GRRRRRRRR!!! The title refers to Woolies, or BWS which is an offshoot of Woolies. Still trying to fleece their customers.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a six pack of cans of beer from BWS which were marked on the shelf at $21, down from $25. Silly me for not checking my docket before I left. When I got home I found that I had been charged the full price, $25. Grrrr! Of course, it’s too much trouble to go all the way back and complain, isn’t it? So I let it slide.

This time, last Saturday, I saw a four pack of cans of stout, priced at $31 or $7.75 per can. Expensive, but high alcohol and a special brew. And very nice it is, too.

Trouble was, someone had taken one can from the four. I wanted it, so I wanted the checkout to show 3x $7.75 = $23.25. The checkout ladies tried to get me to take something else to make up the four. I said no, but weakened and accepted a small 330ml bottle of Sail & Anchor lager from their mark down box. I expected a nominal charge for this bottle as it was out of date.

But when I got home, I found I’d been charged the full $31 as if all four high priced stout cans had been there! Bloody hell!

I am sick and tired of this robbery from Woolworths and/or BWS. This is dishonesty. It’s also laziness, in that they don’t keep their computer prices up to date.. What am I going to do? Dunno yet. But I’m warning the world, check your Woolies dockets because they will rob you. It’s ALWAYS in their favour, never in the customer’s favour. I NEVER have this trouble at Coles. Coles are so good that I hardly bother to check the till receipts. Lesson: don’t shop at Woolies.

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I’ve been watching The Crown series for the third time on Netflix and it’s amazing how much detail I’ve either forgotten or missed since I last watched it. It started in 2016, so time has erased a lot, but I’m getting so much enjoyment from seeing it again.

I must single out Clare Foy’s performance as Queen Elizabeth II in the first two series. She is magnificent! The slight tilt of her head, the steady gaze at her prime ministers, the courteous but regal attitude to her private secretaries and the other officials. The glorious sets! How did they do it? Did they build a replica Buckingham Palace with all its huge rooms and paintings? And Westminster Abbey? Amazing.

I’m just into series 4 at the moment, with one to go, and a new series 6 is coming on 9 November, we’re told. This would have to be one of the greatest television documentaries/dramatisations ever made, I say.

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I’ve also been widening my viewing with Netflix. I wrote a few weeks ago about how much I liked the Korean series The Extraordinary Attorney Woo, the autistic lawyer. It was memorable.

I’ve tried a few other Korean series but haven’t liked them as much, so far.

At the moment I’m hooked on two other Asian series: number one, The Midnight Diner, a small scale Japanese series about a tiny backstreet restaurant that only opens at midnight and closes at 6.30am. It’s run by one guy, the cook, and it has a small but loyal group of customers. Each episode is a vignette about life in Tokyo, with various characters, including a Yakuza gangster (who’s really a nice guy), three young women who are on the search for a suitable husband (each), and so on. Each episode also concludes with a quick lesson on how to make the Japanese dishes he serves. They’re not difficult to make.

Second is just called Asian Street Food, and as you’d expect, it showcases all the different types of street food from the Asian capitals. So far I’ve seen Indonesia (Jakarta), Bangkok, Japan, India (Delhi) and up next is Taipei in Taiwan. It’s excellently made. The camerawork, editing and colour grading is totally professional, highest quality. The narration is in English but there’s a lot of local speech with subtitles.

And to round it off, I rewatched the movie Mars Attacks last night. I must be desperate. I saw it many years ago and thought it was very average then, and it has not improved with age. Luckily it’s not too long. The overriding feeling I had is how bad their comic timing is. It’s too slow moving. There are too many gaps between action and punchline. Jack Nicholson as the president seems to be half asleep. Rubbish. The Poms and even we can do humour so much better.

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Which reminds me, Rolling Stone magazine has published their latest list of the top 100 TV shows. As you may have guessed, nine out of the top ten are American. The only foreign program is Fleabag, the British program.

Not one Australian program makes the top 100, natch. Nor does The Big Bang Theory. Huh!

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You’ll recall I had the Peugeot 407 in for cooling system repairs recently. When I put it into the RAC workshops, I left a note on the seat with a short list of things to look at, and the list included an oil change and oil filter.

Because it took so long and was a bit of a drama, when I got it back I didn’t check on the oil change. But now that I look, there’s no sticker on the windscreen and no stamp and notation in the log book. Grrr.

I haven’t kicked up a fuss yet but I’m pretty sure I’ve been charged for the service. I’ll have to phone them and ask if it’s actually been done, and if not, what do I do about it. Annoying.

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I’ve become quite an addict for YouTube shows lately, especially Cutting Edge Engineering, made by an Aussie bloke Kurtis and his wife Karen on the Gold Coast. He runs a sole trader engineering workshop and does heavy, and I mean heavy fitting, turning, milling and welding. He’s got about six giant lathes, a couple of enormous milling machines and does more kinds of welding than I knew existed. He fixes heavy machinery like graders, scrapers, dump trucks, tractors, you name it. It’s fascinating. They also feature their small bull terrier called Homeless. He’s charming, and viewers of the channel send in gifts of chew toys and pigs ears from all over, many from the USA. Good stuff.

