Okay, so the Competition Stripe has been in action for nearly a year & I think it's still going strong. However, that's my opinion only, not the viewing public like yourself. You might think it's the best darndest thing on the entire internet, or you may consider it to be the most repulsive blog background in living history, with the only reason for returning being to see if such horrors were a mere figment of imagination.
If either is the case, or you just want to see the stripe in a different shade, now is the chance. By now, you should have seen "Pazza's Poll" up & running, so it's time to cast your vote.
A nice Navy hue might "be the new black". Heck, even black may be the new black!
I thought about a full redesign, but the motivation is struggling for the time being, so instead of delivering something worse than what I already offer, the future's open to the people!
To those who commented on the last post, thank you muchly for the greetings!
As you can tell, I'm still not comfortable with admitting to the whole birthday thing.
Despite a few people knowing, such as the payroll officer & a couple of others in my department, the secret was well guarded until around 5pm. During the day, one of the Sales Department girls had overheard something & wished me Happy Birthday in front of a bunch of staff. The result of which had my desk littered with tiny gold hearts, a "Happy Birthday" banner taped to a shelf & a hastily printed card signed by all the girls from the Sales Team.
Today, anyone who has glanced through my office window has worked out what is going on & then proceed to cane me for not letting on. The Banquets area also provided some Birthday muffins before lunch to help with the celebrations.
Basically, by holding back the fact I was entering the forth decade of existence, the celebrations have gone far longer than if I had just owned up yesterday morning!
& since I keep finding those little gold hearts amongst everything in my office, I'm sure I'll remember this Birthday for a long time to come!
Four wheel drives & all those other big-ass Recreation vehicles should be banned from the roads...
... or at least until I can afford one, in which case, I'm going to attach the biggest bull-bar I can find, swerve all over the road, drive over any kerb or roundabout I want & generally assert my apparent endless authority on the minions driving less substantial forms of transport.
I have previously asked the question of "where does snot come from" & "how the hell does one generate so much of the stuff when you get a cold"! These little mysteries have plagued generations without resolve.
Now, I'll add another one to the list.... ear wax!
I actually find this somewhat more disgusting than snot. I'd much rather see someone burrowing their finger into their nose than their ear & if you drive regularly, you're pretty sure to see both in action quite regularly. Maybe it's the colour that's disturbing, maybe it's the smell. Not that I go around sniffing ear wax of course.... um, let's move on.
I've been a bit clogged in my right ear for the last few days. Occasionally, it comes good, but in the majority, i find myself turning my head in unnatural directions to try & get sounds to my unblocked ear. Normally, a bit of water coercion under the shower will sort the problem, but this time around, nothing seems to be working. I'll spare the details, but I'm scooping heaps of stuff out of it & it just keeps coming. Okay, I did give you the details, but it's for your own visualisation pleasure!
My question therefore is, why do we have earwax? Snot seems only to exist to let you know you when have a cold. Both the nose & the ear have hair inside to catch anything that might try to burrow in, so it seems pretty pointless. If there is a legitimate rationale for the wax, why then, does it get produced until you get bucket loads of cerumen congealing to produce temporary & darn frustrating deafness?
It's pretty quiet in my corner of the world! Yet another Reporting period at work out of the way & then everything seems to grind to a halt. I've got plenty of crappy little things I can do, but who can be bothered?... not me (well, not at the moment anyway!)
Happy Valentine's Day to all you romantics! For yesterday I mean.
I went walking a couple of weekends ago, from Waterfall Gully to the top of Mt Lofty. I've done it many times before, but not in the last eight months or so. For a while I didn't think I'd make it, but I struggled & joined a whole heap of Japanese tourists at the summit. So "as in Rome...", I too pulled out the camera & put together one of my famous panoramas.
Click the shot to download the full thing. It's a biggy at a smidge over 1 meg, but it's pretty detailed. On the far right is the city, with the Victoria Park Race Course just in front. Just right of centre is the Airport (the big brown patch) & further left is Glenelg.
Please enjoy, because it's a bloody hard walk & I don't plan doing it again for a while!
I must have a short tolerance today for Government Departments & Government owned businesses.
Firstly, Telstra, whose website is incredibly slow, if it's working at all, which today it isn't! I have to check their site to find out the details of my phone bill because they won't send me a bill in paper form. They didn't let me know they would stop sending it after I signed up online & when I tried to get a copy, they wanted to charge me $12 for the privilidge! Had I never signed up, I'd be receiving the bill by mail every month & not having to bother with their crap website.
I have also jumped on the internet to pay my car registration. The site for this is nice & quick but their use of language is rather patronising. Under "Renew a registration" is the question - "Can't find the time to visit a Customer Service Centre?". Well, yes, I can find the time, but everybody knows that once I actually find one of the Centres, There will be minimal staff dealing with long lines of frustrated customers & by the time I actually make it to a teller, they will place their "next teller please" sign on the counter & head off for lunch. That is what I don't have time for!
However, I did find time to blog about it. Hmmm, maybe I defeated the whole thing in the process.
Last night at 2am, about fifteen to twenty teenagers walked down our street, going on a rampage, knocking over letterboxes, shaking streetlamps until the globe explodes & leaving their trademarks with graffiti on anything standing still. By the time I had pulled myself from semi-consciousness & up to the window, one of these kids was working on our letterbox.
A year ago, a similar event occurred & our metal letterbox was flattened & the wooden post snapped in two. In response to this, Dad decided to make something more substantial. In past building efforts, the over-engineering has been quite amazing. Most things around the backyard are encased or reinforced with concrete, to the point that if we ever decide to move or change something, we have to get out the sledge or in the case of our veranda, dig really deep to find just how far the poles were buried into the earth.
For our letterbox, Dad used the steel panels from an old safe to construct the box. It's therefore made with quarter-inch steel & includes a lock to stop tampering. This is bolted to a metal pole which is buried about three feet into the ground & concreted in. To finalise the process the pole itself is also filled with concrete! Despite the levels of reinforcement, it is not out of the ordinary, still looking like an ordinary letterbox.
When the kid attacked it last night, it didn't move. When he kicked it, it didn't move. When he ran, full pelt, from across the road & kicked it karate style, that sucker still didn't move. All eight attempts to damage the box were futile & I suspect (& hope) this kid is rather sore after his efforts. There is not one single mark on the box.
I thought it was crazy to build such a heavily armored box, but it has now proved it's worth. The spoils of their attacks elsewhere were evidenced when a couple of other teens walked past the house carrying someone else's letterbox.
If anyone needs to dispose of small nuclear or other incendiary devices, drop by & we'll blow them up safely within the confines of our indestructible letterbox!
