So anyway…

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. Melbourne Weather
2. Melbourne Cold
3. Happy Solstice!
4. Summer again
5. Happy Solstice

SYDNEY is shedding 22,000 citizens a year to all parts of Australia, and for the first time the people deficit covers all key groups, from students and young singles to families and retirees.
(Just a personal note, you couldn’t pay us to live in Sydney. Literally. Andrew has been headhunted by Google more than once and the pay and compensation package is impressive, but there’s this huge drawback, and that is that we’d have to move to Sydney. He and others have suggested to Google that they should open an office in Melbourne because this is where all the good information retrieval people are, and almost none of them are willing to leave Marvelous Melbourne and move to (sucky?) Sydney. It’s interesting to see that lots of other people feel the same way. I mean, people prefer Hobart to Sydney, what does that tell you?)

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. Freak storms lash eastern Australia, at least two dead
2. Senator Conroy Wants Chinese-style Censorship #nocleanfeed
3. Court docs: Ballmer vowed to ‘kill’ Google
4. Into the City
5. What is it about unicorns, anyway?

I’m not normally a “resolution” kind of person. Generally, when I decide to do something, I do it (or I try, anyway), regardless of the calendar. January 1st isn’t any more special to me than any other day, really.
Anyway, this year I do have a resolution, but I’ve already started it. On Boxing Day (that’s the day after Christmas for those of you who are not in a Commonwealth nation), we observed our usual “day trip” tradition and we ended up at Wilson’s Promontory and we just had the best time of it (there are a couple of new photos already in the photo gallery, but I haven’t documented them, and I still have more to add). I was so very happy on that day, just really, genuinely happy. It was a perfect day out, and it was also a spiritual experience in ways that I can’t really explain without sounding like a lunatic (which I may already do, but I’ll take that risk).
Now I’ve been working on healing and attitude and a lot of spiritually directed things for a long, long time now, and to put it into a nutshell, I realised that there’s no real reason why I can’t and shouldn’t be happy every day. So that’s my resolution. From now on, I’m going to be happy, every day, for the rest of my life.
Now… I am not insane. I am more than aware that life is full of all kinds of twists and turns and unforseen tragedy and so forth. I don’t expect to be happy every moment of every day. I think that’s probably impossible. But I do definitely believe that it’s possible to rise above stress, pain, grief, sorrow, fear, and other stuff that gets in the way of being happy. I know from long experience that if I can just manage to climb on top of that stuff, I can touch the joy, and experience it. And I know that I can know joy even when I’m sad or tired or irritable, because I’ve done it. The trick is just going to be to do it all the time, or at least most of the time.
There you go, my resolution. And isn’t it just a doozy…

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. That New Year’s Resolution…
2. Being happy
3. This whole happiness thing
4. Happy
5. Life, the Universe, and Everything

It’s stinking hot. Well, it was hotter earlier in the day. The maximum got to about 30° C. (which is around 86° F. for you North Americans stuck in an outdated and rather silly measurement system, no offence intended). Tomorrow, however, the forecast high is 40° C. (which is about 104° F.). Ugh.
We’re going to the movies in the afternoon, to be where’s it’s dark and cool in the heat of the day (we’re going to see Bee Movie in case you care).
Oh, and in other news, I finished the first draft of an actual client website. Woo. Actually, it’s a friend of the family who needs a website for her new business (music typesetting and notation, if you’re interested). Well, what the heck, I’ll give her a link. It might get her some business, who knows: Copied Right Music Services.

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. Australian Humour
2. A Tech Support Tale
3. Andrew the Geek
4. Melbourne Weather
5. Melbourne weather

Fear of ending up like this kid is the reason I almost never use txt type abbreviations. *shudder*

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. Seth Green wants us to leave Chris Crocker alone!
2. Leave Blackbeard alone!
3. Dressy Ups
4. Top Eleven Beatles Songs

I just read this in an Australian forum:

we live in a democracy .. free speech is our constitutional birth right

Uhm, no. Well, okay, we do live in a democracy. However, free speech is not guaranteed by the Australian constitution. No, it’s not. Australia does not have anything like a Bill of Rights such as the United States has (and argues about constantly).