The other two shows I’m a bit addicted to are a UK TV series, Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away, about debt collectors, high court debt collection agents or bailiffs. These are pairs of guys, heavyweights, who are given court authority to collect debts, or to take goods to equivalent value in lieu. Although they take a lot of abuse and lies from the debtors, I give them credit, they are unfailingly polite and never use violence.

But another UK series is quite a bit more violent: Re-po Men. This is about guys who are contracted to repossess goods, usually vehicles, from people who haven’t paid. This show does get violent. The collectors are big, solid ex military types. They don’t start the fights, but they often have to fight their way out of trouble. This show gets the heart racing. It’s not the best thing to be watching before trying to sleep.

Aaah, 23degC today and rising to 27deg, even 28deg later in the week. Spring has sprung at last. I hate August, I hate winter. Give me summer all year round, and especially give me October and November, the nicest months of the year.

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Today, Monday 26 September, is a public holiday for, would you believe, the Queen’s Birthday? I’m sure it’s been renamed the King’s Birthday, but it’s not his birthday. Anyway, it’s been tradition here for many years to maintain a fiction that it’s the Queen’s Birthday and it’s the first official day of the “Royal Show”. I used to go quite often as walking around the various exhibits was quite interesting, but I’m not up to it now.

Sympathy to the woman in Adelaide who stepped across a barrier and walked onto the track of a roller coaster trying to retrieve her dropped phone. Of course, she was hit by a roller car. She’s got severe injuries. What possessed her to do such a stupidly dangerous thing? Crazy!

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I got a shock last week, the night of the Queen’s funeral actually, when I received news that a long time high school friend, Jan Sobon, had died.

I only gradually got to know him as the years went by, as he kept a lot of his story to himself. But now I know that he was born in Germany in the same year as me, 1947. He was sent as a child migrant to WA by sea in the early 1950s and was sent to Northam. We met at Northam Senior High School, where he excelled as a swimmer in Northam’s Olympic length pool. He had the broad shoulders and big chest of a swimmer. I used to think he was Dutch, actually, only finding out he was from Germany much later.

In recent years I knew he was having trouble with a kind of arthritic condition in his hands, causing him trouble with gripping things and picking them up. But he was very active and made many trips to the Goldfields with a metal detector and his Subaru.

He graduated as an architect around 1970 and married one of the prettiest and nicest girls in the school, Vivienne. They had three children, Alexander, Gabriel and Zoe. Viv is an audiologist and that meant I met her son Gabriel a few years ago when I had a bit of hearing trouble. He is the only child I’ve met. Unfortunately the eldest, Alexander, succumbed to depression while at uni and took his life. That must have been very hard on Jan and Viv.

I went on a cruise with Jan in November 2014, a six week voyage sharing a cabin on the Arcadia. We flew to Singapore, boarded there and cruised via Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki Japan, Busan South Korea to Tian Jin, the port for Beijing. Four days in Beijing, then flying Vietnam Airlines to Hanoi for four days, then on to Bali for five days and home. This was a long trip and I during it I got to know Jan well.

So it’s a bit sad, not knowing he was so ill and not having a chance to say goodbye. Not realising he was ill. Sad. The first of our close group to go.

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Among my Bali DVDs I have a movie called London Bridge Has Fallen. The Queen’s funeral reminded me of it, as the funeral was code-named London Bridge in all the British planning for many years.

However, the movie plot is that terrorists take the opportunity to stage a huge raid on the funeral, seeing that so many world leaders would be present. It’s an American movie of course, and the US president is the main target, but the terrorists don’t care who they kill or how many. It’s an Incredibly violent movie and you wonder how so many guns can be fired in public places with so few casualties among the innocent bystanders. Even the London Met Police are shown as undercover bad guys and get shot by the wonderful American good guys. Amazing. I might watch it again, just for laughs.

Good day again. Beautiful blue sky day here, still a little cool at 20C but I can’t complain.

The two images above are from the web, and notice how they are different in flag patterns, cushion colours and crown types. Also:

The one on the left is the one currently on show, whereas the one on the right is very similar. I don’t know the answers. But wouldn’t it be cool to have two or more crowns to choose from?

Nor would Mr Musyoka have been happy to have previously withdrawn from the race [to be the new Queen?]

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For my younger readers (almost everyone?) these are thermionic valves, or tubes as the Yanks like to call them. These were a common thing when I first started in electronics in the 1960s, these particular types (12AU7s) being used in audio frequency amplifiers. When I was working then, these were so cheap and common that when we tested them and found them weak, we just tossed them out and replaced them without a moment’s thought.

