Den of thieves. © P J Croft 1977, 2014

I’ve been listening to Radio National and a talk about the level of competence of management in Australia.  The conclusion is that it’s not very high.  My thoughts exactly.

The interviewee, a professor of management studies at Melbourne University, said that more ordinary wage employees have tertiary qualifications than managers. In other words, managers are not well educated in this country.  That’s my experience.

At the place I used to work:

1.  All engineering people had to get a Diploma or Advanced Diploma in Electronic Engineering at TAFE as a condition of employment.  If you couldn’t or wouldn’t do it, your position was at risk.  One tech was fired for lack of progress and enthusiasm while I was there.  It was a female tech, one of only two we ever had in my 33 years. (The other was good, but she left.)

2.  All engineering employees also had to pass the ABCB, later Dept of Communications, later TAFE run, Broadcast Operator’s Certificate of Proficiency (BOCP) and the Television Operator’s Certificate of Proficiency (TVOCP).  I did.  This was in addition to their Diploma studies.  Don’t be fooled by the term “Operator’s”.  This was a full electronics/maths/electrical/practical written and oral exam course.

The BOCP and the TVOCP used to be mandated by the Control Board. Any time the station was on air, there had to be a TVOCP qualified person on the premises.  The same for radio stations with the BOCP.  In TV, we all had both certificates.

At the time I did them it was self study, but later it required classroom exams.  Hardly anyone passed at their first attempt.  It usually required two or three tries, especially the oral, where the examiners really probed your knowledge.  (I passed both on first go, although I admit I chickened out of the first try at the oral exam and had to wait 6 months before another try.)

The Diploma was/is a three year full time or 6 year part time course. We had to do it in our own time, on top of our 40 hour work week.  We continued working a 40 hour week right up until 2000, the year after I retired. All the office and other staff had been on a 37½ hour or 35 hour week since the general shift in the 1980s.  Management tried to make a 37½ hour week for us part of an enterprise bargaining agreement!

As “deregulation” became the catchphrase of the 1980s, and the Australian Broadcasting Control Board was disbanded and absorbed into the Dept of Communication, management was left free to regulate itself.  One of the conseqences of that was that they couldn’t care less about TVOCP rules any more.  Not required. Shrug of the shoulders, uncomfortable look, walk away.

3.  I was doing another Diploma course in Instructional Multimedia in the mid 1990s.  At one stage, I suggested to the Station Manager that most production staff (cameramen, directors, audio operators, lighting people) had no qualifications or formal training, and maybe they should.

The station manager’s response?  “What would you teach a director?”, in a dismissive tone, and he walked away.

4.  All the time I worked in Engineering, 33 years, when we needed to order anything, we had to make a requisition.  That involved writing it out on a piece of paper.  The Engineering secretary then typed it out onto a Requisition form which she took into the Chief Engineer’s office for him to approve and sign.  It was then walked to the store for them to act on. All totally manual, in other words.

In the 1990s, we adopted PCs and most engineering people became pretty competent at using them.  They were networked to a small extent at that early stage.

But they were really used just as word processors.  I developed a copy of the requisition form as a template in my word processor program, so when I made a requisition, I handed the secretary a form already filled out.  But she wouldn’t accept it as finished.  She had to copy my requisition onto a “real” requisition form, then walk it into the chief engineer’s office for his ink signature, then down to the store.  NB:  when the chief engineer was away or on leave, all this paperwork had to go upstairs to the Director of Engineering’s office.  He was also the Station Manager I mentioned – dual role, above the Chief Engineer.

One day I said to him, “Why are we still using this paper process for requisitions? Why can’t we keep it all in electronic form over the network?”

His response?  “You can’t do signatures electronically”, and that was the end of the conversation.  Yes you could!, even back in the early 1990s.

5.  Everything we needed required a requisition.  No matter how cheap or trivial, there had to be a requisition, even if we’d picked it up on the way to work, as we often did.  A bottle of methylated spirits? – reqquie;  a special connector or transistor from Altronics in Roe St as I was in the area? – reqquie, if I wanted to be reimbursed.  Crazy!

Towards the end of my time, my company branch in Perth had a $1,000 limit imposed by Sydney on anything we needed.  Anything above that had to go through the Capital Expenditure process.  That involved more complex form filling, about three pages, I think, on why we needed it, how the cost would be recouped or amortised and so on, then passed through three levels of management including the Managing Director and Company Secretary for approval.  Unbelievable!  The waste of time!!

