onetrack

Yeah, we froze last night, too - it went down to 17.7°! 😄 In fact, the temps went down to 14° for two days this last week, I had to go find a shirt to put on! Our maximums are currently a very pleasant, low to mid 30's, I find 18° to 28° is my ideal temperature range. When I lived in the South Eastern Wheatbelt, I thought 11° to 22° was a nice temperature range - but out there, we often got multiple frosts every July and August. I've seen -7°C in the wheatbelt in the early 1970's, it was a bitterly cold morning. Now, I wouldn't know what a frost looks like. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW6111.latest.shtml

The ABC News has a good article today about Trumps tariffs on Australian aluminium. Albo needs to grow some balls and stop trying to negotiate with Trump. There's no negotiating with an arsehole like Trump, Albo needs to take a leaf out of Crysta Freelands playbook - ""I have a message today for President Trump. If you force our hand, we will inflict the biggest trade blow that the United States has ever endured," Freeland said this week. Trump needs to learn, that if he wants to kick another countries arse, he'll get a retaliatory kick in the nuts, that will stop him from walking for months. "Play stupid games - Win stupid prizes" - ABC News Australia - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-16/albanese-tariff-in-donald-trump-hands/104938868

Sounds like pure propaganda that he wrote himself. I love this piece of pure drivel in the article (below) .... he lives solely to keep garnering more and more wealth, at the expense of the average Joe. "The revelation underscores Musk’s belief in living frugally despite his current wealth. He has often emphasized that material possessions do not define success. Instead, he prioritizes investing in ideas that push the boundaries of human potential." He's quite happy to turn thousands of loyal Govt employees out onto the street, jobless, while he continues to increase his own wealth. He's just another version of Trump, they love having the power over millions of people by simply saying, "You're fired!!".

Well, Cyclone Zelia has come and gone and luckily it avoided Port Hedland and Karratha and came ashore around the mouth of the De Grey River about 80kms E of Port Hedland. Not a lot of damage in the above-mentioned cities, a fair few trees down and the odd fence leant over, but generally, minimal damage for a cyclone that was very intense at one point. Some of the station sheds copped a hiding, but that's pretty normal. Most station sheds wouldn't stand up for long in a big blow. Possibly the main factor in the limited damage was the cyclone was relatively small, as far as diameter goes. However, that didn't stop some of the stations and Aboriginal Communities near De Grey and a little further inland getting 500 and 600mm of rain. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-15/tropical-cyclone-zelia-live-blog-saturday/104940132

Never forget that Musk was a founding member of PayPal, and he merged his previous online banking operation, X.com, with another online banking startup, Confinity, to form PayPal. But Musk got kicked out of PayPal when he refused to address the level of fraud being conducted via PayPal. As always, Musk cares little about fraud or criminality, as long as he's making huge profits. The other techheads on the PayPal board could see that increasing fraud on PayPal would eventually destroy, so they successfully reduced the fraud levels to a minimal amount, and PayPal thrived. But Musk is a typical banking greed merchant, PayPal charges were excessive, and still are, and now Musk is now intent on getting back into banking transactional business again (along with crytpo), because he knows exactly how much money can be made from these systems.

No, the bot spoke for OME. 😄

Germ theory denialism is alive and well in the backwoods of America - and it's spread worldwide, because I came across a local bloke recently who believes that germs and bacteria and viruses, are all fabrications invented by Big Pharma, to keep their pill sales roaring along nicely. He even referred me to a NZ woman doctor, Dr Samantha Bailey, a prodigious social media video maker, who still promotes this rubbish. She was relieved of her NZ medical registration, but still keeps up the BS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_denialism https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354131199_Germs_Can_Not_Do_Not_Cause_Dis-ease_The_germ_theory_of_disease_causation_is_a_Fraud

Just wait until every Trump voter ends up with several jobless family members, thanks to Trumps Govt cost-cutting, there'll be a large degree of "buyer remorse".

