The very annoying Harold Scruby, chief wingnut of the Pedestrian Council (membership unknown) wants to stop drivers listening to MP3 players.
I am yet to see a driver with earphones do something stupid, but I come close to mowing down dopey MP3 listening pedestrians on a daily basis. The worst place funnily enough is an intersection right outside some law chambers on Goulburn St in Sydney. The legal fraternity seems to have little or no understanding of what constitutes jaywalking, and idiots with and without headphones cross the road against the lights on a continual basis. Either that, or they figure they'll just sue a hapless driver that happens to hit them when they step out on the red.
I have lost count of the number of times that I have had to swerve around some idiot pedestrian that has stepped out onto the road with a glazed look in their eyes and noisemakers in their ears - or a noisemaking phone pressed against one ear. I shall henceforth start slapping them around the head as I go past.
Scruby needs to get out of his Blue Mountains hideaway and come visit the real world where pedestrians are their own worst enemy.
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Idiots on the roads
As much as I enjoy reading certain blogs, there are times when I feel like I've been strolling down a lovely country lane, smelling the sweet air and listening to the birds singing, and then I've trodden in an enormous, steaming dog turd. Comments on blogs can be like that.
A predictable theme on my favourite blogs is to have a go at people on bikes. I don't mind it most of the time - the idiotic cycling behaviour that I see all too often is deserving of disdain and a bit of abuse. I dish out a bit of it myself to dickheads on two wheels that cross my path. But I draw the line at people wanting to run cyclists over. I like to joke about taking a Glock with me on my rides, but it's pretty unlikely that such a desire will ever become reality. Unfortunately, I have come across motorists who really mean it when they say they want to knock a cyclist over - I've had one carload of young cockheads try and do it to me.
Now I've driven a lot of different vehicles, both on road and off. Tractors, trucks, big non-articulated Mack trucks, dumpers, motorbikes, forklifts, buses and a wide range of cars. Plus a bike, and in my youth, a skateboard.
Regardless of the vehicle that I've been driving, I have always managed to meet at least one over-ego'd dickhead on the road.
Back in my Reservist days, I often had to drive as an escort for vehicles carrying ammunition and explosives. These things carried everything from plain old ball ammunition, to grenades, anti-tank rockets, mortars, flares and C4 (useful for blowing up anti-tank rockets that fail to fire). The vehicles that were carrying this stuff had signs draped all over them saying "explosives", and just to make sure the message got through, they were bright red.
Now you might think that people would drive more carefully around trucks carrying explosives. They wouldn't exactly want to run into the side of one and end up being scattered all over the countryside in small, difficult to identify bits. At least that's what you'd think. That's how I would act.
That's how a lot of normal people would act, but for every 99 normal people, there is one festering fuck-muncher on the roads. The type of idiot that tailgates a truck full of explosives. The one that overtakes a truck full of explosives on a double white line on a blind crest. The type that races up beside a truck full of explosives on the inside, just so they can be at the front of the queue at the traffic lights - and then slams on the brakes just when they get in front of the truck.
One of the better driving courses that I have done was the motorcycle learners course. The instructors essentially spend two days drilling it into you that the road is covered in meat heads that are all out to kill motorcyclists, whether by intention or in-attention. Riding a motorbike safely is all about spotting the dickhead a mile away and taking evasive action. It is the only way to stay alive. The RTA mandated course simply tells you that the same RTA has allowed full fledged knuckle draggers to get a license, and your only option is to learn to avoid them.
I am sure that skippers of boats will tell stories about idiots that should never have been allowed onto the water, and pilots will probably talk about fools that should never have been certified to fly.
Some people that have a Jeckyl and Hyde personality change when they get in the car. Mild mannered people become complete arseholes behind the wheel. What I find fascinating is that from reading blog comments, it's clear that some people don't need a steering wheel to become an arsehole - they are spanking knob-throttlers 24x7.
This much the internet has taught me.
A predictable theme on my favourite blogs is to have a go at people on bikes. I don't mind it most of the time - the idiotic cycling behaviour that I see all too often is deserving of disdain and a bit of abuse. I dish out a bit of it myself to dickheads on two wheels that cross my path. But I draw the line at people wanting to run cyclists over. I like to joke about taking a Glock with me on my rides, but it's pretty unlikely that such a desire will ever become reality. Unfortunately, I have come across motorists who really mean it when they say they want to knock a cyclist over - I've had one carload of young cockheads try and do it to me.
Now I've driven a lot of different vehicles, both on road and off. Tractors, trucks, big non-articulated Mack trucks, dumpers, motorbikes, forklifts, buses and a wide range of cars. Plus a bike, and in my youth, a skateboard.
Regardless of the vehicle that I've been driving, I have always managed to meet at least one over-ego'd dickhead on the road.
Back in my Reservist days, I often had to drive as an escort for vehicles carrying ammunition and explosives. These things carried everything from plain old ball ammunition, to grenades, anti-tank rockets, mortars, flares and C4 (useful for blowing up anti-tank rockets that fail to fire). The vehicles that were carrying this stuff had signs draped all over them saying "explosives", and just to make sure the message got through, they were bright red.
Now you might think that people would drive more carefully around trucks carrying explosives. They wouldn't exactly want to run into the side of one and end up being scattered all over the countryside in small, difficult to identify bits. At least that's what you'd think. That's how I would act.
That's how a lot of normal people would act, but for every 99 normal people, there is one festering fuck-muncher on the roads. The type of idiot that tailgates a truck full of explosives. The one that overtakes a truck full of explosives on a double white line on a blind crest. The type that races up beside a truck full of explosives on the inside, just so they can be at the front of the queue at the traffic lights - and then slams on the brakes just when they get in front of the truck.
One of the better driving courses that I have done was the motorcycle learners course. The instructors essentially spend two days drilling it into you that the road is covered in meat heads that are all out to kill motorcyclists, whether by intention or in-attention. Riding a motorbike safely is all about spotting the dickhead a mile away and taking evasive action. It is the only way to stay alive. The RTA mandated course simply tells you that the same RTA has allowed full fledged knuckle draggers to get a license, and your only option is to learn to avoid them.
I am sure that skippers of boats will tell stories about idiots that should never have been allowed onto the water, and pilots will probably talk about fools that should never have been certified to fly.
Some people that have a Jeckyl and Hyde personality change when they get in the car. Mild mannered people become complete arseholes behind the wheel. What I find fascinating is that from reading blog comments, it's clear that some people don't need a steering wheel to become an arsehole - they are spanking knob-throttlers 24x7.
This much the internet has taught me.
There are some things I just don't get
Check out all the little figurines across the dashboard.
I have just one question.
Why?
I have just one question.
Why?
Nerd review - MG-350 HD MediaGate
The postie arrived around 1pm yesterday with a present for me - a wireless high definition multimedia player from zazz.
The idea behind spending $300 on this gadget is so that I can reduce the number of times I have to swap DVD's in and out of our DVD player. I know that sounds horrendously lazy, but when you have a Monkey that likes to watch a bit of the Wiggles, then a bit of Thomas the Tank Engine, and then a bit of Bananas in Pyjamas, then you'll understand where I am coming from. My idea is to rip all our DVD's, plonk them on the big hard drive in the MediaGate and forget about ever opening the DVD cupboard ever again.