6.  When the Chief Engineer retired in 1995, he wasn’t replaced!  Sydney decided we didn’t need a chief engineer in Perth.  We had a Director of Engineering who combined his job with Station Manager and lived upstairs in the glass walled offices, but he played no hands-on role.  I saw this a s a complete lack of respect from upper management.

7.  One of my worst arguments happened over a 15″ monitor.  I was developing a software program over nearly a year, and doing a hell of a lot of it at home in my own time.  I had a 15″ NEC Multisync monitor at home.  At work, I was told to order a computer and monitor for this job.

I ordered a 15″ Viewsonic colour monitor, a much cheaper model than mine, about $700, I think.

When the Chief Engineer saw my requisition he objected.  Why did I need a 15″ monitor?  “The company standard is 14 inch.”  He was really angry with me for deviating from what he had and what he felt was extravagance.  I asked why it mattered so much?  Because Sydney would go over his accounts and ask why this extravagance was needed, he said.

I didn’t get the chance to say it, but my feeling was, “Why can’t you defend your own staff and say, this guy needs it for a special job.”  But he was really upset and we both got pretty angry about all this.  I kept the monitor, but this manager was really upset about the difference between a 14″ and a 15″ monitor.  This was at the same time as we were paying $4,000 each for Sony 8″ rack mount high res Trinitron monitors and about $7,000 each for 19″ studio monitors.

My point is that:

• very, very few management people had tertiary qualifications.  Many of them were simply moved up from operational roles on the basis of showing a bit of leadership ability;
• they were not interested in getting qualifications for themselves;
• they had almost no respect for our qualifications;
• they resisted change;
• they kept us working a 40 hour week long after the rest of the workforce were working reduced work weeks;
• they saw no contradiction in going outside for smoke breaks several times a day (MD, MD’s PA and Company Sec were all smokers), or going out to lunches, or going on junket trips to Melbourne with clients for footy games at the MCG.

I could go on!  Workers are more qualified than managers in this country. The standard of management is appallingly low.  Management rails about unions and union corruption, but as the inquiry in the ICAC in Sydney is showing at the moment, many upper level managers just take what they want.  Massive pay “packages”, enormous pay increases no matter how the company is performing (e.g. QANTAS), huge bonuses, big “incentive” payments, dodgy share schemes,  long lunches, company freebies …  it’s endless.  $200,000 for less than 50 hours a year work?  This from a man who was supposed to be one of the elite managers and directors of companies.

As you can tell, I spit in disgust.

I just remembered that today is exactly one year since I moved into this house.  Happy birthday, house.

It took me a long time to get used to it.  I pined for my old neighbourhood, even though my old house was a shambles.  But it was home.  It took me 25 years to get it into that condition 🙂

This place initially seemed so far away that I found it hard to get used to.  But I have.  It no longer seems so remote.  A half hour drive to anywhere seems normal now, and it’s good for the car.  The house now seems like home.  Ya get used to anything, given time.

Having two bathrooms and toilets is useful at times, but it’s twice the cleaning, too.  Double the cleaning liquids and brushes/brooms/mops.  White tiles on the floor – aaaarrrgh!  So hard to keep clean.  Very slippery too.

As I said, all the yuccas had to go, so that cost a bit, and more cost is about to happen to get the back weed patch removed and replaced with lawn. (Artificial lawn?  No, being plastic it gets really hot in the sun, it looks obviously false and I believe it will eventually deteriorate.  You won’t be able to revive it, as you could a lawn. And it’s just as expensive as roll-on lawn.  No thanks.)

The side quartz-chip path is being taken out and replaced by paving, as there’s no point in having a lawn path in this shaded narrow area.  The guys also pointed out the leak in my water feature, so I might finally be able to keep it plugged, filled and running.  Since the yuccas went, I can also put half drums under the kitchen windows for a small vege garden.  There’s reticulation all around the house on a great Rainbird timer, so no watering worries.  All good stuff.

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I mentioned my Neato robot vacuum cleaner a few weeks ago.  I’ve been using it a lot recently and have a few opinions on it now.

