onetrack

GON, No - I have no family, I went through a very difficult time after my return from Vietnam, and broke up with my then girlfriend, and effectively "went bush" for a long period of time, during which time I found it very hard to establish a relationship with any woman. However, I met a good woman when I was 41, and she was 39, and we clicked and "shacked up", and we just celebrated being together for 35 years yesterday. She was a divorcee who raised a girl and boy to adulthood, on her own, with outstanding results, as both her son and daughter are upstanding citizens. Perhaps being a Police Superintendents daughter and knowing right from wrong was a big help, but she has exceptional strength of character, and set strict boundaries for her kids. A major problem was, she got her reproductive system stitched up in her late 20's, deciding that she never wanted any more children. I tried to get her to reverse it, but that only produced a high level of stress in her, so I didn't push it. Her experience was that men just give you babies, and then abandon you, and it was an experience that affected her outlook for good. She had been married to a pretty useless drug-using musician initially, and her marriage barely lasted 5 years before she booted him for infidelity, and general uselessness. She never got a cent in child support from him over his entire life, and he died a couple of years ago with little by way of assets, and after suffering from multiple cancers for quite a number of years, from his mid-60's. He actually died in total squalor in a rented property, and despite treating his kids with disdain, and using them as a source of funding regularly, they still went and spent the effort to clean up his property and sort out his affairs - great credit due to them. The property was in such a state, they actually had to use breathing apparatus and pressure cleaners to clean the place up. It was full of rotten food, dog turds, uncollected waste and mounds of general rubbish. It took them 3 weeks to clean the property up! Abandoned cars from other people, knackered furniture items, the rubbish they had to clean up was mind-boggling. I've got a reasonably good relationship with my stepson and stepdaughter, despite a few rocky patches early on. Stepdaughter and SWMBO are like twins, they have a very strong bond, and my arrival caused a few problems there for a while, as SD tried everything she could, to get rid of me. But we established a relationship, that while not close, is a satisfactory one, and she accepts I'm part of the furniture now. Unfortunately, she has suffered from endometriosis since puberty, and has been unable to procreate, so that has been a bitter blow to her. Her brother insisted he was never going to have children for many years, as he spent 18 years with one partner - then that partner up and left him suddenly, for seemingly minor reasons - so he went on to find himself a divorcee who has two adult sons, and despite a late marriage, they had a son together in 2014 - and as he's an only grandchild, I think he's probably spoilt. There are many things I'd love to change if I had my life over again, but one has to accept what life dishes out, I know a lot of people have had some pretty shi**y lives, and ended up in dire straits when circumstances they had little control over, seriously affected their lives.

While it might appear I'm at risk of commercialisation of the forum with this post, I just wanted to let the other members know, that I've found the above app is quite worthwhile, and actually provides satisfactory rewards for loyalty - unlike the vast amount of other loyalty programmes that give you bugger-all a lot of the time, in relation to the amount of money spent. The Australian Venue Co has around 200 venues across the entirety of Australia (mostly pubs, but also small bars and restaurants) and you get points for money spent in their venues on food and drink. The points are quite generous, you can easily get $20 or $50 credit after spending a relatively small amount. SWMBO and I like to eat out a bit, we probably eat out 3 or 4 times a week, and our local pubs nearly always offer discounted "seniors meals" or discounted drinks, specials, and other enticements. The beauty of the PASS App is that you still get points rewards even when you buy discounted meals and drinks. As someone who doesn't have a lot of time for apps - finding a lot of them pretty useless and memory-consuming - I find the PASS App is quite user-friendly and simple enough to use. Once you register your credit card with them, you just tap on "order at the bar" or "order at the table", and you receive an order code number (4 numbers), which you simply show to the venue employee and he/she inputs the number and the transaction is done. We've found that a lot of the loyalty rewards programmes and offers declined massively during COVID, but they have started to return now. We used to use the Entertainment Book for a long time, and got good value out of our $65 payment for the book each year - but when COVID hit, the Entertainment Book system virtually collapsed, and it became difficult to find discounts anywhere. The Entertainment Book gave discounts on a wide range of products and services, but that range has shrunk considerably since COVID hit. As someone on a relatively fixed and modest income, I'm always looking for discount offers and programmes that offer real value. I've got a COSTCO membership, and that membership pays off in fuel savings, as I use a bit of fuel, and COSTCO fuel is always 4-5 cents cheaper than anyone else. But a lot of the loyalty programmes on offer today, are fairly dubious value. I won't put up a link to the PASS App, as I'm sure you can all find it yourself, with a bit of Googling. But I hope you find it and utilise it, to save a few bucks on food and drinks - every little bit helps, in todays world.

GON obviously makes it his lifes mission to constantly nurture extreme bitterness, and to keep grudges and hatreds alive for tens of decades, even centuries. He'd fit well into Ireland.

