I'm not opinionated, but...

Petrol prices: Without doubt petrol companies are profiteering during this world wide oil problems, solely caused by #47. The 'outrageous prices' of the Biden era don't seem so outrageous now. The retailers and the supplying companies are making a bomb, and no one is talking about that.

Lachie Neale: Creepy Australian football player who on camera punched another player in the guts. He was suspended for one match, but it was the Grand Final match, so naturally a way was found to let him play. For mine, he should have been charged with assault by the police.

A US AI company attacked an Australian medical system to seek information. Another AI company took that as being an ok thing to do, so it attacked too. Bring back the old days when there was only Google and Wikipedia. Matters of the tech have never scared me, but they are starting to now. 

'Ave a good one', (day). Suddenly English as a second language supermarket staff are using such slang as you thank them after paying. I don't mind it, but is clearly coming from management, with the hope that they are seen as dinky di Australians. 

Data centres: Massive buildings that from within consume huge amounts of electricity and water. Every year before summer we are warned by doomsayers that there will be electricity blackouts over summer because there won't be enough electricity to power our cooling. I think it did happen once in the teen years, but that was I think due to coal power station failures. One data centre can use as much power as a town with 127,000 residents. This is a huge issue to be addressed. And so is the water consumption, when in times of drought and water restrictions for households. There will be a huge pile on against the data centres and governments if the use of resources is not addressed and ensured they are renewable.

Electricity supply for data centres: Nah, we're not paying for underground cables. We'll, just put enormously tall high voltage power poles down your quiet and leafy suburban street. They did in one street and after another street saw that happen, they blockaded their own street by parking cars to stop the works. Already dug holes have been filled in. Who knows what Plan B will be.

A terrorist plot in England foiled by a farmer returning home after being at a party? Well done that girl, but was it? Much to the dissatisfaction of #47 and his bitch boi Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, the accused have been released on bail. I would assume the English authorities know what they are doing and such a decision wasn't taken lightly, and they don't need interference from across the Atlantic. 

Miss Manners in public: No one wants to hear your phone videos playing on public transport (young people), and no one wants to hear your phone on loudspeaker with what should be a private conversation (old people). 

Me's upgraded my tech

Advertising leaflets were placed in our letter boxes, which is not allowed but it easy enough for someone to get to the mail room to stick leaflets in letter boxes. I look at whatever a leaflet might offer, and mostly they go straight in the convenient nearby mail room rubbish bin.

This one grabbed my attention, my own internet supplier offering deals for new customers. I noted that once the bonus sign up discounted period ended, they would be on a better plan that I was.

I was paying $85 per month for my internet connection, with the modem spreading the signal to the whole of the apartment. Tvs, my desktop, phones, tablets, laptops, a few lamps, and Rover the vacuum cleaner all use the internet. My speed was 100mbs, and truly, I find that quite adequate and I was actually getting that download speed.

But for new subscribers, they would eventually end up on the $80 plan and get 700mbs download speed. I was outraged that I was paying more for less. 

It was time to talk to someone in the Philippines about my internet. 

Oh Sir, you are on an older plan.

It would have been nice if you informed me that there was a better plan for me.

I am sorry Sir. Our website clearly shows our plans.

Well, I will take the $80 plan and have a 700mbs service, thanks.

Sir, I have made the changes to your service. It will take some time to change and someone will call you.

Weirdly I was shuffled between various people on the phone but it wasn't too bad taking about 15 minutes. 

My expectation was that some buttons would be pressed somewhere and I would have an upgraded service. 

A few days later someone called to make an appointment. Ok, between 8.00am and 12 noon. I normally shower at 8.00, so I showered earlier on the day of the appointment. At this point I though the tech person might have do something in the basement or my floor's service room. I would just let him in.

He called about 8.30 and said he would arrive at 9.00. I let him in and he was a pleasant and competent man. He had to install a new box next to my modem. Lordy what a mess of wires. I had forgotten the name, and now I am forgetting it again. I think it was a LAN cable that connected this new box to my modem. I was told I don't own the new box, but as a homeowner, it wasn't that relevant. The LAN cable was bright yellow. That won't do at all in a public area of my apartment.

I've just remembered it is an ethernet cable, not a LAN cable.

Well, now I am connected, I should have 700mbs download speed, a huge increase from 100mbs.

Mr installer, 700mbs is an amazing speed. 

Sorry Sir, your building is old, your tech installations in the basement were early models and the wire from the basement to your home is copper. You won't get 700mbs but let me check. 

Sir, you are getting 365mbs download speed. If your building had newer equipment, and a fibre cable to your apartment, you might get 700mbs. 