At least that was the theory.
To start with, the manual is 50% useless. It fails to mention Vista even once, which is a problem since that is what most of our home computers are now running. You can download a more up to date manual from the airlinktek.com website that mentions Vista, but that's a bit bloody stupid given that Vista has been on the market for a year and this thing probably went into the box in China only a week ago.
So this manual can go in the bin.
What's it like to use?
Don't know - haven't managed to get it fully setup yet. I bought it because it is wireless, thus hoping that I could stick the MediaGate in the lounge room and use the ether to copy movies from my PC to the gadget. Well, that might be possible if your PC is running XP or Windows 2000 - maybe even Windows 98 - but Vista is not having a bar of it. The only way to get things onto the hard drive is to plug in a good old USB cable, which means the MediaGate is still sitting in the office on my desk whilst I rip DVD's and copy them across the wire.
If we had a LAN in the house, I could just plug it into an ethernet cable in the lounge room, but we haven't got that far yet. I have been hoping to avoid stringing cables from one end of the house to the other.
The remote control is a joke. The interface - well, let me just point out that it was designed by some Chinese people who are very good at putting hardware together but are hopeless at software development. Yugio is more comprehensible than the interface.
You can stream stuff off your PC, eliminating the need to copy stuff to the gadget, but that means a wait whilst it buffers up some of whatever it is you want to watch..... and I lack the patience for that. It also means your PC has to be on all the time, and it also means having a hard drive stuffed full of cartoons for the kids. I'd rather have my PC clear of all that stuff and have all the watchable stuff on the gadget.
I get the feeling that it is also going to look horrible when viewed on our old fashioned CRT TV.
Would I buy another one?
Ask me in a week.
The idea behind spending $300 on this gadget is so that I can reduce the number of times I have to swap DVD's in and out of our DVD player. I know that sounds horrendously lazy, but when you have a Monkey that likes to watch a bit of the Wiggles, then a bit of Thomas the Tank Engine, and then a bit of Bananas in Pyjamas, then you'll understand where I am coming from. My idea is to rip all our DVD's, plonk them on the big hard drive in the MediaGate and forget about ever opening the DVD cupboard ever again.
At least that was the theory.
To start with, the manual is 50% useless. It fails to mention Vista even once, which is a problem since that is what most of our home computers are now running. You can download a more up to date manual from the airlinktek.com website that mentions Vista, but that's a bit bloody stupid given that Vista has been on the market for a year and this thing probably went into the box in China only a week ago.
So this manual can go in the bin.
What's it like to use?
Don't know - haven't managed to get it fully setup yet. I bought it because it is wireless, thus hoping that I could stick the MediaGate in the lounge room and use the ether to copy movies from my PC to the gadget. Well, that might be possible if your PC is running XP or Windows 2000 - maybe even Windows 98 - but Vista is not having a bar of it. The only way to get things onto the hard drive is to plug in a good old USB cable, which means the MediaGate is still sitting in the office on my desk whilst I rip DVD's and copy them across the wire.
If we had a LAN in the house, I could just plug it into an ethernet cable in the lounge room, but we haven't got that far yet. I have been hoping to avoid stringing cables from one end of the house to the other.
The remote control is a joke. The interface - well, let me just point out that it was designed by some Chinese people who are very good at putting hardware together but are hopeless at software development. Yugio is more comprehensible than the interface.
You can stream stuff off your PC, eliminating the need to copy stuff to the gadget, but that means a wait whilst it buffers up some of whatever it is you want to watch..... and I lack the patience for that. It also means your PC has to be on all the time, and it also means having a hard drive stuffed full of cartoons for the kids. I'd rather have my PC clear of all that stuff and have all the watchable stuff on the gadget.
I get the feeling that it is also going to look horrible when viewed on our old fashioned CRT TV.
Would I buy another one?
Ask me in a week.
Beating sciatic pain
I used to suffer terribly from sciatic pain - it's what brought my career as an infantryman to a screaming halt when I was about 21. I had to give up my beloved M-60 and move to a less demanding role because my lower back had a bad habit of going berko about 10 days into a 2 week exercise. Not the best thing to happen at the best of times, but an absolute bastard when you are out in the shrubbery somewhere.
I spent the next 10 years or so bouncing from one form of unsatisfactory treatment to another. I have tried just about every form of quackery known to man, except for that thing which relies on continued dilution of whatever potion you are supposed to be taking. I've had massage, acupuncture, chiro-back-cracking, osteo-stuff and various other things, and none of them worked. I've tried stretching and bending and tucking myself into odd contortions, and none of them worked.
At one point, I was told that I would need surgery on my back before I was 40. Not a good prospect to look forward to.
After 10 years of occasional bouts of suffering, one doctor finally worked out that my problem was muscle spasms in my lower back where the muscles gripped the sciatic nerve and squashed it, hence the pain. He prescribed anti-inflamatories, and they finally did something about the pain.
The only problem with anti-inflamatories is that they are not good for you - they are certainly not the kind of thing that I would want to take twice a day for the rest of my life.
Then a certain series of events put me back on a bike. I moved house, which took me away from the pool that I used to swim in, so I needed a new form of exercise. As there were no gyms about, I bought a bike.
The next change was that the reliability of CityRail went down the toilet, so I went from casual rides on the weekend to riding to work most days.
After a while, I noticed that the back pain had gone completely, and I was no longer taking the anti-inflamatories. I saw a quack about it, and he reasoned that the riding was stretching my hamstrings and lower back out, which was the source of the problem. Apparently my hamstrings are so tight, my lower back doesn't bend at all. After a few years on the bike, it bends a bit more now. It's not perfect, but it is flexible enough to ensure no more sciatica.
So for me, it's not about whales or glowball worming or peak oil or any of that - it's all about my back.
Speaking of which, it's time to go for a ride.
I spent the next 10 years or so bouncing from one form of unsatisfactory treatment to another. I have tried just about every form of quackery known to man, except for that thing which relies on continued dilution of whatever potion you are supposed to be taking. I've had massage, acupuncture, chiro-back-cracking, osteo-stuff and various other things, and none of them worked. I've tried stretching and bending and tucking myself into odd contortions, and none of them worked.
At one point, I was told that I would need surgery on my back before I was 40. Not a good prospect to look forward to.
After 10 years of occasional bouts of suffering, one doctor finally worked out that my problem was muscle spasms in my lower back where the muscles gripped the sciatic nerve and squashed it, hence the pain. He prescribed anti-inflamatories, and they finally did something about the pain.
The only problem with anti-inflamatories is that they are not good for you - they are certainly not the kind of thing that I would want to take twice a day for the rest of my life.
Then a certain series of events put me back on a bike. I moved house, which took me away from the pool that I used to swim in, so I needed a new form of exercise. As there were no gyms about, I bought a bike.
The next change was that the reliability of CityRail went down the toilet, so I went from casual rides on the weekend to riding to work most days.
