ajft

Same newspaper, same story, just check the difference in wording!

15:28 it is reported as:

  A MAN playing cricket with his family has been killed and his
  daughter's partner was badly hurt when a fight broke out with a second
  group of people on a beach.

Only an hour and a half earlier, at 13:51 it opened with:

  A MAN playing a game of beach cricket with his family has been
  killed by thugs who pelted him with beer bottles and hit him in
  the head with the bat.

Why the change? Was legal advice made to change it? What's the real story? Who knows....

They're here to help....

I'm convinced that not only is Vic. Roads determined to get cyclists off the state's roads, but that Bicycle Victoria is in league with them. Us poor cyclists are outgunned, but not outclassed.

Bicycle Victoria appears to like to have concrete things that they can point at to, so that they can prove that they are living up to their motto More people cycling more often... so long as it is on nice safe little off-road bike paths or specially painted bike lanes. Making cycling a normal part of normal life and accessible on all normal roads is way too hard, much easier to build special bicycle facilities — unfortunately reinforcing the attitude of both cyclists and drivers that you can't ride a bike unless its on a special-purpose bicycle facilities, and the much worse attitude that where such facilities don't exist, you can't ride a bike. Without X many new kilometres of bike lanes and paths to point at each year, where would all the funding come from? Of course none of the previous years' bike lanes and paths ever seem to receive even a fraction of the funding for maintenance, but that all seems to get overlooked. A lot of the new lanes and paths only seem to get built where they won't inconvenience anyone either, or provide any real improvement in safety.

Meanwhile Vic. Roads appears to have an intention of getting cyclists off the roads completely, all in the interests of improved safety and improved traffic flow of course....

These two groups periodically manage to reach a crescendo of anti-cyclist facilities, such as the newly redeveloped North road, "upgraded" from three lanes to four in each direction, and with the kerbside lane made bus-only for a couple of hours each day. Of course special “cycle facilities” are provided; this is in the form of an off-road bike path that has no drainage, no lighting, no lane markings, that ends at each of seven road-crossings and restarts on the other sides (cyclists must give way to cross traffic and cross the roads as pedestrians) and that utilises a footpath past a primary school and across a dozen driveways for the last half kilometre! With friends like BV and Vic Roads, what kind of enemies do cyclists in Melbourne need?

Being subjected to the latest hazard of bollards and roadworks this morning prompted me to investigate the exact meanings of the term “Bus Lane”, and prompted the following enquiry to Vic Roads.

As a frequent cyclist along North Road to Monash University I am concerned that recent "upgrades" to North road appear to pose a significant hazard to cyclists. My experience as a motorist along here shows that drivers rarely respect the existing speed limit (70km/hr) and the expansion from three to four lanes in each direction is likely to increase this speed.

The opportunity was present for the new kerbside lane to be made wider, enhancing the safety for cyclists and enabling motorists to more safely pass, but this opportunity appears to have been ignored, the kerbside lane is now, if anything, narrower than previously, further endangering cyclists from motorists who overtake unsafely.

Additionally, it appears that for some hours of the day, the kerbside lane is marked as "Bus Lane" which I believe means that cyclists will be forced to ride in the next most lane, being simultaneously passed on the right by most motorists and on the left by buses and by that percentage of motorists who choose to ignore the "Bus Lane" signs.

Can the "Bus Lane" signs please be updated to the "Bus/Cycle lane" signs as described in VicRoads pamphlet "Cycle Notes No. 19".

thank you, Adrian Tritschler

I await with interest the response....

[<tstamp date="2007-12-27">2007-12-27</title>] An interesting response received; apart from the spurious mention that I should use the off-road cycle facilities, there is the statement that cyclists can legally ride in the bus lane at all times of the day. I later discovered that this advice was, in fact, illegal!

Manually recorded rainfall from the rain gauge in our back garden.

I'd love to get an electronic rain gauge, maybe one day!

Trying for a smaller meal for once, we had a plain toasted sandwich for breakfast, then poked around in the greenstone shop while Hoki prepared for its Christmas parade. Nothing much of interest in the shops — nothing under a few thousand dollars that is! A little curious that from memory of my visit in 1980 it was all tikis and figurines, now it seems to be all spirals — “koru” — and other geometric shapes.

We drove out of town as the parade was starting, twisting around for 20km or so north then turning inland and commencing the clib up the valley towards Arthurs Pass. The road followed the old railway line on and off before losing it in the distance as we started the real 3rd and 3nd gear climbs and corners up through the forest. The views back down or out over the Otira viaduct were incredible — and just on cue two Kea (Nestor notabilis) mysteriously appeared without a sound. I'm not sure if they fly quietly in or walk out from under the bush, I'd suspect either. Very intelligent birds, they remind me as much of owls as they do of parrots.

Once over the pass the forest changes almost immediately, so much drier on the eastern side. We drove through the town of Arthurs Pass and out the other side before fully realising, then turned around to go back for lunch. So-so bacon sandwiches with more sickly-sweet salad dressing, but more than made up for it with a magnificent icecream, all eaten outside as the Keas circled overhead.

Coming down from the mountains and ski fields parts of the landscape were almost reminscent of the Western USA, dry plains and rocky mountain sides, such a contrast from the green of the west coast forests.

Then a last hour or so across the plains of Canterbury, so green and tame compared to the mountains — and windy too! I can see why there are so many hedges and windbreaks planted.

Saturday afternoon Christchurch traffic came as a bit of a shock; traffic lights and a stop-start crawl. At the entry to the city the sign “Centre via One-way system” provoked a comment of “hold your break, we're going in” and much laughter. Amazing how your perceptions of traffic change after a few weeks of driving around out in the isolation in the country.

A car park in a random city street as we commenced the search for accomodation on foot. Strike one — Coachman is full. Strike two — Excelsior is full. Third time lucky, a bed in Corkers, although there is a long walk up the stairs and signs warn us to beware of leaving valuables about....

Then it is beer o'clock, first the delights of the “Twisted Hop” ale house, then beers and food at the “Dux de Lux.” With food and drink like this I could very quickly grow to like Christchurch!

After all these years of spotting the swooping magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) just in time, or hearing the whoosh as the go for the back of the head, today my luck ran out.

Damn! Ouch.

I was cruising home slowly up the Dandenong road service lane, no point in exerting yourself when the temperature is up around 35°C, somewhere alongside the sports oval where the old men play boules there came out of the blue a completely unexpected smack on the side of the head. What the #@#$%@$^@! was my immediate thought, some kid's thrown a ball at me, then glanced around to see the culprit spiralling up for another attack run. Madly waving my arm above my head I rode on, out of range, out of the nesting territory.

One bleeding ear, one bruised ego. One satisfied magpie.

Have you ever tried to take a macro photo in the mirror of your own ear? No, I didn't think so. Go and try it, that'll explain why there's no photographic proof of the damage done.

Adding to the meme, and courtesy of the ABC news, by way of the AFP, a list of the Most ridiculous British laws. I'm wary of these, how many times have we heard so called “laws” that turn out to be apocryphal? Anyway, here they are together with the percentage of surveyed people who thought it was the most riduclous:

Most ridiculous British laws

1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament (27 per cent)
2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside down (7 per cent)
3. In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store (6 per cent)
4. Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day (5 per cent)
5. In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter (3 per cent)
6. A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet (4 per cent)
7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail belongs to the queen (3.5 percent)
8. It is illegal to avoid telling the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing (3 per cent)
9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour (3 per cent)
10. In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow (2 per cent)

So, slashdot is good for something sometime!

The story New Robots Hunt Pirates by Sea, linking to a Popular Mechanics article is interesting enough, but as always, it is the comments that make the story. A quick read and the two that had me spraying coffee are:

  Pirate Dread

“We are the Dread Pirate Robots. There will be no survivors.”

If only we had a remotely-operated wheelbarrow... That would be something!

  I feel safer already

What could possibly go wrong? I mean, I'd love my cruise ship to get checked out by the naval equivalent of ED-209.

“YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO COMPLY”

Can someone take a cluestick to the newspeople who write gibberish such as the following:

The 2.54pm Williamstown train was expressing from Footscray to Spotswood at the time of the accident.

and:

...said he heard the train sounding its horn as it expressed through the level-crossing.

Go to any dictionary you can find and look up the verb expressing, there is only one definition that I know and it aint the one that they've made up, nor is it an act that a train is likely to perform!

Something that's been bugging me for a while as I deal with ridiculously large amounts of disk space:

Assuming a 2M capacity of an unformatted "1.44M" 3.5" disk which has physical dimensions of 3x90x94mm; 1T of data is a stack 1572m long, or 13.3 cubic metres of disks, or if used as floor tiles, enough to cover 4435 square metres.

Man these guys are fast! It seems to be a week for the Peregrine (Falco peregrinus), yesterday there was an article about a nest and chicks on a city apartment block and photos on page 5 of both the big and the little papers; then today as we were driving out of the street I saw one hurtle past overhead. I think it must be the same one that I saw a few weeks ago in Oakleigh East as I was riding home, and some months ago chase pigeons over our house.

No way I'd be able to catch them on camera, not in flight, not with my camera!

Ride-to-Work day was amusing in some small way. In the morning could I tell it was RTW day? Not really, North road was bumper-to-bumper stationary cars, in twenty minutes I saw one other cyclist, the traffic choked to a halt as the road gets widened to accommodate more cars, with a special bicycle ghetto being built in the median strip that you a) can't get to, then b) have to give way at every single cross road at then c) use the footpath past the primary school. Cyclists dismount please!

In the evening could I tell it was RTW day? Riding up a one-way lane I come to a halt as the p-plate bearing commodore screeches around the corner and comes straight at me. Me: “Mate it's a one way street,” him: “Get fucked, I live here,” me: “I guess if you live here you know its a one way street.” I then had to dive off to the side as he drove straight at me screaming abuse about faggots bicycles poofters f'en cyclist c*ts.

All this followed ten minutes later by a different knob-end throwing the door open and heaving his wobbly belly out of the car and nearly collecting me with the wine bottle he was waving as a counter-balance.

RTW day. Oh yeah. Maybe in the CBD, but out here in 'burbs the petrol-heads go on for ever

Oddness. Placing my mouth to the information firehose for a daily catchup via google reader there's two mentions of tag::pumpkin in two adjacent items — not quite adjacent, I think there were three not-so-interesting ones in between. Norman Walsh plays with Ajax and on his demo portal the first twittering is:

mattb: apparently the UK is experiencing a severe pumpkin shortage due to recent weather. what will we do? (about 8 hours ago)

Second item in a cycling group on Flickr, titled “Pumpkin Runner”, a man jogging carrying a pumpkin.

I guess the northern hemisphere's pumpkin season makes it all a little more understandable...

I wonder what movies I'll end up watching through the year? Here's hoping it'll be more than we managed to see in 2006! Somewhere in the past few years we went from being frequent cinema-goers to almost complete abstainers.