After he left I went to JB HiFi and bought a grey ethernet cable and tidied wires and plugs as best I could, and that made the rat's nest, like Sybil's hair, look better. You only see the mess of the wires when at the end of the kitchen but they aren't really visible to visitors.

The black thing is the modem and the new white booster thingie sits flat on the bench.    

The end result, I have noticed a much higher speed for some things I might download, but for general computer business, such as blogging, there is no difference. It was hardly worth the bother, but then I am saving $5.00 a month. Did I mention I know how to look after the pence? 

The Digital Mess

I am quite organised, even to the point of mostly knowing what I am doing tomorrow.

Jackie in Toronto posted this about organised  people.

Yes, I tick most of the boxes as being organised. Not being organised would give me great stress. Ray was the same. Phyllis and Kosov are terribly disorganised. I never run out of anything, but they do and have to make a last minute trip to somewhere for something.

My email organisation is up to date, as is everything else, with one exception.

In the mid 1990s when we bought our first computer and connected to the internet, someone who I was chatting to on a rudimentary chat site, maybe MIRC, sent me a photo of a bunch of flowers, followed by a dick pic. How amazing that this machine can do that! I saved the photos, and I probably could find them now if I needed to, but it was a downhill slope from there. I saved and I saved, everything. Photos, videos, messages...everything. My oldest email address still operational is from the nineties, a Rocketmail eddress, which became a Yahoo eddress. Not often, but I still use it.

However, over the years I had organised things, almost everything. Photos are filed in folders, stored in the cloud and on an external ssd drive. The problem is that I didn't name all the folders appropriately, and with near two gigabytes of photos, I struggle to find individual photos.

My brother asked me about a photo he had seen of Mother with her four children standing in front of the fireplace at the Dick Whittington Hotel in St Kilda. I just cannot find the photo, but I have now worked a way to narrow it down. He brought his dog Cobber into the hotel, and he was asked to take the dog outside. Cobber died suddenly soon after. So I need to ask him what year Cobber died, and that will narrow the search down to one year. Wow, I've just remember Jo was there, crawling around on the floor crawling around on the floor and checking out the contents of women's handbags. She must have been two years old, so I need to look at 2009. That's so much earlier than I thought.

Or were these two different visits to The Dick. We went there so many times over so many years. Btw, The Dick has a drive through alcohol outlet where apparently you can pick up your Dick Liquor. 

When I have something stored, while it might take some time and thought, I can usually find it.

The afore mentioned guy who sent me photos in the 90s might be this guy. The photo is all of 45 kilobytes.

What a drone

Drone bees are male used for sex and then discarded. Not that unlike some humans really. 

Is there a parallel with drones of the skies?

In the noughties Ray and I were on a grassed area at St Kilda Beach, Melbourne, when I heard a noise and looked up and saw a drone aircraft, and it descended to land right next to us. This is a public safety issue, said the State Government and banned them in some areas.

Skip to the teen years of the 21st century and I thought from my balcony I could see a hovering bird over the streets of South Yarra. We don't have large hovering birds. I realised it was a drone. I watched for a very short time and went inside to get my camera to take a photo, but it had gone by the time I returned. The drone operator was certainly in breach of laws.

Now, they have become skilled surveillance cameras, weapons that can hunt down and kill people with precision, can be armed to attack sites and suicide bombing devices.

Their abilities are quite scary, but they can be used in very useful areas too, for surveying and mapping, to check inaccessible areas and to fight against crime. 

They are topical here because they are used at Sydney beaches as shark spotters. Sadly at Coogee Beach a female swimmer was recently attacked by a shark. The beach is one of the popular few that doesn't have drone coverage because of Sydney Airport flight restrictions. Duh, how high do drones fly compared to planes? The authority has now temporarily allowed shark spotting drones to fly over the sea at Coogee Beach.

Over the summer periods, Sydney beaches are often netted to stop sharks coming close to shores, but this has a huge impact on sea wildlife, with many creatures getting caught in nets, including dolphins, whales, stingrays and turtles. Drones are a far more effective way to prevent shark attacks and don't have the impact on creatures of the seas. 

After all, aren't the seas the province of sea creatures. Humans enter at risk.

There is a natural predator for drones, as this Australian wedge tailed eagle shows. (PS. If this post seems very unedited in someway, that's because crazy things are happening around me) 

Dashcam caught a crash

Yesterday was a bit of a disaster. Phyllis wanted to show me an incident that would be caught by dashcam, so I removed the SD card, brought it up to plug into my desktop. I am struggling a bit with the front and rear dash cams connectivity to my the app on my phone, but I'm getting there. 

