onetrack

So, do we get more details, such as make, model, etc? - and is it red?

I've paid a grand total of just over $122 for electricity in the last 12 mths. But we got handouts (power credits) from the State and Federal Govts, so without them, our total power bill would have been much higher. I just looked up my power supply account, and we've still got $300 in credit with our power provider, Synergy. We don't spare anything by way of power use, we've got 3 reverse cycle air-cons (1 x 3HP and 2 x 1HP) and we use electricity for heating in winter (a column oil heater and the R/C A/C's on heat) - but we do have a 6.6kW solar system feeding into the grid, and we turn on the washing machine and dishwasher during the day.

The "free energy" from the sun and wind is not free, the huge costs of installing solar arrays and wind turbines has to come out of it, and those Danish turbine manufacturers don't exactly give their turbines away.

Well, at least we know Litespeed's still alive.

Power costs go up every year, regardless of where you live, so that might account for the "higher bill in the following year".

I have a Rheem gas instantaneous HWS, and it has no external electricity requirement. It contains a little "turbo-generator" (Rheems wording), which is simply a small, inline, water-driven turbine that produces electricity that ignites the gas upon opening a tap. It has no pilot flame, but has a backup 3.7V rechargeable battery, and it's been virtually trouble-free for about 11 years. However, a small solenoid crapped itself the year before last, and once again, it was a 5 min repair job, but I paid over $500 for the repair - obviously because that solenoid was a pricier item than an igniter. Interestingly enough, the Rheem repairman said it was the most common fault in my model, and he always kept a few on hand in the van. The HWS manufacturers eliminated pilot flames probably 15 years ago, as it was deemed a lot of wasted gas and unnecessary pollution.

The West Australian Govt Railways, and its former rail authority, the Dept of Works & Railways, had not a single tertiary-qualified engineer, until Ron Fitch, a UWA engineering graduate, was appointed to the WAGR - in 1929!! Yet the vast majority of WAGR rail lines and infrastructure were installed between 1880 and 1929 - without the oversight of any railways engineer! The men in charge of laying the rail lines were surveyors, and senior foreman, who all had practical skills in rail line construction - but not a one of them had any tertiary qualifications! Oddly enough, the W.A. Railway Workshops, initially established in Fremantle in 1886, and then moved to Midland in 1904 - which workshops were responsible for all West Australian rolling stock and engine construction and maintenance - appointed a Chief Mechanical Engineer in 1900! Obviously building, repairing and maintaining railways rolling stock and engines was regarded as VERY important job, that warranted the oversight of a Mechanical Engineer - but building the railways themselves, was obviously regarded as simply a foremans job!