2007-Oct-12 A Scanner Darkly (DVD)
2007-Sep-02 Amazing Grace
2007-Aug-12 Black Book
2007-Aug-10 Desperado (DVD)
2007-Aug-04 El Mariachi (DVD)
2007-Jun-17 Overcoming (DVD)
2007-Jun-03 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (DVD)
2007-May-27 My Best Friend
2007-Apr-01 A Sunday in Hell (1976)
2007-Apr-01 Vive Le Tour (1962)
2007-Mar-04 Thunderball (DVD)
2007-Mar-03 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (DVD)
2007-Feb-25 Miss Potter
2007-Feb-24 Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest (DVD)
2007-Jan-20 Casino Royale

Hmm, its been two months now, surely Bigpond have made some sort of progress on my problems with their billing system... surely...

Interactive telephone games, 133.933, 1, 1, 1, 2, 03, home phone number, #, yes, yes, yes... Aha, a human. “What can I do for you today?”

“I lodged a problem report on August the 8th, called again on the 10th and 14th,, then had it escalated on August the 21st. On August the 29th I received a call to see whether I still had the problem and I did. I have heard nothing since.”

A little time on hold, a little wait, then this classic statement:

“It's been escalated up to the helpdesk guys which is up on high and there's no telling how long those guys'll take.”

I pointed out that it has now been two months. Another little wait on hold while Shannon investigated further.

“There's no phone access to them, only email, so you'll just have to wait and there's no telling when they'll get back to you”.

So it could be two days, it could be two months... it could be the middle of next year in which case the two year contract will be expired and I'll be finally rid of them for good and they can keep their broken billing system for all eternity for all I care.

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Ah, I guess that settles it then, it is now definitely time to get my ride-to-work bike to the mechanics for some much-needed TLC. All winter long I've been looking at the great lack of teeth that is the cluster and chain-rings and thinking that I'll do something about them once the weather improves....

Last week I was starting to think that the weather had improved and I really needed to do something about them....

This morning on the way down the street there was a loud metallic SPANG followed by the unmistakable feel of a rear wheel wobbling from side to side. A spoke has snapped, and in true spoke-snapping fashion it is hidden behind the cluster.

It is now definitely time to do something about it...

The Rosstown Rail Trail is all a bit of a sad joke really; there is no longer a railway, there was only ever one train on it, and there is no rail trail — just a handful of signs at semi-random locations at road intersection, some pointing one way, some pointing the other, and the odd place where there are signs that point in both directions. The general feel is that someone somewhere once got some funding to put a few signs in. That this was done with much fanfare and hurrah, then it was all ignored and has been left to gradually decay. The one information board on the entire route is buried under a thick mound of vegetation and almost completely obliterated by graffiti.

I've ridden sections previously, I think on one memorable occasion Jo and I managed to traverse the entire length when a few random corners turned out to be the correct random corners. This afternoon I thought I'd try again, taking my camera along for company.

The start at Oakleigh station looks promising, a distinctive red arrow in the station underpass pointing proudly off to the south. Just note that you aren't allowed to ride here, even though it is a section of Melbourne's Station Rail Trail and a major commute track, cyclists aren't allowed to cycle on the cycle path where it goes through the stations. So get off and walk up the ramp and along the footpath to where local knowledge and previous experience shows me that the plaque is buried under the bushes! The arrow here points off along the footpath, but it is of course illegal to ride on the footpath so you have to cross the road and continue on the far side, under Warrigal road and along Carlisle crescent. At Richardson street you turn right into the cul-de-sac and continue along the Station Rail Trail towards Hughesdale station, admiring the broken glass and dog turds on the path, and the graffiti murals on the rear fences of the houses along the rail line.

A very loud CRACK alongside my right ear served to inform me that the magpie nesting season has commenced, as usual, they half scare the life out of you but unless you're unlucky, or the surprise makes you crash, don't often draw blood. Here also was my first navigational mistake, at the unsigned tee-intersection in the park I turned right to follow the trail to Hughesdale station, expecting to see a sign there telling me where to go. There is no sign — apparently you're meant to just know that you need to go straight ahead, then down Freda street, then left into Poath road and follow Poath road to the roundabout. I got to Hughesdale station instead, then turned back onto Poath road and headed back to the roundabout and the directions off down Murrumbeena crescent — from previous experience I already knew that somehow I had to get to the roundabout.

Murrumbeena crescent ends at a tee-intersection with Murrumbeena road, of course there are no signs, so I guessed — correctly it turned out — and zig-zagged left and right and into Rosanna street, then past the large construction site of yet-another old-peoples' home.

You have the choice here of riding along a nearly deserted quiet suburban back street here, or the bike path alongside in the narrow park which is a magnificent shade of pale yellow concrete. I wish more of the bike tracks where made of that concrete since it is fairly smooth and can actually be seen at night, when the typically black tarmac paths cannot — for of course it is exceptionally rare for the bike paths to have any lighting.

Amazingly, at the end of Rosanna street there are arrows not only pointing back the way you just came, but to the left, indicating where you should go! You should treasure this, it is one of the few times that it will happen on this trail.

...

It is here where the park ends and the road goes under the Frankston rail-line that I lost the trail for good. The path you are on ends at the tee-intersection, one road stretches off north-south, a minor road curls under the railway line and a path heads off north alongside the rail line. The arrow seems to point somewhere half-way between the path along this side of the rail line and the tunnel under it. If you choose to go under the railway you can either ride off into the carpark of a suburban footy ground or curve around north and ride towards Glenn Huntley station hoping that each side road you pass will have an arrow directing you west and back onto the trail. You will search in vain, I think you are meant to detour through the footy ground carpark, but I'll have to leave that for another day...

A Telstra Bigpond technician — presumably of the second level in support — telephoned to see if my problem with their billing system has been resolved. A short answer: No, since they have not yet resolved it!

Interesting in that I was told last Tuesday they would contact me in "about four to five days", with the implication that it would be fixed by then, but the first contact is in six days and that is pretty obviously just to verify that they have to start working on the problem!

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Always such a tedious task, but I have to find the gems amongst the dross:

“I am MR. Gray Norman, an accountant”

Gray Norman, a gray name for a profession gray by reputation... how very appropriate.

“I am a straight forward person”

The wonders of the English language... given all the sexual innuendo in the spam, is he really meaning that he is a straight, forward person, or a straight-forward person?

Oh well, back to work...

Another trip through Canberra airport, once more I'm selected for the “random” additional security checks. I think I've worked it out though, on a Sunday evening there's so little to for the security staff to do that their “random” person selector picks every third person, and anyone who stands out in the slightest gets picked on.

At least this time they were civil about the whole deal, although I am puzzled about one aspect of the whole metal-detector thing. I walked into the airport wearing shoes, socks, jeans, underpants, a belt, tee-shirt, fleece vest, fleece jacket and a hat. For some reason I have to remove the hat and it has to go through the metal detector seperately. I guess I prefer it to be my hat to my underpants…

Ho hum, on it goes...

Three weeks, one problem, four phone calls, nine emails — today I spent 45 minutes on the phone and they reproduced the problem I first reported on the 8th, then again on the 10th, and will escalate it to a higher level of support!

The woman in support that I spoke to was very helpful, she expressed complete amazement that nothing has been done in three weeks and confirmed that the unpublished "wide-spread login problems" on a Friday afternoon two weeks ago was a typical "go away and stop bothering me" answer.

Unfortunately, all I've got to show for three quarters of an hour on the phone is a sore ear, a fault escalation, and the knowledge that my Bigpond password is now written down in the fault report (I didn't know they were allowed to ask for it, don't care, if my account is misused I can show that they are using it)

I've been told I should hear from them in "about four working days". I chose not to ask how whether four working days in Telstra corresponds to four calendar days, or four calendar weeks...

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A weekend away from Melbourne down along the coast, there's just so much birdlife compared with in the city. I still saw the airborne rats that are the Sparrows, Starlings and Indian mynahs, but off the top of my head I can remember: Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen), Pied Currawong (Strepera graculina), Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), Crimson Rosella, King Parrot (Alisterus scapularis), Sulfer-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita), Mudlark, Wood duck (Chenonetta jubata), Black duck (Anas superciliosa), Dusky Moorhen, Pied cormorant, Little black cormorant, Black cormorant, Silver gull (Larus novaehollandiae), Mystery grey seabird, Pacific gull (Larus pacificus), White ibis, Superb blue wren, New-holland honeyeater, Brown thornbill, Black-shouldered kite, Black hawk, Nankeen kestrel, White egret.

Two new books:

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien ASIN: 0006754023 Buy at Amazon

On Mexican Time, by Tony Cohan ASIN: 1863591303 Buy at Amazon

Normal Thursday evening social events were thrown into disarray by Jo working late, we met up for a beer or several in the GB to make up for it and ponder out next move. Such a great pub, and always a variety of interesting beers on tap.

A blackboard above the bar advertised a “Black Wattle Superior Ale” and I couldn't resist trying it, even the bar staff didn't seem to know anything about it. Very tasty, I'll have to find out where it comes from and who makes it... and maybe where I can buy some more!

[2007-Aug-27] Revisited: Aha! Barons Brewing Company is the creator of this fine beverage.

A quick check of the map today and I saw that the aerial photo of home had changed — a closer inspection has me puzzled.

Up until a few weeks ago, the Google Maps and Google Earth view of Oakleigh showed our neighbours as a vacant block — not surprising, the house was bulldozed last May. There was also a huge flash of light reflecting from a parked car's windscreen, which made it very easy to find!

Today I noticed that the flash of light has gone, the photo has been updated and we've got a neighbour again... or have we? Something odd seems to be afoot since I could swear that the photo shows the old single house rather than the two new town-houses, and that all of the bulldozed garden is back.

Yep, definitely! The building sites on Warrigal road have gone away and been replaced by vacant land. I wonder what prompts Google to do this?

Customer support my ass!

Second round of the Bigpond battle. Between lunch time and now I've exchanged six emails with the Bigpond help staff and gone over the same ground — I can login to http://my.bigpond.com/, I can see my bill, but I cannot email my bill to myself. Once again the email query has reached an impasse and I have to telephone 13xxxxxx whatever and play the interactive menu games.

Once again I have to identify myself and give a full verbal description of the problem and then the technical staff tell me that it is a billing problem and that they can't help me.

Once again I'm transferred to the billing people and have to again identify myself and again describe the problem, then they tell me that its a technical problem and that they can't help me!

I explain that I've been around this loop before and it isn't fixing the problem — this time I get both a technical and a billing person on the line at the same time and once again tell them the story.

They start trying to talk me through the procedure in Mickey-mouse words for flushing the Internet Explorer cache and clearing the cookies and I explain — again — that the problem can be reproduced on any one of six different computers, over four days at two locations, three operating systems, three web-browsers, any computer of any OS or browser that I walk up to.