This picture is from an advert, maybe eBay(?) and the asking price is $125 each! Holy moley. Hi-fi nuts will pay a fortune these days for anything that seems in any way “special”. These are Mullard brand, common as dirt in the 60s, yet touted now as having some kind of magic properties. Crazy.

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By the way, since the electrons within the glass envelope came from a heated wire cathode coated with a chemical that gave off a good supply of electrons, they “wore out”. That is, after a year or more, probably a lot longer, they gradually used up the chemical coating and became “low emission”, faulty. All valves had to be periodically tested and replaced as needed.

When transistors were invented, they didn’t need a heated cathode to supply the electrons any more. They are current-controlled variable current flow devices. The current (electrons) flowing from the emitter to the collector is regulated by the current flowing into or out of the base (depending on the type of transistor).

A very small change in the amount of current in the base makes a big difference in the current in the collector, hence amplification.

Therefore, in theory, transistors, like diamonds, are forever. They don’t wear out, unlike valves. They don’t need “testing” unless there is an obvious fault. And they are CHEAP! They are made in such huge quantities and are so simple to manufacture that you can buy a bag of 200 of many types for a couple of dollars. For example:

Speaking of cheap and quantities, Large Scale Integrated circuits (microprocessors) use transistor circuits to simulate all kinds of electronic elements, as well as acting as switches and memory cells. The present day state of the art is to fit around three billion transistors on a die approximately 6-10mm square, with interconnection tracks as small as four nano-metres!

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An advertising image from the web site of my mattress manufacturer. Notice the feet on the base? I didn’t need a base as I used my existing one, but I couldn’t use this one. I have carpet, so these flat feet would have been useless to me. I don’t like these false wooden floors, I like carpet.

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Netflix chooses programs to recommend to me from time to time, and not surprisingly, they’ve put The Crown up for me to watch again. I’ve actually watched it twice already and I have series 1 and 2 on DVD, but it’s a good while since I watched it so I’ve started it again from series 1, episode 1. Like a good piece of classical music, you see new things with each performance and I’m seeing things I’d missed or forgotten since first watching it in 2016. Crumbs, there are many things I don’t like about “Great” Britain, but I do admire their television, on top of their pageantry, royalty and uniforms.

However, we should not ignore the capacity of the British for brutality and savagery down through history. Their pitiless, ruthless pursuit of their imperial goals led to endless massacres, torture, racism and complete disregard for human rights for many hundreds of years. They simply stomped on the heads of anyone who stood in their way to their empire goals.

They were even merciless in killing their own people! Don’t forget the English civil wars in the 16th to 18th centuries, the dissolution of the monasteries and the banishment of Catholicism, the wars against the Scots, “the Clearances”, the takeover of the Scottish farms and the cruel dispossession of the crofters, and the barbarity of the repression of the Irish during the potato famines. The list goes on and on. Barbaric cruelty against their own people, on top of the atrocities committed against people of “lesser” races and countries.

And never forget, the term “hung, drawn and quartered” was invented by the English – hanging a man but not to death, then taking a sword or knife, drawing it down the chest and abdomen and quartering the abdomen so that the guts spills out, then just leaving him for the crows to feed on while he dies. How could any human commit such atrocities, but the English did.

Until a few years ago I didn’t realise the depths of Scottish people’s hatred of the English, but I do now.

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I’ve said before that I’m an Aussie through and through, a committed supporter of a plan for a republic for Australia, but I have to admit to admiring the UK in this time of changeover of monarchs. I’m boggled by the pageantry and colour, the military precision, the tradition, the history, the uniforms. I admit, I love it.

I’d be interested to know why and how the uniforms are chosen for these ceremonies. Chas and William were dressed as RAF Air Marshalls for the march, whereas Princess Anne was dressed as a Navy Admiral. Why? Why was Anne dressed in a naval uniform? Strange.

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There’s a radio quiz going at the moment, asking what we think of the ABC’s coverage. I admit I was a bit irritated by the 24hr blanket coverage in the first few days, to the exclusion of all else including news and weather. But now it’s eased off, I’m glad I watched some of it.

My only serious complaint is not to the ABC but to the BBC: in last night’s coverage of the coffin walk from the palace to Westminster Hall, why oh why do we have to put up with a BBC lower screen banner with supposed news headlines, but the same headlines, repeated over and over for six hours! This is the same as they did on the Thames Pageant in 2012. For goodness sakes, we know it’s the BBC, why do you have to slap us in the face with it?

Anyway, I admit to a deep envy of Britain’ history. With the surname Croft and ancestry going back to the 13C, I feel I should be able to claim a small part. But I’m also aware that the UK regards me as an alien. I get no special treatment, no right of residence, no acknowledgement of my history. Not happy.

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My new mattress arrived right on time this morning, about 9.30am, and it all went smoothly. Boy, it’s soft. I think if I’d been able to test it in a shop beforehand, I would have immediately walked on. I’ve chosen a medium hardness, but I’m wondering if it’s too soft for me. I admit, I am a big boy so I sag a fair way into it. OTOH, I had a nap this afternoon and I dropped off without even being aware of it.

