…he may have been detained by the local sweet shop, who appear to have chained him to a telephone pole.
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The car and the fridge
Just when I thought my finances were more-or-less under control, March brought a couple of major unexpected things breaking down. Electric car windows are nice to have. But one stopped working a couple of weeks ago. This involved using sticky tape just to keep it from descending by itself and staying open to the weather. ... [More]
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Flags over Footscray
Just thought I’d highlight this, over on the PTUA web site: The Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) has called for the Australian flags on the Westgate bridge to be moved to Footscray station, in recognition that the station carries more people through it than the bridge at peak hour. Read the rest See also: story ... [More]
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The scream
There are times when I’m feeling stressed, usually about multiple little things at once, that I just want to scream with rage. Open the release valve and let out the stress. Daltrey WGFA to the power of 10. You can’t really do that of course, not in a built-up area. It’d have the neighbours (who ... [More]
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I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
Having had a week when a car window motor broke down (cha-ching, $520 thanks) and my fridge went on the fritz (TBA), it was good to let it all go with a concert on Sunday night. (See earlier blog post) It’s probably easier to just dump the Twitter posts, with a few extra notes here ... [More]
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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Is going to the Grand Prix just for the post-race concert the equivalent to reading Playboy for the articles? ‘Cos that’s what I’m doing. I don’t know if I’ll bother looking at the cars whizzing round and round, but I’m really looking forward to the music. And for those living in Victoria, may I just ... [More]
It turns out there are actual documented rules for street cricket, which is popular on the sub-continent. But at my place we’ve got our own version, which has evolved into a limited overs format that suits a short game after dinner for the three of us, though of course occasionally neighbours will join in. 6 ... [More]
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Extending Sydenham to Sunbury
There’s a debate raging about whether or not electric trains should be extended to Sunbury. Some Sunbury passengers are arguing that they want to keep V/Line services. There might be a bigger issue here: whether Sunbury people want to be part of suburban Melbourne or not. I gather that came up at last night’s public ... [More]
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Patter
If you’re in customer service it’s good to have some kind of patter worked out to keep your customers entertained. Bad to use the same line twice in one session though. This is why spam fails, actually. One might take notice of a single reputable-ish-looking email, but when a dozen show up at once, it’s ... [More]
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Working the queue
McDonalds in Elizabeth Street — at least at busy times — appears to now have someone who takes peoples’ orders while they’re still in the queue. The order is keyed into an electronic gizmo, which presumably goes into the Maccas computer, and the price of the order is quoted to the customer, and a ticket ... [More]
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Ring tones
I switched my geeky Galaga ring tone back to a standard ring (Nokia’s “bee”) the other day, when I finally came to accept I just couldn’t hear the Galaga tone outdoors. Also it appears my model of phone can’t handle starting quietly and getting louder with an MP3 tone. Apart from my own utterly superb ... [More]
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Clueless
Wow. Following up from frivolous calls after Melbourne’s earth tremor a couple of weeks ago, and just in time for yesterday afternoon’s tremor, Victoria Police put out a press release that reveals how many clueless people there are, who dial the Triple Zero emergency number for stupid reasons. January 2009 – Caller telephones 000 to ... [More]
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Attn: Other Daniel Bowen
Attention: Whoever has tried to initiate a password change for the Gmail address “danielbowen”: It’s not working for you because it’s not your email address. It’s mine. That’s why the password assistance message keeps coming through to me. If you’ve received this mail in error, it’s likely that another user entered your email address by ... [More]
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Park and ride
This post has been superseded by this one from 2015, which used far better statistics For all the prominence given to issues around railway station car parks, the number of people using them is only a fraction of the total numbers of people using the trains. Source: Total users — Connex figure of 360,000. P+R ... [More]
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I must be getting old
From a blog on the Australian Jewish News web site: Recently I was on a bus and a young man got on in front of me wearing very low-slung jeans, so low in fact that his gutkes showed above the jeans. I was sure that his jeans were going to fall off and I was ... [More]
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Stewart vs Cramer
For those who missed it, last Thursday night’s Daily Show was a corker. Jon Stewart took on TV financial advisor Jim Cramer in one of the best TV debates I’ve seen in a while. The interview was one of those classic television moments that crystallised the public mood in the credit crisis. Stewart articulated the ... [More]