Then I'm told that there is a current problem with the Bigpond website that has been going on for a few days that some people can't even login and to wait a couple of days and try again... I pointed out that it would be nice if this service outage was listed on their service outages page!

I'm almost suspicious of these mystery unpublished service outages, I get the feeling that they're quite handy for fobbing off customers who have odd technical problems — especially on a Friday afternoon.

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Yay Telstra (again). Since their account management system is incapable of handling my work address, I have to have my bills emailed to me. Due to "security reasons" they have to be emailed to my Bigpond account and I cannot have them emailed to any other address. (Note, I can have the physical bill mailed to any address). However I can have my Bigpond email forwarded to another account, so I send it to my normal work account.

The Bigpond bill for the 1st of August didn't turn up, it might have vanished with the spam, but that's unlikely, since I review the contents of my spam folder before deleting it all.

No problem — I thought — simply log onto the http://my.bigpond.com/ website and email myself a copy of the bill. Haha, not so fast.... Every time I try I am presented with the following:

  Technical Failure

  An error has occurred while trying to provide the page you
  requested. This may be due to a problem with your browser or may be
  as a result of a current system outage. You can check for outages
  using the Service Status page. If there are no outages reported on
  the Service Status page you may be able to fix the problem by
  closing all of your browser windows and reopening them.

Over the course of four days, three computers, two operating systems and two web-browsers I've tried to email myself a copy of the bill — with the same results every time.

Two days ago I lodged a query with Bigpond support asking for it to be fixed — a query that they said would be answered within 24 hours. The 24 hours came and went and I received another email telling me that my query would take longer than 24 hours. The second 24 hours came and went and I received a second email telling me that:

  We will need to attempt to replicate this error on our test
  machines. Please contact Help Desk by phone on 133 933 (Selecting
  Option 1, Option 1, Option 1) quoting your ADSL username. Once we
  have verified the account holder, we will be able to assist you
  further and forward the issue to our Server Complex department if
  necessary. Due to security and privacy procedures, we are unable to
  assist further via email correspondence.

I called and played the voicemail games, then I got to a person. The technical assistance was uninterested in "replicating the error" and told me it was a billing problem and that they couldn't help me with and transferred me to the billing staff. The billing staff then asked for name, account and date of birth again, since they can't have these transferred with the call from the technical assistance!

The billing staff can't help me with the website not sending me emails — that's a technical problem and I'll have to contact technical support! I explained that technical support were unable to help and had transferred me to billing support and that I wanted two things; a copy of my missing bill and the my.bigpond site fixed so I can send myself other bills. The billing support staff are unable to email me a copy of my bill, apparently because I am unable to send myself one!

There is a copy of my latest bill in the post being sent to my home address, and as for fixing the website so I can email myself other bills... “Other people are able to use it so there can't be a problem with the website”.

I guess I wait for the first of September and see what happens with the next bill....

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Sadly, illusions I've had about cycling just keep on being broken. Today was one of those days that really starts to get you down.

After all the mess and fuss about drugs in sport and drugs in cycling especially, capped off by last year's Operation Puerto affair with naming of 200 European athletes — 30 or more of the cyclists, assorted suspensions and fines, I had thought that this year's Tour de France would be free of it all. Surely with all the publicity and all the testing there wouldn't still be riders being caught during the event? Whatever did happen to all those other athletes named? The soccer players, basketballers, track and field people?

Sadly, this morning I hear the Alexander Vinokourov has tested positive and been suspended, and that the whole Astana team was asked to leave the tour — and that they did. Why? You just have to ask why, not why the suspension, but why they did it.

It just puts such a bad taste in the mouth, all that good feeling you've put towards the riders through the weeks ... are they all on it, are only some, have only the unlucky ones been caught, are they really unlucky and subject to a false positive from the test? I just don't know, but the trial by media and pontificating by all and sundry left in the event just adds to the indignity.

The other illusion? Oh, that'd be the stupid belief I have that maybe one day people will stop being absolute obnoxious lethal idiots the second they step into their cars; that maybe just once I can ride to work without having to take evasive action because of some idiot in a big metal box. That once wasn't today, the asian-looking woman taking the kids to school who drove into me on Haughton road didn't even glance round after the bang — she passed and pulled in, belting my hand with the mirror and knee with the door.

G524, 1201, N461, wtf? Oh dear, those are the trains I saw on the ride to work today! I only wrote them down when something else came up with 461 in it and reminded me... then I wondered what the name of N461 was — the City of Ararat, ah, of course! Scary thing is that I could find a fan-site that lists them all! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear....

Yes or no? Will we ride into the city for the second Melburn-Roobaix or not? Last year it was heaps of fun; a day out riding around the city with all the more interesting cyclists you can find, single-speeds and fixies of all shapes and styles, together with all the other more ordinary bikes... but last year the weather was great, and this year is different.... Its been four days now of icy cold rains, alternating showers, clouds and sun.

Woke to a very cold, but cloudless clear day, an omen, we shall go. Bacon and eggs and shopping and coffee and home and get changed and go! — the couple of hours before we needed to leave vanished in a bit of a blur. Out the door at at 11:00 on the tandem, bound for Federation Square and a noon start....

A supposed noon start... a lot of standing around waiting, the clouds thickened and a gentle mist started falling as people began to feel the cold. Thoughts of coffee, thoughts of schnapps, thoughts of a warm pub and an afternoon in front of the fire....

Finally time to queue up for registration and instructions over the megaphone; “See this guy with ballons on his head, find him, shortly we'll tell you where he his and you'll go find him. Then you'll get your route cards, then at each checkpoint find the balloons and stamp your card!” Ugly rode off and there was more waiting while people started trying to second-guess the first checkpoint, “to church” Jo guessed Rod Laver arena, where the Mormons were meeting, but no, it was light tower #3 at the MCG, the mighty church of football.

Take care everyone, play nice, watch the pedestrians... and we were off, en-masse around to the river and on all sides of bemused pedestrians, through Birrarung Marr, past Circus Oz and up over the footbridge to the MCG. Two hundred people on bikes picking their way around the stadium as several thousand on foot arrive for the St Kilda Collingwood match! Shouts come over the PA telling the cyclists to slow down, pretty much all travelling at a walking pace anyway and I couldn't see any close calls — just the footy people wanting to appear in charge of this new oddity.

Here's your map, thirteen checkpoints and a finish at Brunswick Velodrome like last year. Nothing over near Richmond this time, but checkpoints #1, #2, #2 and #3 are down to the south of the river — yep, there's two number twos, but thats ok because number four is missing.

A few minutes to work out a plan of attack, then down to the river and over Morrell street bridge, the first point challenging as Jo and I had no idea where “Airline Bank lane” was — chancing on following some others, sadly picking the wrong others! A bit of crossing back and forth and we found the bottom end of the lane of dreaded pavé — the first of the thirteen cobbled lanes. Started up the climb and all was going well until the timing chain flew off the tandem — that's never happened before, and its definitely not meant to happen today! Quickly slipped it back on and got it mostly right, one tooth out I think, then slithered our way up the hill on the wet cobbles to the first checkpoint.

Easy route from here to #2, down around Albert Park via Domain and Kerford roads then left into Little Page street and block after block of endless pavé — we'd come in at one end and the checkpoint was right at the far end — a bit of sneakiness with the grid reference of the checkpoint not matching the house number, forcing a few blocks of extra pavé! One of the number twos complete, now for number three! A little light had come on and Jo suggested that we use the sealed road parallel to Ashworth street, then cut across when we got to the far end — 'tis a wondrous thing having a clever navigator on the tandem!

Checkpoints three and two and now time for the other two; thoughts of Stuart O'Grady's win in the Paris-Roubaix as we rode up O'Grady street (sealed), parallel with Little O'Grady (pavé). A bit like a movie chase scene — at each cross road we could see riders who gone for the more classic route riding the length of Little O'Grady.

One third done and there was nothing left south of the CBD, the next few points are all in the city — almost unknown territory for me — but easy to get to, simply follow the trams.... Unfortunately it was as we were passing through South Melbourne that the fickle finger of fate struck — the dreaded puncture fairy. One punctured tube and one spare tube is happiness, two punctured tubes and one spare tube and icy rain and two thirds of the event still to gois not so good. The nearest bike shop I could think of was over on City road, but when we got there we found it had closed up and vanished. This was a definite sign from above to head for somewhere warm for a bowl of soup....

Up City road on foot, wheeling the big blue beast, then back across the river, then it was up to DeGraves street for hot soup, red wine and strong coffee. End of the Melburn-Roobaix for us for 2007! Maybe next year we'll come better prepared, either way, many thanks for the day's event to the guys from http://fyxomatosis.com/ to any of the 195 starters and who finished.

There's also a few photos on Flickr and the route from the GPS on motionbased — see, we didn't really get lost!

Looks like Schmap would like to use some of my photos for their next map about Melbourne, nothing special, but its the first time anyone has asked to use them! I guess I'll see them on http://www.schmap.com/Melbourne if they do get used.

Further along the track to recovery from the disastrous attempt to move / into LVM. I've reinstalled ubuntu-desktop after quite a few false starts, acpid gave me grief, as well as other DEBs that were in the file system but not present in the DEB database.

Installing Beryl as per. http://wiki.beryl-project.org/wiki/Install_Beryl_on_Ubuntu_Feisty fixed most of my initial problems.

ajft@fafnir:~/doc/downloads$ sudo apt-get -fV install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
   libgl1-mesa-glx (6.5.2-3ubuntu7)
The following NEW packages will be installed:
   libgl1-mesa-glx (6.5.2-3ubuntu7)
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
147 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/143kB of archives.
After unpacking 475kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
(Reading database ... 18206 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libgl1-mesa-glx (from .../libgl1-mesa-glx_6.5.2-3ubuntu7_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /cdrom//pool/main/m/mesa/libgl1-mesa-glx_6.5.2-3ubuntu7_i386.deb (--unpack):
 unable to create `./usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2': No such file or directory
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /cdrom//pool/main/m/mesa/libgl1-mesa-glx_6.5.2-3ubuntu7_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Recommendation from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2662530

I think this is a problem with an ATI or NVidia binary driver deb package that didn't clean up its diversions after itself.

Try removing the ATI or Nvidia driver, then remove the diversions like this and tell me if it fixes your problem:

Code:

  dpkg-divert --remove /usr/lib/libGL.so.1
  dpkg-divert --remove /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1

Checking on drivers from http://support.asus.com/

BIOS

203 453.17kB

Audio

V6.0.1.5334

LAN

V6.186.1103.2006

Modem

M:V1.8_D:V6.11.13.1

TouchPad

V9.1.5.0 11.32M

Wireless

V10.6.0.46 3.61M

Video

V8.33 CCC 113.8M

What on earth is there in a video driver that makes it 113M in size!

Installed drivers

Video

ATI Mobility Radeon X2300

  8.33-061220-040818
  2D — 7.01.01.569
  3D — 7.14.10.0464

After a serious hour or two's use of the newish (now two months old) laptop, I've decided that some of the bugs are too buggy and need sorting.