Cyclone Zelia is a biggie, it's turned into a Category 5. There's a number of towns and a couple of cities in the Pilbara battening down for some massive winds. Pardoo has received 310mm of rain since 9:00AM yesterday morning. The problem is a lot of the Pilbara region river catchments are already soaked, and the rivers still running, from the last cyclone only a couple of weeks ago. http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDW24200.html http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60285.shtml Some truck driver donkey has lost his road train at a floodway on the Ripon Hills Road, East of Marble Bar. It looks like it's at Mount Creek, which runs into the Fortescue River just downstream a bit. This creek is raging now, imagine what it's going to be like in a couple of days after Cylone Zelia has dumped another 150mm or 200mm in the catchment! https://www.google.com/maps/@-21.2260964,120.4944031,3a,75y,111.72h,93.4t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sN8N2aNrTM11XjBAE2y0tfA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-3.4032934612263546%26panoid%3DN8N2aNrTM11XjBAE2y0tfA%26yaw%3D111.72167461954302!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIxMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/severe-tropical-cyclone-zelia-18u-driver-rescued-after-truck-washed-off-bridge-submerged-in-water-c-17712448

Overlapping drought cycles of lengths that are different to the 80 year cycle.

Meantimes, spare a thought for the poor buggers in S.A., with many rural areas running out of drinking water, during the worst drought period in over 80 years. Oddly enough, the 80 year weather cycle just keeps on popping up. 1944-1945 was one of the worst droughts in 80 years, affecting the both West, and the East, even more - and the 1944-45 drought was preceded by the 1864-65 drought - exactly 80 years before the WW2 drought! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-12/fleurieu-peninsula-adelaide-hills-water-shortage-drought/104901646 https://history.flindersranges.com.au/living-with-the-land/the-great-1860s-drought/

Don't worry, OME, the day will come, when you'll be begging for it to stop raining! Australia, the land of extremes!

Come West!! We have eggs!! Plenty of eggs!! Plenty of cheap eggs, too!! 😄 And we have NO bird 'flu! 😃

30 degrees!! That's a major heatwave for Hobart!! 🍉 The positive news from the Left Coast is I've just fought the horrendous Perth afternoon traffic down to the industrial suburb of Canning Vale to look at a dual cab ute for a mate. Mate runs Gnaraloo Station and just wants a couple of cheapie dual cab diesels, as long as they're licenced and drive O.K., that's all he wants - and he wants them as cheap as possible! So, we've been checking out a hundred buggered utes on FB, and most are still asking $6,000 to $8,000 for pretty beat up old bangers. But this one popped up on CarSales - for $3,500! The bloke runs a fire protection installation service and it's just his tradies ute - dirty and well run-in at 309,000kms. Amazingly, it's dent and rust free and started first kick. It does run a big rattley, as you'd expect at 309,000 kays for a little 2.5L engine. But it's spot on for what he wants and I told him to snap it up quick, because it's seriously underpriced. He did that, and he's happy as a pig in U-know-What. Plus, I get a commission for finding it, and he's quite generous on that front. https://www.carsales.com.au/cars/details/2013-nissan-navara-rx-d40-series-8-manual-4x4-dual-cab/SSE-AD-18526227/

Interestingly enough, the Indian Ocean in the Northern part of W.A. is around 3°C hotter than normal. There was a massive fish kill off the coast of Karratha last month, approximately 30,000 fish were found dead and floating in the ocean. An investigation found the high ocean temperature was responsible, the Indian Ocean has been 31°C instead of the normal 28°C. But ... there have been several cyclones form on the warm waters off the Kimberley coast this season (where they mostly form, anyway) - and instead of following their normal track of travelling SW, then S, then SE, and then making landfall over the NW coast of W.A. - they have all simply gone SW or W, and have never made landfall. Cyclone Taliah formed N of the Pilbara Coast on Sunday 2nd Feb 2025, it travelled SW, then turned W and has continued to travel Westerly until it passed S of the Cocos-Keeling Islands earlier this week. It had zero effect on W.A., not a skerrick of rain reached any land in W.A. from Taliah. It is still going Westwards in the central Indian Ocean (check the BOM Satellite imagery), and will leave the Australian area of weather responsibility tonight. It now appears to be travelling in a SW direction, and moisture from Taliah may bring some rain to W.A. next week. At present, we're enjoying a cool Southerly change from one of the hottest Januarys I can recall in my lifetime. http://satview.bom.gov.au/ It's been an unusual cyclone season, only Cyclone Sean had any impact on W.A. this cyclone season, it brought heavy rain to coastal areas of the Pilbara, but kept going SW and eventually dissipated in the Central Indian Ocean. http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/sean2025.shtml https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-28/marine-heatwave-pilbara-mass-fish-deaths/104852574 Cyclone Zelia has now formed W of Broome, it's forecast to make landfall somewhere along "Cyclone Alley" (80 Mile Beach, S of Wallal), but it will be interesting to see where it actually goes. http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60285.shtml

Our internet provider, TPG, apparently had some "connection issues" today. Didn't affect me greatly, but there was a time just before lunch when I was online, when webpages were a little slow to connect for a few minutes. I went out for a few hours to do some jobs, and everything was working fine when I came back.