I’d say it’s like sleeping on marshmallows.

I’m looking at the website of the manufacturer (A.H.Beard) to see if there’s a return policy in a case like this. Haven’t found it yet.

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My good mate Keith came out here today to give me a hand, but I didn’t actually need him after all. However, ever helpful, he got up on my stepladder and changed a couple of ceiling lamps for me. I needed six changed, but I wasn’t ready with new replacements so we only got two done.

However, one of them was the one that has been turning itself off after about five minutes ever since it was renewed last year. We fitted a brand new illuminant and I was mentally rubbing my hands, thinking “At last”. But dammit, the new illuminant is doing the same thing! What the … ? Does it mean there’s a faulty transformer in the ceiling? Do I have to pay an electrician to fix it? Dang!

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Good interview on ABC Radio just now (Friday afternoon) with Greg Mullins, leader of the group of 34 retired fire chiefs who tried to get Morrison and the Liberal-National government to listen before the catastrophic fires of 2019-20. He tried to warn Morrison, but Morrison refused to take his calls! He tried to get $10m for fire fighting aircraft, but was stonewalled. The cost of this inaction was $billions in damage, billions of native animals lost, thousands of homes destroyed and thousands of lives ruined.

He said the difference between the previous government and now is “chalk and cheese”. One of the first acts of the new Labor minister Murray Watt was to pick up the phone, call Mr Mullins and ask what needs to be done.

So why did the previous government refuse to listen or take action? To me, the answer is clear – the problems were too big for the brains of these incompetent L-NP people to cope with. They can’t grasp the complexity, or the science, so they close their minds and shove the problem to their out tray. (Or there is a more sinister reason, involving money, of course.)

I accuse these criminally stupid L-NP people of incompetence and negligence. I say they should be held to account for the costs of their inaction in a legal class action. They should be made to pay for their inaction.

As Mr Mullins said, the fire experts foresaw the changes in the weather patterns and fire conditions as far back as the ’90s and tried to sound the warnings, but the L-NP government refused to listen. We lost nearly a decade before action is finally being taken now. These former L-NP politicians must be made to pay!!

Well, what a day. The Queen died on Thursday [edit: yes, I originally wrote Friday]. I was awake at 1.30am (insomnia) listening to ABC radio when the upbeat tune being played faded down and after some silence, was replaced by quiet classical music. (That sounds like The Lark Ascending, I thought, and sure enough it was, music by Ralph Vaughan-Williams).

After a few minutes of that, the announcer said “We’re taking you to the newsroom”. The news announcer said the Queen had died. I think that’s the closest feeling I’ve had to an historic event.

It’s hard to believe, but I’m a bit sad. Even though I’m a strong republican (nothing to do with the GOP!), I’ve grown up and lived all my life with the Queen and Charlie. He and I were born at roughly the same time and I’ve always felt a kinda kinship, I don’t know why.

I can actually remember the time before Liz became the Queen. I was born in the time of King George VI, and I was six when the Queen was crowned. I can remember the King’s head on coins and notes, and I think Dad must have bought the newspapers because I have vague memories (just mental pictures, not the text) of articles about the King.

So now we have a new King. I find it cringworthy that he is now King of Australia. I quite like him, but he’s not my King! I bow to no-one, especially a Pom.

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Phew, Aldi is seductive. I discovered their hardware and bargain aisles a few years ago and recently I’ve told myself to lay off! I was spending too much money in Aldi.

Well, yesterday I saw their on-line catalogue and so I went to Clarkson shops to buy just a couple of items. Wow, I came away with a trolley full. I spent $262, the most I’ve ever spent in one trip.

I went in to get a battery powered hand vacuum, a battery powered window washer vacuum, some dishwasher cleaning tablets and washing machine cleaning liquid. I got all those, PLUS a new mattress protector and a trolleyfull of food items. I can hardly walk past the shelves without picking things up.

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I think I’ve mentioned how my mattress has sagged on one side and developed a hard ridge down the middle. In the olden days, I used to be able to lift the mattress up, turn it around and flop it down, bottom side up every year or so. But there’s no way I can lift it any more. I’ve lost my strength.

I had arranged for a friend to give me a hand to do this next Thursday, but I’ve found that Appliances Online not only stock a few of the mattresses mentioned in CHOICE as good buys, they will also deliver and take the old mattress away for disposal. That’s what I want.

So I think it’s time for a new mattress. I bought my present one in about 2000, so I think it’s had a good life. My abiding memory when I bought this present mattress was being at my Trigg house and awaiting delivery. I saw the truck pull up on the road, and next thing, a guy was walking down my driveway carrying the mattress. One guy! One hand under the bottom edge, the other hand steadying the top against his shoulder. Wow, it was heavy and he seemed to make it effortless. I was impressed.

