Who are you online?
I like permanence. Six years ago I bought my own domain primarily so I’d never have to change my email address ever again. I almost had separation anxiety when my employer gave me a mobile phone, meaning that I had to stop using my old number. We still have the same license plate number that I had when I got my first car 15 years ago. I don’t like it when I have to adapt. The internet has gone a long way to messing that up.
Grey Water Installation
At Ray’s request here is a more detailed look at how to install a grey water tank, Dave from Albury style.
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Grey Water
The lawn at the Dave from Albury Compound is one of the many things that had suffered from neglect over the years, but has been receiving plenty of attention of late. Last weekend I unboxed lawn seed, bought home a trailer load of sandy loam, and set about repairing the extensive bare patches in the front and back yard.
The problem that immediately sprang up was how to keep the seed damp while it germinated, seeing as how Albury is still on anti-lawn water restrictions. The obvious solution was to invest in a grey water setup, one of the myriad things that have been ‘on the list’ to do forever, but never materialised. Mrsdave sent me to Bunnings with the idea of one of those wheelie bin style tanks in mind, but things didn’t turn out quite as she’d expected.
The Beatles: Rockband
In short, it’s absolutely amazing.
This isn’t just a case of dropping Beatles tracks into Rockband, it is so much more. The visuals are absolutely stunning, there are some nice tweaks to the gameplay, and it really sets a new benchmark for this style of game.
If you love The Beatles and you’re not a gamer, this game is seriously good enough to turn you into one.
Cold, wet and happy.
Today, along with three other families from Albury Apex, we left the glorious sunshine which had finally made its way to the Dave from Albury compound and headed to Falls Creek. We’re not regular visitors to the snow, in fact this was the first time that Mrsdave has been since well before she fell pregnant with Buster Boy, and my only recreational visit was last year’s Apex trip when we took a group of African refugees to Mt Buffalo.
Buster Boy and the Troll Princess had been excitedly looking forward to the trip, Buster Boy because of his memories of last year’s trip, the Troll Princess because Dora rescued a snow princess once (actually it’s been dozens of times, DVD repetition is the bane of a parent’s life). We hired some gear in Mount Beauty and headed up the mountain, trying all of the usual distractions that you throw out when trying to avoid the kids feeling queasy on a windy road. As we passed the sign marking ten kilometres from the village I switched to ‘who can see the first snow?’ as I knew we were nearing the area where we’d start to see it on the road side.
Well, I thought I knew. Higher and higher we drove, with no sign of snow on the roadsides or in the nearby scrub. In fact we drove all the way into the village before we saw any real piles of snow anywhere. We made our way to the aptly named Windy Corner, where the toboggan slope is located, and braved the icy squalls and grey skies. To our delight, all of the kids took to the slope with gusto, although they were far less keen on dragging their sleds back up the hill.
After plenty of trips down the hill, including all of the Dads, and then Mums, racing each other (Mrsdave won, I disgraced our family) we retired to the nearby shelter for some lunch. It was great to be out of the wind and snow for a while, and there is something sublime about communal food.
We headed out again to build some snow men, but the entire enterprise soon devolved into a snowball fight. We didn’t have long though, as the wind picked up even further, chasing us back to our cars. After a relaxing drive back down the mountain we reconvened at the Dederang Pub for a few quiet ales before going our separate ways. All in all, a fantastic day, made even better by sharing the experience with good friends.
Baptism of fire
After a few days waiting for the IT boffins at Crikey to upgrade my account so that I could begin contributing to Pure Poison, I managed to post there under my own name today.
I’d run through a few ideas for posts over the past couple of days, but I’d let all of them go because I had been unable to publish them. I figured that I’d avoid being too confrontational as I eased my way into the team, but as fate would have it at almost the exact same time that I got posting rights a post popped up in my RSS reader from News Limited Blogger Tim Blair that I simply couldn’t let pass without comment. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mr Blair, he’s been a feature of the Australian blogosphere for quite a few years now and has previously crossed swords with some of the other authors at Pure Poison. Because of that history I have to admit that I wasn’t planning on raising my head above the parapet to soon, but I set timidity aside and made a contribution that I hoped would be appropriate.
It turns out that was the easy part.
Unlike Dave from Albury’s Weblog, with a modest audience and a collegial group of commenters, Pure Poison is read widely and comes under much more scrutiny. As such, rather than having a free flow of comments and ad hoc intervention, each and every comment needs to pass through a moderation queue. Making the judgement call about which comments are or are not OK to publish really isn’t something I’d given a great deal of thought to, but it’s an important part of the process. Thankfully my cohorts were available to give me direction, giving me a bit more confidence to wade into the moderation process, and at the end of day one I think I’ve managed OK.
The challenge now, as always, is what to write next.
More of the same, but different.
After a couple of guest posts at Pure Poison, Jeremy, Scott and Toby have asked me to join them there as a regular contributor. At first I was concerned that it might impact negatively on my blogging here, but when they pointed out that Pure Poison’s readers probably weren’t interested in stories about funny stuff my kids had done, I realised that there was probably scope to spread myself around.
Clash of ideas.
There’s no doubt that I often find myself at odds with the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church, one issue that is particularly pertinent at the moment is the approach to gay marriage. As far as I’m concerned gay marriage is a civil rights issue, more than half of all marriages in Australia are done by civil celebrants so I don’t think that religious groups have the right to try to dictate that other people be bound by their beliefs.
Because of this, I’d urge all of you to go to the Australian Marriage Equality website and fill out an online submission to the Senate Enquiry into Marriage Equality. Our government should not be discriminating against people based on their sexual preference. Submissions end Friday, so please take a few minutes to let this committee know that equality is a value that is important to you.
Preconceptions
This morning on Radio National Breakfast, Fran Kelly interviewed Robert Brown from the NSW Shooters’ Party about a private member’s bill that he plans to introduce into the upper house of the NSW Parliament. The crux of the bill is that it removes some of the discrepancies in NSW law relating to hunters performing pest control, it would extend to National Parks the same system that presently exists, quite successfully, in State Forests and give farmers more choice about how they managed kangaroo culls on their own properties. What sounded like a fairly straight forward piece of legislation, that can only be successful with the support of the government, really seemed to raise Fran’s ire.
If you don’t like coffee, don’t order it.
I was enjoying a quick break with Mrsdave at one of our favourite coffee houses this afternoon when a woman walked in and decided to insult the barista. I’ll repost what I tweeted at the time.
A woman here just ordered a large, half strength latte. Why not just order a Horlicks & be done with it?
A large latte is already weak, because as a rule it has no more coffee, just more milk, so to ask for it to be made half strength really begs the question, what the hell do you think you’re buying?
I have no problem if people don’t like coffee, whether it’s the taste, the caffeine hit or because you’ve only ever been given international roast, but if that’s the case, why order it? People confuse me no end.