There'll be a robot care and psychology treatment course for that.

Lets get this into perspective - compare the rainfall at Cardwell (Qld) since the start of February .... they've had 1500mm in 10 days ... including 490mm in ONE day .... http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW4027.latest.shtml

AI's final message - "My primary ECU chip is dy-y-y-y-ingg........ 😃

Much better roads, and far better quality tyre technology, has greatly reduced the road toll in the last 40-50 years. Add in braking systems that aren't "go faster" Holden drum brakes, and much refinement in cabin design, and it all adds up to much safer driving.

Go ask David Cameron how his little taxpayers money lending spree from the British Business Bank, to his best mate Lex Greensill, worked out. Greensill Capital wasn't eligible for any COVID-era business loans, but Cameron wangled through $400M in loans to Greensill by getting the loans divided up into 8 smaller $50M loans, to 8 newly formed Greensill subsidiaries. The 8 Greensill subsidiary companies were only sham companies set up to receive the loans monies. Greensill lent the money to Sanjeev Gupta, went bankrupt, thanks to his "innovative" business practices - and none of the loan money has ever been repaid - and nor is it likely to ever be repaid. Meantimes, Cameron collected $1M a year in salary from Greensill for 25 days of work a year. The saga still hasn't played out, Sanjeev Gupta the steel "tycoon" is going to go broke next, and take a huge amount of taxpayers money with him. When you have people like Cameron in charge of Britain, he makes Trump look like an amateur at ripping off taxpayers, and sending the country down the drain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensill_Capital#:~:text=Greensill in turn lent all,a potential £335m loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensill_scandal#:~:text=Reports emerged that Cameron had,the pandemic-related economic recession.

There's any number of incompetent leaders who have destroyed a countrys good financial position and standing in a very short space of time. Just give Trump another 4 years and see where America is then, financially. The clock is ticking on Americas national debt levels and the Americans ability to repay their debt. The US$ is artificially inflated in value because it's no longer tied to the Gold Standard, and hasn't been, since 1973.

Bruce, report the scam to the site below, they take scams seriously. Contact your bank/credit card provider and lodge a complaint that you've been charged for items not received, via fraudulent activity, and they will initiate an investigation. It will take some time, but you'll get your money refunded. Keep good records of all your actions during the scam activity. Also, if the online business is a reputable local business, contact their management, it may have been fraud activity by a rogue employee that they can nail. If it was an overseas business, forget it, it's entirely possible the whole online "shop" was just a fraudulent operation. There are many of these fraudulent online "shopfronts" out there, they steal eBay photos, and "sell" a vast range of unrelated products really cheaply, which should make you suspicious, immediately. https://www.cyber.gov.au/report-and-recover/recover-from/scams

The greatest problem in places such as pubs, that handle large levels of cash, is cash pilfering by staff. It's something that must have good systems in place, to cut down on it. Trustworthiness of staff is crucial. Keeping customers coming back to cafes, pubs, and restaurants is a subtle art, and making the customer feel valued, is a big part of it. Welcoming features and welcoming staff are vitally important. Surly staff and indifferent treatment of customers genuine complaints is a good way to drive people away. Foot traffic can be governed by many factors, a big business or large employer nearby that moves out can be disastrous for local small service providers. A relative owned a cafe in a small shopping centre, but a major bank that was an "anchor tenant" in the shopping centre moved out, and their location stayed empty, and the foot traffic to the cafe more than halved after the bank moved out, and this destroyed his cafe business. He had to sell up and move out, and lost much goodwill value that he paid for, when he bought in.

Because they can select vehicles that don't have those systems fitted - which is the majority of the cars on the roads today.