Aaaah, great sleep the last couple of nights. How? Why? I’ve stopped the Duloxetine, that’s why.

When I say stopped, I gave it a short taper 🙂 You’re not supposed to stop it suddenly and I didn’t, but I tapered it off much quicker than they advise. First, I skipped every second day, then after a few of those, went to every third day for a week, then after Friday, I just stopped. That’s a bit abrupt but I was sick of sleepless nights. The result, with one exception, has been good sleep.

The one exception was Sunday night when I went the entire night without sleep. In hindsight I realised that the evening before, I had a strong gin and tonic with dinner, on top of my two cans of beer beforehand. I’ve read about alcohol being bad for sleep and although it never used to bother me, it seems to now. Booger! I’ll have to experiment a bit. Is it just the amount that matters, or is it mixing different types of drink? It’ll be fun finding out.

However, the neuropathic (nerve) pains are back. Not as bad as before (two months ago), but enough to have me arching my back and yelling. It’s like a red hot poker suddenly hitting some part of your foot for a few seconds. Yowch!

OK, take other kinds of pain relief? But they all seem to cause insomnia for me. Paracetamol doesn’t, but it’s not effective enough. Prodeine Forte? It nearly works, but I can’t use it near bed time as I can feel it ‘wiring’ me up. Tramadol? I had to stop that a few years ago when I realised it was the cause of insomnia. It’s also an opioid. Aspirin’s too weak, and causes stomach problems in high doses.

So, I dunno. I have an appointment with a pain specialist but it’s not until 21 October. Dang.

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A new British PM? She seems to me to be a woman who changes her mind to suit her clothing fashions. She started out as a liberal (Labour-like), then moved to the Liberal-Democrats, strongly supported the Remain (in the EU) campaign, but then joined the Conservatives and changed her views to be a rabid Brexiteer when it seemed in her interests, so as to advance in the party.

So now she’s PM, what views and convictions will she change next? I have no confidence in her.

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Good call from a listener to ABC Drive radio just now; What message should we send to outer space when we send the interstellar probe? “We don’t taste like chicken.” 🙂 Good one!

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Speaking of interstellar probes, a few weeks ago my favourite radio show asked, “What have you seen that’s amazing recently?”

Well, I nominate the James Webb Space Telescope. This has to be one of the greatest engineering feats of all time! A NASA engineer said recently that there were 34 single points of failure in the process of building it and getting it into operation, 34!

Quick explanation: a single point of failure in any system is where the failure of just one item would disable the entire system. When I was working, we did the news every night out of a control room with a 16 channel audio mixer. If any channel failed, there were 15 others, so no real problem and so on. But there was only one power supply (many pro mixers have two or several distributed ones for this reason). If that single power supply failed, we would have lost the entire news program until we could move to another studio, very, very difficult to do.

Being the senior tech, I pointed this out to the chief engineer as a single point of failure. I got permission to investigate getting a second power supply, but due to the general turmoil at the time, it never happened. Luckily, it didn’t fail.

The reason I mentioned this is the JWST mission and its 34 single points of failure, the failure of any one of which could have killed the entire mission.

Just for example (these are a few of my guesses): the folding of the mirror into its narrow shape to fit into the nose cone of the rocket without damage; the transport of the nose cone containing the telescope to Kourou in Guyana for fitment by giant crane to the rocket; the launch itself; the insertion into initial Earth orbit; the second burn to send it to the Lagrange Point; reaching the precise Lagrange point required; the cast-off of the nose cone to release the mirror sides; the unfolding of the mirror, and so on and so on.

There were 34 ways the mission could have failed and been a write off! Yet everything worked. me think it ‘mazing!!

Now we’re seeing the amazing results:

This nebula has been photographed many times before, but never in such detail. See https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/041/01GA76MYFN0FMKNRHGCAGGYCVQ?news=true You can download giant (124MB) images.

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In the past months I’ve been watching hundreds of YouTube clips about cars. The best (most relevant to me) are those uploaded by Rainman Ray in Sarasota, Florida. He’s a mechanic/technician at an independent workshop and is a very personable guy. He explains everything in great, but not boring, detail, accompanied by jokes and repeated catchwords and phrases, such as Oops, gravity whenever he drops something, Oodle-loodle-loo when the workshop phone rings, “Nice and shiny”, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner” and so on.

The reason I mention this is because I’ve learnt so much! He just launches in to the diagnosis and dismantling process, explaining what he’s doing and why. Brilliant. Just search for his name on YouTube.

Another is Dave the Car Wizard in Wichita Kansas. He’s a little slow and can be boring, but again he explains everything and shows good video of what he’s doing. His wife, Mrs Wizard :-), does the camera work. Just search on CarWizard.

I can’t remember why I started writing this thread. Anyway, recommended.