Australia, being a democracy, has the implied legal right of free political speech. We do not, however, have the right to say anything, any time, anywhere, as this person would have us believe. They’re even posting this on a privately owned forum, they could be banned at any time and have no recourse whatsoever… So much for their God-given, inborn Constitutional right to spout off at will, hmmm?

Australia does have a strong history of allowing free speech, but Australia also has laws against sedition (a term of law which refers to covert conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order), so if you say stuff about the government that the government doesn’t like and can show to be “subversive”, you can go to prison for it.

And furthermore, this whole “right to free speech” thing does NOT give you the right to use my resources to make your speech. In other words, you can get your own printing press, I’m not obligated to let you use mine.

Mind you, this is totally lost on the sort of brilliant mind that can’t tell the difference between free political speech and bitching about their host in their host’s own home….

Anyway, people like this are the reason I don’t have a guestbook, a forum, or open commenting.

Enough ranting. I’m actually in a good mood. I was just momentarily annoyed. I’m over it now. Really.

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. Thinking
2. Dixie Chicks
3. Bush Made the Call
4. Libraries Rally Against USA Patriot Act
5. Good read

It really irritates me when people are selling things (on eBay or elsewhere) and they really have no clue what they’re selling. For example, there was a pendant I was interested in and it was listed as “German Silver”. Now, German Silver can mean that it’s a silver-coloured base metal made of some alloy of tin, zinc, nickel, etc. OR it can mean actual silver which is simply below the standard for sterling (such as .800 or .900 as opposed to .925 purity). To me, it’s important to know what it is, because I have real problems with costume jewellery (my skin is very acidic, and base metal tends to turn black, green, and other nasty colours, and the jewellry is ruined very quickly).

So I wrote to this seller to ask what is was. I was very polite. This is the reply I got:

When I list an item for auction I am obliged to list it as it is. When I purchase items that are sold to me as German Silver I have to state that is what it is. I am not an expert in metal and therefore am not able to comment on the standard of one as opposed to the other.

Uh, right. They might as well have said, “I have no idea what I’m selling.” Seriously, that’s precisely what they’re saying. They don’t know anything about jewellery, they don’t know anything about precious metals as opposed to base metals. I mean, I’m no metallurgist, but it’s not all that difficult to learn basic things like whether the item you’re selling is base metal or actual silver, is it?

People like this are the ones who make online trading such a big risk, particularly through eBay or similar sites. And yeah, it does irritate me. No, you don’t have to be an expert, but you could at least have some damned clue what you’re offering the public!

Rant over.

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. The strange and boring tale of Bonni’s glasses
2. Andrew the Geek
3. Just let me share this with you
4. What’s the problem, then?
5. A spam poem about uncertainty

I just want to give a public thumbs up to Amazon and their customer service. Several weeks ago, I ordered four books and paid for expedited shipping. I wasn’t in any particular rush, mind you, but it’s not that much more for the expedited and I get very bored with waiting for them to get around to shipping. I’ll take my chances with the actual postal services, but if I can give Amazon a few extra bucks to pack my stuff and post it sooner, well, sometimes it’s worth it.

Anyway, they split the order into two packages for whatever reason it is that Amazon does these things (presumably, it has to do with shipping weights). The two packages were supposed to ship on the same day. I got one of the two packages, which contained two books. I waited patiently for the other, thinking that perhaps it just got mixed up in the Christmas scuffle or something like that. Eventually, I realised that the package was way, way overdue, and I wrote to Amazon’s customer service department to politely inquire.

Well, they did whatever they did (checked the tracking? looked up various information? who knows…) and refunded my money AND sent the two books to me via international express courier. Wow. I would have been happy with EITHER of those options, but they promptly gave me both of them. Money back AND reshipping of the order. Just… wow. That’s what I call customer service!

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. Tech Support, Pizza Style
2. The wisdom of Miranda
3. It had to happen…
4. That hasn’t happened for ages…
5. The Beatles Anthology

 

 

Festivus: For the Rest of Us!

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. A few pictures
2. Happy Birthday
3. Dressy Ups
4. Happy Birthdays and Elections

(And yes, Britney Spears does have a pregnant sixteen-year-old sister, in case you weren’t aware.)

Auto-generated, possibly related posts:

1. Pregnant pause
2. Perez Hilton’s plea to Britney Spears
3. Leave Blackbeard alone!
4. How stupid can Britney be?
5. Like, whatever, I think