We viewed the footage, showing one of two incidents he passed by in one trip. The first was a tipped over concrete mixer truck but other vehicles blocked most of the view.

I took the SD card back to the car to insert it into the camera unit and as I pushed it in, the camera fell off the windscreen. I also realised I had put the card in the wrong way and it was stuck. I tried to pull it out but made it worse, pushing it in further. I can't do this in semi darkness in the carpark, even with my phone torch. I unplugged the camera from the wires and tapped the unit on a hard car surface and the card disappeared altogether, somewhere inside the camera. Woe is me! Yes, I could hear the card rattle inside the unit. Back upstairs.

Kosov, help me. I gave him the jeweller's kit screwdrivers and went off on my errand, hoping he could extract the card. I returned and he had taken part of the camera apart. His opinion was that the card was not inside and had fallen out, so down we went and with our phone torches on to search the car where it may have fallen out. It was not found.

I was very sure the card was inside the unit somewhere, so Kosov used the AI Gemini to find out how to take the camera further apart. Later I asked him, couldn't you just find that using Google. Yes, he replied but it will take me much longer because of promoted ads, and a lack of detail where I will have to burrow down unknown holes. Gemini gave me an instant answer in about 10 seconds. 

Armed with information, he stripped the unit down to exposing its motherboard and and did find the card, carefully extracted it with tweezers and we reassembled the unit and put it back in the car and all was well. That was about an hour out of his day because of my stupidity. But really, that part of the camera was not designed well. I didn't force anything, and it all went terribly wrong. 

To to the incident. Traffic was banked up at an intersection. Phyllis did not know why. He gave a toot to the driver in front of him and then soon realised the driver was stuck, and felt so bad about the toot. The dash cam downloads separate files each of about two minutes in 4K definition, over 100mb for two minutes of recording. 

25 seconds in you can see there is an issue. 

30 seconds Phyllis tooted the car horn.

42 seconds it is clear the driver in front is trying to change lanes. One driver to the right hesitates to let the car in but the driver in the car front did not pick up on this. The next driver was rather impolite for not letting the car diverge into the right lane. 

Then Phyllis diverged left around the obstacle. And what was the obstacle? It becomes visible at 50 seconds. A learner driver on the wrong side of a three lane road facing oncoming traffic. On the face of it, a terrible mistake by the learner driver. But let's look closer.

The car is a Royal Automobile Car Club of Victoria car, displaying learner driver L plates, meaning there is a student at the wheel, with a driving instructor who has foot and perhaps steering controls on their side of the car. It simply cannot end up where it is without a very good reason. Move on to 58 seconds and freeze, and you can see the car as been hit. I suspect it was hit and spun around by another driver and I doubt the L driver in the RACV car was at fault.  

YouTube is as ridiculous as it is absurd about background music, and because there is music playing in the background of the car, for copyright issues, in some countries this clip won't be viewable. YouTube even informed me of the two songs being played. Hey, it's better at recognising music than Shazam.  

The electricical

The spelling of the subject line is as Eva Gabor used to pronounce the word in the tv show Greenacres. I thought this post might be of interest to those overseas who haven't experienced our power plugs and outlets.

Our sockets and plugs are known as Type 1, and used in Australia, New Zealand, PNG and some Pacific Islands. Oddly, they are also used in China and Argentina. These are to carry 240 volts, unlike the North American standard 110 volts,  and Japan's 100 volts. The history of the use of 110v versus 240v is very interesting, and 110v seems problematic as at times things need a higher voltage. 240v is much more dangerous than 110v. You'll be very quickly fritzed.  

These are the original overhead lights in my apartment. I have two incandescent 100 watt bulbs in each, which totals 400 watts of electricity when they are on. That is an extreme amount, and worse, they don't actually light up the room that well. They are probably only used if one drops an earing and needs to find it. As they are so rarely used, it makes no sense to change to LED.

I am thinking of replacing them with fan lights. At times all you need is a bit of breeze, rather than air conditioning. 

The lights are on a dimmer though, which we had installed. 

I was going to use my own photos but there has to be as mix. This is the typical Australia socket. Generally people do use the on/off switch. I always turn power points off. I don't want the the electricical leaking out. The angled plug outlets are for the positive and neutral and the vertical for the earth plug. Tourists who aren't accustomed to turning switches on and off can find their phone has no juice when it should be fully charged. 

You can get very fancy power sockets but I think they look rather gauche. 