1.  It works, but not very well.  The main complaint is that it won’t go closer to the skirting boards than about 50mm, so all those little dead insects don’t get cleaned up (tiny midgies, I mean).

2.  The dust compartment is very small, a lot smaller than a normal bag, about 1/8 the volume. That means a lot of emptying, and it’s messy.  But the amount of dust and fluff in there is amazing, so it’s obviously cleaning well.

3.  It constantly gets itself stuck in corners, or tangles with cords, and can’t get out.  It stops and beeps, asking “Please clear my path.”  The beeps are discreet, but it’s annoying.

4.  It is utterly unpredictable where it will go.  It doesn’t do a long straight line in unobstructed areas, it only ever goes about a metre before turning on some arbitrary angle and shooting off elsewhere.  I can set it cleaning one room and have to hunt for it later, only to find it way off in another part of the house, stuck and beeping.  That means it sometimes doesn’t find its own way back to the charger station.

5.  On the good side, I can set it going and completely forget it.  For a bachelor, that’s good, knowing that cleaning is being done, even if I don’t know where.  I don’t want to waste my time vacuuming.

I got an email from Amazon a couple of weeks ago asking me to give feedback, to review it.  I haven’t done so yet, but I will.  By coincidence, CHOICE ran a test of them last week and out of about a dozen tested, mine came third last.  They gave it a score of 30%, which I’d agree with.

However, the winner costs $1,199.  The price of mine is A$699 (yes, it’s sold here).  I paid ~A$350 plus about A$100 freight.  It’s yet another example of the Australia tax at work.  Why should it cost nearly double the US price in this country?

© P J Croft 2014

This is a summary from the second report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released recently:

“Ice in the Arctic is collapsing, the oceans are rising, coral reefs are dying, fresh water supplies are diminishing, and the oceans are becoming more acidic, which is killing certain creatures and stunting the growth of others. Heat waves and heavy rains are escalating, food crops are being damaged, disease is spreading, human beings will be displaced due to flooding, animals are migrating toward the poles or going extinct, and the worst is yet to come.

“The evidence the world is warming is indubitable.”

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/#ixzz2xy3jI0Jo

Yet our prime minister Tony Abbott BA Boxing (Oxon.) still says “Climate change is crap.”  He said that some time ago but he hasn’t made any attempt to retract it.  He, and the government he leads, are actively undermining and preventing efforts in Australia to combat climate change.  He ascribes the recent drought and floods in the eastern side of the country to normal weather cycles, without any evidence to support his unqualified assertions.

One of their ways is to repeal the so called Carbon Tax.  They deliberately play on the ignorance of the public in calling it that – it is actually a levy on the worst emitters of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, one of the major causes of global warming.  They bray like donkeys about how little revenue it has raised.  That’s because the worst emitters have taken steps to reduce their emissions to escape the levy!  This is exactly what the “tax” is designed to do!

This Liberal government lies to the Australian public.  If you vote Liberal, you are complicit in their lies.

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I make no secret that I will be voting Labor today in the WA Senate election re-run. Did you expect anything else?  But I won’t be voting above the line – I’ll make my own choices for my preferences.

One thing I’ll be doing is voting 1 for Louise Pratt and 2 for the number three candidate on the Labor card, putting Mr Joe Bulloch well out of my list.  I don’t vote for idiots.

My second preferences will be to the Greens.  At least they have a well thought out and reasoned approach to politics.

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I’ll also be voting against this cold, callous, cruel government which sees nothing wrong with imprisoning people who have committed no crime, without trial, for an indefinite sentence.  They constantly lie to you, the public, by calling refugees “illegals”.  This is a LIE.  It is NOT illegal to seek asylum in another country.  It is a deliberate lie, designed to appeal to the blue singlet brigade, the man in the pub, the sheep who believe the constantly repeated lies being told by Abbott and Scott Morrison, the Minister for Immigration. He is a cold, cruel, vicious man.  But the unintelligent dolts in this country believe what he says and approve of what he’s doing.  Not in my name. I don’t approve and I didn’t vote for this.

Apparently 61% of the public approve of what the government is doing in “stopping the boats”.  They also don’t seem to care about the concentration camps being run in this country, or the imprisonment of children and pregnant women.

I’m disgusted.  NOT IN MY NAME!

