Nothing pleasurable sadly… it’s almost 6 years since David Hicks was illegally detained by the US forces in Afghanistan.
Australia’s shame continues.
One of the chief Australian mufti’s, Sheik Feiz Mohammed, has had children distributing DVD’s in mosque car parks. On the DVD’s he can be heard calling people, especially children, to die for Allah. he can also be heard calling Jews pigs. Charming person eh? For media coverage try here.
Maybe it’s me, but it seems to highlight one of the fundamental differences in approach between the Christian and Islamic traditions. The former talks of love, peace and living together in harmony being the way demostrate faith to god … whereas the other seems to advodate killing and mayhem as the path to heaven.
Personally I’m for any religion that prefers the pursuit of peace and happiness to pain and suffering. But maybe I’m just odd.
Jan 172007
The McNaught comet has been visible in the night sky for the last few days and a damn good view it was too. It looked like a little orange ball in the sky but was enhanced into a slightly *less* little orange ball by using binoculars.
We’ll be out looking again tonight… it shows up on the horizon above the mountains.
Jan 172007
Spare a thought for Victoria. Already over a million hectares of bush burned out with no sign of rain to douse the flames.
The heat is appalling, the damage to property escalating, the wildlife killed and/or maimed is beyond calculation and the efects on the environment catastrophic.
To add to the misery, the fires burned out a major power supply cable between NSW and Melbourne cutting 25% of the state’s power supply off… and it seems it will take a week to fix.
This means large chunks of the state have no source of power for air conditioners, lights, trains, traffic lights etc. Businesses have had to close, people have been trapped in lifts in blistering hot weather and life support machinery in hospitals under threat.
Global warming to blame? Or is this just another of those dire Australian summers? Either way let’s hope the situation is brought under control soon.
And off she went!
The alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. and up we got. The wife showered, dressed, poofied up her hair, added make up and a twisted pearl necklace, had breakfast… and went off to catch the bus to her new job.
The bus stop is the other side of the park that’s in front of the house, and as we leisurely wandered across she said “I hear a bus” and moved a little faster. Lucky she heard it… we saw it coming round the corner as we crossed the road! Would have been a fine start if she’d missed it.
She’s catching a bus for a couple of reasons. Firstly because we handed her Prius back to the Qantas leasing people yesterday so we only have the one, partly for ‘environmental reasons’, (i.e. why use a car if you don’t need to) and partly for simple economics. The cost of the bus is about the same as the cost of the tolls she’d pay driving her own car, so she saves hugely on the purchase price, the petrol, insuance and other running costs, and importantly… parking fees! It isn’t cheap to park in central Sydney so really the decision to abandon a private car in favour of public transport is really a no-brainer.
Of course she loses the convenience of the thing, and there is also the ‘status’ thing to consider… so maybe we’ll reconsider eventually, but for the time being the bus is king.
First days at a new job are always stressful, and apart from the stress of getting to the bus stop on time… we added a new problem. As she was boarding the bus I realised the hem of her dress had dropped and called her… but she had no time at all to fix it. An hour or so later she sent me a text message telling me she was sitting half naked in a dress alterations booth in Sydney waiting for it to be fixed and wasn’t happy. Well at least the bus got her there in good time. 
It all could have been much worse!
I’m looking forward to hearing how her day went… I think that story might take some time to tell.
Well ok I finally got around to sorting out the Australian Opinion forum. It had crossed my mind to abandon it as a distinct entity and redirect DNS calls here to the blog, but I relented and it’s up and running. It was a pain to do it, and I’m hoping I don’t have to do it again!
Now though it’s been moved to my ‘reseller’ hosts where it has 1 Gb of storage available and 200Mb bandwidth. This should last a while, but even if it fills up there is still 50Gb storage left.
We chose the Simple Machines software… which I admit I am totally unfamiliar with… in favour of the old Invision Board and so far it looks ok. It needs ‘tarting up’ with a dedicated theme, banners, adverts and the like but at least it’s there.
What protection I can give it against hackers I don’t know. I installed the spam filters for posts (similar to the one I use here) but otherwise… all we can do is hope, and be vigilant. Also maybe some regular password changes on the hosting service might be of use… so that’s my next port of call!
I’m bizzy bizzy, bizzy lately and there is *so* much housework to do as well… let alone looking after the kids and the oldies!!
Not sure what else you’d call it. Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bander were both hanged in Iraq yesterday in typically gruesome and incompetent fashion. In fact, so badly handled was it that Barzan (Saddam Hussein’s younger half-brother and and former intelligence chief) was decapitated by the force of the drop.
I’m not sure what the Iraqis understand of the forms of ‘western’ justice but it would appear the only lesson they’ve learned from the US led invasion is that violence begets violence.
At least this time they managed to avoid film of the incident reaching public view, though because of the requirement to hand the bodies over to relatives for burial, they were unable to hide the fact the executions had been bungled.
Jan 162007
So. Time moves fast when you’re having fun… or not.
I came out of hospital feeling groggy as you’d expect so that took care of the 11th… and then went off next morning to the dentist for a filling… so more anaesthetics… and the wife insisted we walk over *and* back… which pretty much took care of the 12th 
That brings us to Saturday 13th… about which I have little memory at all… I seriously cannot remember what happened over the entire day.
Sunday? Well I was still feeling sick but dragged myself off with the others for a day in Sydney. We went to Darling Harbour… again… wandered over to the Chinese Gardens for lunch… which wasn’t too bad if you ignore the offhand surly uncooperative staff that seem to be employed in these places with monotonous regularity.
Australia in general, and Sydney in particular, has a huge tourism and hospitality industry… people take university degrees in it… and yet at the simplest level of customer service they are regularly let down by what appears to be a complete lack of staff training!
Surely one of the first things they shoul’d learn is how to interact with customers? And in that respect simple good manners would be one of the first things they should be taught… grrr.
Anyway… moving on… we went up to the Powerhouse Museum to look at the exhibition on the Great Wall of China (a very Chinese day this ). Exhibition pretty good… but when we came out eager to ‘buy the book and the DVD’ as you do when you’re fired up… no DVD… and not even a catalogue! Yet again hopeless organisation.
And that was about it for Sunday.
Monday I spent at home… the ‘sister site’ Australian Opinion was apparantly riddled with Trojans and other malware so it was deleted Sunday night and I spent part of Monday recreating a new version… which for some bizarre reason I currently can’t access!! Never rains but it pours. To be honest… I am quite likely to simply give up on it and redirect the url here instead. But I’ll have another hack at it today and see where I go with it.
Other than that… life has been quiet. If you discount the hospital and dental visits… and having the entire day filled with non-voluntary, non-paid work that is
C’est la vie.
My friend the The Phantom Staple Remover has kindly braved the cold wet weather in the UK and forwarded all the posts missing because of the server crash… and for that we say a *very* appreciative thank you.
I’ll have a quick read/edit (where appropriate) and get them uploaded.
So… let’s see… to add to the Sleep Apnoea, ADHD and the rest… I now have Diverticulitis to add to the list. We’re not sure about the Coeliac disease and the gluten intolerance… we’ll find out in a week or three when I go back for the results.
Still… in some ways it’s good to know I’m not a complete hypochonidriac… tho as I’ve always maintained… even hypochondria is a disease
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