After a while, I noticed that the back pain had gone completely, and I was no longer taking the anti-inflamatories. I saw a quack about it, and he reasoned that the riding was stretching my hamstrings and lower back out, which was the source of the problem. Apparently my hamstrings are so tight, my lower back doesn't bend at all. After a few years on the bike, it bends a bit more now. It's not perfect, but it is flexible enough to ensure no more sciatica.
So for me, it's not about whales or glowball worming or peak oil or any of that - it's all about my back.
Speaking of which, it's time to go for a ride.
Suicide visor
My bike helmet has a clip-on plastic sun visor at the front that is no more. I'm not sure if it was added by the manufacturer as a means of keeping the sun out of your eyes, or simply to improve the lines of the helmet (ie, a fashion accessory). Whatever its purpose, I left it in place when I bought the helmet.
It's always been a bit wobbly - it's just a bit of plastic with lugs that bed into the foam liner of the helmet, and foam can easily stretch and deform. At normal riding speeds, it wasn't a problem, but I wasn't doing normal speeds last week.
In any given week, I rarely exceed 60km/h - the hills around here just aren't steep enough for a really rapid descent. But I went for a ride into new and uncharted territory, and found a hill that was an absolute ripper - by that, I mean that riding to the top of it almost resulted in me coughing my lungs out of my nose. It was steep and nasty and seemed to go on forever. Hard going up means fun going down.
The speedo quickly went up past 65, so I tucked down into my most aerodynamic position (it's hard tucking right over when you have 20 years of beer drinking wrapped around your waist) and the speedo started heading towards 70 when - WHAP - the visor detached from its middle mounting point and whacked into my sunglasses. I suddenly found myself going very fast down a completely foreign hill with no idea where I was going.
I lost my aerodynamic tuck as I wrestled with the recalcitrant visor, and later found that I had only reached 69.9km/h - which was about when the visor cut loose. I had no desire to climb the hill to try for another land speed record, so exceeding the speed limit by a large fraction will have to wait for another day.
I do wonder though whether a Police radar gun is able to pick up a speeding bike, particularly when they are so full of carbon fibre and other exotic creations. I only ask since I was not in a 70 zone - it's not often that one gets to exceed the speed limit when relying solely on your legs.
It's always been a bit wobbly - it's just a bit of plastic with lugs that bed into the foam liner of the helmet, and foam can easily stretch and deform. At normal riding speeds, it wasn't a problem, but I wasn't doing normal speeds last week.
In any given week, I rarely exceed 60km/h - the hills around here just aren't steep enough for a really rapid descent. But I went for a ride into new and uncharted territory, and found a hill that was an absolute ripper - by that, I mean that riding to the top of it almost resulted in me coughing my lungs out of my nose. It was steep and nasty and seemed to go on forever. Hard going up means fun going down.
The speedo quickly went up past 65, so I tucked down into my most aerodynamic position (it's hard tucking right over when you have 20 years of beer drinking wrapped around your waist) and the speedo started heading towards 70 when - WHAP - the visor detached from its middle mounting point and whacked into my sunglasses. I suddenly found myself going very fast down a completely foreign hill with no idea where I was going.
I lost my aerodynamic tuck as I wrestled with the recalcitrant visor, and later found that I had only reached 69.9km/h - which was about when the visor cut loose. I had no desire to climb the hill to try for another land speed record, so exceeding the speed limit by a large fraction will have to wait for another day.
I do wonder though whether a Police radar gun is able to pick up a speeding bike, particularly when they are so full of carbon fibre and other exotic creations. I only ask since I was not in a 70 zone - it's not often that one gets to exceed the speed limit when relying solely on your legs.
Monday, 7 July 2008
Dats Amore
Our hopeless local MP hit the big time today when she was mentioned in the SMH - that's a step up from getting your mug into the local rag once or twice a month. I reckon she feels that she is suffering from relevance deprivation syndrome, because a glossy newsletter comes through the mailslot every month or so, and I have run out of fingers and toes counting the number of times her photo appears in it.
I doubt her appearance in the SMH was a happy time for her, since Costa gave her both barrels.
"So I just tell all those cowards that are running to the press, they ought to stand up and put their hand up and say look, vote for me for leader, I'm sure most of them would be laughed at."
Yep. Angela would be laughed out of the house if she stuck her hand up for the top job.
This all resulted from Angela opening her yap last week and getting this quote in the paper:
"with the Drummoyne MP Angela D'Amore declaring the Premier and his ministers out of touch".
Out of touch? Angela held a series of "street meetings" not long ago where she decided to "listen to the community" about the proposed widening of the Iron Cove Bridge. I went along to one of them, and I can tell you that very little listening was done by her. She spent the entire time telling people what a good thing the bridge would be, and why they should change their minds and support it (and thus support her). I don't think anyone bought her spiel, but she appeared to be too thick to realise that she might as well have been preaching to a bunch of lamp posts.
Unfortunately, I think she is safe. This area is pretty much Labor dominated, and the voters and just too rusted onto Labor for their own good. Ah well.
I doubt her appearance in the SMH was a happy time for her, since Costa gave her both barrels.
"So I just tell all those cowards that are running to the press, they ought to stand up and put their hand up and say look, vote for me for leader, I'm sure most of them would be laughed at."
Yep. Angela would be laughed out of the house if she stuck her hand up for the top job.
This all resulted from Angela opening her yap last week and getting this quote in the paper:
"with the Drummoyne MP Angela D'Amore declaring the Premier and his ministers out of touch".
Out of touch? Angela held a series of "street meetings" not long ago where she decided to "listen to the community" about the proposed widening of the Iron Cove Bridge. I went along to one of them, and I can tell you that very little listening was done by her. She spent the entire time telling people what a good thing the bridge would be, and why they should change their minds and support it (and thus support her). I don't think anyone bought her spiel, but she appeared to be too thick to realise that she might as well have been preaching to a bunch of lamp posts.
Unfortunately, I think she is safe. This area is pretty much Labor dominated, and the voters and just too rusted onto Labor for their own good. Ah well.
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Doomed, continued
Adrian the cabbie blogged about this puff of steam back in June.
I rode past it and got a lungfull - it stank. Why anyone would want to live there is beyond me.
I rode past it and got a lungfull - it stank. Why anyone would want to live there is beyond me.
Rude little fuckers
Five frangers in two weeks, all in the same spot out on the street. Someone is getting a bit of action, which is nice, but why do they have to leave the evidence out in the street for all to see?
Funnily enough, they never leave the wrapper behind - just the franger.
I am starting to think that Trevor is finally getting his revenge...........
Funnily enough, they never leave the wrapper behind - just the franger.
I am starting to think that Trevor is finally getting his revenge...........
Garnaut idiocy
I heard a snippet of Garnaut on the radio today.
He said, if you have a carbon tax of $10 a tonne, the govt will raise $4 billion in revenue.
If you have a tax of $20 a tonne, they will raise $8 billion.
