Aaah, 27deg today. Hoorah!

_______________________________________________________

I’ve restarted watching the entire 11 series of the Big Bang Theory!

I was always a fan when it was on free-to-air TV. I didn’t care how many episodes were repeats, I always found something new in the jokes or situations, or in the expressions and mannerisms of Sheldon and Penny.

There’s something special about this series to me and watching it again now is like coming back to an old friend. The humour is genuinely funny and depends on subtle timing. Call me corny, but I love it. I’m up to episode 12 in the first series at the moment.

I’ve actually got about four boxed sets of various series of this, but since it’s on Netflix, I may as well give the DVDs to the charity shops.

____________________________________________

By the way, being the grammar nazi that I am: notice that I used the numerals 11 and 12 up there? The way I’ve learnt it is that when you write numbers, if they’re less than ten, you use the word, but for more than ten, you use the numerals.

For example, if I talk about six boxes or ten boxes, I write it that way, but when I mention 11 boxes or 15, I use numerals. That’s the way I learnt it.

Another thing – notice I wrote learnt it. If I were in America, I would have written learned it. But to me, learned is pronounced learn-ed, two syllables, meaning someone who has knowledge, who is learned, two syllables. “I bow to the superior knowledge of my learned friend.”

You must obey me! Otherwise I’ll come round and kick your chookhouse door down, OK?

__________________________________________________

We’ve all heard about the benefits of cannabis oil in the past five years or so, and how doctors have to go to great trouble with the paperwork to get permission to prescribe it. It all seemed a bit too remote for me. I’m interested, though, because I’m having chronic pain from the diabetic neuropathy in my feet. They ache 24/7. They sting and burn at the same time as feeling too cold. And I get shooting nerve pains every few minutes, bad enough to have me crying out in agony. Luckily it only lasts a few seconds each time, but it’s bad enough to disturb me while getting to sleep sometimes.

Therefore I’ve been considering asking my GP if he would prescribe CBD (cannabidiol) for me. I know someone else who suffers chronic pain and he’s taking it and thinks it does him some good. I’d like to try it, although I seem to show almost no response to all the various vitamins, minerals, organic remedies and so on.

Well, knock me down with a feather duster but the TGA has reclassified CBD oil as a Schedule 3 drug in Australia. That means you don’t need a prescription any more. You just have to ask the pharmacist. Hallelujah, a bit of common sense in this country at last.

Of course, there’s the small matter of cost – my friend’s CBD oil costs him about $130 for a month’s supply. This change doesn’t happen until February 1 next year, so I’ve got time to save my pennies. By the way, why the delay? Why the seemingly arbitrary date?

__________________________________________________

For years, I had to work alongside fellow techs who refused to belong to the union. The first question they always asked when I approached them was, “How much does it cost?” The second was a comment that Harry Bluck made us go on strike in the past. (He was the state head of Actors’ Equity and the strike happened in the early ’60s!)

From Crikey.com: For years, the Business Council of Australia has portrayed itself as the body representing big business. But it is shareholders who are the owners of capital and who should be calling the shots. Directors and executives merely are hired hands, employees.

You could argue the rise of industry superannuation funds has returned capitalism to its roots, delivering power back to the ultimate owners who coincidentally happen to be employees, a neat merger of two factors of production.

You could also mount an argument that the BCA is a trade union, representing the interests of their members, company directors and senior executives. [My emphasis.]

There’s nothing wrong with that. And you have to hand it to them, as an organisation, it has been phenomenally successful.

While wages largely have stagnated economy wide, executive salaries have ballooned with largesse doled out regardless of performance.

Exactly. The Business Council of Australia is a trade union which represents its members’ interests. Just as the CPSU – Technical, Communications and Aviation Division represented our interests. And just as the AMA represents doctors’ interests and the Airline Pilots Assoc. represents pilots’ interests, and so on and on. Everyone has a union to represent them, including bankers, employers, accountants, lawyers, politicians.

Why my fellow workers would trust the employers to always have their interests at heart, preferring to act alone in any negotiations, is beyond me. It’s academic now, in the past, but I put it down to simple cowardice. They were too scared to do anything to project their own interests. They would rather shrink to the background and let me and other union members do the work. Yes, I’m bitter, especially as many of them did finally join the union right at the end in 2000 – 2005 or so when they finally saw what bastards the company really were.

_____________________________________________

As I think I’ve mentioned, the MyHeritage web site is mainly a family tree builder and although I’ve been talking about the photo enhancement function, I’ve also been working away on the family tree:

It’s taken quite a while just to put current family members and cousins in, with some antecedents. I’m spending a lot of time working on the living people and I haven’t gone very far back in our history so far, but I’m working on it.

Each person can have an attached photo, so that’s where the enhancement business comes in. I’ve added quite a few photos, but nowhere near all. You could waste the rest of your life doing this but it’s quite satisfying. Dad would have been fascinated, I think. He did a fair bit of work on his side of the family but had it drawn out on a big roll of tracing paper in ink and pencil. I saw it, but I don’t know what happened to it.