Cairns 1997 © P J Croft 2014

You’ll notice the new look.  I saw this on someone else’s blog and liked it, so here it is.  The other one was a bit black and techno.

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I finally saw my mouse a couple of days ago.  It ran across the top of the bench in the kitchen and stopped at the end, looking at me for several seconds.  I made a slight move, thinking I might be able to grab it, but Geronimo!, it jumped and fell to the floor, then skittled behind a cupboard.  This is a metre high bench onto a hard tiled floor.  It would be the equivalent of us jumping 30m onto rocks, I think.  Yet it survives.  Courageous mouse.

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Insulin:  my BGL readings seem to be pretty regularly between 8 – 10 mmol/ml during the day.  Early mornings are often 6 – 6.5.  This is good.  Two hours after dinner is still up around 12 – 16, which is too high, so I might need extra insulin later in the day.  I’ll find out next Friday.

I still feel very tired though.  Very limited stamina and endurance.  I need to go back to the bed in the daytime for an hour or so, and feel much better when I wake.  I went down to Trigg this morning for a coffee with a friend and intended to go on to Osborne Park for an errand, but I was too tired and came straight home.  I hope things will improve later this year.

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Last time I was at that Trigg cafe I saw a yellow Lamborghini go past.  Then half an hour later on that morning, I saw another one, a silver one, at the lights near Karrinyup. Two in one morning!

This morning another one went past!  Black this time.  What is this, Lamborghini territory?  Some people have lots of money.

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BANG!  That was the sound from my shower yesterday.  I used the hot water for the first time since 1 November last year and there were many air bubbles in the pipe.  One of them was so strong that it almost exploded from the shower head, and in fact, blew the diffuser partly out.  The water squirts in a wide stream from the side now.  It seems to be just a press fit into the metal housing, so I’ll have to prise it out and see if I can glue it back in.  Meanwhile I’m using a spare shower head.  A spare shower head? Doesn’t everyone have a spare? 🙂

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I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking the other day, voice dictation and recognition software.  I tried it many (10?) years ago but you had to train it for several hours to learn your voice in those days.  I never had much success.  All I got was a text file with many errors that had to be edited and corrected before use.

This latest version is supposed to be magical – no training required, Aussie accents recognised.  I’ll give it another try.

Hinchinbrook Island, Qld 1997 © P J Croft 2014

I was talking to someone just a few days ago about telemarketing (or scam) calls from India, and I said I haven’t been bothered by them for at least six months. Also, that I’m on the Do Not Call register.

The phone rang just now and immediately I could tell by the satellite delay and the noise of the call centre that this was one of those calls.  How did they know? Did they read my mind?  Are they listening in on my phone conversations?

However, this one was a bit different. I had asked for Caller Line ID to be activated on my phone a few days ago.  “It’ll take a few business days, sir” and I forgot all about it.

This time, when the phone rang, it announced “Call from overseas. ….  Call from overseas”, repeating.  When I picked up and answered, I could hear my voice and this message being echoed back, then the line went dead.  I think the Indian call centre must have heard this and decided against talking to me.  Good.

Why did I answer?  Because we’re organising this reunion and one of our old school chums lives in the US (we think).  I’ve sent emails to him and kinda hoped we might hear back.  He’s the type of bloke to pick up the phone and call (especially since his company pays for the calls.)  Anyway, it’s good to know that CLID will identify and tell me when a call is from overseas.

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Cairns 1997 © PJ Croft 2014

I really do think a black cloud is hovering over me, hurling lightning bolts of bad luck.

First (recently) there was the travel agency failing to pass on my deposit for the P&O cruise.  Then the fridge not working in my cabin (my complaint, passed on to P&O by the travel agency, still hasn’t been answered.)

Then the Pioneer Blu-Ray player went dead a few weeks ago (still under warranty).  Won’t even power up.

Now my Logitech Harmony Touch remote control has died as well. There’s nothing but “Harmony.com” on the screen and my attempts to reboot it have failed.  If I could open it and remove/replace the battery, I would, but it’s sealed up tight.  That’ll have to go back too.

Then today I took a cheque, which I’d never cashed, that I’d found in my filing system, to the bank. (It’s a refund of a fee from a Radiology firm.)  It’s dated 22/9/2012.  I didn’t think it would matter, but it does – there’s a 15 month time limit on cheques.  It’s “only” $52.  I’m tempted to let it slide, but $52 is $52 – maybe I’d better contact them.

