was staying in. In fact, what alerted me to it was the lamp attached on the other side of the wall. It was sitting in a hallway on an unadorned side-table, with an electric power cord that just dived into the wall like David Campbell at a Turkish bathhouse.

I had to know where the lead went, so ambled around the corner into the computer room to investigate.

The guy who was using the computer room was a little non-plussed. What he saw was a large, giggling bloke come lurching into the room, kick a chair out of the way and start taking photos of what looked like the empty corner of a room. I pointed at the power cord by way of explanation, but he didn’t seem to find it as amusing.

Anyway, the thing that really keeps me chuckling about this, is the implicit workmanship. The ‘handyman’ has drilled a nice small hole but he’s obviously then had to do one of two things to get the power cord through it. Either remove the power cord from the base of the lamp, or the plug from the end of the power cord. So, he’s had to do some re-wiring. If you’re going to the bother of rewiring, why don’t you just do the wiring job properly the first place? Put a power point in the hall.

Flogging A Dead Horse: A Users Guide

I had the following conversation with a bloke recently that illustrated to me that SMS abbreviations and acronyms can cause confusion. We had only just met, so were doing the greeting behaviour thing.

I started, “So, how’s it going?”

“Not bad. Started a new job a couple of weeks ago.”

“Don’t envy you there. I prefer to stay quietly incompetent in the one place, rather than spreading it around. Are you enjoying it?”

“I think so, although I didn’t get off to an auspicious start. I had been at a convention, really working the room and making lots of new contacts. I was handing out my business card to anyone who’d take it, and got a really poor response. Like, no-one got back to me. It was only a couple of days ago, when I had my specs on and happened to look at one of my own cards, that I saw my email address was John.Citizen@Business.com.au. They hadn't sent me a proof to look at before I went to the conference. I trusted them and wasn't wearing my glasses during the whole thing.”

Me, drying me eyes, “ Here’s an opportunity to go the deed poll and get that name change you've always wanted.”

Wry grin from fellow, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Me, really warming to subject, despite what others may feel about it (as is my wont). “Hey, you should just take ownership of that email address in the company and use it until the cards run out. It would make a cool murder-mystery-cop-show as well. They wheel your body into the morgue with the John Doe toe-tag on, only to identify you as John Citizen, only to be put right much later when someone comes forward and actually identifies you with your real name and we all live happily ever after, except for you.”

“Yeah, that would be good,” he says, looking about for other company.

Me, still digging around for that rich seam I know is around somewhere, “Did you hear that one about the guy you couldn’t afford a personalised number-plate? He changed his name to JQM 154?”

He stops and just looks at me, thinking it over. No laugh. This was the type of environment where a polite snigger was required at the very least. But this guy - nothing.

It was then that I realised he was trying to work out what JQM 154 stood for. He was looking for another gag. This is what happens when everything has meaning. I had deliberately gone for letters that to me, meant very little, but he still searched around for the acronym or the leet speak. And, to tell that gag without pre-remembering a random series, is harder than you’d think. (You just remember the formula. Guy, personalised plate, can’t afford, random plateish sounding combination. Huge laughs. Thank you and goodnight.)

So, for those of you who are happy with my assertion that everything has meaning, you can leave with my blessing.

For those who don’t believe me, I will give a short demonstration. I can’t cover every eventuality of course, so it’s just a sampler, but this is the type of thing you run into when you try and rip out the above little joke, and are searching around in your head for a suitably meaningless combination.

You need to make it a fairly standard numberplate format for your audience. Where I was, that is three letters followed by three numbers. The state of NSW now has almost limitless combinations, but you go for the classic, historic format.

You can’t start the letter triplet with “A”. The indefinite article sets the listener up to look for “one of something”. It also has that other bunch of meanings around first, primacy, top class, best mark, Alpha etc etc.

You can’t start the triplet with “B”. It sounds like “be” and also any vowel that follows is going to have the audience searching around for the word that they think they’ve just heard.

“C” - See. And the vowel thing again

“D” - this, if they’re anything like me, gets them looking for the acronym that starts with “Department of….” and of course, the vowel thing. Let’s just assume the vowel thing, every time I mention a consonant.

“E” has been hijacked by eMail, E-commerce, electro, and there are any number of TLAs that start with “E” because of the environmental movement.

“F” - is this a rude joke now? Because you’ve just said “eff”, as in “effing shut up”.  Don’t forget, the fact that you are obviously telling a joke, means the listener is now slightly prejudiced into looking for the naughty bit.

“G” - Gee.

“H” - This one isn’t particularly difficult, but, if you’re an Aussie, it has the “Her Majesty’s” baggage and it is quite hard to say in a crowded, noisy room, without someone thinking they’ve heard something else.

“I” - no good for obvious reasons. I break for unicorns? I, Claudius? Better than a poke in the eye?

“J”- Usable. Not a commonly used letter in the English language.