The prongs are partly plastic coated and once the full plastic is shown as you remove a plug, the prongs are no longer in contact with the socket. That is really the only safety aspect to our plugs, unlike English plugs that are incredibly safe but very bulky. 

As you can see the normal plugs is not very bulky.

And this one an earthed plug. My washing machine has an earthed plug, and I think the dishwasher, but not much else now. 

Browsers

I updated the desktop from Windows 10 to 11. It was quite painless, but there are some changes that I will adjust to in time. The first evening as I moved the cursor to shut the computer down, the button had gone. How do I turn it off, safely without just pressing the physical on/off button? 

I found its very discreet placement, but I wonder what was the point of changing its placement.

I was at my pharmacy today to buy my drugs. I used my last Covid test kit when I came down with this cold. My goodness, the kits now test for RSV and flu types A and B as well. The wonders of medical science. I don't have to test to know I have a common cold. 

The news today from Hungary was joyous to hear. The extreme far right leader Orban has been voted out of office. Restoring Hungary to its former progressive status will take some time, and I don't know enough about the new leader to offer an opinion beyond what I have said. Graphs indicate it has in many ways performed poorly against its comparative counterparts.

Can you believe about two months after my car had a punctured tyre that was a slow leak, I now have the same tyre punctured with a slow leak. This time I can see a piece of wire protruding from the tyre. If I pull it out, I am sure the tyre will quickly deflate. I have to fix that today. I am sure Phyllis picked up the metal somewhere in the outer areas when I allow him to take the car one day a week for work. He was prepared to take the car to get the tyre repaired, but the tyre repair place said they could not fit that in. When I had the last puncture fixed, I wasn't charged. I wonder if Phyllis would have been charged, although they probably have the record of my car stored in a database. So, yes, I wonder if young dark guy would have been charged when the old white guy wasn't. Believe me, if the job was the same and he was charged, I would make it rather uncomfortable for the Australia wide chain. 

While I didn't think doing anything physical today was a good idea, I did manage to wash my doona cover and put it back on the bed. My doubled over summer sheet that I use instead of the doona from about October to April was washed, dried and put away. I washed it with the doona cover and it balled up inside the doona cover and did not dry properly, needing another half an hour of the washing machine drying cycle. 

Photos improve blog posts.

Sunday night chicken soup for dinner, guaranteed to cure a cold. It didn't but it was rather nice and did no harm.  

Kosov is trying to make Jass into a lap cat. I don't think she ever will be, but she does love him.

Lacking energy on Sunday while I was dying from a common cold, I still managed to have a wander at the Sikh festival at Federation Square. Ah, the mysteries of southern Asian men wearing turbans. There was even a display showing how to put one on and wind hair into the scarf. 

 

Ignore the subject line. I never got around to talking about web browsers. However, I put yesterday's mural post into AI and I am informed it is a Banksy work, in Park Street, Bristol. Yeah, nah. 

Defragging

Ah the memories, often associated in my mind with dial up internet.

I cannot remember Windows 3.1 but I certainly can remember Windows 95, which had a semi manual system for defragging your computer. I suppose I used to do it every few months, and with another system check, which I no longer remember. What is defragging? The proper word would be defragmentation, so it is correcting when everything is fragmented. It pulls together bits and pieces on your hard drive into a more orderly manner, hopefully to improve your computer's performance. 

I think we moved on to Windows 98 but certainly not Windows ME, which was and is known to be less stable than previous versions of Windows. The next was Windows XP and then Windows 10, which is what I am now using and have for a very long time.

I am being nagged by Microsoft to upgrade to Windows 11, and I guess I will have to bite the bullet at some point and change over. 

Now defragging happens automatically and you don't know what your computer is doing in the background, as it looks after itself.

Here is a nice clip of what you saw when you were defragging back in the 90s. I used to find it quite mesmerising and strangely relaxing. 

I've dried out

The dampness camera and the moisture probe showed my apartment had dried out, so the nine fans and two dehumidifiers were removed and I have so much space, and I won't he kicking furniture that's sitting in the wrong place. I could get away without repainting anything but given the building's insurance will pay, I will get it done, after a bit of luxury of having no tradespeople visiting. 

Someone mentioned my new lounge chairs, and the damage was repaired with a very satisfactory job.

They are nothing special, just black leather but I am excited by what they can do, sadly though not pouring a drink and serving it to me.

The controls, with the centre button to put all back to normal, and a USB A and USB C charging ports. Buttons are each side. 

This a a phone charging pad. I can't work out the purpose of the recess at its edge. Note the little button on the lower edge.