Um, sorry to break it to you BONEHEAD, but the whole idea of these sin taxes is to reduce consumption. Therefore, as the rate of tax goes up, consumption drops. I can't believe this idiot has written a report based on an economic model that assumes that revenue will double as the tax rate doubles. If doubling the tax rate doubles the amount of income raised, it means that the tax has had absolutely no impact on consumption, making it utterly worthless as a green tax - but quite good as far as raising revenue is concerned.
Success would be saying that doubling the tax rate to $20 a tonne increases the tax take, but only to say $6 billion, meaning that consumption has dropped as the rate has increased.
If he doesn't understand that simple point, then the whole report is a waste of space.
He said, if you have a carbon tax of $10 a tonne, the govt will raise $4 billion in revenue.
If you have a tax of $20 a tonne, they will raise $8 billion.
Um, sorry to break it to you BONEHEAD, but the whole idea of these sin taxes is to reduce consumption. Therefore, as the rate of tax goes up, consumption drops. I can't believe this idiot has written a report based on an economic model that assumes that revenue will double as the tax rate doubles. If doubling the tax rate doubles the amount of income raised, it means that the tax has had absolutely no impact on consumption, making it utterly worthless as a green tax - but quite good as far as raising revenue is concerned.
Success would be saying that doubling the tax rate to $20 a tonne increases the tax take, but only to say $6 billion, meaning that consumption has dropped as the rate has increased.
If he doesn't understand that simple point, then the whole report is a waste of space.
More bollocks
A DESPERATE service-station owner has drawn up a hit list of potential "petrol thieves" - including owners of old cars and suspicious-looking drivers - who must pay before they pump.
"You can't judge people on what they look like.''
That's what you think, wog boy. I, on the other hand, think you can judge people on what they look like, and we do it all the time.
Wog boys like the whingeing idiot that made that comment are a case in point. Why bother dressing up on a Friday night if it's not going to impress the chicks? Listen Fazio, you are counting on chicks judging you on what you look like in order to get a root.
If that's too difficult for you to grasp, go back to stealing BMW's.
"You can't judge people on what they look like.''
That's what you think, wog boy. I, on the other hand, think you can judge people on what they look like, and we do it all the time.
Wog boys like the whingeing idiot that made that comment are a case in point. Why bother dressing up on a Friday night if it's not going to impress the chicks? Listen Fazio, you are counting on chicks judging you on what you look like in order to get a root.
If that's too difficult for you to grasp, go back to stealing BMW's.
Kevin's rooted then
NSW bureaucrats have drawn up an official list of intoxication symptoms, so pub owners can tell when patrons are drunk.
Number one on the list of 39 signs of intoxication is slurred words, followed by rambling or unintelligible conversation.
Can't see our incoherent PM getting served in a bar anytime soon then.
Number one on the list of 39 signs of intoxication is slurred words, followed by rambling or unintelligible conversation.
Can't see our incoherent PM getting served in a bar anytime soon then.
Money definitely can't buy you class
I did one of those father-son things today where I took the Monkey to the park. My expectation was that I'd let him loose on the playground equipment, and would then sit back and read a book and enjoy a spot of winter sun.
Ha. Fat chance. We were at the park for 90 minutes, and I spent a good 75 of them pushing him on the swings. I had to swap him between the swings from time to time so that I could changeover to my other arm. I can barely type.... my arms are about ready to fall off.
Even 75 minutes of going up and down was not enough. Tantrums were thrown when it was time to depart the park for comfier places, like the couch for me and his bed for him, because we both like an afternoon nap.
But enough of our swinging habits.
Whilst we were there, the adjacent swing was occupied by a delightful young girl who was being pushed by her completely feral rich mum, who spent the entire time ignoring her kid and yakked to her friend instead, who also appeared to live in a house with a Mercedes or three in the garage.
I have nothing against rich people. I come from a comfortable background. Some of my friends have done very well for themselves. Heavens, I went to school with Twiggy Forrest, who is now Australia's richest man, and I even find myself related to him by marriage (not that it has ever done me any good.) So envy is not something that I feel when stuck next to two pretentious blondes in their Gucci sunglasses.
What I do object to are tarts who've married well. In the UK, they call them footballer's wives - slappers who have married dense, athletic bozos - and they get to drive a Ferrari as a result.
These two seemed to fit the mould. I spent around half an hour listening to one bitching about how useless her nanny was, and how many emails she had sent the nanny telling her to clean this and iron that and to feed the kids "interesting" vegetables etc etc. My god, she went on and on and on. I just couldn't understand why she didn't just sack the useless nanny and find another one. But no, that would have taken away her whinge-cow; that being someone even more useless than yourself, the sole purpose of having them around is so that you can bitch about them when they are not there.
Here is what I learned about some of the inhabitants of Five Wog this morning:
The nanny was so useless, she couldn't be compelled to iron anything - that meant that everything had to be taken to the ironing lady to be ironed. I have not heard of someone using an "ironing lady" since, oh, about 1920. Funny how as soon as these slappers make the jump upwards from the lower decks, they instantly outsource all domestic activity back to those still stuck on the lower rungs of society.
The nanny was so hopeless, she couldn't even extract the laundry from the dryer as soon as the dryer finished, meaning that everything had to be ironed. Well, whack me with a pickle stick - I don't think I have ever removed stuff from the dryer when it has gone beep, and I have certainly never considered the possibility of ironing the kids shirts. I just dry stuff and wear it.
Nannies have to be emailed these days with lists of things to be done. What the be-jesus ever happened to face to face conversation? I think that it's a good sign that you should not be employing someone if you are too afraid to talk to them. Unless you have some bizarre nervous condition - in that case, get a gig on Boston Legal with all the other wierdos.
Nannies get to drive a nice car, and they take it to the car wash an awful lot. I'm not sure if I heard right, but it appears that with this family, nanny collected the kids from school and then went to the car wash - every single day. I surmised that because the kids were fed cake every time they went to the car wash, and they seemed to be getting cake an awful lot.
Who washes their car every day? Mine gets washed once a season, if that.
Nannies have to feed kids vegetables every day, and they have to make those vegetables "interesting". The only way that I know to make vegetables interesting is to put them on a spoon and fly them around the table making "nrrow, nrrrrow" sounds, before popping them into a waiting Monkey mouth. Is the nanny supposed to carve them into squid and rabbit shapes? Dye the carrots purple?
Why can't these people fuck off out west and buy a mansion where they belong.
Ha. Fat chance. We were at the park for 90 minutes, and I spent a good 75 of them pushing him on the swings. I had to swap him between the swings from time to time so that I could changeover to my other arm. I can barely type.... my arms are about ready to fall off.
Even 75 minutes of going up and down was not enough. Tantrums were thrown when it was time to depart the park for comfier places, like the couch for me and his bed for him, because we both like an afternoon nap.
But enough of our swinging habits.
Whilst we were there, the adjacent swing was occupied by a delightful young girl who was being pushed by her completely feral rich mum, who spent the entire time ignoring her kid and yakked to her friend instead, who also appeared to live in a house with a Mercedes or three in the garage.
I have nothing against rich people. I come from a comfortable background. Some of my friends have done very well for themselves. Heavens, I went to school with Twiggy Forrest, who is now Australia's richest man, and I even find myself related to him by marriage (not that it has ever done me any good.) So envy is not something that I feel when stuck next to two pretentious blondes in their Gucci sunglasses.