• ASUS auto-updater shows a blank window with blank pop-up items
• ASUS single-sign-on is appalling slow, and more of a hindrance than a help.
• Norton Security Centre just appears to suck in general

The last one is pretty much a given, I think that's the general feeling everywhere regarding that product, but I thought I'd let the three month free licence run its course and get some experience using the product — the three months can't end soon enough.

The first two seem bizarre, you would think that in a laptop where the vendor ships the vendor's programs on a machine where the vendor installs everything that it would work... stupid of me to expect them to ship software that actually did anything!

The ASUS support forums seem pretty hopeless, no presence from ASUS, just a bunch of postings from people with problems and no solutions. Not to mention a user interface which doesn't seem to distinguish between read and unread messages, and a really annoying tendency to open every single link in another window.

On my second attempt I managed to lodge a request about the laptop, no idea if they'll respond since I can't give them the serial number because I'm at work and the laptop isn't. The support request form doesn't seem to work in Firefox so I had to go find a Windows machine with IE and retype the damn thing. At least they give me a response code to follow up on:

Case Code :WTM200705311451226266

Our system has received your mail enquiry. ASUS Technical Support Engineers will be responsible in replying your mail within 48 hours on Mon~Fri (except public holiday). If you have not heard any response from ASUS TSE, please check for mail reply status from the link below. Thanks very much.

http://vip.asus.com/eservice/techmailstatus.aspx?ID=WTM200705311451226266

The second of the two houses built on the block next door is full now, I'm not sure how many people have moved in but they had all their friends helping unpack the truck — the only way to move house, the more friends the better!

That makes two houses with three car spaces that now contain somewhere between six and eight people and who knows how many cars... I guess parking in the street could get even more shambolic than usual if they start parking out the front where customers of the singing school park illegally.

More rubbish though; just like when the people in the other house moved in, they've bundled up all their house-moving rubbish and dumped it out on the footpath — its in a bin — but they've picked the council green-waste bin, and they've put it out four days early. Seems to be a common problem; “chuck it out on the street, not my problem any more.”

I don't know if it is a result of the drought, general changes in the bird population, or me just being more aware of what lives where in Melbourne now that I've lived here for ten years!

For the last few weeks, I leave work nearly every day on sunset and there is an enormous flock of crows or ravens in the trees and buildings around the north-east corner of the campus. They whirl around, screeching and cawing, resting for a while then rising up to swirl around in an enormous flock for a minute or so. Very noisy, very strange, a little like something from Edgar Alan Poe.

I tried to photograph the birds against the sky as I left this evening, the light was too low and all came out blurred...

More fun and games with Telstra; phone, email, phone — no, yes, no.

Seems to be differences in the emphasis in the email and phone calls as to the whether it can be relocated (email from sales department) and who requests and pays for it (support and faults department)

Today's call, I stated the same question as last Friday and was again told verbally: The lead-in cable is Telstra infrastructure and neighbours are forbidden from touching it ($50,000 fine if they do so).

I then explained that I'd received an email from Telstra stating that our lead-in cable would have to be relocated, and that the neighbours did have this right:

  Thank you for your email dated 18/5/07, regarding your lead-in cable.

  Your lead- in cable will need to be removed or relocated onto your own property. Your
  neighbours do have the right to remove this cable as it is on their property.

  For more information on this matter please phone us on 13 22 00.

Telstra staff on the phone said "Huh?"

I expressed my concern that this appeared to be the opposite of what she'd just told me, and of what I'd been told on Friday. She discussed this with her supervisor and returned to state that:

• the cable can be relocated, if arranged between neighbour and Telstra
• as we have not requested the relocation, we will not be billed
• the neighbour cannot pass the Telstra bill on to us

Aw crap, what are they playing at? We found the following unsigned letter with quasi-legal wording in the letterbox today:

  16th May 2007

  Owner
  XX XXXXXX XXX
  Oakleigh Vic 3166

  The Residents
  XX XXXXXX XXX
  Oakleigh Vic 3166

  Dear Sir/Madam

  It has come to our attention, that you have a Telecommunication wire, trespassing
  across our property. As we have never given you permission for this to happen, we
  want it removed.

  We noticed that you already have a pole outside your house, which would be more
  suitable for that wire to be attached to.

  We will therefore give you seven (7) days from the date of this letter to remove it
  from its orginal site and have it re-attached to the other pole. If that has not taken
  place by the expiration of the deadline, then we will be removing it ourselves and any
  cost that is born as a result, will naturally be passed on to you, so it will be in your
  best interest, to act promptly.

  We thank you in advance for your anticipated co-operation in this matter.

  Your faithfully

  OWNERS

It caused a bit of fun and games with the enquiries line, not your routine query it seems!

Yep, the Telstra cable is Telstra infrastructure, and in a magnificent quote “The infrastructure can go where it wants.” Any "issues" that they have with it are between them and Telstra and they should contact Telstra about it.

The cable can be relocated if they wish, however the costs will be born by them, not by us and not by Telstra.

Of course, none of this could possibly have anything to do with the fact that we keep asking the building company to come and finish fixing the fence that they half took down months ago, now could it...?

Quite amazingly, the TAC has finally decided that their 100% obsession with speed being the cause of all collisions is not the be-all and end-all of road safety. There's a new campaign telling motorists to — shock horror — pay attention and put the phone down, stop fiddling with the radio, stop playing with the children and DRIVE THE BLOODY CAR WITHOUT KILLING PEOPLE.

A good start, but sadly reality intrudes. Another day, another ride to work, another dickhead in a 4WD on the phone on the road.

There I was sitting at the lights at Dandenong road and North road. There he was sitting next to me — big shiny BMW 4WD, (rego. Vic. SUB-116), chatting away, SMSing away. I point and shout out 'put the phone down', he swears and gesticulates and swears some more. The lights go green and I ride off, then he roars past, swerving in to give me a scare.

All the campaigns in the world are meaningless when the vast majority of Australians believe its their god-given right to do what they damn well please the instant they get in their little metal boxes.

You think that we're being shafted by Telstra and the government now? Just wait till they've finished bending over backwards to pat each other on the backs with this one. At least some people are prepared to analyse the name caling and full-page fora and against ads in the papers and look into why Telstra wants the government to "rein in the ACCC" (that rogue regulator) and let Telstra have monopoly access to $9Billion worth of not-yet-built broadband network.

From Charles Wright, the final paragraph sums it all up:

Selling out to Telstra

:

No government in Australia's history has demonstrated a fraction of the contempt for the electorate implicit in virtually every thought, word and deed of the Howard Government. No Prime Minister has been able to get away with mouthing one lie after another, while doing precisely the opposite of what he pledged. No political party with any conviction or the slightest claim to integrity could contemplate the shredding of principle in such a fashion. What a truly shameless mob they are.

Seems that May is bike month in America, not only that, but in Motionbased's blog I get a mention as one of the two runners up for logging the most number of "commute" bike rides for the year. Hardly record breaking distances with my 5km ride, but there would have been another month's worth of entries if the Edge 305 hadn't been off being repaired for all of January!

Interesting that the second, wamble, and third, ajft (me), are both Australian, while number one, mallfellow is in the US.

Fun and games over the weekend attempting to get the Motionbased software working on the home laptop. Minor problem is that the laptop is running¹ Windows Vista, major problem is that http://www.motionbased.com is almost unusably slow.

Downloaded two updates, but had to leave prior to installing them:

MBAgentInstall_release_2.3.0.1.exe

Existing version 2.3.0.0

Garmin-USBDrivers_221.exe

Existing version is 2.2.0

I managed to read data from the Edge 305 and upload it, but couldn't login to the website, either the password is wrong or its just timing out.

1. Of all the verbs in the English language, "running" doesn't quite seem appropriate when applied to the speed of Vista; I think I'd prefer anything from the following list: walking, crawling, meandering, dawdling....

Thread: last next

After yesterday's V/Line farce, what wonders would the train home bring? At least we'd be spared the platform announcements, Garfield's station is rather sparse — a small half-enclosed shelter on an open platform is all the protection you get, there's a timetable pinned up away on the other side of the line, and a confusing sign telling us that the trains travel through Garfield on either the left or the right... depending on what time of day it is!

Prior to 2pm on a Sunday they drive on the left, so platform two was correct — although this was the same platform we arrived at yesterday!

We sat in the sun and waited... and waited....

Yay, a minute or so after noon and the train appeared, we're not sure whether it was meant to arrive at 11:41 or 11:51 so I've no idea if it was ten or twenty minutes late.

There seems to be a constant amount of stuffing about that has to be added to any trip I make on the trains, it just isn't worth it for a trip of only an hour!

That's enough from the both of you V/Line and Connex, stop appologising for the lousy service, please just fix the damn train system!

Oh well, “it seemed like a good idea at the time”. Famous last words... Jo and I decided to catch the V/Line train out to Garfield to visit friends for the evening, a chance to try these shiny new purple V/Locity trains and see what all the fuss is about and whether they live up to the gov'ments hype about the “fast rail” service or the opposition's “farce rail” retaliations.

So far I'm tempted to go with the latter. A month ago my first ride on one was appalling; a two-carriage train put on from Geelong to Melbourne in the school holidays, crammed in so tight that people sat in the aisles and were packed sardine-like in the exits. Today we only had to endure a 50 minute trip that started life 45 minutes late! By the time we finally got on the train in Caulfield we could have been comfortably sitting at Mark and Lesley's house if we'd chosen to drive... and it wouldn't have cost anywhere near $12.20 in petrol!

Quarter past four we left home for the suburban train back to Caulfield, to then sit and wait on platform four — the V/Line trains always use platform 4... Then there's the announcement that it is running late and will use platform 2, so we troop down through the underpass and the stench of greasy fried things and up to platform 2. From about five to five until quarter past we had at announcements at ten minute intervals telling us that the train was having mechanical problems and that it had “just left” Southern Cross station.

Bah, hardly a great start to the evening.

Once (finally) on the train it was comfortable and quick and a pleasant trip, but the stuffing about that accompanies it will make me think twice...

The evening's company, the food, and the red wine were as good as ever and its always good to catch up with friends... but next time we'll drive the car.

From http://www.hunlock.com/blogs/Attach_icons_to_anything_with_CSS

A few days ago, while using stumble-upon, I stumbled on a site which showed how to conditionally append icons to the end of hypertext links using css. What made the article interesting was that it used CSS conditionally. For instance...

a[href $='.pdf'] {
   padding-right: 18px;
   background: transparent url(icon_pdf.gif) no-repeat center right;
}

Finally done it! The home PC has been thrashing for ages with “only” 512M of RAM and more and more greedy software.... Another 1G has been on the cards for quite some time. The catalyst was Jo deciding to finally buy her camera, which then needed some memory itself, and a trip to CPL for a 1G SD card for her, and 1G DDR 3200 DIMM for me.