Later: now I remember. I’ve been thinking that it’s amazing (there’s that word again) how complex cars are these days. They have many thousands, even tens of thousands of parts. Almost every car is different, even from the same makers, and every part is designed and manufactured to precisely fit its own unique application.

The next amazing (!) thing is how deeply electronics has penetrated cars. BMW in particular has dozens of computer modules scattered throughout their cars, hidden away not just in the engine compartment but under the seats, under the dash, in the boot, in the sides, everywhere. BMW even uses fibre-optic cables to link them all, sending data all over the car at light speeds. I’m sure Mercedes, Audi and all the others are the same.

This is all schmick and clever, but it makes the cars incredibly complex and requires the dealers to have special computers and software to diagnose and fix them. That means that independent repairers are shut out unless they spend thousands of $ with BMW to buy the test gear. That’s if BMW will sell it to them.

The other thing BMW does is encodes the car’s VIN into spare parts, so that each major part is encoded to the particular car. Again, this means that you can’t buy an after-market part and fit it yourself. It won’t work. You have to go to a dealer or an independent with the right test computer to have it encoded.

BMW would tell you it’s a safety issue and I can see their point, but it means that I WILL NOT BUY A BMW! They are notoriously unreliable and expensive to fix when they fail. So there.

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One of my USA cousins put up a Facebook post yesterday, saying that there should be a ban on anyone over 70 running for office.

She is obviously referring to President Biden. I think she doesn’t like him.

I replied, “I’m 75, L–a”, and left it at that. But I should have added, “If you are going to set that age limit, I presume you’ll include everyone, such as company CEOs, bankers, all people holding high offices of responsibility, judges, all political appointees such as Secretaries of State, Defence, Treasury and so on. Doesn’t matter about competency or worth to the country, once they turn 70, OUT!”

Not impressed, L–a.

Nope, no luck. Another horrible night last night, even though I’d (a) forgotten to take the Duloxetine; (b) read a book rather than use the tablet; (c) lights out at 1am. I lay there until 3am and gave up (as is recommended), got up and made a hot milk drink, watched YouTubes on the desktop PC until 4.30am, went back to bed, read for a short while and STILL couldn’t get to sleep until after 6.30am. I finally dropped off around then, but woke at 7.30am! I finally got up at 10am but hadn’t really slept, with the result that I feel awful now (6.15pm).

I had to see the GP today and told him I can’t tolerate Duloxetine. It’s impossible. Unfortunately, you mustn’t stop it abruptly so I have to taper it off for another week, at least. That means I still have another seven nights of bad sleep.

Meanwhile, the foot pains are coming back. Not as bad, but …

The good news is that all my blood tests were fine (liver function, kidney function, vitamins, iron). The only discrepancy is that my thyroid is marginally low, but we agreed to wait a while before doing anything, if needed.

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The Babbage photo above is especially apt, because the book I’m reading in bed is Innovators by Walter Isaacson, about, you guessed it, innovators down through history.

And I’ve just finished reading chapter 1, which is the story of Charles Babbage around 1820, and Lady Ada of Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron. She was quite something, being enraptured by mathematics from a very young age. She was quite obsessed by maths and in particular, by Mr Babbage, 24 years her senior, who designed the machine above. However, he never had the money to build it; the photo above is a modern day replica.

Ada (after whom the high level programming language is named) was quite far ahead of her time and pushed Babbage to design a better machine, to be called the Analytical Engine. Again, it was never built at the time and the machines in the photos are modern day replicas.

Ada was the first to see the potential of using punched cards to program the machine. One set of punched cards, one function; another set, another function, and so on. Just as we load different software programs to do different functions today.

As well, she first came up with the idea of nested functions, conditional branching, recursion and so on, all features of modern software.

Unfortunately, Babbage never could get the money to build his machines, and Ada died of cancer at age 32.

The next genius was Alan Turing during WW2 in the 1940s, and he took his own life. Sic transit.

Miracle! I slept last night. To explain, in order to get relief from my severe diabetic neuropathic pain, I was put onto Duloxetine (again – I’ve used it before). The relief was almost immediate. The absence of pain was noticeable, which means something because you often don’t recognise the absence of pain. That was good.

But! The side effects that made me stop taking it a couple of years ago came roaring back: (1) insomnia. It was immediate. I lie there all night and I just cannot drop off. I’m as relaxed as a jelly, but I’m fully aware until about 6am or so, when I finally drop off. Then I sleep for a couple of hours, maybe three, but then I’m awake and have to get up. I manage to get a few hours during the day, but for the past week or more I’ve been living on only 4-5hrs a night, every night. Not good. I’ve thought I might get used to it, but not so far (except for last night, I suppose).

And (2) The second side effect is restless leg syndrome. It’s an overwhelming need to tense the muscles in the legs and lower body, especially the buttocks. The result is, as well as being unable to sleep, I’m writhing around in the bed for hours at a time. It’s awful.