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I read Silicon Chip magazine intermittently. It’s the only Australian electronics magazine left out of four or five 30 years ago and I often feel I should support it.

But it’s the world’s most conservative magazine!  You would hardly be able to tell the difference between this month’s issue and one from 30 years ago.  Almost every sentence ends with an exclamation mark! Gosh, gee, wow!  The typeface is the same, the black borders to every illustration are the same, and even the content is much the same.  This month I reckon they published the 534th Drill Speed Controller project.  I reckon there’s been at least one drill speed controller every year since 1978.  Or a Musicolour, or an electronic ignition for cars, or an electric fence or a 20W amplifier in a matchbox.

Too bad, most of the time.  But the editor is a Climate Change Denier in Capital Letters.  He believes it’s all a hoax and that the CSIRO is “hysterical” in its warnings. He won’t accept all the IPCC reports or the Royal Society/American Association of Science report. He supports Ian Plimer, the loopy South Australian professor who’s written a book denying Global Warming, even though he’s a paleontologist, not a climate scientist.

In this month’s (April) issue he devotes the editorial to pushing his views.  That’s his right – he owns most of the magazine – but he has no qualifications in science, only in business.

I feel sorely tempted to send him a rocket, but it would be a waste of my time.  Any sane person must take the evidence seriously.  Personally, I believe it’s too late.  The tipping point has been reached and passed. Global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification are unstoppable now.  I’m glad I don’t have kids, because they’d better get used to living in a hot, hotter, drier and drier climate.

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I was in the shopping centre today (Yay! JB HiFi have opened a shop at Ocean Keys, Clarkson, about 5Km down the road from me), when I passed a woman doing photography of kids in one of those big booths in the mall.  She was lifting a kid up in the air and making cooing noises and the flashes went off and another frame was captured.

Then it hit me.  She can do this without an assistant now, with a very high probability of success.

First, autofocus is now so quick and so accurate that as long as the kid is in a zone, the camera will latch on to focus.  But more than that, face recognition!  She would know where the frame is that the camera sees, and as she lifts the kid into frame, the autofocus latches on and the face recognition works its magic and fires the shutter.  No need to be behind the camera, hoping to get it right, just let the electronics do the work.  The magic of electronics.

Excellent:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/hilarious-responses-to-dames-and-knights-in-australia

Couldn’t have said it better myself.  Except that I nominate Bronwyn Bishop for a knighthood.  Not a damehood.

I propose there should a Knight of the Order of the Cane Toad. That’s the Aussie way. (My photo)

What a joke.  Sir Les Paterson and Dame Edna Everage will be recognised at last. How about Sir Alan Bond?  Dame Gina?  These parodies will become official. Abbott didn’t even consult his own members before announcing his Ocker knighthoods and dameships.  I raise these points:

1.  He has just devalued all the existing Australian honours, the ACs and AOs and AMs, by putting a new level above them. No wonder he didn’t consult.  I think there would be some very annoyed people at the moment, although they are far too polite to say it out loud.

2.  This will be payoff, payment for big Liberal Party donors, mates of Abbott and his cronies, big businessmen and so on.  Money will be involved even though it will be deeply hidden.  Peerages in Britain were able to be bought and sold.  There will always be suspicion, especially from me.  Abbott has opened himself up to ridicule forever more.  Hah!  What a sick joke.

3.  Personally, I will refuse to acknowledge these titles, although the chance of me ever having to address these people is extremely remote.  I think Peter Cosgrove will show a lack of principle if he accepts this “pseudo knighthood”.  He should refuse it.  He’s a prototypical Aussie – surely he’d be embarrassed to have to be called Sir Peter.

4.  So Australia joins PNG and the tiny Pacific and Carribean countries who cling to these honours for their ribbons, top hats, morning suits, titles and knee bending “prestige”.  It’s utterly embarrassing.  The word tinpot comes to mind.

I’ve long noticed that The Australian never uses “Sir” Fred Nerk in its opening sentences of an article, even if the guy or lady does have the title.  Its been their protest for years.  Mine too.

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This one had grown enormous – at least five times this size, and was threatening the wall. It had to go.