A healthy 1.5G now, and no swap in use, yay.

Attempting to import photos into my Ubuntu system with f-spot, the import window opens, but contains the text:

An error occurred in the io-library ('Bad parameters'): Could not find USB device (vendor 0x4a9, product 0x30f2). Make sure this device is connected to the computer.

Something is definitely wrong with the permissions, my account can't read the camera, but root can:

ajft@fafnir:/dev/bus/usb$ lsusb
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 05a9:0511 OmniVision Technologies, Inc. OV511 WebCam
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
ajft@fafnir:/dev/bus/usb$ sudo lsusb
Bus 005 Device 017: ID 04a9:30f2 Canon, Inc.
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 05a9:0511 OmniVision Technologies, Inc. OV511 WebCam
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

I'm beginning to suspect that my computer system that has been through three hardware boxes and Redhat to Debian to Ubuntu upgrades has quite possibly got some oddities in the group memberships!

Solution was to add my account to the group plugdev (in /etc/group). I wonder how many other groups user accounts get placed into in Ubuntu that my pre-existing account isn't in?

Five or six annoying phone direct marketing calls in the last week and I see a notice about the Do Not Call register, I've decided to register the home number with http://www.donotcall.gov.au/. Here's what happens afterwards:

You have successfully registered 1 telephone number(s) on the Do Not Call Register.

Your registration expires in three years on 4-May-2010.

How long will it take before I stop receiving phone calls?

It may take up to 30 days for telemarketing agencies to recognise your registration and stop calling your number.

What can I do if I still receive calls after 30 days?

It you are still receiving telemarketing calls after 30 days, you can lodge a complaint.

Who can still call me?

Registering your number on the Do Not Call Register will not stop all calls to your number. There are some limited exemptions which enable certain public interest organisations to make telemarketing calls. Exempt organisations include charities, religious organisations, educational institutions and political parties.

Companies with which you have an on-going business relationship will still be allowed to call your number even if it is on the Register. For example, it may be reasonable to expect to receive a telemarketing call from a financial institution, utility, service provider or telephone carrier if you have an existing account. You may request the business to stop calling you at any time.

Oh yay. Seems to be a toothless piece of garbage, I've got a bank account with X, so they can still call me whenever they feel like and try to sell me insurance or anything else, and every exempt organisation — not to mention overseas ones not bound by Australian laws — can still call.

An exciting morning, first we woke to the very unusual sounds of thunder, hail and rain on the roof — all very welcome in the drought and with Melbourne's water storage dipping below 30% of capacity for the first time in 40 years. Next, Jo went out to pick up the newspaper and came back in with the news that a train had derailed itself just out of Oakleigh station, right outside our front door.

Connex sent out their SMS warnings that no trains were running between Springvale and Caulfield, and with thoughts of how hellish the replacemenet buses would become I offered to drive her the 5km to Caulfield.... Its a very long time since I've driven anywhere in morning peak traffic and yet again I'm reminded why, creeping and crawling along, fifteen minutes stuck in a log-jam on Murrumbeena road, people hooting, people swearing, people pushing in. One of the major annoyances was sitting in that logjam while the boom-gates on the level crossing were down and watching three trains full of people go past from Oakleigh to Caulfield — these were the trains that Connex had told us didn't exist!

Finally got Jo to Caulfield, then re-entered the maelstrom and crawled my way back to Oakleigh, ran inside to get the bike and tried to refresh myself on a routine ride to work. An hour to drive the 5km to Caulfield and back, then fifteen minutes for me to ride the bike the same distance to Clayton!

Ouch, ow, oh! Creaking old bones and bruises this morning, I'm definitely not accustomed to physical work like yesterday's housemoving extravaganza.

There are bruises in the weirdest places, and my hands feel like I've completely lost all fine-motor coordination, picking up boxes is about all they can do. A perfect day to do nothing, laze on the couch and read the paper...

If only! A slight sleep-in then its preparation for Jack's seventh birthday party, a cavalcade of cousins and a horde of aunts and uncles. Completely exausting, I'm going to need a weekend to recover from the weekend.

Take three abodes; in order these are a one-bedroom flat, a two-storey two-bedroom townhouse and a two-bedroom house. Starting conditions are one person lives in the first, two people live in the second and both the first and third are full of furniture — in the case of the town-house heavy, obscure, antique wooden furniture. Our mission, which we did in fact volunteer for, was to assist in moving half the furniture from the flat to the new house, half the furniture from the flat to the town house, and half the furniture from the town house to the new house. Two people move from the townhouse to the house, and one from the flat to the townhouse... simple really.

To add to the complexity, the townhouse was full, years of skilled packing had left not an inch of storage space unused, so nothing could get in without something coming out first!

Seven adults and one half-adult assistant, one truck, nine hours and it was mostly done. A great deal of good natured cursing, many bruises, and the skin off quite a few knuckles, but it was done.

The electricity company had stuffed up, the power that was meant to be connected on Friday hadn't been, so the last load of furniture and a monstrous man-eating wardrobe were delivered by candle-light, but it all added to the atmosphere of the post-house-moving bottle of red wine.

Such a good day, and such a bad taste left from three bad experiences with Connex in under 24 hours! Last night's train into the city — the trains that run every 15 minutes — was 19 minutes late to arrive, the only reason the 17:48 didn't run into the 17:54 was because Connex cancelled the 17:54! Today's train home was running on time, I guess, but the whole trip the pleasant recorded announcements were one station wrong, so were told that "The next station is Richmond" as the train left Richmond — it's only ANZAC day, there's only hundreds of visitors probably trying to use the trains and get useful information from the announcements!

Piece d' resistance was at Flinders street station and the queue for tickets — more of those hundreds of visitors all unfamiliar with the ticket machines. It seems that probably half of them didn't need a ticket anyway, since anyone in the Anzac day march was entitled to free public transport, but nowhere was this advertised! Large queue of elderly people peered at the machine and tried to puzzle out the tickets while three Connex "Customer service" staff leaned on their elbows on the turnstiles. Once I finally got in I asked if there was any chance they could help the people outside "Wot people?" was the aggressive reply.

Trying to keep calm, "The ones queuing up who don't know how to use the ticket machine". Him, "I can't make the queue go faster, and anyway, most of 'em don't need a ticket".

"Yes, I know that, but they don't because nobody has told them!". "Not my job mate" I did ask "Well what is your job" but he wouldn't respond.

His final words when Jo said "You're meant to be customer service staff" was "Ah, go on, just go and get on your train"

I wonder how much of today's ticket take was from people who didn't need to pay, and how much Connex will be donating to Legacy?

It must be a day for computer upgrades to try their best to frustrate me... Ubuntu Feisty has had its try, now the new Vista laptop has a go as Jo tries to download photos from the old Canon Digital IXUS 300 — surprise, it seems that no matter what we do we simply cannot convince the laptop to read the photos from the camera. It can see the camera, but it can't read anything off them.

The ubuntu upgrade I started yesterday morning has completed on fafnir, or at least initially completed. Now all I have to do is find all the software that broke and fix it... Minor problems during the upgrade itself:

• gettext-el failed to install
• sawfish failed to install
• upgrade-manager failed to install

The first two seemed to be because they were looking for /usr/lib/X11/locale, and there isn't one anymore, things are in /usr/share/X11/locale. Created a symbolic link from the real one to where it was looking and re-ran apt-get -u dist-upgrade and it fixed those up.

After the install and reboot I've found:

• Beryl/Emerald won't work anymore, no window decorations unless I disable the "window effects"
• imgstamp now produces an error at commented out lines in ~/.imgstamprc

I can fix imgstamp by removing the commented out lines, although it looks to be a step backwards, since nearly everything else can handle a configuration file with lines that start with '#' being ignored.

Dear selfish bastards... PUT THE PHONE DOWN BEFORE YOU KILL SOMONE!

You'd think that with all the recent media focus on idiots who insist on breaking the law, that maybe, just maybe some drivers would actually STOP USING THEIR BLOODY PHONES. Obviously not, they just can't resist their mobile phone addiction. I'm not really looking for them and in my fifteen minute ride to work I'm still seeing four or five a day, every single day.

Today's Mr Important was sitting there at the Dandenong road, North road lights in his shiny green BMW, Victorian registration RWC-726, chatting away. I sat across from him in the next lane staring, pointing at him so all could see — he got a little embarrassed and tried to hide the phone below the door, then behind his head, but no way was he going to put it down. Eventually the lights went green and off he drove, phone still clamped to his head, still chatting away.

When will the police start to enforce the law?

When will someone start to confiscate the bastards' phones?

After many months of building it seems that we've finally got people moving in to one of the two units next door — the rear one, since the front one isn't finished yet. There's been a "for lease" sign up for a few weeks, sometime last week a couple of cars started appearing in the drive.

Saturday afternoon they took all their boxes and rubbish from moving in, neatly bundled it up and dumped it on the street out the front of the house! I've no idea why people do that, rather than wait for the garbage collection and put it in the bin, for a start the stuff sitting on the street won't get picked up if it isn't in a bin!

Of course it sat there for the weekend, then this morning when the gardeners turned up to work on the front unit the rubbish was in their way so they moved it half-way along the front of the house... then surprise, surprise, when I got home from work they had carefully bundled it all up and piled it up on the footpath outside our house!

A couple of minutes work and I carried it all back next door, lifting it over their front fence and neatly bundling it back up on their garden.

[2007-Apr-17] Looks like the boxes of rubbish were in the way of the gardeners when they turned up, at least this time they've picked it up and moved the boxes into the doorway of the unfinished house.

[2007-Apr-19] Garbage night last night, the new neighbours put out all three bins, garbage, recycling and green-waste — all full of garbage — and next to them, two big bags of rubbish on the footpath. Not surprisingly, when I came home in the afternoon the bins had been emptied and put away and the bags of rubbish are still sitting out on the street.

OK, we'll start with the nice approach. A note in the letterbox with:

Please don't leave garbage on the footpath.

It has to be in your bin or it won't be collected.

thanks,

Adrian (x Mill rd)

[2007-Apr-21] Surprise, surprise. Today the builder/owner turned up to look at the week's work — as he does every Saturday. I guess he didn't like the bags of garbage piled near the letter box and the three boxes of stuff in the doorway of the unfinished house. He's moved all the garbage off his land and it is now piled up on the footpath at the edge of the road.

Required a full reset while the Bigpond staff were helping me get the Vista laptop to use the Wifi, so had to reconfigure all my settings.

Dynamic DNS support

From the main screen: Gateway, ISP Connection, Advanced settings, Set up Dynamic DNS, then:

• enable
• Service username: ajft
• Service password:
• Host name 1: millpond.dyndns.org

and then Apply

Port exceptions

From the main screen: Gateway, Security, Address Translation, Port By-pass configuration, then:

• TCP, Port 15998, fafnir's internal IP

Firewall

Security, Firewall Level Configuration

• Low

Aarg! On Tuesday I rang Bigpond up and was promised a return phone call within an hour or two, on Wednesday I lodged the same enquiry via email and was promised a response within 24 hours, then today, 48hours later I get an email telling me stuff all, and that I should call them on the phone!

