I've had this cold for weeks now. Sinus blockage, couging, etc. etc. It was sort of getting better and then got worse. Doctor feels I had one and then got another right after, which may well be the case. In any event, I feel like crap. I got up to take Miranda to kinder at 8:30 (she was there at 8:30, I actually got up earlier, obviously), and then came home, took some cough medicine, and went back to bed, where I slept until about 11:30 and went and picked her up at noon.

I feel somewhat better now, at nearly 6pm. Partly, I took some pain reliever and that's surely helping. I also irrigated my sinuses with saline solution (uncomfortable process, but does a great deal of good, and it seems to help my chronic sinusitis in many ways). I also put a shoulder heat pack on and one for my neck, and that seems to help for whatever reason.

Still, I'm very fatigued and will probably have to go to bed early (again). I hate winter for this very reason...

President George W. Bush has admitted that his bellicose "bring 'em on" taunt to Iraqi insurgents was a big mistake, as he and Prime Minister Tony Blair carefully avoided setting a timetable for removing troops from Iraq.
 
"I learnt some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know. "Wanted, dead or alive"; that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted," he said.

(Gee, Dubya, ya think so?)

Today, I'm 42 years old. Any Douglas Adams fan will tell you why 42 is a great number. It's the answer to life, the universe, and everything (it's only th question we need to work out now).

Zoë is about a hundred times more excited about my birthday than I am. I've not been very much into my own birthday for many years. I like getting presents, of course, but really, I don't pay much attention to my birthday except to put in on forms that ask for it.

And I admit, I do have a bit of a thing for the year I was born. Lots of interesting things happened that year (which was 1964, in case you're as arithmattically challenged as I am).

Anyway, the little girls gave me my birthday present today, which, of course, their father picked out. It's the double DVD of The Eagles: Farewell I.

As it happens, we were there one of the nights they were filming for the DVD. No, we are in no way visible. We were in the wings of the very large Rod Laver Arena, and even if the camera had swept that direction, you couldn't have spotted us in the crowd, but no matter.

The DVD is reminding me of that experience, which was very, very high on my list of great life experiences. In the middle of the second song (which happend to be "New Kid in Town", an extremly influential song in my life for many reasons) I suddenly was overwhelmed by: "Oh, my God. I'm listening to the Eagles. In Melbourne. With Andrew." Sounds a bit silly, but it was a really fantastic moment, and a fantastic concert.

Seeing the Eagles perform live was one of the things I wanted to do before I died. I'm one step closer to death, and this DVD on my birthday is reminding me of that, but you know what? I'm still enjoying it. Life is a consumable.

If you're the sort of person who is at all likely to click on an attached .doc (especially from someone you don't know), you should probably read about the latest security risk in Microsoft Word.

Fraudsters who deal in stolen credit card data have devised a means to extract money from sponsors of junk mail campaigns.

Excellent blog, very entertaining reading. I'm not Catholic, but I am something of a historian and while I read The Da Vinci Code and thought it was a pretty good read, I can't figure out how people take it as some sort of divine truth. It's a work of fiction, for heaven's sake, and one that freely mixes fact with fiction in ways that maybe aren't as ethical as possible...

And for the record, Angels and Demons by Dan Brown is a much better book.

I’m going to try to solve, or at least explain, a mystery that has had many women, especially single ones visiting so-called “bachelor pads”, alternately curious and furious for hundreds of years.

Why do men piss on the seat?

Most copyright disputes are about money, but here's one that's literally about cash.
 
Freelance photographer Kelly Fajack claims in a lawsuit that one of his photos was reproduced without his permission on a currency note circulating in the central African nation of Burundi.

Yesteday, Andrew took the day off and we did errands. In the early afternoon, we went to the Post Office (well, to the nearest "business centre" hub, anyway) and met with my account manager. Since I now have an account with Australia Post, I'm eligible for an additional contract which is known as a "Consumer Dangerous Goods" contract or something along those lines. Basically, it enables me to legally post perfume and some other theoretically dangerous things (not sure precisely what).

I'm still not entirely convinced that its a violation of anything to send perfume in the post, and I've gotten all different answers from different Australia Post employees. Nobody seems to know... I'm still of the personal opinion that it's only an issue if it's greater than 5 litres, but just in case and just to be sure, I went ahead and got myself a Dangerous Goods contract. All this means is that I have to fill in (yet another) form and put a special sticker on the package so that handlers know what's inside. Hoopy doopy.