“K” - now so commonly used as the abbreviation of the already truncated Ok, that you’re setting the listener up for a fall when they start looking for the mental state of the plate owner. As in, “‘K with the divorce“. Also, The Prime Minister probably has KRUDD tied up.

“L” - If you’re a geek, “L” is going to always stand for Light. It’s not bad, but you do run into the vowel thing again.

“M” - Not a bad one, either. But think about it. If you’re a normal person, you’ve probably started this mental search at “A”. You’re now about halfway through the alphabet. How long are going to make the suckers wait for the punch line?

“N” - National and Neuro. No chance.

“O” - OMG. Oxford. Here’s another one where I fall for a trap. If I start with “O” I’m going to either say OMD and then end up humming Enola Gaye for the rest of the evening, or reflexively go for OED, which leads the audience down the garden path.

“P” - Private. Pee. No vowel is useable. Still, could be worse.

“Q” - As long as you don’t use a vowel or a “T” (so they’re not looking cutie or “on the QT”)

“R” - Pirate number plate.

“S” - The number 2 backwards. Is this a trick number plate?

“T” - Not bad, but don’t forget that the frequency of use of the letter will lead lots of people to search around for personal meaning. Tea? Tee?

“U” - You guessed it.

“V” - Again, not such a bad one, but all dealings with the road and traffic authority will involve an acronym with a “V” in it - it stands for Vehicle.

“W” - particularly to be avoided in conjunction with the previous letter. Also, and this might just be a local phenomenon, the type of tosser who really, actually has a personalised number plate, quite often has them strapped to a BMW. I have seen all sorts of murderisations of those three letters in an attempt to get a plate that advertises something about the car. 8MVV as an example.

“X” - Huge problems waiting here. Extra? Kiss? Marking the spot? Rated.

“Y” - Why indeed.

“Z” - Is this the number 2 masquerading as something else? Is it a backwards 5? What am I looking for here having searched through the Alpha and the Omega? Also, and it pains me to say this, we say zed in this country… but only if we are over a certain age. It can lead to confusion if the audience has been super saturated in American ‘culture’.

So, you’ve made your choice for the first letter. Time to choose a second letter. Nah, I’m not going to do it to you. You get my point.

A few quick words about the numbers.

Three numbers in a row. You can’t start with 1, because that doesn’t sound random and for the joke to work, it really has to be random.

2 is no good because of its use as “To” in common messaging.

3. Not bad. But is that an “E”.

4. For.

5. Is that an “S”?

6. Is there a New Zealand sex joke in here?

7. It’s ok, but for the L337 speakers, it might put them off.

8. Ate. Or, used in the following abbreviated sense. Back of a handyman’s van - M8S R8S.

9. Small gee?

The numbers are a little easier, but don’t forget you could be advertising something unwittingly as well. A lot Sydney FM radio stations ID themselves by their three numbers that represent frequency.

So, you’ve worked your way through the combinations and arrived at your punch line. You are now standing in a deserted room with the sound of one cricket chirping in the background.

(For the record, if someone held a gun to my head and said, give me a number plate that we will attach to your car, it would be 3MT1H2U. I will buy a beer for the first person who works out what that’s all about if I haven't already told you.)

It's A Long Way To The Mop

Under the influence of an insistent advertisement and the advice of certain friends of mine, I bought an electric steam-mop. Actually, that’s a lie. I bought two electric steam-mops.


I know that sounds like a contradiction (“Electric, but still steam-powered? I do not understand, good Sir. Pray tell, how does such a contraption contrive to cleanse your floors?”) but I wanted a steam mop on the pretext that it would somehow improve what Emergency Contact and I palm-off as “completed housework“.


Honestly, if there’s a household chore that I find less rewarding and more annoying than mopping, I can’t think of what it is… apart from washing dishes… and hanging out two weeks of black socks… oh, and don’t forget dusting the high places. I hate that. Actually, when I think about it, the only housework I think I would enjoy is rocking backwards and forwards on the balcony with my shotgun on my lap, telling the neighbourhood boys to keep off the grass.


The deal was one of those ‘twofus’ and I become aware of the special magnificence of it as I was doing the Saturday crossword. The ad that seemed to have been going for half an hour in the background of my awareness finally crossed the threshold into my consciousness and I sort of came to, thinking, “I’ve always wanted one of those - maybe even two.” My call was very important to the Kiwi lady who answered the phone, and I quote, “Thuts icksullunt, cheers aye?”


I ordered the mops and asked for them to be delivered to work. I left special instructions to the effect that they should be delivered to reception so I could sign for them personally, rather than being delivered to goods receiving round the back where they'd disappear. “No drumus, aye.”


On the fifth of May, I decided that the wait had been too long. I gave them a bell and was told that the mops had been delivered on the 21st of April, nearly two weeks before my call. Investigations would ‘bigun at their und’.