My 93 yr old Italian neighbour, Barney, has a Rheem instantaneous (natural) gas HWS. It stopped working, so he came over to see what could be done about fixing it. His English isn't good, and he has zero knowledge of the "computer world" - and he's deaf as a post, too - so it's all hard work for him. I told him he could call Rheem, they have their own plumbers and repair vans, but it would most likely cost between $400 and $500, even if it was a simple part. If it needed more repair, it might be cheaper to replace it (it's a 2012 model), which he understood pretty well. I told him Rheem take $200 deposit out of your credit card just to initiate a callout - and their minimum charge is $260. Of course, he doesn't have a credit card, he only uses cash at all times! - and when I said they would send him messages via his phone, he decided that wasn't the way he wanted to go (he has a cheap mobile, but hardly knows how to use it, and he only keeps it "for emergency"). So he said he had a plumber mate down at the Italian club, and he'd ask him if he could fix it. A week later, I asked how he was getting on with it. He said his mate looked at the unit, figured out it was "an electric part" that needed replacing, and it would take 2 weeks to get the part, and install it. I was surprised, I told him Rheem parts were easy to get, and Rheem will repair it in a day or two. He said, "I don't think my mate wants to repair it, would it be easier and quicker to get a new one?" (a new replacement gas HWS is $1350 for a basic installation here, and it goes up if any difficulties are encountered). I said, "Rheem will repair it for you quickly, and as I said, it will probably be $400-500, do you want me to organise it?" He looked relieved and said "Yes, I'll pay you what it costs, and pay you as well!" I said, "I don't need any payment Barney, but I'll get it organised for you". I rang Rheem and inquired about parts supply, and they said they can supply almost any part needed for nearly all Rheem HWS's in use, and the worst wait would be 2-3 days. So I got them to put me through to Rheem service, where the (older) lady was very good. She took all my details down carefully and read them back, and advised the $260 minimum and $198 up-front charge (which I knew about), and initiated a call-out. I got a text with the job allocation number within minutes, and the next text was advising the job would be done the following day. The following day I got a couple of texts advising the repairers timing of arrival, and he arrived pretty much on time, in the early afternoon. He quickly diagnosed the problem as a U/S igniter (about a $40 part) and he had one in his van - but the model of HWS Barney had was a bugger to work on, because it was older and the igniter was buried deep in the HWS. He set to, and had to undo about 50 screws and pull off part after part, panel after panel and bracket after bracket. After about 45 minutes, he had the igniter out. He said the current models were a doddle to repair the igniter, and he would've had it done in 10 mins, if it was a current model. When I asked him about the life of a gas HWS, he bluntly stated. "10 years!". So he reckoned this one was past its use-by date! - but it still looked O.K. and didn't show any signs of corrosion. He pulled a new igniter out of his van and had it in and finished about an hour and 15 mins after starting the job. He signed it off and left, and the HWS was working spot-on. I went to my computer and there was the bill! - $339.13 in total - and the money was already gone from my credit card! I went and told a grateful Barney, gave him the invoice (the job was booked in his name and he would need the invoice for any claims), and he insisted on giving me $340 plus $50 for my trouble - despite me insisting I didn't need any payment, I just wanted to make sure he could have a hot shower! I think he got out of it pretty lightly, cost-wise, and he would've almost certainly have been ripped off by private plumbers.

I remember watching a snake at a highways edge once, back in the early 1980's. I was trundling along in my Mack and low loader, just picking up speed as I left the outskirts of a country town, and I suddenly sighted this snake in a strike pose on the RHS (gravel) road shoulder, from about 300 metres away. I was puzzled as to why it was preparing to strike, until I looked further, and saw a little bird crouching in mesmerised terror on the LHS gravel shoulder! However, the noise of my approach snapped the little bird out of its mesmerisation, and it took off, flying upwards very rapidly. To my amazement, this snake literally flew across the full width of the highway (highway bitumen seal is 8M wide), fully erect, just propelling itself along, sitting on the last 30cm of its body! It lunged at the departing bird and missed by quite a distance, the little bird was too fast. But that rapid movement of the snake across the highway, just virtually sitting on its tail, was amazing to watch, it took probably just over a second to travel around 10 metres.

Give it a couple of years and Colombians will be deporting planeloads of American refugees, all seeking to escape Trumps brutal and erratic decisions and executive orders, that will have led to poorer economic outcomes for most working class Americans.

Any tiger snake near me would be a dead tiger snake very quickly. The W.A. ones are downright nasty bastards, they rear up to strike, the instant they spot you. I've never forgotten one that chased me on the dairy farm when I was about 8, and my hatred of snakes is lifelong. They can move VERY fast for something without legs. I've seen a snake in the W.A. goldfields doing about 30 kmh, it was staggering to watch, and I watched it keep up that speed, for about 400 metres. I have no idea what kind of snake it was, I was too far away, but it was a thin snake, possibly a Gwardar.

I have never heard that acronym of Aunty Acid's, and I think it's probably something heard quite often in some American slums, and certainly not in Australia. To my mind, it sounds downright abusive towards offspring, and my parents certainly never spoke to me in that tone, or style of speaking.