Which electrically opens and retracts the drinks holder. 

Inside this storage area are another USB A and USB C socket. 

The reading lamps, with the flap of leather concealing where the screws failed. 

Not quite completely flat, but very comfortable. I haven't fallen asleep on it yet at night time and woken up at 2.30am, but give it time.

Friday Funny

Kitty Flanagan is a great actor and she is very good at stand up comedy too. In these clips she talks about tech and how non digital natives have adapted to the world of phones and tablets. And let's face it, if it isn't us, we will have all seen it happen.

Could I learn to text with my thumbs? I doubt it, and I text as I write here. It takes me longer to insert BRB and an emoji than it does for me to type it in full.

OMG, I am not suspicious but it is Friday the 13th today. TTFN.

Public phone life

This post is inspired by Hel who wrote this most interesting post about the history of the classic red English phone box and other models, or perhaps that is the UK.

So, let's have a look at public phones in Australia that lie in my memory.

This is the first oldest public phone I can remember. On the horizontal part, you can just see a half round circle and you sat your sixpence or five cents there, and when the phone was answered at the other end, you would push your coin to the left and it would roll and drop down into the phone.

This is not a public phone but some of the above had separate earpieces and fixed mouth pieces similar to what is in the candlestick phone below. I don't remember there being much in the way of vandalism as everyone used them at time, and wanted them to work. 

This model became quite standard in my younger years.  Five cents would be inserted into the slot at the top and when the call was answered, you pressed button A. Button B was to retrieve your coin if the call wasn't answered. As kids we often just pressed button B to see if anyone had left a coin in the phone but I can't remember if we ever found any. It was common knowledge that if you yelled into the ear piece, the person at the other end could faintly hear you, enough to say 'Pick me  up', if there was an arrangement in place. I don't remember if that worked either. Sometimes just calling without using a coin was sufficient. My grandmother called her home and the phone ringing alerted my grandfather to drive to pick her up from church.  It's a wonder you could get a dial tone without inserting a coin. 

So what housed these important machines? It was an English style classic red phone box, of various styles. This one has panes of glass but I remember some at least, having louvred windows, which I guess let in external noise. This was taken at the National Communications Museum in the suburb of Hawthorn. It's well worth a visit.

I assume the paint used inside was to stop people writing on the walls. I can imagine people scribbling a  phone number on a wall that they needed to remember. It could have also been for insulation the boxes from external noise too. They had a very dead sound inside and with the door shut, very little noise penetrating. 

Now, I wonder if there is a gap in my knowledge. These are the next public phones I can remember. They were virtually vandal proof, with the very inconveniently short metal cord.

                                               

With a closing door, these boxes weren't too bad.

But clearly vandalism was becoming a big problem, with this version minus the door and with a metal grill around the bottom of the box, rather than glass.

Indoors, you would see phones more like these.

What do we have now? These very modest affairs. The pink topped one indicates free WiFi, which was originally only for Telstra customers, of which I was then one. In days before apps, how did the system know you were a Telstra customer? 

At one point as usage fell by 2020s, all calls within Australia to fixed phones and mobiles became free from public phones, so no complicated machinery for coins or bank cards were needed, no risk of coin theft.

Many are now covered in advertising, electronic at times. 

I suppose these phone cards are from the nineties into the two thousands, and before you could use a bank card. Kosov loved the Australian dinosaur card. The two lower cards have punch holes in them, made by the phone as you used your stored value card. I've heard since that you could put tape over the holes and whatever detected the holes saw the card as unused. The two top cards were later when a circuit was printed on the card, so no more punch holes.

Of extra interest to note, the lower right has the name Telecom, which followed the earlier PMG, Post-Master General's, the title for our government postal and phone company. Without fuss or fanfare, Telecom became Telstra, as seen in the left hand card.  

AI Slop Answer

I haven't given everyone a chance to check my last post, but as I was watching the YouTube clip, it jumped out at me. What? I stuck a pencil in the cog of the tape and rewound to check if what my eyes were seeing was true. Game Roon? Well done Marie Q.

The mopping Rover

Rover has been difficult getting to and from wherever he has been ordered to clean. He wasn't taking a direct path but wandering around under the bed in the spare room, his home base. In frustration at his antics, I picked him up and took him to the area to be cleaned and then ordered him to clean. That worked twice and he found the direct route home, but would not climb onto charging and emptying stand. I eventually put him up by hand and he began charging but of course as he didn't make the move himself, he didn't empty his bin.