All my Yuccas are gone, thank goodness, except one, which is a burglar deterrent under a window that I like to leave a bit open to let some air in.  The guys removed the roller shutter for which I had no key, so now I have access from the garage to the “drying court”, the western side of the house.

Yucky Yuccas, begone!

Now I can start planning to build my model railway, with the main part in the garage, but a long run outside in the open.There will need to be a lift-out section of track to allow a door in the opening, for security, although I don’t think anything will deter a determined housebreaker.

I’m reluctant to start drilling holes in the rendered dividing wall, so I may use trestles, but water proofing and weather resistance matter.  Wall brackets would be much easier.

I want to use this outside area because loooong runs are vital for model trains, in my opinion.  I’m not interested in just watching trains racing around an oval track on a 6′ x 4′ baseboard.  Anyway, all this is a long way off.  I’ve got to get my stomach removed first 😉

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Hmm.  The HBF nurse has just been and says my legs are bad enough (redness and swelling, stinging pain, weeping skin breaks, incipient cellulitis) that I should go to Joondalup Hospital Emergency Dept tomorrow and get intravenous antibiotic administered.  Don’t wait for a doctor’s appointment, just go.  It may need an overnight stay with an i/v drip. Wow.

My cabin on the Arcadia. It was quite spacious, with that lounge being very comfortable and a writing desk with armchair to the right. There was a 19″ TV with satellite reception of BBC and Sky News.

My cluttered desk.

The bed was very comfortable and with the ship’s stabilisers, there was almost no motion. I had to place my CPAP on the chair and stretch the cord to the desk. No power next to the bed.

It’s become clear now why my ticket on the Arcadia was cancelled. The woman at the Holiday Planet travel agency in Stirling St, Perth, failed to pass on my BPay payment to P&O.  She’s told me so.  She’s apologised profusely and said it’s the first time in nine years it’s happened.  So why did it have to happen to me!?

As I said, she gave me $200 on board credit and has offered another $200 as compensation off any other cruise I do.  I doubt I would want to deal with them again, though.  As I’ve said, this was a slack, complacent attitude.  Even though I told her twice that I couldn’t log in to P&O’s web page using the booking number she gave me, it didn’t alert her to a problem.  She just brushed me off, saying she often has trouble with that web page.

That goes along with an email I sent alerting someone that I was coming, but getting no answer and being told it wasn’t received. Now I’ve been told that four of the letters I sent out to reunion people a few weeks ago weren’t received, even though the addresses were correct.  “Please send another letter.”  Yeah, at my cost in time and stamps.  Gee, Australia Post must be so unreliable.

Out of ten letters I sent to reunion people a few weeks ago, not one person has replied.  I feel as if I’m wasting my time and effort sometimes.

There seems to a black hole above me, sucking things into it, my luck included.

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Along the same lines, for some years I’ve had the idea that Panasonic products are better, so I’ve chosen a DVD/HD recorder and fridge of that brand and often thought of buying a bigger Panasonic plasma TV (I haven’t).  But lately I’ve come to realise that I’m not happy with Panasonic.  The fridge rattles.  Something in the door is rattling and it’s not what I put in there.  I’ve rearranged the contents many times, and banged the door and plastic pockets to no avail. It stops rattling for a few minutes, then starts again (while the compressor is running, I mean).  It’s very annoying.

The DVD/HD recorder is too slow.  Every operation involves a wait of several seconds before it happens.  Bit sick of it.  I’ll try another brand next time.

Then there’s my Pioneer BluRay player which has failed completely, as I said a few weeks ago, and my older Pioneer DVD player, which I use as a CD player because the sound is so nice, but it refuses to read any CD which is not bog standard CD spec,  eg HDCD or similar.  I bought a nice CD in Singapore, but it won’t play it.  Grrr.  And the Pioneer amplifier which has only two knobs on the front, and tiny buttons with tiny grey-on-black lettering that I can’t read.  Phut!  Why did I buy it??  I didn’t look hard enough at the product, only at the price, that’s why.

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Watching TV last night, I saw something moving below my eye line.  It was a tiny frog, about 25mm in size, hopping across the floor.  We had a very heavy rain yesterday morning for over an hour, so the water probably brought it out, and it must have hopped inside through an open door.  It went under the TV bench and stopped hopping, but I can’t find it now.