What I do object to are tarts who've married well. In the UK, they call them footballer's wives - slappers who have married dense, athletic bozos - and they get to drive a Ferrari as a result.
These two seemed to fit the mould. I spent around half an hour listening to one bitching about how useless her nanny was, and how many emails she had sent the nanny telling her to clean this and iron that and to feed the kids "interesting" vegetables etc etc. My god, she went on and on and on. I just couldn't understand why she didn't just sack the useless nanny and find another one. But no, that would have taken away her whinge-cow; that being someone even more useless than yourself, the sole purpose of having them around is so that you can bitch about them when they are not there.
Here is what I learned about some of the inhabitants of Five Wog this morning:
The nanny was so useless, she couldn't be compelled to iron anything - that meant that everything had to be taken to the ironing lady to be ironed. I have not heard of someone using an "ironing lady" since, oh, about 1920. Funny how as soon as these slappers make the jump upwards from the lower decks, they instantly outsource all domestic activity back to those still stuck on the lower rungs of society.
The nanny was so hopeless, she couldn't even extract the laundry from the dryer as soon as the dryer finished, meaning that everything had to be ironed. Well, whack me with a pickle stick - I don't think I have ever removed stuff from the dryer when it has gone beep, and I have certainly never considered the possibility of ironing the kids shirts. I just dry stuff and wear it.
Nannies have to be emailed these days with lists of things to be done. What the be-jesus ever happened to face to face conversation? I think that it's a good sign that you should not be employing someone if you are too afraid to talk to them. Unless you have some bizarre nervous condition - in that case, get a gig on Boston Legal with all the other wierdos.
Nannies get to drive a nice car, and they take it to the car wash an awful lot. I'm not sure if I heard right, but it appears that with this family, nanny collected the kids from school and then went to the car wash - every single day. I surmised that because the kids were fed cake every time they went to the car wash, and they seemed to be getting cake an awful lot.
Who washes their car every day? Mine gets washed once a season, if that.
Nannies have to feed kids vegetables every day, and they have to make those vegetables "interesting". The only way that I know to make vegetables interesting is to put them on a spoon and fly them around the table making "nrrow, nrrrrow" sounds, before popping them into a waiting Monkey mouth. Is the nanny supposed to carve them into squid and rabbit shapes? Dye the carrots purple?
Why can't these people fuck off out west and buy a mansion where they belong.
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Predator and the awesome firepower scene
I remember going to see Predator at the cinema - crikey, that was a long time ago. 1987 if IMDB is correct. I am pretty sure that this was the movie that I went to with the Big T, and he came out with an imprint of his watch face embedded in his forearem. The tension was that great, he'd had his arms crossed and had dug the watch well and truly into his other arm.
I have just done a quick search for one of my favourite scenes - where they glimpse the alien for the first time and blast holy hell out of the jungle. For years afterwards, I had to put up with people telling me what a bullshit scene that was. After a while, I gave up trying to explain what bullets do to shrubbery, and used it as a means of sorting out those who have fired an automatic weapon from those that haven't.
I didn't get to participate in that many live fire shoots when I was a reservist - live ammo costs a lot (I was going to say that it costs a bomb, but bombs cost even more), so it's use was rationed. Blanks are much cheaper, but at times the budget for ammo ran out completely and we were reduced to running around the scrub yelling out "bang bang bang". I kid you not. Your defence force in action.
I imagine that sailors are told to stand on deck and go "whoosh" to similate firing a Sparrow missile.
Pilots probably get to run around the tarmac flapping their arms and going, "vroom".
Yes, I still cringe when I think about it.
Live fire shoots were something to look forward to - assuming that such a thing is your cup of tea. They were one of those things that made humping the M-60 around worth it. It was worth humping that damned thing around all year just to give it a run on a live fire and movement.
Why?
Because it was so much fun. Fun with a capital F.
Imagine this. Your section of 9 or 10 blokes is given a scenario of where you are doing a patrol through the bush and you hit an entrenched enemy and you have to clear them out. The target area has already been setup with remote controlled pop up targets set into bunkers, so you load up, patrol into the live fire area and let rip when given the word.
The entire shoot is tightly controlled. DS (directing staff) walk along behind you to make sure that no one does anything stupid, like point their weapon at someone else, and to check on things like your patrol skills, accuracy of your shooting, how you mark targets for the others in the section, how well you conduct your IA (immediate action) drills and so on. [IA is what happens when you pull the trigger and nothing happens. It could be a weapon jam, or your magazine is empty. The drill allows you to quickly determine what has happened and what has to be done to fix it - like stick a fresh mag on the weapon.]
We wouldn't know where the live fire zone was of course. We might patrol for half an hour before hitting it, but once we found it, we really let rip.
I'd be lugging the standard gunner load of 400 rounds for the M-60. My offsider would have his rifle plus another couple of hundred of link for the gun. Other members of the section would also be carrying a bag or two of link, each bag holding 100 rounds. We'd typically try and lug 1000 rounds, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it weighs plenty. Each round weighs 146gm, so a 100 round bag weighed in at 14.6 kilos (I'm not sure if that is correct, as it seems an awful lot - the M-60 itself "only" weighed 10.5kg.
Anyway, we lugged as much ammo as they'd issue us, which was about as much as we could carry without collapsing after 5 minutes.
So we'd be patrolling along, then the DS that had the remote control panel for the targets would flip up a target and the contact would be initiated. "Contact" for any non-Army types reading this means you have contacted the enemy. I'm not talking about contacting them via email or phone - I'm talking about contacting them with a wall of fast moving lead.
Half the time, everyone missed the fact that a target had popped up and the DS would have to flip a few more up to make it obvious. The drill then would be for us grunts to yell "contact front" (assuming it was a frontal contact) and then run a few steps, hit the ground, crawl to a firing position, select a target and open up. Everyone had an arc of responsibility - you don't want people shooting in all directions. A contact is not a wild melee of people shooting in all directions. Bullets kill both types of people - friendlies and enemies, so one does ones best not to zap your mates. Everyone would stick to their arc and blast anything that popped up within that arc.
That's when the fun began. The idea behind having a machine gun is to pulverise the enemy, so people would indicate targets for me to hit - since I was carrying 90% of the section firepower, it made more sense for me to blast a target with sustained fire than to have a rifleman plug a few rounds into it with his SLR.
One reason why I got the M-60 was that I was the master of the 3-5 round burst (the main reason though was that I had the strength and stamina to carry it all day and night). When we went on the range, I was always stunned by how few people could make the thing consistently fire a 3-5 round burst. I could pretty much fire as many rounds in a burst as were called for. If I was asked to fire 4 round bursts, that's what I'd do. If they wanted 5 round bursts, I'd fire 5 rounds, pause, fire 5 more, pause, and repeat until the ammo ran out. I seemed to have a natural feel for the tempo of the gun, and knew exactly when to release the trigger after each burst.