For some reason Rover has corrected his path and now travels directly. You really have to work hard with Rover in the early days to get him right. The time I've spent on my phone app for Rover, the time I've spent watching him, the time I've spent with other Rover matters, I could have vacuumed myself, perhaps twice. However, we are on the upward. I always knew I bought a toy.

Rover mops the tiled areas. I've learnt to tell him to do all jobs twice and use extra water with added detergent on tiled areas. In this video you can see Rover's mopping arm come down. The underside of the arm is a mopping material, velcro connected to the arm. It has to be changed perhaps every six months or so. 

I wondered if Rover could sweep and mop the balcony? I measured Rover's height and the gap at the bottom of the glass, where Jass loves to stick her head out, and no. Rover would go to his death as he went under the glass. 

On my own

I expect no sympathy from people who have lived on their own for a long time. But, you know, it is a bit hard when you've been with someone for forty five years and suddenly they have gone. 

There are the very practical things, like feeding yourself, cleaning your home on your own, shopping on your own, and spoilt as I was, having your ironing done for you. Lunching on your own is different. It all takes so much time and visiting places you used to visit together can make you feel very alone. 

I know many of you will at some point lose your beloved life partner. You don't know when. It could be instantaneously, as it was for me, or it could be long and lingering. 

I don't have advice about how to deal with grief. I am not sure that I have really dealt with it yet.The hardest thing is that everything you do is down to you. You have no one discuss decisions with. It is all totally up to you. The quite wonderful expression in America is 'Shooting the breeze'. Or more crudely 'Shooting the shit'. Yes, family and friends will step up to help, but there is nothing quite like talking about nonsense with your partner, along with the incidentals that happen each day. 'Ah, that shop has closed down.' 'Did you see how old Mrs Kafoops is looking'. No one but your late partner will be interested.    

But what you can do NOW, hopefully long before the event, is ensure you know everything about your joint lives so far as documents go. Titles to property, where are they? Passwords, pins for devices and bank accounts, logins for various sites. There is really nothing quite like having these in printed forms. Whether you are proactive and do so yourself or your partner does it, no matter. 

Harsh reality is around the corner one day. Sort it. 

I'll try to post something more cheerful tomorrow. 

A fail

The bollard in my car parking space failed. The rechargeable lead acid battery had worn out. I just could not get my bollard up. As I mentioned to the company, it only lasted five years. As they mentioned to me, five years for the battery is a good innings. 

A replacement battery would cost about $85 including postage. I was mulling it over and then I received a generic email that the company would be closed until 12th January. This cost was a good bit more than we paid five years ago. But prices have risen with everything.

I went into town to Jaycar, where I know the staff are very helpful. They had the appropriate battery but without the wires to plug it in. The battery was only $30. If I could solder, I could connect the wires myself. I saw my father solder, and the first thing you need is a soldering iron, which I don't have. I think you brush the soldering area with spirits of something and then drop the molten solder onto where you want to join.

Jaycar man suggested a company called AMT, and it was short walk away in the old Argus building, where Fire Fighting Nephew once did some urban exploration when the building was abandoned. That company did not have the battery and suggested I visit Jaycar. I explained about the battery and staff said he could solder the wires onto the Jaycan battery, so back I went and bought the battery and returned to have the wires soldered to the battery. I thought it would cost $10-$20, and stupid old man did not ask the cost of soldering earlier. I forget the soldering cost, about $60 I think. Anyway the cost ended up being about the same as I had just ordered it originally online from the bollard company. 

I felt like such as stupid old man. Then it got worse. Phyllis' father is an electrical engineer and Phyllis said, Andrew, I know how to solder electronics. You could have bought the cheapest electric soldering iron and I could have soldered the wires. 

There you go. Me after a lifetime of being frugal with money tried to save some money with quite a bit of effort, and I absolutely failed. I could kick myself. 

This evening it is very cool out on the balcony, with a fair breeze and my arms have goosebumps, although the weather bureau says it it 18/65. It's hard to believe in two days time the temperature will be 41/106. I guess I won't be going out on that day.

Bosh and botheration, and Bosch

My dishwasher is eight years old and if it washed every day since it was bought, it could have washed a load of dishes nearly 3,000 times. Obviously when we were away from home, it wasn't used. Occasionally it missed a day because we had dined out, and rarely, it did two loads a day. Since Phyllis and Kosov moved in and I insisted they use the dishwasher rather than washing dishes under running water, it was probably averaging three loads every two days. 

It was a Bosch (note past tense, I'm building momentum) and one morning I rose to unusual pumping noises and displaying an E15 fault on the display panel. Google quickly told me it was water present in the base tray under the unit and a float mechanism, like one in your toilet cistern or horse trough, for reasons to prevent an overflow of water, had caused the fault. 