Later in the afternoon, we went to the accountant and got general advice on setting up the legalities and paying taxes and registering for the GST and so on and so forth. The accountant is good. He's an older gentleman, a lodge brother of my father-in-law (when we arrived I said to Andrew, "Do you reckon he'll give a Masonic handshake?" and he did, too). He reminds me of William H. Macy, and he's pretty sharp about... well, everything. We're officially clients of his now.

He also gave me the go-ahead to use any bookkeeping software that I felt comfortable with (some accountants apparently insist on MYOB, but I downloaded the trial of it and found it a little too over my head; I'm going with QuickBooks for now). All he needs from me is the basic profit and loss statements and we can go from there. Oh, and he wants me to write out a simple busines plan, which I can also do.

At this point, there's no need to incorporate or form a trust or anything of that sort, but maybe next year...

So. Now I have an Australia Post account manager and an accountant. I hope I won't have to get a lawyer, as well... (eek)

An Australian larrikin has failed in his bid to sell New Zealand for a bargain-basement price on eBay.
[...]
"Clearly New Zealand is not for sale," eBay Australia spokesman Daniel Feiler was quoted as saying.

(Note for non-Aussie: a "larrikin" is a charming rascal, a naughty but lovable rogue. Just thought you'd like to know.)

A WHEELCHAIR-BOUND Los Angeles woman, who has repeatedly filed lawsuits over access for the disabled, got up and ran after police arrested her for fraud, authorities said today.

How a Massachusetts psychotherapist fell for a Nigerian e-mail scam

(Fascinating and bizarre; he fell for it more than once...)

I used to laugh at Melbournians complaining about the cold. Seriously, it rarely gets down to freezing temperatures, even in the outlying areas, and I don't think it ever snows (okay, maybe once every twenty years there are flurries and the snow melts upon hitting the ground). We do get a hailstorm or three every year, but that's not usually in the winter.

After spending as many years as I did in upstate New York in the Finger Lakes region (from which we get the chilling words "lake effect snow" which has to do with the way the many, many small, cold lakes affect the weather and cause there to be lots of snow and ice and other horrid stuff along those lines), and also spending many, many years in the American Midwest (icy cold winds whipping down off of Lake Michigan, whee!), I understand about cold. Really, I do.

So, yes, I used to think, "Hah! Melbourne's not that cold!" and it's not, but.... After living her for seven years and becoming more used to the climate, I get it now. Melbourne winter cold is wet, grey, rainy, and cold. It's not a frigid, dry cold like you get in the Midwest or the Northeast of the United States. It's nowhere near as cold, but it has this way of sort of surrounding you, and creeping up on you, making you feel wet (even though you're not), grey, cold, and on the miserable side. It's a dreary, mucky, insidious cold, rather than a hard slap in the face type cold.

And it's been cold here lately. Wet and grey and cold, like a bowl of cold scrambled eggs with a side of cold cooked oats.

Yum.

PostSecret is completely fascinating. People write things on handmade post cards and send them semi-anonymously to the blog author, who then publishes them. It's really remarkable, definitely worth reading.

I'm already thinking about what I might write if I were to do so. I don't have a lot of deep, dark secrets, really. I have some things that I haven't told many people, but they're not secrets, they're just private, and I don't feel the need to share them anonymously.

Anyway,

Well, most of us here are sick. Zoë had some sort of virus that was giving her a very high fever, totally taking away her appetite, and making her exhausted. Miranda's had a very strong cough that has woken her in the middle of the night every night for a week. I've got a cold with a lot of sinus congestion (naturally; I think I'm going to have to go to a specialist about my sinus issues, ugh), and tiredness. Andrew seems well, and the cat's okay, but other than that we're all on the miserable side of things.

In other matters, though, I've registered my business name and gotten myself a new account for the business. It's at the same credit union we use for our other banking, so we can easily transfer funds between the accounts, but this way I can set it up to send me an email when I get a deposit from a customer (if I had the regular account email me every time there was a transaction, it would be ridiculous!). The account is in my name and also Andrew's, and we can accept deposits in our names or the name of the business. We also get a Visa debit card, which could come in handy at some point.

Tax year in Australia ends mid-year, so we're coming upon it. At this point, I've spent more on the business than I've made, which is okay, because it means I won't have to pay any taxes on my income (haven't got any, hehe). But the Australian government has just passed a new "entrepreneur" law, which will probably be helpful to me. Businesses with a turnover below a certain amount can take 25% off the taxes that they have to pay. So if, after all deductions, you owe the government say, $1000, you can take off 25% of that and you only have to pay $750. Pretty good.