The idea behind the 3-5 round burst is that every 5th round is a tracer, so if you five a 5 round burst, there'll be one tracer in there somewhere to mark where your burst went. You can then adjust the next burst to fall wherever it is supposed to go. If you fire more than that, the gun recoil will probably have your rounds going all over the shop. You fire a burst, check where it went, adjust, fire another, check, adjust, fire another burst etc etc etc. I'm happy to say that I was pretty good at putting those rounds where they were supposed to go. I don't know why - I guess I just had the knack.
Anyway, to Predator.
A section contact would see us fire off maybe 1500 rounds - more if the DS were feeling generous and had given the riflemen extra mags. They carried 3 mags of 20 rounds back then, so 9 of them would blast off 540 rounds between them, and I'd add maybe another 1000 from the gun (assuming it didn't jam or fall apart in the process). By the time we'd finished, every tree under about 6 inches in diameter in the target area would be lying on its side. That much lead going through bush just flattens everything in its path. It was a good lesson in showing us what to hide behind and what not to. If you hugged a tree and your hands didn't meet on the other side, then that was an ok tree to take cover behind. Anything less, well, you wouldn't make it through the contact in one piece.
I watched one bloke shoot down a fairly thick tree. The DS were distracted, so instead of brassing up his designated targets, he put round after round into a selected tree in front of him. About halfway through his third mag, down it came. It gave everyone a surprise, since trees that big usually didn't fall over during a live fire shoot, but he was accurate and persistent, and he beat it in the end.
Nothing would be left standing in front of my gun for some distance. Any grass in front of the muzzle would be completely flattened by the muzzle blast. Any grass growing level with the barrel would be chopped off at that height by the departing bullets. All sapplings, shrubs, bushes and topiaries would be no more. The ground in front of me would be littered with twigs, shrubs, branches, leaves, grass and woodchips, and every now and then, the tracer would set some of it on fire, so we'd finish the contact, clear our weapons, then pick up rakes and water packs and put out a small bushfire.
So next time you are watching Predator, look out for that scene.
I have just done a quick search for one of my favourite scenes - where they glimpse the alien for the first time and blast holy hell out of the jungle. For years afterwards, I had to put up with people telling me what a bullshit scene that was. After a while, I gave up trying to explain what bullets do to shrubbery, and used it as a means of sorting out those who have fired an automatic weapon from those that haven't.
I didn't get to participate in that many live fire shoots when I was a reservist - live ammo costs a lot (I was going to say that it costs a bomb, but bombs cost even more), so it's use was rationed. Blanks are much cheaper, but at times the budget for ammo ran out completely and we were reduced to running around the scrub yelling out "bang bang bang". I kid you not. Your defence force in action.
I imagine that sailors are told to stand on deck and go "whoosh" to similate firing a Sparrow missile.
Pilots probably get to run around the tarmac flapping their arms and going, "vroom".
Yes, I still cringe when I think about it.
Live fire shoots were something to look forward to - assuming that such a thing is your cup of tea. They were one of those things that made humping the M-60 around worth it. It was worth humping that damned thing around all year just to give it a run on a live fire and movement.
Why?
Because it was so much fun. Fun with a capital F.
Imagine this. Your section of 9 or 10 blokes is given a scenario of where you are doing a patrol through the bush and you hit an entrenched enemy and you have to clear them out. The target area has already been setup with remote controlled pop up targets set into bunkers, so you load up, patrol into the live fire area and let rip when given the word.
The entire shoot is tightly controlled. DS (directing staff) walk along behind you to make sure that no one does anything stupid, like point their weapon at someone else, and to check on things like your patrol skills, accuracy of your shooting, how you mark targets for the others in the section, how well you conduct your IA (immediate action) drills and so on. [IA is what happens when you pull the trigger and nothing happens. It could be a weapon jam, or your magazine is empty. The drill allows you to quickly determine what has happened and what has to be done to fix it - like stick a fresh mag on the weapon.]
We wouldn't know where the live fire zone was of course. We might patrol for half an hour before hitting it, but once we found it, we really let rip.
I'd be lugging the standard gunner load of 400 rounds for the M-60. My offsider would have his rifle plus another couple of hundred of link for the gun. Other members of the section would also be carrying a bag or two of link, each bag holding 100 rounds. We'd typically try and lug 1000 rounds, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it weighs plenty. Each round weighs 146gm, so a 100 round bag weighed in at 14.6 kilos (I'm not sure if that is correct, as it seems an awful lot - the M-60 itself "only" weighed 10.5kg.
Anyway, we lugged as much ammo as they'd issue us, which was about as much as we could carry without collapsing after 5 minutes.
So we'd be patrolling along, then the DS that had the remote control panel for the targets would flip up a target and the contact would be initiated. "Contact" for any non-Army types reading this means you have contacted the enemy. I'm not talking about contacting them via email or phone - I'm talking about contacting them with a wall of fast moving lead.
Half the time, everyone missed the fact that a target had popped up and the DS would have to flip a few more up to make it obvious. The drill then would be for us grunts to yell "contact front" (assuming it was a frontal contact) and then run a few steps, hit the ground, crawl to a firing position, select a target and open up. Everyone had an arc of responsibility - you don't want people shooting in all directions. A contact is not a wild melee of people shooting in all directions. Bullets kill both types of people - friendlies and enemies, so one does ones best not to zap your mates. Everyone would stick to their arc and blast anything that popped up within that arc.
That's when the fun began. The idea behind having a machine gun is to pulverise the enemy, so people would indicate targets for me to hit - since I was carrying 90% of the section firepower, it made more sense for me to blast a target with sustained fire than to have a rifleman plug a few rounds into it with his SLR.
One reason why I got the M-60 was that I was the master of the 3-5 round burst (the main reason though was that I had the strength and stamina to carry it all day and night). When we went on the range, I was always stunned by how few people could make the thing consistently fire a 3-5 round burst. I could pretty much fire as many rounds in a burst as were called for. If I was asked to fire 4 round bursts, that's what I'd do. If they wanted 5 round bursts, I'd fire 5 rounds, pause, fire 5 more, pause, and repeat until the ammo ran out. I seemed to have a natural feel for the tempo of the gun, and knew exactly when to release the trigger after each burst.
The idea behind the 3-5 round burst is that every 5th round is a tracer, so if you five a 5 round burst, there'll be one tracer in there somewhere to mark where your burst went. You can then adjust the next burst to fall wherever it is supposed to go. If you fire more than that, the gun recoil will probably have your rounds going all over the shop. You fire a burst, check where it went, adjust, fire another, check, adjust, fire another burst etc etc etc. I'm happy to say that I was pretty good at putting those rounds where they were supposed to go. I don't know why - I guess I just had the knack.
Anyway, to Predator.
A section contact would see us fire off maybe 1500 rounds - more if the DS were feeling generous and had given the riflemen extra mags. They carried 3 mags of 20 rounds back then, so 9 of them would blast off 540 rounds between them, and I'd add maybe another 1000 from the gun (assuming it didn't jam or fall apart in the process). By the time we'd finished, every tree under about 6 inches in diameter in the target area would be lying on its side. That much lead going through bush just flattens everything in its path. It was a good lesson in showing us what to hide behind and what not to. If you hugged a tree and your hands didn't meet on the other side, then that was an ok tree to take cover behind. Anything less, well, you wouldn't make it through the contact in one piece.