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Yuccas!  Those nasty spiky plants, you can’t call them trees.  I’ve got at least a dozen around the house, including one with a trunk about 40cm in diameter right next to a wall.  It’s going to damage the wall eventually.

There were two guys digging some out next door the other day, so I spoke to them and they are going to remove most of mine too.  They’ve quoted me $800, plus $280 tipping fees.  Ouch.  Spiky in more ways than one.  These are useless plants.  They give no shade and drop their sharp fronds when dry, but you can’t kill them except by digging them out and poisoning the roots.  The big one near the wall will be too hard to dig out completely, so they’ll have to cut it off at ground level and poison the stump.  Terrible work – they have to wear protective gear to avoid being cut or spiked.

They’re all through this suburb.  The developers plant them because they grow very quickly and won’t die.  Useless things.

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Australian Personal Computer magazine have their 400th issue out now and it prompted me to send them a scan of a hand written list I made in 1993 of the cost of computer components then.

I paid $980 for a 486 motherboard!  I didn’t record the cost of the CPU but it would have been $300 or so.  $125 for a keyboard.  $120 for a mouse!  I remember that one – it was a two button Logitech even back then.  $99 for a 5¼” floppy drive and $89 for a 3½” floppy.  You needed both back then.  $400 for a 40MB (megabyte, not gigabyte) hard drive.  $250 for a VGA graphics card.  Plus sound card.  No on-board graphics and sound in those days.  $1170 for an NEC 15″ colour monitor.  And so on.

By contrast, I’ve just bought all the bits to make up a new computer, a Core i7 4770 3.5GHz CPU with 8GB of RAM, very fancy motherboard to suit with 10 USB sockets, six of them USB 3, HDMI graphics, on-board sound, a 256GB SSD and so on.  Including a very fancy Fractal Design R8 case, about $1,100 all up.  The cost of computing has fallen to about 1/10th what it was, allowing for inflation, for far better gear.  We’ve got it good these days.

Huh?  Those pictures I posted yesterday of the Mercedes convertible in the car park of the Soda Cafe were definitely of a 280SL – there it was in chrome letters on the back of the car.  I thought at the time that I hadn’t realised there was a 280SL.

(Ooops, it’s an SL280, not a 280SL.  My mistake.  It matters in Mercedes-speak, as does the number of slots near the front wheel arch – two slots or three? It changed with models.)

Naturally I’ve been looking on the web today for cars like that for sale.  Google brings up plenty of references to that model, but they are all much older cars, dating from around 1982 and looking older, with chrome wheel arch mouldings and out of date things like that.

When I clicked on two references to 280SL models for sale in Australia, both of them showed pictures of cars with 500SL prominent on the boot lid.  What’s going on? Why would 500SLs be advertised as 280SLs?  Twice.

When I look at the Wikipedia article, all the pictures they show are of the old model from the late 70s and early 80s.

So where did this car in the Soda carpark come from?  It seems to be a model that doesn’t exist.  I’m wondering if it’s a Japanese special, imported.  I’m mystified.  Not that it matters much – I’m not a buyer —- yet.

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I’ve been talking via email today with the Perth travel agent about the P&O cruise foul up.  It’s very clear that she stuffed up big time. She admits it.  She failed to ensure my BPay payment went through to P&O, so that’s why they weren’t paid and why my booking was cancelled.  I was issued with an e-ticket and a booking number, but when I tried to use it to log in to P&O, it wouldn’t let me in.

I told her about this.  But she brushed me off, saying she often has trouble logging in to P&O and to try again later.  I had the booking number, so although I was stymied about logging in, I wasn’t worried.

If she had been more focused on the problem, she might have realised something was wrong.  But good old Aussie attitude, “She’ll be right, near enough, can’t be bothered, what’s the problem mate” made her ignore my complaint that my booking number wouldn’t work.

She’s admitted her fault and apologised.  She allocated me $200 on board credit as compensation, so that paid my drinks bill for the cruise.

I contrast that with Hotel Club, the Singapore hotel booking agency.  I used their web site to book my hotel and thought that was it. No problem.

But they phoned me here from Singapore to enquire if I was happy with my booking shortly after I made it.  No problems, thanks for calling.