I'm not very good at numbers, unfortunately. We're going to have to hire an accountant to do stuff for a while, until Andrew gets the hang of it.

For the moment, though, I'm well below the levels for having to pay much of anything, because I think "in the negatives" pretty much counts as "don't have to pay any tax". Next year though, I hope to have to pay tax, believe it or not, because it'll mean I'm actually making money....

Memo to those considering entering the exciting field of Ecstasy production: It's probably not a good idea to set up your illicit drug lab via purchases on eBay, which apparently is being closely monitored by nosy Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

I have to laugh at Indian telemarketers.

Now before I continue, I want to make it totally crystal clear that I have no issues with Indians (or Pakistanis, come to that). Having grown up a military brat and lived all over the world, I've got a very, very accepting and even welcoming attitude toward other cultures, and skin color is pretty much meaninless to me other than in an aesthetic sense. I live quite happily in a country that prides itself on its multi-culturalism, and I think multi-culturalism is a good thing and I embrace it. Okay? Okay.

Now back to those telemarketers.

The thing that I find funny is that the phone connection is frequently terrible (I'm sure this isn't their fault, but still, it's not very professional nor is it conducive to doing business by phone). The second thing is that they'll have distinctively Indian accents, but they say their name is Tanya or Mike or Jessica or something similarly non-Indian, when you just know they're calling from Bangladesh or New Dehli... And then they'll hit on whomever answers the phone. Doesn't matter who you are, they want to read you their little spiel!

I sometimes answer the phone on behalf of my in-laws and once I told the Indian telemarketer that the person they asked for wasn't home, that I was their daughter-in-law, and I could take a message (hey, I always offer to take a message, and they never tell you up front that they're telemarketers, so who knows if it's not a legitimate call from someone with an Indian accent?). The telemarketer asked me (three times, because his accent was so thick and the connection so poor that I couldn't understand him) if I was over eighteen. He then proceeded to try to sell me some sort of mobile phone service!

On another occasion when I answered the phone for my in-laws, the telemarketer wanted to know if I could make decisions on behalf of my mother-in-law. I said no, but then when "Tanya" told me what she was selling (some telephone service, gee, the quality of the phone line doesn't make me want to switch, yanno?) I did make a decision on behalf of my mother-in-law. I said, "Thanks, but I don't think she'd be interested," and hung up the phone.

I don't think there's a moral to this story or a snappy ending. I just felt like sharing it. And believe me, if I suddenly get the urge to change mobile phone companies, I certainly won't be switching to one that hires people who barely speak English and go by fake names to recruit me!

First we have this story (note: you need free membership, but it's the New York Times and worth doing it, and they don't spam you):

Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore accused of plagiarizing parts of her recently published chick-lit novel, acknowledged yesterday that she had borrowed language from another writer's books, but called the copying "unintentional and unconscious."

Note that the "I committed copyright violation, but it wasn't intentional" argument didn't work for George Harrison when he tried it (curious? look up "My Sweet Lord" in reference to "He's So Fine").

And back to Ms. Viswanathan, we now have this:

Fresh passages in the novel by a Harvard sophomore, whose book was pulled from stores last week after she acknowledged plagiarizing portions of it, appear to be copied from a second author.

Now, normally it wouldn't be that big of a deal to see a Harvard sophomore committing plagiarism, as it's a pretty common occurrence. But this particular Harvard sophomore is represented by the William Morris Agency and had a half million dollar film deal in the works.

Perhaps her next book should be called "How to Succeed as an Author Without Even Writing Your Own Material, Until You Get Caught. Twice." I wonder if William Morris would be interested in representing her then...

Some relatives of people with autism also display behaviours and brain differences associated with the condition, even though they themselves do not have it. This could make it easier to spot families at risk of having an autistic child. It could also help in the quest to identify the genetic and environmental triggers for the condition, though it seems these triggers might vary from country to country.

Well, I've been fighting a cold for a while, but it's here now in full force. I had a night sweat last night (which may be due to hormones rather than illness, but still), and today I'm freezing, despite it being appropriately heated in the house. Head hurts a bit, lots of congestion, nasty sore neck. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. I just hope I don't develop a cough like the kids have had, I HATE having a persistant cough for various reasons that women who have given birth to children and/or reached a certain age will understand.