I watched one bloke shoot down a fairly thick tree. The DS were distracted, so instead of brassing up his designated targets, he put round after round into a selected tree in front of him. About halfway through his third mag, down it came. It gave everyone a surprise, since trees that big usually didn't fall over during a live fire shoot, but he was accurate and persistent, and he beat it in the end.
Nothing would be left standing in front of my gun for some distance. Any grass in front of the muzzle would be completely flattened by the muzzle blast. Any grass growing level with the barrel would be chopped off at that height by the departing bullets. All sapplings, shrubs, bushes and topiaries would be no more. The ground in front of me would be littered with twigs, shrubs, branches, leaves, grass and woodchips, and every now and then, the tracer would set some of it on fire, so we'd finish the contact, clear our weapons, then pick up rakes and water packs and put out a small bushfire.
So next time you are watching Predator, look out for that scene.
What on earth are our teachers up to?
Schools seem to be mad about testing these days, which appears to make a change from say a decade ago when it was vitally important that parents were given no idea as to how their little dears were performing. Junior seems to be undergoing more tests than a sick character in an episode of House.
There's just one tiny problem with all this. Junior did a maths test recently and scored an almighty 12%. The last thing that I saw with 12% on it was a bottle of red that we drank last month. 12% is what Albanian illegal immigrants score when they go for their taxi license, and the taxi authority seems to regard that as a pass mark, but knowing only 12% in maths isn't going to get you far in life.
The score was abysmal enough to rate a phone call from his maths teacher, which did little more than alert me to what he had achieved, or failed to achieve. She seemed to be at a complete loss when I enquired what could be done to remedy the situation. Her job description did not appear to include anything to do with improving poor performance.
So J simply sat down with him one night and went through the questions one by one. It turned out that he just didn't grasp some of the concepts to do with fractions and decimals and things, but it didn't take long before he did. All he needed was an hour or two of tutoring to go from 12% to 64% when we got him to do the test again.
I then had a look at the questions that he got wrong on the 2nd time around. It was clear that he was completely confused when it came to multiplying fractions, so I spent 15 minutes making up about 50 of my own test questions, J went through the first few with him and then we left him to it. By the time he had done about 10 questions, he seemed to have it right. All it took was a bit of explanation, followed by a lot of repetition to hammer the point home.
It really was that easy. Explain it. Do it. Do it again. And again. And again and again and again and then about 50 more times. It's how I learnt to spell and add up and all that, and it seems to have worked reasonably well for me.
When we have sat down and looked at what Junior is being taught, we continually find that his teacher is getting his class to only do half the questions in his maths book, meaning that he is missing out on a big chunk of repetition. I have no idea why. The book was supposedly written by people that have a good grasp of what it takes to teach maths to kids. What's the point of missing out on half of it?
I can see that the rest of my year is going to be taken up with reading his maths book each week, seeing what's been done and then typing out about 50 sample equations for him to solve.
And people try and tell me that we have a good public education system.
There's just one tiny problem with all this. Junior did a maths test recently and scored an almighty 12%. The last thing that I saw with 12% on it was a bottle of red that we drank last month. 12% is what Albanian illegal immigrants score when they go for their taxi license, and the taxi authority seems to regard that as a pass mark, but knowing only 12% in maths isn't going to get you far in life.
The score was abysmal enough to rate a phone call from his maths teacher, which did little more than alert me to what he had achieved, or failed to achieve. She seemed to be at a complete loss when I enquired what could be done to remedy the situation. Her job description did not appear to include anything to do with improving poor performance.
So J simply sat down with him one night and went through the questions one by one. It turned out that he just didn't grasp some of the concepts to do with fractions and decimals and things, but it didn't take long before he did. All he needed was an hour or two of tutoring to go from 12% to 64% when we got him to do the test again.
I then had a look at the questions that he got wrong on the 2nd time around. It was clear that he was completely confused when it came to multiplying fractions, so I spent 15 minutes making up about 50 of my own test questions, J went through the first few with him and then we left him to it. By the time he had done about 10 questions, he seemed to have it right. All it took was a bit of explanation, followed by a lot of repetition to hammer the point home.
It really was that easy. Explain it. Do it. Do it again. And again. And again and again and again and then about 50 more times. It's how I learnt to spell and add up and all that, and it seems to have worked reasonably well for me.
When we have sat down and looked at what Junior is being taught, we continually find that his teacher is getting his class to only do half the questions in his maths book, meaning that he is missing out on a big chunk of repetition. I have no idea why. The book was supposedly written by people that have a good grasp of what it takes to teach maths to kids. What's the point of missing out on half of it?
I can see that the rest of my year is going to be taken up with reading his maths book each week, seeing what's been done and then typing out about 50 sample equations for him to solve.
And people try and tell me that we have a good public education system.
Deja vu all over again
I take a walk up and down our street every now and again with one of those grab-handy rubbish picker-upper things and a plastic bag and keep walking until I have filled the bag with roadside litter.
I usually only get about 50 yards down the street before the bag is full.
But that is the least of my problems. I once again found two used condoms in the gutter, almost opposite our house. I found two in pretty much the same spot a few weeks ago.
I never thought that we lived in such a fucking attractive spot. Or, perhaps I should call it an attractive fucking spot. I've never been watching TV and been disturbed by the sound of squeaking car springs, so either cars are quieter these days, or someone is seriously wrong in the head, and has taken to transporting their used frangers to our street for dumping.
It almost makes me want to start perusing security catalogues for an infra-red camera and the usual bundle of snooping paraphenalia. I don't really give a bugger about a couple of teenagers rooting outside my house, but I do care about them littering.
There is a great car park on the Bay Run that I ride through most mornings. It would be even better at sunset - some of the best photos that I have taken of the Bay have been from around that area. People drive there, park, and do whatever they do in parked cars.
Again, the only thing that gripes me is that when I ride past in the morning, there are piles of fast food wrappers stacked up neatly next to each car space. The little sunset watching turds are clearly having a feed, then dumping their rubbish out of their car door. I am usually gobsmacked at that sort of behaviour when I ride past, since there are plenty of rubbish bins along that stretch. In some places, you'll see a pile of rubbish in a car spot right in front of a bin.
I only see the evidence the morning after - I've never seen one of these arrogant little bastards in action. It makes me want to sneak around the carpark at night with a can of that expansion foam, going from car to car and filling up their big fat exhaust pipes with stuff that will cause their cars to backfire and fail to start.
That'd fuck 'em.
I usually only get about 50 yards down the street before the bag is full.
But that is the least of my problems. I once again found two used condoms in the gutter, almost opposite our house. I found two in pretty much the same spot a few weeks ago.
I never thought that we lived in such a fucking attractive spot. Or, perhaps I should call it an attractive fucking spot. I've never been watching TV and been disturbed by the sound of squeaking car springs, so either cars are quieter these days, or someone is seriously wrong in the head, and has taken to transporting their used frangers to our street for dumping.
