Year: 2000

Map showing my local Safeway store several hundred metres closer to my house than it really is. Bringing food to life?!? Why do they need two slogans, anyway? A leaflet in the mail today revealed the opening of a new Safeway "We’re Muscling Into The Petrol Station Market" Plus in the neighbourhood. I found two  ... [More]

On the phone to Ozemail Customer Accounts. After the recorded advertising guff, the hold music starts "I can’t take it anymore". Uh huh. It’s a fair cop… Yesterday in the mail I got my first driving ticket. (I’ve had one ticket before, but that was a parking ticket). I… err.. well, I seem to have  ... [More]

Thanks to online banking and BPay, I can pay all of my bills via the Internet. Except one. My ISP bill.

The Olympic Games have ripped me off. No, I don’t mean the $50 each I paid for Soccer tickets. For a game that occurs two days before the opening ceremony… hmmm how does that work then? Strictly speaking, shouldn’t the opening ceremony be before everything else? On the other hand, I used to work at  ... [More]

In this day and age, you shouldn’t be embarrassed about buying condoms, should you? I’m not sure – it can still be tricky. In my local supermarket, a lot of the staff know me. If you live in one area for five or more years, and you have kids, you can expect most of the  ... [More]

Josh and Catherine, with silly hats numbers 1 and 2. Iris and I, with Josh’s silly hat number 3. Bourke Street, 1am – for our small change, we got a personalised song To celebrate the tenth birthday of the Toxic Custard mailing list, on Friday night there was a bit of a get together organised  ... [More]

The whole separation thing is working out well. The kids are spending weekends with their mum, and she and I are getting on very amicably, and cooperating in making arrangements for her to move back into this area, so she can take the kids for more of the time, which will be good for all  ... [More]

As usual the kids were staying with their mum for the weekend, so yesterday I went for a drive out into the country. I wasn’t really sure exactly where I would go, but I wanted to get out of the concrete jungle, to see some wilderness, even if only from the comfort of my car.  ... [More]

Today and yesterday I zipped into the city on the train at lunchtime to enjoy some good food and a chat with some friends. The train goes express between Malvern and South Yarra, skipping three stations, so just after leaving Malvern I was somewhat bemused to see a guy a few seats ahead of me  ... [More]

It was a clear night in Melbourne for last night’s lunar eclipse. Messing around with the video camera and the video, I managed to grab some images as the earth’s shadow came across the moon. The most interesting was around 23:00, when something flew past my camera’s field of vision. It was gone in a  ... [More]