Trump thinks he's the worlds great DEAL MAKER. He makes deals alright, but only to benefit himself, no-one else. Putin will offer Trump a "GREAT DEAL" by allowing Trump to do something like build hotels and golf courses in Russia, and that will immediately send Trump into high praise for Putin, and start him off parroting all the Putin diatribe, about how Russia fears for its existence against the war-mongering West, so it HAS to arm itself and try to "protect" its borders against the Nazis who want to take over Russia. Then Putin will be grinning like a fox, as Trump turns his invective and nastiness onto Zelinsky, and Trump will tell Zelinsky to hand back all that "illegal" Russian territory Ukraine has held for years. With a bit of luck, and with more backing from the NATO countries, Zelinsky just might tell Trump to shove his attitude and his outrageous demands.

Trumps dopey decision to can EV's and anything to do with them, is going to hand the global car market on a plate, directly to the Chinese - and destroy all of the U.S car manufacturing industry. If Trump thinks canning EV's and putting huge tariffs on Chinese cars is going to do great things for America and Americans, I've got some news for him. I wonder how long before U.S. car manufacturers start pulling him aside and saying, "you'd better drop this crazy idea of yours that oil and fossil-fuel powered cars are the future - because they aren't!" https://www.torquenews.com/17995/uss-end-ev-support-will-significantly-strengthen-chinas-aggressive-moves-dominate-ev-industry

ERROR CORRECTION: My memory is getting faulty. The Golden Eagle nugget finder in January 1931 was Jimmy Larcombe, not Larkin. As a postscript to the Larcombes life story, Jim Larcombe Snr purchased the Terminus Hotel in Lane St Boulder in July 1933, and after re-naming it the Golden Eagle Hotel, he and his wife moved in as owners and operators. However, Mrs Larcombes life was cut short in 1942 when she had a stroke whilst working in the Hotel. She was taken to Hospital, where she died shortly after. Jim continued to operate the Golden Eagle Hotel, but sold it sometime in the 1960's I think, and purchased the Foundry Hotel in Kalgoorlie. Unfortunately, the Golden Eagle Hotel started to fall into disrepair in the 1980's and then became abandoned as an operating hotel in the early 2000's. Then the 5.2 magnitude Kalgoorlie-Boulder earthquake of 2010 caused serious structural damage to the building, and it was then deemed by the owners to not be economically repairable, and was slated to be demolished. However, before that could be carried out, someone set fire to the hotel, leaving it a smoking ruin. What was left was then demolished, thereby reducing the number of historical original hotels in Boulder by one more.

Gold actually travels in solution via chemically active water through the soils, and reaches points where it precipitates out as the metal. Thus the reason for the totally random formation of nuggets. The Golden Eagle nugget was found at Larkinville W.A., just 45kms from my gold mine at Higginsville. I've been into the spot where the Golden Eagle was found, and it's a totally unimpressive patch of flat red clayey ground, with no normal signs of gold-bearing country, such as quartz or calcrete, as is common in the W.A. Goldfields. Yet, a dig by 16 yr old Jimmy Larkin found the biggest nugget ever found in W.A., just half a metre below the surface. When I was at Higginsville, a mining company started up an open pit just a few kms South of the old Higginsville townsite. One night, the conveyor transporting ore to the crusher stopped dead. The workers went to find the problem, and found a 42 oz nugget had jammed the conveyor, and brought it to a halt!! https://www.goldindustrygroup.com.au/news/2017/9/18/finding-of-golden-eagle-nugget

Dennis Lillee look to be in reasonable shape for his age, I don't think he's gone the way of beauty treatments.

Who is Elon Musk? The worlds greatest personal greed merchant, who has shafted billions daily to accumulate a level of wealth that simply continues to increase at an astronomical rate, because he knows how to game every system designed to limit massive wealth accumulation. But his accumulated wealth does nothing to help the average American. Even if you buy one of his famed Tesla cars, you're obliged to continue to pay a monthly fee to keep accessing the cars features. What a monstrous scheming rort!! You bought the car and its systems, but you don't really own it, you have to keeping paying "tithes" to the company owner!! John Deere management are stating that within a couple of years, 10% of their income will be from incoming, continually ongoing, "royalties", on their "technologies". Did you want to buy that large tub of Vaseline now, as well, to help ease the gigantic anal insertion?