Four paragraphs of advertising for their incredibly expensive 3G wireless network service and then:

Due to the complexities of ADSL with Home WiFi and the limitations of email, it is best for you to call our help desk on 133 933 option 1 option 1 option 2 and talk to one of our support staff for further assistance.

Emailed them back giving the details again and explaining the hassles I have with trying to ring them.

Later in the evening I managed to ring them, then get through to the right people, then, miraculously, I even managed to find out how to get Vista to talk to a Bigpond-configured ADSL router. Yay.

One small drawback — the WEP key and admin. password that were written into the front of the notes wouldn't work, so along the way I had to perform a complete hard reset of the Speedstream 6520 and re-enter all my details manually, losing the port-exceptions and all the security settings that were in their previously. I guess I can recreate the port exceptions from the software I use, but since the security settings were all made intially by the Bigpond setup CD I'll have to make them up!

Its amazing the amount of absolute crap you see on the roads when you slow down to cycling speeds... glass, metal, bits of builders' rubble, bits of garden rubbish. Cycle lanes end up full of the stuff and then people on bikes riding legally "as far to the left as practicable" end up completely outside the bike lane and must endure the ire of ignorant people in cars.

Unfortunately all the well-meaning bleeding hearts with "cyclists' best interests at heart" seem to want to build more special purpose bike lanes, forgetting that what keeps all the crap out of the roadway is the traffic running over it and flicking it off to the the left and right — you build a chunk of road that cars can't drive on and that's the bit of the road that ends up with all the crap in it!

One of the worst sections I see every day is the bridge over the railway on North road at Huntingdale — in either direction the bike lane is full of glass, wire, rocks, nails and bolts... and the odd washing machine part, metre-high weed and chunk of wall board.

Last night an ominous ka-pow from under the back tyre soon proved correct as yet another piece of crap ripped through the tyre on much the same piece of road that delivered my last puncture. This morning I found that a cycling cow-orker has three stitches in his leg, a tetanus injection and a course of anti-biotics as a result of gash from a piece of metal that flew up and hit him.

At least I finally managed to find the contact details for VicRoads to report hazards and glass on the roads; Bicycle Victoria has the phone number and a dud URL, so I'll try 13 11 74, then option 4, then lots more voice mail options, then hopefully a person. Five minutes on hold and still no person, so hang up and look around the VicRoads site and finally find http://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/Home/AboutVicRoads/ContactUs/FeedbackAndEnquiries.htm, then submit one hazard report to VicRoads and one webpage update to Bike Vic.

Another Thursday, only nine hours in and it feels like death.

Something woke me around 3:30 this morning, then tossing and turning and Jo's cold kept me awake. At 05:20 the garbage trucks came and commenced their not-allowed crashing and banging, at six o'clock I gave up and got out of bed.

Sat down at the desk to grind through some more of the woefully slow sluglike behaviour of Vista and file-synching from my main linux PC and pop, there goes another light bulb. We seem to replace one or two of the three in the kitchen at almost monthly intervals.

To add to yesterday's woes and frustrations about the new ASUS F3JR laptop, today I find that they've mysteriously dropped $150- $200 in price! Brand new, the model's only been out a fortnight, what can you do? Oh well, grin and bear it.

One shining point rising above all of the crap; today is our fourth wedding anniversary! Flowers and fruit for the traditionalists, or the very boring "appliances" from some modern list. Oh wow honey, give me a new appliance...

I'm starting to think that getting Microsoft Vista on the new laptop was a mistake... It seems so slow! I know darned well it isn't the hardware...

Oh, and then there's the "service" from Telstra Bigpond... It seems that despite Vista having been available in development for almost two years and publically available for two months, they don't support it yet, or not in any information on their websites!

After half an hour yesterday of poking around with various wireless connection panels on Vista I gave up and plugged a piece of UTP in and set up a wired connection, then tried calling the technical support to ask how to get the wireless laptop to talk to the wireless router across less than a metre of desk space. Twenty minutes on hold and a very brief conversation, it seems that the special "Vista team" will have to call me back with this information. In response to my "When can I expect their call?" it was a "Oh quite quickly, should be as soon as they receive this email".

Well, its nearly 24 hours later and there's been no call so I've lodged the enquiry via their webform, ah, but there's problems with that since it appears that bigpond.com will only work with IE — something in there just won't work with Firefox on either Linux or Windows.

At least I've received a response, albeit just the automated one giving me a reference number [Reference Number:070411-004681] ...

I do not want to plug the special Bigpond USB wifi key into the laptop, I do not want to plug the lumping great Bigpond wifi PC-card into the laptop, I simply want to connect the wireless laptop to the wireless router, is that too much to ask?

Up nice and early — no chance of a sleep-in with two small boys in the house and an enormous flock of cockatoos in the trees outside; screeching from one lot and elephantine stomping from the others...

Breakfast and pack and out and onto the bike; the simple plan was to ride to Queenscliff and catch the ferry to Sorrento, then ride up the bay to Frankston and catch the train the rest of the way — I don't think I'm quite up to the 200km or so of riding the whole way!

The morning ride from Lorne to Airey's Inlet and Anglesea was one of those magic country rides that sticks in your mind, no wind, cool weather, little or no traffic, just the sun on the sea and pleasant thoughts in your head. Unfortunately it went downhill from Anglesea and just kept on descending... Traffic between Anglesea and Torquay was a constant annoyance, endless 4WDs charging home to Melbourne along the GOR all packed to the hilt with screaming kids and aggressive mums and dads.

The road from Queenscliff to Barwon Heads to Torquay continues to mystify me — yet again I managed to get lost. This time trying to ride through Torquay; the last time I rode this way I missed the end of the road out near Queenscliff, today I couldn't find the other end of if where it leaves the town for Barwon Heads — instead I must have spent half an hour riding around and around endless ugly new developments of monstrous beach McMansions crammed cheek-by-jowl through the golf-course as part of the latest mega-dollar development. One lot of advice sent me into a windy-spiral of interconnected enclave roads that lead nowhere, then a "nah mate, the road out is back that way". Finally some advice to "right at the roundabout then up that hill and turn right at the lights". I back-tracked to the roundabout, headed up that hill and lo, found myself all the way back on the bloody highway facing back to Geelong!

Grumpy, I gave up with the idea of Queenscliff and the ferry and rode the last 20km to Geelong in the hot sun in a bad mood with even more roaring traffic peppering me with gravel as they passed.

Half an hour wait for the train then my first chance to ride on one of our much vaunted shiny new purple "high-speed" Bombardiers... This would have been much more enjoyable if the idiots running the train system had realised that a two-carriage train with near zero luggage space is going to be completely overwhelmed during the school holidays! The train was packed, there were people sitting on the floor the entire length of the aisle and a dozen people crammed standing in the doorways, I could just squeeze my bike into the "oversized luggage compartment", the three guys with surf-boards had no such luck and had to stand holding them the entire way. It seems the trains are designed for commuters or travellers with no luggage at all.

Then we swayed and rocked as it crashed and banged its way for an hour from Geelong to Melbourne, stopping at assorted stations to refuse entry to passengers with tickets because there was no room! "Next train guys" called the conductor, to be greeted by screamed abuse since the five kids had received the same reception an hour ago at the last train! At least a few got off, although one luckless passenger didn't get out because he simply could not get to the doors in time!

Finally we arrived at Spencer Street and I could untangle myself from my yoga-like position wrapped around the luggage rack, wheel the bike outside and ride the rest of the 20km home. My first, and hopefully last, time putting the bike on one the V/Line Geelong to Melbourne train I reckon!

I saw one of my all time favourite books converted to television this evening. An English tele-movie version of Gerald Durrell's "My Family and Other Animals", of course I stayed up to watch it... found it quite annoying.

None of the characters seemed as I had pictured in my mind from so many years of reading and re-reading the book, it all seemed to light-hearted and silly and pointless, there was none of the feeling of wonder and eye-opening experience I had always envisaged from my reading of his years on Corfu.

I'd only just re-read the book a few weeks ago, its one of my "comfort" books to recapture a happy mood, now I feel I need to read it again to wash a bad taste away. I wonder how old I was when I first read his books? I seem to remember reading "Rosy is my Relative" back in 1976 when I was in the UK, or is that just my imagination?

The tide seemed a long way out again today, so our meandering walk was around where the mouth of the Erskine river should be and then off up the beach to North Lorne.

The Erskine if closed off by about ten metres of sand at the beach, I guess the water seeps through gradually, probably in both directions, although the estuary is at the highest I've ever seen it. The river is the colour of old tea and swarming with small bream — and some larger ones that John has brought home for dinner from fishing. Every day there are people lining the boardwalk hopefully dangling a line baited with bread, hauling up endless undersized fish and hoping for a bigger one....

The rock-pools were all completely exposed and accessible, but all seem much more empty than the ones I remember as a child, maybe I'm just not looking hard enough or long enough, but other than the weeds and the limpets and snails, there's not a lot there. Where are all the crabs and small fish that I remember? Is it just a different beach and rock-pools to the ones I used to visit, or has 30 more years of thousands more people really had this much effect?

Today's purchases

• CD Flat Pack Philosophy by The Buzzcocks

All my computers are coming undone — several months of work on and off to try and get myself some consistent files and decent backups and redundancy seem to be coming unstuck from entropy.

The desktop PC at work has the beta software blues, patches, updates, reboots and intermittent behaviour, I got it onto the roundabout and I can't seem to get it off. The desktop PC at home thrashes like crazy and desperately needs a memory upgrade. The Plan9 box was 90% of the way through being resurrected after I managed to fill, crash, expand and rebuild the venti file system when poof it turned off and won't even power on anymore.

Bah!

Must be international idiot on the roads day, or maybe just Melbourne Motorised Morons.... A few drops of rain on the way home and two idiots try to hit me, one successfully.

Major idiot number one was the one that missed; traffic was banked up all the way back from the roundabout to North road in the right lane so what does our hero do? He plants his foot and sends his rice-boy car fish-tailing down the left lane and around the corner, then pulled over and stopped in the bus-stop. I caught up as he drove into the bus-only lane. Stupidly I presumed he was simply illegally stopping to pick someone up, but no, he revs the car, glances right and starts to do a u-turn as I'm about half-way past his car! A loud "HEY!" from me is greeted with a shouted "Fuck off dickhead" as he slides the car around and screeches through the roundabout ahead of the ten or so cars he's managed to overtake through this manoeuvre.

Idiot number two was the far more prosaic daily illegally parked car in the street outside the house — as I overtook and turned into our driveway he pulled out without looking and ever so gently ran into my left foot. Didn't even knock me off, a brief surge of adrenaline and I'd got up the gutter and out of his way.