Turning it off and on again at the powerpoint did not help. Kosov emptied the dishwasher and washed its contents by hand. Next morning I arose and pressed the on switch, and thank goodness it switched on like normal. Just a minor glitch, and now fixed. 

About two weeks later, the day after I bought Rover, the iRobot, the same thing happened, but it didn't fix itself the following morning. We learnt it would work if we turned the inlet tap off it had finished washing, it would work again. That is clearly not going to work long term. I called an appliance repairer we had used before, a long time ago though, and no, they won't service Bosch appliances. 

I called Bosch, and arranged for a bloke repair technician to visit and repair. The cost was $200 for half an hour, plus parts, plus more if it took longer than half a hour. After pondering for a few hours and looking at prices for new dishwashers online, I decided to cancel the appointment and buy a new one. This is a rather unexpected expense, but what else can I do. 

The Good Guys had a cheap price for a replacement, also a Bosch and much the same as the old one, I was prepared to pay for delivery, removal of the old unit and installation, until I was told the delivery company would no longer take away old dishwashers as they leaked water on to the floor of their precious vans. I paid just for delivery. 

What I also learnt, which both the old and new dishwasher have, is the as I described float to cut water off if the float rises, but also that there is an electric wire running up the inside the outer casing of the inlet hose, to a cut off valve where the hose connects to the tap.

The machine was delivered around 5pm last Sunday. I was is no mood at that hour to deal with it so, it messily sat in the 'eatery' until the next day when Kosov installed it under my instruction. 

It is not an exciting appliance, just doing the job the old did. But it has completed the transformation of the kitchen from white goods to stainless steel; fridge, microwave and now dishwasher, all in twelve months. 

Jass helps to remove the plastic wrapping on the new dishwasher.

After unwrapping, the dishwasher sat there overnight.

Compared to hand washing, whatever the ratings, it uses less power and water. 

Jas viewed the installation of the new machine from a place of temporary comfort.

Voila! Well done me and Kosov. 

But we now have the old unit to get rid of. My bedroom is ahead and while Phyllis' and Kosov's door to the left is ajar. Jass can enter if she wants, but prefers to just guard the room. 

iRobot for I

Off and on Ray and I used to talk about the merits of robot vacuum cleaners and buying one. We could never justify the expenditure when we had a perfectly good stick vacuum cleaner to clean not such a large area. Unlike getting out the old barrel model, unwinding the extension cord and putting the hose into the vacuum shaft and head, the stick vacuum cleaner was simply taken off its wall mounted charging stand and it was ready to go. For here, with just the two of us, it was perfectly adequate.

The lads will vacuum whenever I ask them but they are rarely proactive about doing so. At times they have a cleaning burst and it will be done.

I confess, me getting one though would be nothing but a toy to play with, however with two people and them cooking a lot, along with Jass' fur, I was thinking about it. Then a blogger mentioned she had one, and although there is just the two of them, a lot of fur will be shed in their abode.

The straw that broke the camelus back was when Ex Sis in Law mentioned she had bought one. Now she doesn't have money, but maybe there is some kind of cause and effect thing happening there. Right, I want one.

I researched and found the one I wanted for a good price, so meet what Phyllis named, Rover. 

We firstly sent it off on a mapping run, which it did successfully, and has been continually adjusting the map since. Kesav worked on putting names to the rooms. 

My room is Andrew's Chambers, with my ensuite called Andrew's Retreat. Their room is simply PK and the spare room is called Rover's Room, where the robot's base station is located.

The main bathroom is called Shower with the toilet called Potty. The kitchen is Cook's Area, the dining area, Eatery and the lounge area, Jass' Play Room.

The machine is great and continually refines itself, doing less strange things than it originally did. With water and a couple of drops of detergent, it also mops the tiled areas, as directed by how you set up the map.

Jass initially followed Rover around, always keeping a safe distance but its path is not always predictable. Then she started to ignore it, but once again as I made this video today, she was on watch.

Rover returns to its base after vacuuming and mopping the kitchen floor and then empties itself into a bag within the base unit, which is when it makes a loud noise. 

Had I known what would happen a couple of days later, I may not have bought Rover. That will be in a later post. 

Fed up with gambling ads

Gambling ads for horse racing have really stepped up a level, with seeing nicely dressed and groomed attractive men at a racecourse cheering on their favourite horse, well the one they hope will win. 

However, I am fed up with seeing the ads on YouTube and after a quick search, I found I can get rid of them.