Our democratic system is subtly warped by the formation of political parties, which means politicians, who are elected by their constituents, end up representing and voting in decisions that benefit their political party, rather than their constituents desires and needs. In America, politicians are controlled by corporations, who wield their enormous political clout, via their incredible wealth, to make decisions that constantly benefit corporations and senior executives and CEO's, instead of the general population. There are inadequate taxes on the rich, who scream blue murder any time increased taxes on the rich are imposed. These people also utilise vast amounts of manipulation of tax laws to ensure they pay even less tax than envisioned by the lawmakers. These people were called "robber barons" in the old days, they still exist, albeit in a different and more cunning form. The gigantic corporations such as Google and Microsoft and Apple should be broken up, because they're wealthier than half the worlds countries, and wield unbelievable political and economic power. America has Anti-Trust and Monopoly laws, but they've been ignored, watered down, and manipulated by these gigantic corporations, that have global tentacles. The American politicians of the early 20th century, who saw huge monopolies forming from the oil and railroad industries, were acutely aware of the power and control they could acquire, which usurped the power of even U.S. Presidents - so they introduced the Anti-Trust and Monopoly laws to try and rein them in. Those laws were used on General Motors in 1967 to break up GM's ever-increasing tentacles, making GM divest itself of companies it had bought up to monopolise certain areas of manufacturing. However, since that time, a new breed of corporate leader and new teachings in business skills have seen the rise of illegal, unethical and outright immoral conduct amongst corporations - all the while they claim to teach "corporate ethics". What a joke. So, to summarise, to improve outcomes in wealth distribution and to improve the average persons lot; 1. Make politicians responsible to their voters, not their party. 2. Place tight limits on political spending and advertising (note how much Clive Palmer spent on political advertising to gain votes - it worked for him). 3. Make all political donations public, and limit the amounts. 4. Increase taxes on the extremely wealthy and make their "innovative" accounting and tax-minimisation methods illegal. 5. Limit the size of corporations so they cannot have more wealth than Govts, whereby they can control the Govts accordingly.

I don't know about the lack of hair and makeup, I tend to think it's multiple plastic surgeries, multiple botox injections, and illegal drug use, that's done the damage. It looks like Melanie Griffiths.

There's not going to be much in the JFK investigation archives that will reveal anything new, 99% of the information has already been released. It's a typical Trump stunt to try and get more self-glorification. Maybe he's hoping the records will reveal that the shooter on the Grassy Knoll really did exist, and they actually know his name!? 😄

I don't believe the sensors ever give any trouble, the problem was the explosive material that Takata manufactured for the airbags was faulty, and could explode without warning, and it would shatter the canister that holds the charge, propelling metal shards into the car occupants. The original airbag explosive was sodium azide, which was a relatively slow and weak explosive - but Takata decided to start using Ammonium Nitrate, which is a more powerful explosive, and which chemical is sensitive to moisture and heat buildup - which can make it go off unexpectedly. As the Ammonium Nitrate and its casings in the Takata airbags aged, it became susceptible to water ingress and corrosion - and more susceptible to heat. So quite a few of the Takata airbags exploded, and killed a fair number of people. There were lawsuits galore, and Takata and the car manufacturing companies had to replace the airbags, or buy back the affected cars and scrap them, and also pay out to affected owners. The whole exercise cost Takata dearly, and they went bankrupt in 2018.

Have a prang and try them out, to see if they work, Spacey! 😄

Now, all you need to find, is that your car is part of the Takata Airbag recall, and they contact you, and offer you $20,000 for a buyback!! 😄 I knew a bloke who bought an old bomb of a Honda for about $1000, drove around in it for while, and was all set to scrap it, when he found out it was one of the Takata Airbag recall cars! He contacted Honda, gave them the VIN - and they identified the car as a recall, and bought the car back off him - for $6000!!

Whoa, that's a photo guaranteed to frighten any child, and make them burst into tears! 😄