Bah, neither of them left me bleeding in the gutter, and with no bus-load of lawyers as witnesses there's stuff-all that our police will do if I tried to report it, so all I get to do is add them to the list of idiots who try to kill me.

OK, so there was a bad collision in the Burnley tunnel last Friday. Yes, there are no emergency lanes or emergency bays in the tunnel, and yes, the speed limit is 80km/hr — except for the majority of the time when I seem to go through and its been reduced to 60 or even 40.

But come on people, the amount of crap we've seen in the papers for the last few days about "a disaster waiting to happen" is complete bollocks. Every bloody motorist in Melbourne is a disaster waiting to happen, they don't need a special tunnel for them to be stupid and drive too close together too quickly!

Amazingly, on Saturday as we drove in stop-start traffic to get off the freeway before the closed tunnel. There was a semi-trailer in front inching its way along, us, also stationary, then a largish gap and another semi-trailer with the driver slowing as he approached. So what happens? Typical idiot comes flying up the closed-off lane to overtake as many people as possible and swerves into the gap between the bumper of the truck and the back of our car! Semi-trailer driver had to brake hard to avoid flattening Mr Important in his 4WD. Um, wasn't it idiot antics like that that caused the crash in the first place?

journal

journal

journal

journal

journal

journal

journal

Wake up, pack up... Bacon & eggs for breakfast, finish off the bread. Clean up, wash up... Bicycle cleaned and ready, bags all packed. Put the bike in the car — no mean feat when one is a tandem and the other a Holden Astra. All ready to go. One last look around, "Have you got your shoes?" "Oh hell, no!" Pick up the offending pair of cycling shoes and have one more last look around.

Out of the house at 10:15 and only 40 minutes to drive around the CBD and out to the Hume highway — a vast improvement from last Friday.

Three hours of freeway with far more sensible drivers than Monday, bypass most of Albury then detour in for lunch at the Mermaid café, an old favourite hamburger joint.

Back onto the highway and north up to Holbrook, refuel, turn off and head east to Tumbarumba. One bad moment as we were run off the road by one terrifying gravel truck, head-on straddling the centre-line and thundering past downhill, then an uneventful drive the rest of the way though rolling hills and late afternoon sun.

The Red Café in Tumba runs a 'B&B' — more of a relabelled motel I think, but they like the name. We got the last available room, unpacked and settled in, then wandered around the town. Up the main street, down along the creek to the parklands, then back around to the Union hotel for a few beers. Sadly, no bistro, so at eight we left and walked two doors along the street to the other pub for an enormous steak dinner amidst TAB screens, pokies and seemingly hundreds of mandatory government signs warning of the dangers of problem gambling.

Stuffed full, we staggered out the door and back to the hotel to bed.

Since I've changed roles at work it has been deemed that I no longer warrant the use of a laptop, something I'd found to be useful enough that the lack was a slight annoyance. Happy enough with the ASUS model from work, we looked around and decided to buy one ourselves... the F3JV seems to be fit the specifications and price.

Only one small problem though. I've been trying to buy one since mid-January. Despite it appearing every week in five different companies' advertisements in the IT section of the paper, when you phone up these companies and try to buy one they don't actually have them, nor can they get them, nor do they know when they will get them!

Today we are quoted:

Centrecom

“Be in in two weeks, nobody has them”

CPL

“Next week sometime”

Computerworld

“No, we don't have them in stock”

Nextstep

“We don't have them in stock, we'd have to order one in for you”

At least Landmark have given up pretending that they have them, and have removed the model from their ad. — even though the guy in the shop never did ring me back.

CBR

CBR

CBR

Today's purchases

• CD Hashish and Liquor by Dave Graney and Clare Moore
• CD el momento siguiente by The Church
• a small gift for a nephew's christening present
• 1:250,000 map (SI55-15) of the Wagga Wagga area for cycling holiday
• an historic map of Melbourne's railways 1854-2004

Today's accomplishments

• hung the ceramic frog tile that was a Christmas present from Kathy on the kitchen wall.
• collected the case of Xanadu Chardonnay that has been sitting under my desk at work.
• found homes for most of the Christmas presents that have been sitting in a pile on the lounge-room floor for two months.
• tried to buy, or even order, the ASUS F3JV laptop but was foiled by the lack of stock or expected delivery times.

Maybe that last one doesn't count as an accomplishment yet...

Soft reset: Press mode and lap/reset at the same time.

Hard reset: While the unit is off, press mode while pressing the power button. You should be asked if you want to erase all user data. Select Yes.

2006-Apr-03: Telephoned GME and they didn't sound at all helpful, "Its a new device and we've only had them for a while, send it in and we'll have a look at it"

A few minutes later I found out that a newer release of the software is available, so I've updated it from version 2.30 to 2.40.

2007-Jan-05: Oh yay, went over a speed-hump coming into Monash and the Edge popped out of the bracket, hit the road and cracked the display in half diagonally. Seems that the handlebar bracket is broken and won't grip the unit properly.

Called up GME (Australian support staff for Garmin) and I have to post the unit off to Sydney to be repaired.

2007-Jan-23: Rang up the Melbourne office of GME to get the phone number for the Sydney office of GME to find out what has happened to my Edge. "It couldn't be repaired so we're waiting for a replacement unit". Nice of them to call me and tell me, but that would be customer service and apparently that just isn't done!

2007-Feb-12: Posted off the broken mounting bracket to GME in Dandenong South to be replaced, and asked whether I can get a third bracket for the third bike. Australia Post charged $3.85 for the tiny little plastic bracket since it is too thick to fit through the letter sorter!

2007-Apr-16: Called up GME to politely enquire what has happened to the bracket. Seems that it had been buried somewhere with their returns. New brackets can be bought as "MKT64" for $20 from any seller of the Edge 305, the replacement broken one will be posted to me today.

GPSbabel

Seem to need to remove the module garmin_gps, with /sbin/rmmod.

Example commands to read the data from the Edge:

sudo gpsbabel -t -r -w -i garmin -f usb: -o kml -F 20070305.kml
sudo gpsbabel -t -r -w -i garmin -f usb: -o gpx -F 20070305.gpx

Options for getting to the street festival in the next suburb: We could drive there then spend half an hour trying to find somewhere to park, we could catch the train, we could ride the bikes then worry about where to leave them locked up, or we could walk. We walked.

Seemed to have stalls from every conceivable community group and childrens' entertainer. A dozen different kinds of foods, Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek and Mexican. Three stages of music, ranging from the very cultural up one end, the partly cultural about a third of the way down the road, then doof-doof yoof moozik at the far end.

An interesting observation while having a lunch of rice-paper rolls and satay chicken sticks; a dozen caucasian people walked past eating an assortment of asian foods, then half a dozen asian people walked past all eating McDonalds' fries or greasy chicken shop fries.

It almost felt like I was living in Richmond again — left work on the bike, off down Ferntree Gully road and onto the Gardiners creek trail to head into Richmond to meet Jo for a beer. As usual I'm heading against the general flow of commuters; ones or twos, threes and more, the odd group of six, all flying along with total disregard for anyone else on track, all convinced that there's only traffic heading in their direction! At least half a dozen close calls, I wish some of these idiots could meet themselves coming in the opposite direction, at least then there'd be a cleansing of the gene pool....

At the moment, Thursdays seem to be crap days.

Woken — yet again — at 5am by garbage trucks then while riding to work I was hit by a truck at a set of traffic lights.

At the corner of North road and Clayton road I know that there's usually a left-turn arrow, so I'd stopped at the far right-hand side of the lane to let traffic turn with the arrow, five or six cars turned through with plenty of room, then the truck pulled up, the driver yelled out the window "Fucken idiot get out of the way" and turned the corner — striking me with the tray of the truck as it went around and pushing me half a metre over into the car next to me!

Thanks mate, glad to know that getting that truck around that corner was more important than my life and me.

I guess next time I just won't bother trying to be helpful to other road users and letting them pass, I'll just sit in the centre of the lane and let them wait — that is unless this idiot truck driver comes up behind me, in which case he'll probably just swear again and drive over me.

Freeway crash leaves one dead

from The Age News Headlines

One person dies and three others injured after a car strikes a tree on the Tullamarine Freeway.

What the? Bloody dangerous roads those freeways, trees sticking out the middle of them for motorists to just drive into. Is there going to be an investigation into why there is a tree on the freeway? I guess its a change from people driving into each other, picking on the trees for a change....

Where better to go on the fourth or fifth day of a heatwave than off inland to a hot, dry, dusty paddock to eat chillis and other hot foods! The Redback Chilli company's annual Hot Sauce and Fiery Foods Festival — their eighth — was on this weekend out at Jindivick, its always fun, even if I can never quite remember how to get there and the websites are hopelessly out of date.

The annual production of “A Midsummer Night's Dream” is on in the Royal Botanic Gardens, one of Jo's friends has been organising a get together with a group of friends there for some years. Despite the heat — 38°C some time this afternoon — it was a great evening. An hour or two before hand spent lazing around in the Corner Hotel beer-garden, gathering our strength over an ale or two, then a long and very slow walk through the stifling heat across to the gardens. An endless supply of picnic foods and chilled drinks, good company, then as the sun went down the show commenced.

It all got a bit too exciting near the intermission, the Chinese New Year celebration fireworks from over the river nearly deafened and blinded us all, but the cast didn't skip a beat, even throwing in a joke about it all as the scene ended.

Tada! A card appears in the mailbox, "Your water meter has been exchanged". Well how about that, amazing!

Now let me see, I first rang South East Water on May 10, they didn't seem to do anything until six months later when I got the "Call re. your recent enquiry" letter on Oct 10, then when I rang to make the booking for a meter replacement had the — "When will they come?" "Dunno, but the plumber will ring first", "Ok, when will they ring?", "Dunno" — phone conversation.

I guess I should be happy that at least they finally did replace the broken meter, and they did it without me having to make yet another phone call to the disinterested "dunno" woman.

Thunderstorms woke us this morning, wind howling through the trees and rain pelting on the roof, but I got up to find that there was no real rain to be seen, just enough to soak the washing.

All day long the wind howled around from the south-east, the normal prevailing winds are westerly, so every piece of rubbish that has migrated into the lee of a building was found and redistributed, every tree that leans with the wind was forced creaking backwards. In the afternoon every half hour we heard the local fire engines head out for yet another call to a tree or power line down....

The plastic sheeting of the neighbour's carport screeched and creaked like a demented fruit-bat, the loose cable-TV box hammered against the wall, at the building site on the other neighbour the dunny door and temporary electricity box banged incessantly, and across the road the roof of one of the buildings sounded as though it would come off. Hardly a restful Sunday afternoon to aid recover from helping Kathryn and John rearrange furniture!

A courier arrived this morning and brought me a shiny new replacement Edge 305 GPS to replace the one that broke back in January.