I tried varying the time of day when I took the med, from breakfast time to immediately before lights out. No difference.

Maybe I’m sleeping very lightly and unaware of it, that’s possible. I feel reasonably rested when I get up. But it can’t be good for me.

The headline refers to the fact that last night I managed to get a good night’s sleep, for the first time in about ten days or more. Why? How?

First, I only went to bed at 1am, reasoning that if I’m not going to sleep, then I may as well stay up. Second, I had a milk based hot drink before I went to bed. Maybe? Third, for the first time in weeks I didn’t use my Samsung tablet in bed before turning the light off. I have it set to night time (warm) colour, to cut the blueness. I read a book for half an hour instead.

So the test will be to try it again tonight. Stay tooned for the next exciting episode.

Nearly forgot – I have a referral to a pain specialist to talk about this neuropathy. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the soonest I can get in is 21 October! This is terrible. It’s lucky my pain is not too serious. Too bad if you have serious chronic pain 24/7. Same as getting in to see my GP. Even though I’ve been a regular for 10 years, I can’t get appointments sooner than for 7-9 days ahead. Too bad if you’re suffering.

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I’m drinking a new beer at the moment, with a very strange name: “I CAN HAS IBU? Volume 2”. I don’t understand it. It has a black and white stick-on label on the can with a couple of pictures of a black cat, and, in a star logo, “107.7 IBU!!” It’s brewed in Melbourne and is 8,7% alcohol b/v, $28 for four cans.

What does it all mean? Ibu means mother in Indonesian, of course, but what’s that got to do with beer and cats? And why Vol. 2? Why 107.7? I have no idea. It tastes good and with that amount of alk, I can feel it already. Yum.

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No car news lately. I admit I haven’t even driven the Peugeot since I got it back on the 8th of August. The Honda is so much more pleasant to drive, and has so much more carrying capacity. It feels so spacious, and the seats are so comfortable. I think I’ll sell the Pug. It’s good, but the novelty has worn off.

I looked on Carsales for the same model, and wow! There are five listed at the moment and the cheapest is $8,500, while the other four are around the $14,000 mark. Wow! Same model, roughly the same year, very similar specs.

Since I only paid $4,400 for mine (and I have to add the $2,400 for the cooling system repairs), I reckon I should be able to get my money back with a bit to spare. Hmmmm.

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I’m regretting my purchase of the Aldi capsule coffee machine. I just don’t find the coffee to my liking. I like it strong with body, and I’m not getting that, even though I’m using their strength 14 capsules. It also doesn’t seem to make it hot enough.

Even though I rebel against Nespresso, due to Nestle’s marketing techniques, I may have to sell this and buy a Nespresso compatible machine, mainly because there are now so many capsules of different brands that are Nespresso compatible. Wider range than Aldi, too. I find I’m not using my Aldi machine because I don’t really like the coffee much.

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Korea is hot. TV, that is. I mentioned that I found Extraordinary Attorney Woo and I’m up to episode 15. Enjoying it immensely. It’s a little inconvenient having to read the subtitles all the time, but it’s not too bad. Attorney Woo is utterly charming and if this is just an actress without autism playing her, it’s a remarkable performance. Remarkable!

I started another series about time travellers and some story about people from the future coming back to do… something… but I got too confused with names. Korean names tend to be… difficult for me, and I have to say, without wishing to offend, that so many Koreans look so similar that I have trouble telling them apart. I gave up on that one after four episodes.

Last night I watched Train to Busan. I visited Busan on the cruise in 2014 and thought I might recognise something.

But it turned out to be a zombie movie! What a joke. Since I wanted to stay up, I watched it to the end. That was two hours that I won’t get back. I avoid zombie movies usually, but I got sucked in for that one.

Anyway, in general, I’m not averse to watching Korean TV shows. Not bad stuff, usually.

Brrrrrr, my fingies are stiff with cold, even though the sun is shining and the clouds have moved away temporarily. It rained last night and this morning.

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M’selle Evie est dans la maison! Eight weeks she was away. Did I miss her? Shall we say that her memory improved in her absence, but the reality on her return soon kicked me in the backside.

Yes, eight weeks to fix a cooling system leak, and a bill of $2,388 although that includes an oil and filter change. Urrrggh. Can’t be helped, but it’s annoying that it makes absolutely no difference to how the car feels. The workshop mentioned that they felt the engine is misfiring and when they cleared the codes, it went away. I had high hopes for a big difference in smoothness. Nope, it’s still as lumpy as ever.

So do I throw more money at the problem? It’s only at idle that it’s lumpy. It drives OK once the revs are up and there’s plenty of power. Injectors are not difficult to replace and having watched so many mechanic YouTube clips lately, I should be capable of doing the job. But they cost $125 each, and I should replace all six to be sure, so that’s $750, plus a bit more for new washers.

I think I need to sell her. There’s a sucker born every minute and I was a sucker, I think. I knew it felt like this when I bought it, but paid out the money anyway. I just need to find someone else who wants such a beautiful car.

