As I noted in March, a bunch of my annual expenses fall together. This is a consequence of having bought both my house and my car in the month of August. Apart from the insurance on both of them, the car rego also happens to fall in August. I had been pondering why my home ... [More]
Costco at Docklands in Melbourne opens today at 8am. I’ll be very interested to hear how it goes, but I’m not going to be rushing in to cough up my $60 to join up and start doing my shopping there. For one thing I’ve realised that if one is prepared to be brand-agnostic, keep an ... [More]
ABC AM on Wednesday on Green power: JEFF ANGEL: Polluters are using our money which we’re paying as a premium for GreenPower, in order to report lower emissions, when in fact they’re not doing anything. DAVID MARK: Jeff Angel is the director of Total Environment Centre in Sydney. He says the schemes don’t work, because ... [More]
Nice bit of product placement there, Priceline. (They’re not just in the same aisle, they’re virtually opposite each other.) If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth half doing: This advert for VoteMyPet.com.au (promotion for Advocate, a product of Bayer) was nailed to a tree in the park. You reckon they had permission from Kingston Council ... [More]
Advertising on public transport is big business. In Melbourne around 360,000 people a day use the train system for starters… and buses and trams get spotted on the road by many more. Personally I don’t mind the ads if they’re not intrusive. They help subsidise the system. I wonder how it works when advertising on ... [More]
Is it extreme stupidity, or just carelessness not to spell-check your advert before putting it in the newspaper? What were they thinking? (from today’s Age)
Dammit, why does this keep happening? I figure out what I want to buy, and it vanishes. After getting the Ikea Billy bookshelves setup, after some procrastinating, I worked out I needed an extra shelf. When I went back last time they were out of stock (I had checked the web site; it had lied ... [More]
I’m good at some things, and bad at others. One of the things I’m worst at is buying shoes. I hate it, I’m not good at it, and while I don’t always stuff it up, it seems like I certainly do sometimes. I went to replace my Ecco shoes. They’ve been great; have lasted many ... [More]
Forgot to review the Star Trek movie. In summary: great stuff, really enjoyable. (And still chuckling over The Onion’s take on it.) How is it that Rivers in Victoria have 7 retail outlets, but 31 clearance centres? For those of you who want to browse PT timetables online while out and about, bookmark this in ... [More]
Yesterday after having a win at Officeworks (they agreed to beat Landmark’s $20 price on Canon ink cartridges by 5%, thus giving me a discount of almost $11 on each of the three I was buying), we took a look at the Sir William Fry reserve. There were couple of strange metal things near the ... [More]
Why is Westpac bank turning into my mother? Do they really expect to get more customers like this? Great quote: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” — Robert J. Hanlon Star Trek: all creeds and colours of humanity, in a spirit of co-operation and harmony, working together at hating the ... [More]
Had to laugh at the Indian protestor talking to Jon Faine on Monday who appeared to inadvertantly use the phrase “Too many chiefs, not enough Indians” (at about the 20:45 minute mark, using the ABC media player’s weird countdown system.) I haven’t actually seen this week’s controversial Chaser episode yet. But judging from last week’s ... [More]