At one month and one day Garmin are twice as responsive as Canon for repairs — last year's warranty headache — but I'm still not really impressed that it takes that long for them to send a replacement unit, I would have thought they would keep them in stock. Apparently not, I was told that they order them in when a faulty one comes in for repair. I'll be keeping track of the dates since I'm fairly sure that Australian law says I get my warranty period extended if I'm without it for more than a week. Here's hoping I don't need the warranty though!

All excited at the new arrival, I powered it on, got it synchronised with the satellites, then put it in my pocket and rode to work — no replacement mounting bracket was sent. Unfortunately I was too excited, forgetting that unlike a normal bike speedometer I was supposed to press the Start button, so when I got to work I discovered that I had travelled exactly zero (duh!) miles (ugh!). At least I've set it up now so that it reads in metric like the rest of the civilised world.

Another phone call to GME and I can get a replacement bracket, but I have to post in the damaged one. They'll also find out if I can buy a third one to put on the third bicycle....

Thread: last next

  Today: 132.0km
  Avg: 20.5km/hr
  Riding: 7hr 15’

From a start at 07:20 we had until 16:05 to clock in and be within Audax's allowed time limit — our cards were punched at 16:01, according to Evan this meant we had over-trained by three minutes!

  Today: 21.0km
  Avg: 24.0km/hr
  Riding: 0hr 52’

Bright on the Australia Day long weekend; people everywhere, cars with bikes everywhere, people with bikes everywhere, bikes everywhere. The "Bushfire-induced dearth of visitors to Victoria's North East" certainly doesn't seem to apply today!

A late afternoon ride from Bright out to Boynton's winery to meet some friends, pleasantly surprised to find that the driveway at Boynton's now has a little less gravel and seems a little more navigable by bike than always used to be the case.

We'd left Melbourne at about 6pm for the long boring drive up the Hume highway to Bright, dinner of a truck-stop hamburger with the works at Avenel, then back in the car to continue up to Glenrowan, exit the freeway and follow the minor road to Oxley, Milawa, Markwood and on to rejoin the Great Alpine road near Myrtleford. Somewhere around dusk we'd joked about where this comet we'd heard about might be — McNaught something — but neither of us had any real idea of where in the sky to look. South-West-ish somewhere, straight behind us in the glare of the headlights we guessed.

Turning off the freeway and passing up and over the bridge I glanced across to the southern horizon and there it was; an absolutely enormous comet head down to the horizon, with the tail spread ten degrees or more up into the night sky! An absolutely incredible sight for the next hour or so as we tried to drive straight and stare left at the same time until finally it dissappeared behind the hills as we neared Bright.

Definitely one of those times when I wished I had a good digital SLR, and a tripod, and had taken the time to stop and try and take some photos of a sight I probably won't get to see again.

  Today: 82.1km
  Avg: 20.5km/hr
  Riding: 4hr 00’

The last weekend before Australia day, and our last chance to go for a ride and try to get a few more hills into the legs before the Audax Alpine Classic next Saturday! Woeful preparation, at least we're only in for the 130km option.

Under grey threatening clouds and through grey threatening suburbs full of grey threatening 4WDs we made our way out to Ferntree Gully then up Dorset road to The Basin, I'm only used to riding home that way so I missed one turn and we had a lot more of a major road than we really wanted. Thankfully we could finally turn off and up into the forest, only three car-loads of idiots screamed abuse, the rest seemed to just stare wide-eyed, a look we've become accustomed to on the tandem.

A pleasant hour of climbing up through the wet forest, then out in Sunday afternoon "drive in the country" traffic along the main tourist road at Sassafras, incredibly different to the old Mountain highway. Another two kilometres up to Olinda then a large slab of cake and coffees, perfectly timed as we sat inside and watched the rain pelt down, then back out onto dry roads for the ride back down the hill and home!

A mysterious rhythmic thumping appeared as soon as we started coasting down the near-perfect road surface, it appears that the back tyre is starting to wear out on the sidewall and bulge ominously. We hadn't noticed on the rougher roads, or while climbing earlier in the day. A very timely discovery, far better to find out now than half-way down Tawonga gap next weekend! The Continental Tourer 2000 tyres that we're on the bike when we bought it have finally turned up their toes after three years of fairly intermittent use.

A trip out of the house in the early afternoon to collect a few things, we returned to discover that some idiot had parked their car sideways across both our driveway and the neighbour's — and that the neighbour's landlord's car was parked in fron of that.... Tooting on the horn brought nobody out of the house so we parked in the street and went inside.

Five minutes later as I'm in the back garden the old Greek landlord comes out into the backyard showing two young Greek guys around — he's waxing lyrical about how it isn't a wide block but it is a long block of land.... Hmmm, is there more development afoot? There's two things you can do with a house like this; renovate it to a classic federation cottage, or bulldoze and build big brick boxes. These guys don't look the federation cottage type, I wonder if we'll be seeing another building permit soon... and this one would be a major eyesore and barrier to our place, not to mention leaving us feeling like we are in a canyon if it is more than one storey!

A little later I watched the two young guys get into the car and leave, unblocking our driveway. Ridiculously, half an hour later I met the landlord as he was leaving and asked if he knew who had parked the car that had blocked us in. “Car, car, I no see no car here...”. He shrugged and walked away, lying through his teeth.

We shall see....

It was still hot and humid when we woke this morning, but for the first time this year there was the sound of rain on the roof. Measurable rain too, all 3mm of it! I rode out to work in the rain, happily getting soaking wet, wondering how many other people across Melbourne and the rest of Victoria were doing much the same.

Fish'n'chips for dinner from the Oakleigh fish shop, I'm not sure why but it seemed a fish'n'chips day. Across the road to the shop and something exciting must have happened on the streets between the pub and the station, there was police crime-scene tape wrapped around all the poles and trees and three car-loads of coppers interviewing, measuring and analysing. Eye-droppers of chemicals onto strange spots on the tiles, is it drugs or blood? I guess we'll either see a big article about it in the papers or we'll never hear a peep.

The power finally came back almost twelve hours to the minute after yesterday's outage. Four-fifteem a.m. and every clock started beeping and the radio started blaring, I think I'd only been asleep for a little over an hour in the 30°C night.

There was a diesel generator thumping away all night at the end of the street powering some important part of the railway at Oakleigh station. A couple of minutes after the power came on and we'd reset the alarm clock and tried to go back to sleep, the fire brigade all came charging down the street with lights ablaze and sirens on! I think someone may have forgotton to unplug the generator when the mains came back on.

Needless to say, Wednesday the 17th is a very slow, quiet day as I try to make it through the working hours in my new stuffy, airless office.

Revisited... 2007-Jan-20

We bumped into a contractor on Saturday morning, locking up the gates onto the tracks as he was clearing up. Seems that the mysterious brick windowless building at the end of the platform contains a compressor and some 1960s era electrical equipment which is all part of the rail-signalling system. The power outage on Tuesay damaged it and they had to run a spare compressor all night to keep the points working — not a generator as I'd thought. When the power came back it ran for almost a day, but then it blew up and caused a blackout. Of course there are no parts available for a roomful of 1968 electrical equipment, but he'd repaired it and it should keep running until the next time it breaks down!

Six p.m. and all is strangely quiet — very, very quiet. The power failed at about four thirty and we thought it was just the building, or maybe the campus... then a cow-orker heard from his kids that there was no power at Oakleigh, then from others that the effects were more widespread. A forty degree day, all the air-conditioners in Melbourne thundering away and then bushfires damaged the main interstate transmission lines and it all went dark.

Left work at half-past five and slid past the traffic jam in Clayton road, literally sliding in the melted tar, all sticky and slippery. Every second motorist in the jam was illegally on the phone to their loved ones. Then half-way up North road my lack of hubris bit me on the bum as I ran over a nail and had it go blunt-end-first through my back tire. Changing a tube in 40°C heat at the side of a busy road is no fun.

Home at six and it is silent, 40°C outside, 30°C inside. All the clocks are off, all the whirrs and whines and motors are silent.

Manually recorded rainfall from the rain gauge in our back garden.

  Today: 124.2km
  Avg: 22.7km/hr
  Riding: 5hr 27’

An early start, out of bed at 05:45 for breakfast and to drive down to Geelong, every second car on the freeway seemed to be carrying bikes. With no idea how crowded it would be at the ride, we parked in the first car-park we came to and rode the three or four kilometres to the Botanic gardens — an unnecessary precaution as it turned out, but a good way to check the tandem and warm up a little.

...

Out on the road it was very hot and very windy. Since we were doing a loop of the Belarine peninsula, at various times the wind hot north-westerly managed to hit us in every possible direction. At times we were cruising along at 45km/hr on a flat road, at other times slogging it out at 15!

Lunch was grabbed from the Seabreeze general store, just outside Point Lonsdale. I think the couple who were running the place must have thought the gods were smiling on them — several thousand cyclists streaming through buying up an eating everything they could!

The weather turned against us as we finally came back into Geelong, the wind swinging more to the west and rain starting. Caught up with a few friends and grabbed a huge tasty burger, then a beer, then took shelter under the awning of a marquee as the storm front hit. Horizontal rain and howling winds quickly dispersed the riders as they arrived, few stayed to watch the riders warming up for the criterium later in the evening. As soon as we'd finished the beers we extracted the tandem from its parking spot against the fence and rode back to the park where we'd left the car — almost being knocked flat by the next wind storm as it came through!

Ouch! I've never felt really happy with the way that the Edge clipped into its mounting bracket, the bracket always seemed a little too flimsy and the unit a little too heavy.... Well today it proved me right, coming into the Uni. I hit the speedhump and it flew out of the bracket, hit the deck and shattered the display. Hunted around and found that GME Electrophone is the local agent for Garmin repairs, so gave them a call (+61.3.9798.0988). Seems that just like Canon last year, no real repairs get done anywhere other than Sydney. Posted it off to GME in Sydney for repairs — hopefully under warranty.

[2007-Jan-23]: Rang up the Melbourne office of GME to get the phone number for the Sydney office of GME to find out what has happened to my Edge. "It couldn't be repaired so we're waiting for a replacement unit." Nice of them to call me and tell me, but that would be customer service and apparently that just isn't done! At least when I asked about the broken mounting bracket that I'd forgotten to send she promised to send one.

[2007-Feb-07]: One month and two days later a new Edge 305 (serial #37465581) appears at the door. A single sheet of paper with the text "repairs quoted more than replacement value". Sadly, despite the verbal promise, there is no replacement mounting bracket so I now have three bikes, one Edge and only one mounting bracket.

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All of Lorne seemed to be in recovery today. Garbage from New Years Eve covered every flat surface of the beach, the parks, the roads and the carparks. Dazed and subdued revellers walked around slowly, talked quietly, relived last night's antics. Down by the surf club several hundred Harleys and their owners lay on the ground, hung over or sleeping. The whole thing seemed to make a mockery of the council and police with their “Zero tolerance, no sleeping in cars, no alcohol in public” policies.