I asked if the special instructions had been obeyed. When I was told there weren’t any special instructions in my order, I expressed my annoyance. Back and forth we went, and my first call ended with me promising to go and check the goods receiving for my mops. I would get back to them and let them know the results of my search.


I donned reflective safety gear (to blend in, not stand out) and made my way out to the forbidding territory of The Fuckin’ Warehouse, to look for my little electric mops.


As far as not standing out is concerned, try stumbling around heavy machinery and heavy blokes saying, “’Scuse me, have you seen my little mops? They’re about this big and should’ve been delivered by now.” (I could only have improved it by lisping.)


Now, here’s what this story hinges on. One of the lads out the back says, “Yeah, I saw a box for one of them out in the recycling.”


I went and looked and, to my horror, there was an empty box for one of my little mops. Empty. No mops. I instantly knew that I was up against the stony, unhygienic face of Union Backed Workplace Theft Of White-Collar Clown’s Stuff. This is considered a sport and an honourable pastime in some places. Out the back in The Fuckin’ Warehouse, I felt like crying and stamping my feet. That’d show them.


But I decided to become implacable about it and set my shoulder to the task of getting my mops. There was still some of the registered mail sticker ID on the box, just enough to get the number. It wasn’t entirely hopeless.


I spoke to Australia Post (second time lucky I might add, the first agent feigned faulty phone, yelled “Hellohellohello” and then hung-up on me, after 11 minutes on hold.) When I gave them the registered post ID, the agent said, “Yes, that was delivered to South Australia and signed for by *name*, in Findon Post Office.”


I sat back and mustered my patience.


“But you can see the problem with that, yes? I am holding the empty package here, in Sydney. I want the signature of the person who signed for it, here in Sydney, so I can track them down and get the contents of my package.” (And mop the floor with them.)


She came back with, “We must have recycled the number.”


It’s funny where your mind goes when you’re up against “the man” and “the man” floors you with one of those fantastic pieces of idiocy. My first reaction should have been, “What the hell is the point of registered mail if you recycle the registrations?”. Instead, it was, “Wow. You’re telling me that there is so much registered mail sent in this country that the post office has to recycle ten digit numbers every month? You could fix that by adding another number, you know? It’s not like we are going to run out of numbers.”


I left that phone call with the promise that there was going to be an investigation launched and that I should wait to hear from them once they had a signature scan. I went back to the New Zealanders who sell the mops, and told the nice Kiwi lass that, because my special instructions had not been faithfully transcribed, my precious mops were in the clutches of the great unwashed and I would never see them again. She told me what she had been doing while I was away.


“Now, I’ve lussened to thi recording of your order, and the sales agunt dud take the unstrictions down. She ivun rids thum beck to you. We cen hier her typing thum. What appeers to heve hupppened, is the softweer tekes out the unstrictions whun ut forwuds it onto the coureeer, aye. Wool sund you sim replucemint mops.”


Oh joy, oh bliss. I will get my mops.


And it was then that I looked over at the empty mop box from a slightly different angle to the way I had been looking during the phone calls. There, scribbled in blue pen on a blue background, upside-down and almost illegible, was a scrawl saying, “Findon 15/3.”


Findon was the town that the postal girl thought this box was delivered to, and 15/3, if I guessed correctly, was a month before I even ordered the mops. It had gone to South Australia, and it had gone there before I knew I even needed it. Wait a minute…


Holy Crap!


This was a box for the type of mop I had ordered, but not actually my missing mops.


I looked closer at the box. I realised that it had been opened and then resealed. Someone had ordered the mop in South Australia, unpacked it and then re-used the box to post something else to my company in NSW, leaving some of the original postal ID stickers on the box.


What are the odds? Let me recap: I went looking for my missing goods out the back of a giant warehouse, someone happened to notice a small box in one of many enormous, industrial skips, that matched exactly what I was looking for, and I went and started WWIII, thinking that this was my missing stuff.


A bit embarrassing.


But my stuff was still missing. I did have to go back to the phones. I explained to the Australia Post girl that she could wrap up the investigation of my case. She said, “I don’t know what to put. I don‘t have that in my drop-down-box for a resolution”. I asked her if there was 'customer error' or 'alien abduction'. She answered that maybe “Other” was the safest. Yeah. Other.


Now I’m waiting on the replacement two mops which may be joined by the original order of two mops that still have a slim chance of showing up (a man can dream, can‘t he?). If I end up with four mops, I will turn them into a pop group; The Four Mops. Oh, my sides. I think I just made a mess. Wish I had something to clean that up with.


See, it works on so many levels. Four rhymes with floor. Mops rhymes with Tops. It’s one of those things that totally makes the whole, ulcer inducing debacle worthwhile… okay, maybe not.

Underachiever

I was looking at the film of that truck driver missing Tiny Abbott and he just wasn't trying. A little more commitment, please.