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I had to get an Uber drive to the RAC workshops in Joondalup to collect Evie. You’ll remember that Tuesday was a howling, raining, helluva day. I tried to judge a gap in the rain, but when my ride arrived, the rain was horizontal. He pulled up onto the verge and I turned to lock the front door. The rain chose that moment to increase in intensity, so I put my hand up to ask him to wait a bit while I sheltered from the storm.

I spent no more than two minutes over all this, then got in the car and off we went.

Imagine my surprise when I got the in-line invoice showing the charge – the bastard had added $3.50 for “Wait time”. Grrrrr! With “booking fee”, what started out as a $27 ride turned out to cost $32.50. Grrr. I’ve made a complaint.

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So, sell the Honda or the Verada too? I really enjoy driving the Honda, but it’s big, heavy and drinks fuel – 16L/100Km or worse. Tyres cost a lot. But it’s very reliable.

The Verada is also a pleasure to drive and maintenance is not too expensive, although I had to shell out $350 for a mass airflow sensor a few months ago. It’s also a bit heavy on fuel – 12.5L/100Km, but I drive so little that I can go months between fills.

Which leads to the thought – what if I dispensed with owning a car altogether? I hardly go anywhere these days. What if I just used taxis? No more licence costs, no more insurance, no more repairs. No more fuel bills, no more repair costs. It makes overwhelming sense.

But I enjoy driving! How often do I do any long drive? About once a year now, so rent a nice car if I know I have a long drive coming up. That would make sense. Hmmmm. If I found I’d made a mistake in giving up cars, then I could buy something again.

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Which reminds me, from everything I’ve learned and everything I’ve heard, don’t buy a BMW! They are nice cars and when they are going well, they are beautiful to drive. But they go wrong in so many ways, and when you try to fix them, the parts cost a fortune and many parts can’t be replaced by the home mechanic because they are “chipped”, that it they have to be identified to the car’s VIN and engine computer, which can only be done by a dealer.

Same with Mercedes – beautiful cars, and I yearn to own one, but be prepared to pay out thousands each year for servicing and parts. They seem to be more reliable than BMWs, but they still break far too often and when they do, it’s the Check Wallet light that comes on in the dash.

In fact, I will generalise and say, Don’t Buy a European Car! I’ll never buy a Mercedes or BMW, which is a bit like saying I’ll never become an astronaut, but you know what I mean. Too unreliable and too expensive to fix.

No, there are only two cars to buy, Toyota or Honda. Japanese cars are so reliable in comparison. If the Japanese can do it, how come the Germans can’t? The Koreans have come a long, long way and KIA’s seven year warranty shows the confidence they have in their products, so they could be contenders, but such boring cars.

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I’ve found another YouTube mechanic channel, Diagnose Dan. Wow, this guy is good at diagnosis, which is why other workshops and dealers send him their hard-to-fix cars.

Dan is a bit of a pain to watch because he waves his hands around all the time and speaks so slowly and deliberately. He repeats himself. What did I say? He repeats himself, get it?

But if you have any difficult problem, you’d learn a lot by watching these clips. He’s in Europe, Holland I think, but it’s all in English. Recommended.

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I’m watching a fascinating series on Netflix at the moment, which I’ll name in a minute. The series The Good Doctor on Seven is derived from a Korean original, where an autistic guy becomes a surgeon. Hard to believe, but it’s only TV. The point is, he’s a high functioning savant who can recall masses of detail from his text books and reading. In the series, he has a mentor who is the surgical director or a major hospital in San Jose (I think), California. I was very sceptical at first and it’s very choreographed, but it got me in and I’ve watched all the episodes so far.

OK, now I’m engrossed in another Korean series, and it’s the original show with subtitles, called Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Yes, she’s also a high functioning autistic savant who trained as a lawyer, topping her uni classes, and is taken on by a Seoul law firm called Hanbada.

Part of her autism is that she tends to repeat favourite phrases, particularly her name which in full is Woo Young Woo. Whenever she’s introduced, she says her name, then lists five or six palindromic words which, strangely, are English words such as …….. bloody ‘ell, my mind’s gone blank. Point being, her name in Korean is a palindrome. It’s odd that the show uses English words, but maybe they’re just substituting Korean words which are palindromic.

Anyway, she can recall and recite practically any law, ordinance or statute at will. That would be handy to have.

But she’s also obsessed by whales and dolphins, any sea creatures like that, and whenever she has a brainwave, she sees a whale swimming by in her mind, or outside the window of her office block, whichever you want to believe.

At first I was sceptical, but I admit this series has grabbed me. She’s utterly charming and beautiful, for one thing, and it’s fascinating to see Korean life and what Seoul looks like. Quite like Japan, to be honest, very clean and neat and everyone bows to each other. Not a bad habit to have, I reckon.

Anyway, Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Recommended. Netflix.