Then today, after I completed their on-line survey and made a couple of critical comments about the hotel (no breakfast, no restaurant, no fridge in the room, very small room, no armchair, no free wi-fi), they phoned me again today to discuss these things and ask if I would use them again.  Extremely polite, really trying to be helpful, allocating me about US$65 worth of points as compensation etc.  Couldn’t have been more friendly and helpful.  I should add that I said I was very pleased that the hotel had listened to my problem about no fridge in the room and fixed it.  Big Brownie points for that.

What a contrast with the Perth travel agency.  Slack service, big mistake, didn’t follow my query, stuffed up.  It’s a metaphor for this country, I’m afraid.  She’ll be right mate.  Near enough.  No it won’t.  No it’s not.

Balinese luggage size check. © P J Croft 20111, 2014

Home late last night (11pm) after a very cramped flight on Tiger from Singapore on an Airbus A320.  I’m tired of flying these small, cramped aircraft.  I didn’t choose this flight – it was part of the cruise package, but I’ll try to get a better deal next time.  I must admit I’m a bit large, but I feel as if I’m imprisoned in a torture cell on these small aircraft.  I can’t get the table down and I need a seatbelt extension.  It’s not the airiine’s fault, it’s mine, I know.  I’m definitely taking major steps to fix my problem …

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I saw a very unusual sight on the flight, so unusual that I’d rate it as unique:  a woman reading New Scientist.  I have never seen a woman reading anything except Woman’s Day, Women’s Weekly, Dolly, Hello!, Cosmopolitan or any of the other stupid, vapid, untruthful women’s magazines.  Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen a woman reading a quality newspaper!  Reckon I’m wrong?  Prove it.

This was amazing – a very attractive, 30s something woman without a ring, traveling alone, reading a serious science magazine.  I must have been hallucinating.  She looked so familiar …  I’ve seen her before somewhere.

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On the same line, in the airbridge to the aircraft as we were boarding, the queue was moving very slowly.  I heard a youngish Singaporean woman behind me talking on her mobile and asking to speak to the doctor, and using a couple of cardiac-type medical terms.  I thought she must have been talking about a serious problem with one of her family.

But no, once she got through to the person she wanted, it turned into an endlessly trivial phone chat that lasted until we reached the aircraft door.  On an airbridge!  Bloody hell, do these people have their phones surgically attached?   Can they not go a minute of the day without a phone conversation?  Likewise, in the departure lounge, a fairly blowsy bird was prattling away on her mobile in Italian to someone, and it never stopped!  On, and on, and on, and on she talked, for 30 mins or more. No breaks, just endless natter in Italian.  I was thinking, “Mamia mia, I’m glad I’m not married to her!   No doubt she’s glad she’s not married to me, too.  I might say, “Shuduppah you face!”

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I saw another novel thing at Perth airport – a toilet area with spouts from the wall to wash your hands under, which start spilling water by infra-red sensors, so have no taps, but there were no wash basins either.  Huh?  Where are the basins?  I couldn’t work out what to do.

The spouts work by proximity, of course, and I realised eventually that the flat surface where the basins would normally be slopes back to a slot at the rear.  Who needs a basin?  You just hold your hands under the spout and all the water just runs to the back and down the slot.

Don’t bank on even menial jobs being available in the future for your kids.  No-one is needed to clean washbasins any more. Frightening.  The future of work is replacement of humans by machines.  You’d better be a designer or fixer of these machines.

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It was a day for very unusual sightings.  Sitting in Soda Cafe, a yellow Lamborghini Huracan went past.

I never even knew that model existed until I looked it up just now.

Then 45 mins later in Karrinyup Road, another one!  Silver, this time. Two Lamborghinis in one day??!!

In the restaurant, I’d been talking about my idea of buying a Mercedes 500SL.  Blow me down, when I walked out to the restaurant car park, this was there:

Mercedes 280SL. See how it comes with an automatically blurred number plate?

Ain’t it beautiful?  This is a 280SL, a smaller 2.8L engine model, but who cares?, the rest of the car is the same.  I was tempted to wait for the owner to come from the restaurant and offer him cash for his car.  Ooooohhh.

Then later around 3pm, one of these was parked across the street:

The Lexus (Toyota) Soarer (SC400).  This is a contender, and buy one of these and you’re buying quality and utter reliability, but they’re so bland.  Timeless styling, but boring …