This works for YouTube if you are using Google and logged in. Go here, https://myadcenter.google.com/customize and click the 'Sensitive' tab.

Ramblings

I never know what goes on in my home. As I sit here at my desk, I am in the firing line of little pet toys thrown for Jass for to retrieve after a chase and then to ignore. I am more used to dogs retrieving and demanding another throw. Cats don't retrieve, but still want another throw. 

Sunday Phyllis asked me to drive him to pick up a Christmas tree, an ornamental one of course. I think by the box size and the weight, it is huge. It came with a box of decorations and Christmas lights. I'm afraid!

Monday Phyllis and Kosov were up shortly after 5am to catch a train to a business where Phyllis would be assisting at a tyre recycling business. Kosov went along just to make sure Phyllis got there ok, and because he loves him. I would have said, 'Don't make a noise when you leave'. Phyllis discovered there is wire braiding inside tyres. He had the tiny scratches on his arms to prove it. He declared it was hard physical work, and it was only an unpaid trial. 

Kosov returned and had to go to work in the late evening. Yesterday, Tuesday, Kosov went to work Phyllis' shift, while Phyllis stayed home and took notes for Kosovo's university studies. I know if I asked why, I would not receive an answer I could understand. 

In a way I told Phyllis to stop buying stuffs, in fact to get rid of some stuffs, and a crate has been filled with junk to go to the charity shop. 

Today will be an early start as sometime between 7.30 and 8.00, tradies will arrive to install the new a/c. I am a bit excited. I received a $150 credit from the government for replacing an old unit with a more energy efficient model. Still, it is costing a good bit but the old unit is over 12 years old, has become noisy, and my worst nightmare is to be without heating or cooling. When the former unit broke down 12 years ago, it was weeks before a new on could be installed. We bought two cheap electric fan heaters to use in the meantime and end up with a horrendous electric bill.

I am going away on holidays at the weekend, my first proper holiday since Ray died. A plane and train will be involved. I am a little excited, quite apprehensive but quietly confident. I have no one to concern myself about except for myself. If I screw up, it is down to me. 

Sue loved balloons, so here are some balloon photos.

The tech and more

Technology can certainly be exasperating. 

I've just received an email from the online travel company Expedia, with holiday promotional specials in celebration of Labor Day. Labor Day in Victoria was in March. I suppose I shouldn't care, as a special is a special to take advantage of. But I do care that the system is not correctly set up to know when Labor Day is in Victoria. 

Everytime I look at a a product online, Google bombards me with advertising, hence the Expedia email. I spent quite some time looking at lounge suits online, and it took well over a month for the advertising to stop. Next was air conditioning, as I am thinking of replacing my quite old unit. The ads for that didn't last too long. Of late though, I've had the worst bombardment of travel emails. The thing is, all these emails keep arriving long after you've bought a product. 

I found a setting in Google to turn off personalised advertising, and I wonder if, having switched it off, I will stop receiving emails. It's a moot point because this week I installed the browser Duckduckgo. My searches there won't be picked up by the behemoth that is Google. 

I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the tv story, but AI is now being used in schools to assist students. One student was using AI to write computer code to create an online competitive game to clear plastic and other pollution from our seas. Another was using AI for guidance to write an essay about the play Othello. I put Shakespeare up there with my horror of algebra and trigonometry.

I do love what technology can do for us, and I embrace it when I want to.

It is four days after the second anniversary of my mother's death, on this Thursday the 14th. Yesterday was Ray's closest sister's birthday, and today is one year since Phyllis moved into the then chaotic home, post repainting and recarpeting. I wrote his initials on the calendar for today, and he asked about what was on that day. I don't think he remembers the date he moved in. I might buy him a single rose. It was hard to work out the date he moved in, but I then remembered the weekend after he moved in I went away for two nights, remembering that some of you didn't think it was a good idea to leave him here on his own, with friends visiting, just after he moved in. I had judged his character correctly in two or three days. 

I was away for two days, and I had a record of that, on my great niece's birthday, just after I had a melanoma removed from my scalp, still with the bandage on my head covered by my cap.

Today is shopping day but I buy little normal fresh food now.  Phyllis looks after most of that. I will replenish the wine cellar, buy a pepper steak pie for myself to bring home, have coffee from my newest cafe in South Melbourne (naturally the barista is hot) and if Phyllis is at work and Kosov is home, I'll buy Kosov a pie too.

I need a photo. Phyllis and Kosov are both reading this book series as they travel on public transport to and from work. I've no idea what Wings of Fire is about, and I am not interested, but if you know, feel free to say so.