onetrack

"Keep the change, ya filthy animal". The famous line from the gangster movie being watched by Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.

The Addams Family.

TV is just rubbish, haven't watched it for years. Rubbishy news and rubbishy, mind-numbing "entertainment", mostly American crap. SWMBO likes the game shows, and things such as "Would I lie to You?" As a coppers daughter, she's big on sorting out the lies! I can't hear the voices on TV, so that's a blessing in disguise.

A correction, thanks to faulty memory cells. We installed the smaller VH44 unit on the EH - the VH40 is the larger, higher pressure unit, generally used for the bigger commercial vehicles.

An old WW2 Veteran and the local Shire Foreman used to expand on that line, in the mid-1960's - He would say, "Do you believe in the hereafter? If you do, then you know what I'm here after! And if you don't, you'll be here after I'm gone!" I think the line must have been around for a long time, possibly even before WW2.

SWMBO is good at booking us into shows such as rock tribute bands or classical guitarists (she loves classical guitar), so we get out and about, and dress up and socialise. It's very necessary to keep up a social life as you age, or you just become an old stay-at-home grump. That's the reason I have my block in the wheatbelt, and all my restoration projects and shed-building plans and construction. I get out into the country around 3 times a week, that in itself is invigorating. I get a change of pace, and I get mental stimulation repairing equipment, buying (and selling) parts and components, and I get to meet new people in that country town regularly. My wheatbelt block neighbour is a fencer, and has an excavator, tip truck and a Dingo, and he's always coming in looking for a BS session, help with something, or even giving me surplus fencing materials and steel he doesn't need. He can't weld for sh**, so he always gets me to do little welding jobs for him. Life is good. We're off to see the Lightscape show in Kings Park soon, we went last year, but it was July 17th, and it was absolutely pouring with rain! You can't pick your day, you get tickets for a set day and time, and that's it - you take your chances with the weather. The lightscape show last year was absolutely spectacular. I took a swag of photos, then lost them when my Motorola phone crapped itself completely. https://premier.ticketek.com.au/shows/show.aspx?sh=LSPTOURS26&utm_source=ovation&utm_medium=pmax&utm_campaign=LSPTOURS26&utm_content=conversion&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23841141822&gbraid=0AAAAADpZSCT_kspIAeL1Pye-3H_K2rlTo&gclid=Cj0KCQjwrZTRBhDSARIsAHidYfcriQwFvXDUHdq0eIP10u5K_mfUlQsVSlUoudQ4XtUW5aLccL7Dou4aAr1oEALw_wcB

So, it's really only a nail starting guide, not a nail gun as such? I'm amazed, with the Americans propensity to put explosives in anything, that they didn't adapt a revolver or pistol bullet casing to fire nails.

Brakes are the worst thing on older cars - especially GM brands brakes. Not for nothing were Holden drum brakes known as "go-faster" brakes. And they pulled like buggery, either right or left, depending on the road surface, and you never knew which way they'd pull. The brother and I bought a new HR Holden sedan in 1967 and we ordered it with disc brakes, the first time disc brakes were available as an option on Holdens. We were staggered at the difference in braking as compared to our near-new EH ute. We did put a PBR VH40 brake booster on the EH, and it did make a considerable difference to its braking. Old VH40 or VH44 boosters are in great demand for reconditioning and installing on older models of drum-braked vehicles.

About as defective as the bloke himself.

The scary part about getting older is seeing the younger set going ga-ga over some historic, vintage footage, from ancient times, about 50 or 60 years ago - then you look at it, and realise you were there as an adult, and everything is very familiar! I can also recall when middle nephew (about 10) came home from school and asked his Mum (SIL) if she had any old photos for a school project. When his Mum said, "How old?", he replied, "Oh, from about 60 years ago, when you were little!" His Mum was 30 at the time! 😄

That's great news, Willie. One of the problems with getting old is getting older alone. I'd hate to do that. I have a mate doing that now, he and his brother built a big shed on some rented land in the deep SW of W.A., alongside the Blackwood River, which is quite a scenic spot. However, his slightly older brother (79) recently developed dementia (last year), and has moved out of his half of the shed, into a nursing home in a small nearby town. He was assessed as being unable to look after himself. So my mate is now living alone in that big shed, and I've noticed how much he's deteriorated in the last year or so. He keeps falling over, too, as he loses his balance easily. He fell over last week in the yard, and went straight backwards onto the ground, and gashed his head open. So, being the tough old codger he is, he wrapped his head in towels and drove himself to the local nursing post (there's no local doctors or hospital). The nurse there was shocked to see him, there was so much blood, she thought he'd been shot. So then he had to wait 13 hrs for an ambulance to transport him to Busselton Hospital, 60kms away. The doc there stitched him up and sent him home, but when I rang him a couple of days later, he said he was having problems doing jobs in his workshop, and thought he might have had some degree of concussion - although the doc ruled that out with the standard tests. He's just turned 78 last month, and I'm concerned about how he will go into the near future. He's on the bones of his bum, he was never a good money manager, and his ex-wife cleaned him out and took the house, so he ended up in the shed. He's totally resistant to any idea of moving into any form of retirement village, and he can't afford it, anyway. I reckon he would do a lot better with a partner, but he's got no time for women now, so that's unlikely to happen. One of the advantages of having a woman around, is that she can at least raise help, or find you quickly when you've taken a turn for the worse.

Another little-known takeover has seen The Reject Shop sell out to a huge Canadian company, Dollarama. The Reject Shop got $260M for their business, and Dollarama has plans to change all Reject Shop store branding to Dollarama. In addition, Dollarama are going on a massive expansion drive, aiming to enlarge the range of stuff their stores sell, to compete with Target and K-Mart, and even Coles and Woolworths. Dollarama plan to nearly double the number of stores from the current 390 stores, to more than 700. In addition, Dollarama promise huge savings on their product prices, due to their massive buying power. Dollarama claim that in some cases, consumers will see major decreases in pricing of products they sell, sometimes up to half the current retail price. It will be interesting to see the result, the Canadians apparently love Dollarama stores.

You can easily purchase plug-in webcams for older computers, which would give the ability to take facial photographs.

The Poms refuse to do any repair work on their houses, they mostly live in council-owned housing and they expect the councils to fix them. When they do own their own house, they always engage tradespeople to do their repairs and maintenance.

You need to set up a Corrugations Cam at road level, running continously, to record exactly how those corrugations form! I'm amused at how the Americans insist that they're called "washboard" - but all the early American publications call them "corrugations". 😄