It almost makes me want to start perusing security catalogues for an infra-red camera and the usual bundle of snooping paraphenalia. I don't really give a bugger about a couple of teenagers rooting outside my house, but I do care about them littering.
There is a great car park on the Bay Run that I ride through most mornings. It would be even better at sunset - some of the best photos that I have taken of the Bay have been from around that area. People drive there, park, and do whatever they do in parked cars.
Again, the only thing that gripes me is that when I ride past in the morning, there are piles of fast food wrappers stacked up neatly next to each car space. The little sunset watching turds are clearly having a feed, then dumping their rubbish out of their car door. I am usually gobsmacked at that sort of behaviour when I ride past, since there are plenty of rubbish bins along that stretch. In some places, you'll see a pile of rubbish in a car spot right in front of a bin.
I only see the evidence the morning after - I've never seen one of these arrogant little bastards in action. It makes me want to sneak around the carpark at night with a can of that expansion foam, going from car to car and filling up their big fat exhaust pipes with stuff that will cause their cars to backfire and fail to start.
That'd fuck 'em.
One, sole lunatic
I really have to respect this bloke. I took this photo on Friday as I was driving down Victoria Road into town.
For starters, he is riding on Victoria Road, which is something that I would never do. It's three lanes of nasty traffic in each direction, and the hills are killers. There is nothing worse than trying to plod up a hill on a bike with 100 steaming car drivers behind you all wanting to get past.
The second reason is that it is pouring with rain at this point, and it was only about 11 degrees. Yes, he is dressed for the weather, but it is still an evil time to be out on a bike.
Here's the curious thing for those that say driving is such a quick way to get from A to B. I took this photo at Balmain. I didn't catch this bloke until we got to the middle of the Anzac Bridge, and that's only because the bridge is quite steep and all cyclists slow down quite markedly when they get to it.
This guy has some balls. Except that they are probably now blue, small and hard to find.
For starters, he is riding on Victoria Road, which is something that I would never do. It's three lanes of nasty traffic in each direction, and the hills are killers. There is nothing worse than trying to plod up a hill on a bike with 100 steaming car drivers behind you all wanting to get past.
The second reason is that it is pouring with rain at this point, and it was only about 11 degrees. Yes, he is dressed for the weather, but it is still an evil time to be out on a bike.
Here's the curious thing for those that say driving is such a quick way to get from A to B. I took this photo at Balmain. I didn't catch this bloke until we got to the middle of the Anzac Bridge, and that's only because the bridge is quite steep and all cyclists slow down quite markedly when they get to it.
This guy has some balls. Except that they are probably now blue, small and hard to find.
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
What happened to the 20/20 summit?
One of those taxpayer funded colour newsletters came through the mail the other day from John Murphy MP, our local Labor gumnut. It's six pages of, "This is how we are blowing your hard earned tax dollars".
The term "working families" only gets three mentions. It's clearly on the nose.
The 20/20 summit fails to get a single mention, even though prior to the summit, Murphy wrote to all us taxpayers asking for us to submit ideas that he could take to Canberra.
I presume either no one could be bothered responding, or his mailbox was full of people telling him to take a flying jump. The disastrous press that the summit generated has obviously meant that it has been wiped from all government communications.
The term "working families" only gets three mentions. It's clearly on the nose.
The 20/20 summit fails to get a single mention, even though prior to the summit, Murphy wrote to all us taxpayers asking for us to submit ideas that he could take to Canberra.
I presume either no one could be bothered responding, or his mailbox was full of people telling him to take a flying jump. The disastrous press that the summit generated has obviously meant that it has been wiped from all government communications.
New car unreliability
Another ride into work, another morning where I went over the Anzac Bridge at a higher rate of knots than the traffic in the lane next door.
The problem? This new Audi broken down near the crest of the bridge.
I'd hate that to be me. You'd feel like a right twat, wouldn't you?
The problem? This new Audi broken down near the crest of the bridge.
I'd hate that to be me. You'd feel like a right twat, wouldn't you?
Never, ever overtake on the left
I have a small number of rules that I generally stick to because they tend to be fairly handy at keeping me alive and in one piece. One of those rules is to never undertake another road user, except when there is a marked bike lane - and even then to do it with extreme caution and trepidation.
I broke that rule last week as I was crossing the Anzac Bridge. The bike/pedestrian path is quite wide - wide enough for four people to walk abreast without bashing elbows and things - and I am always able to comfortably pass other cyclists or pedestrians on the right.
Except for this turkey that I came up behind as he puffed his way up the hill. He was already on the centreline, and his head was drooping over to one side, and he was drifting to the right......so I dashed up inside him on the left, figuring that he was going to continue going right and slam into the concrete traffic barrier that separates us two wheelers from the traffic.
But the bastard didn't. Just as I drew level with him, his head snapped up straight and he leaned hard left and went hard left....straight into my side. Luckily, I outweighed him by a reasonable factor, and saw him coming, but it was a tough proposition to stop me being driven into the bridge uprights on my left. I ended up with some bruised ribs from where his handlebar went into me, and some pulled muscles here and there from the effort of trying to keep me and him upright.
It only took a few seconds, but I was able to lever him off me by a bit of a jab with the elbow, and then I was free of him and able to get the hell away from him.
Gumbies........ the world is full of gumbies.
I also normally yell at people as I am coming up behind them - usually "Passing on your right", which at least lets them know that I am there. However, more and more gumbies are buying iPods, which means they don't hear and damned thing until they jink right and send both of you crashing to the ground.
Whenever I ride past someone listening to an iPod, I feel like grabbing those little cables and yanking the doo-dads from their ears. And I hope it hurts.
I broke that rule last week as I was crossing the Anzac Bridge. The bike/pedestrian path is quite wide - wide enough for four people to walk abreast without bashing elbows and things - and I am always able to comfortably pass other cyclists or pedestrians on the right.
Except for this turkey that I came up behind as he puffed his way up the hill. He was already on the centreline, and his head was drooping over to one side, and he was drifting to the right......so I dashed up inside him on the left, figuring that he was going to continue going right and slam into the concrete traffic barrier that separates us two wheelers from the traffic.
But the bastard didn't. Just as I drew level with him, his head snapped up straight and he leaned hard left and went hard left....straight into my side. Luckily, I outweighed him by a reasonable factor, and saw him coming, but it was a tough proposition to stop me being driven into the bridge uprights on my left. I ended up with some bruised ribs from where his handlebar went into me, and some pulled muscles here and there from the effort of trying to keep me and him upright.
It only took a few seconds, but I was able to lever him off me by a bit of a jab with the elbow, and then I was free of him and able to get the hell away from him.
Gumbies........ the world is full of gumbies.
I also normally yell at people as I am coming up behind them - usually "Passing on your right", which at least lets them know that I am there. However, more and more gumbies are buying iPods, which means they don't hear and damned thing until they jink right and send both of you crashing to the ground.
Whenever I ride past someone listening to an iPod, I feel like grabbing those little cables and yanking the doo-dads from their ears. And I hope it hurts.
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