There's more plastic in those two photos of Gina Rinehart and friends, than there is in the average cordial bottle factory! 😄

SWMBO has a friend who is - actually, was - a senior ER nurse, dealing with some pretty dramatic presentations. They deal mostly with angry, drugged or drunk people who have injured themselves - often badly. These injured patients abuse the nurses and doctors when they're trying to help them. They attack them, they punch them, they kick them, they even draw knives and other weapons on them, and threaten to kill them. They belittle the nurses and doctors, and threaten them when they don't get what THEY want - which is usually more drugs or more alcohol, other unreasonable demands. The nurses and doctors have to have security staff and orderlies who are expected to deal with violent and abusive patients on a constant basis. In between all this mayhem - genuine, ordinary people present with urgent medical problems, and expect immediate attention from overworked, abused, and tired nurses, doctors, receptionists, and other hospital staff. I'd like to see GON take up a job in the front line of the emergency entrance of a major hospital - preferably working in security. I'll wager he wouldn't last 5 mins. SWMBO's friend threw in her ER job, and now does gardening work. She says she had to do it, to preserve her sanity.

I always liked Benny Hill for a daily dose of smutty English humour!

In our laundry trough, I installed the half-turn taps with the ceramic sealing washers, that take little effort to turn, because SWMBO has arthritis, and she struggles with regular taps. It was made worse in our laundry because the taps come out of the wall on the RHS of the trough, so you need to turn your hands at 90 deg to twist the taps. The ceramic disc taps are about $40 from the big Green Shed and they simply insert into a regular tap housing, you just have to take out the regular handle, spindle and tap washer. They require very little effort to turn, and the best part is, the ceramic disc replaces the regular tap washer and lasts indefinitely, never needing regular replacement, like normal tap washers.

In the early 1990's, I bought 3 x $200 Australian gold coins. They were the first gold coins minted in Australia for multiple decades. I seem to recall they had about 1/3rd ounce of gold in them, and because they had a face value of $200, you could always get $200 for them, regardless of the gold price. In the late 1990's I fell on some really hard times, and I needed some money, so I sold them to a bank for $200 each. Of course, it was one of the worst decisions I've ever made, because those coins are now selling for $1,500 to $2,000 each!!

Here's an interesting story about a (obviously extremely wealthy) European coin collector, who started collecting the most outstanding coins of the world, almost 100 years ago. Following the 1929 Wall St sharemarket crash, the wealthy gent obviously sought a better method for storing his pocket money wealth. So he set out on a coin-collecting binge that amassed some of the worlds rarest coins. It appears that taking the coin collection with him on his travels was dangerous, and possibly became illegal under the Nazi's - so he simply buried the stash in aluminium cans in his garden, when the Nazis started on their warpath! He died not long after WW2 started, but his wife and his heirs didn't lose the location of the stash. The stash was recovered a few years ago (maybe after the death of his wife?), and now his heirs are auctioning it off. It's reported the collection will bring upwards of $100M. One of the rare coins up for auction is a one-off Port Phillip One Ounce coin, a rare pattern piece minted in conjunction with the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition, and later shown in Paris in 1855. This coin was minted by the Kangaroo Office Mint, a short-lived attempt to start up a privately-owned Mint in Victoria. https://canadiancoinnews.com/historice-traveller-collection-hidden-for-50-years/

We've actually got an impossible triangle artwork in the centre of a roundabout in East Perth. The building in the background of the first photo (with the radar dish on the roof) just happens to be the Chinese Consulate in East Perth.

This is probably going to be the dirtiest election in a long time, aided by the Australian Trumpers who will try to create havoc for Labor, as the Coalition desperately seeks to regain lost seats and restore some kind of relevance for the Liberals, to an Australian population whose demographics have changed substantially since the last election, thanks to an ever-increasing level of people of Chinese, Indian, and numerous other "foreign", ancestries.

A great piece of mathematical and graphical impossibility, the first of which, the "impossible triangle", was devised by Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934, and then expanded on by Roger Penrose and others. The drawing above includes the "impossible trident" in the threaded support drawing, but other equally confusing graphical designs are the Shephard Elephant, and the Impossible Staircase (also called the Penrose Stairs). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_stairs

This is American writing we're discussing here, if they can make it look/read/spell differently to standard English, they will.

I must be a genuis, because I spotted it instantly, too! 😄

One.

The CSIRO has been getting some undeserved bad rap in recent times and the Age is keeping it up. If the CSIRO research was valueless, why has the CSIRO set up licence agreements with more than 20 international companies, and has received around A$430 million in licensing revenue, from their Wi-Fi research? And how did they get the 2012 European Inventors Award for their Wi-Fi contribution? The truth is often very nuanced. https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/it/WLAN#:~:text=Slow wireless networking&text=CSIRO has licence agreements with,to send and receive information. https://www.naa.gov.au/visit-us/events-and-exhibitions/disrupt-persist-invent/wi-fi Don't forget the CSIRO has produced over 600 useful inventions from their research, and hold over 3000 patents. They invented the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (which the mining and chemical industries rely on enormously today), polymer banknotes, Aeroguard, "Softly" Woollens detergent, developed myxomatosis and calicivirus for controlling rabbits, invented DME for aircraft, and produced the Relenza flu drug - along with a host of other useful products. They deserve better than a critical, incorrect put-down, in a cheap-shot media source.

Did you tell them the bloke who drew up the plans was named Archie Teckt? 😄

RGM, my kidney function was checked, all is fine, the last blood test result showed everything within a satisfactory range. PSA levels and an enlarged prostate are all I have to worry about now, but even the last PSA reading was back to an acceptable level. I was surprised to find my urologist wasn't overly concerned about an occasional high PSA reading, he reckons they bounce around, and are not necessarily an accurate indication of prostate problems. Litespeed - Sorry, I've become very attached to my kidneys, and don't feel like sharing them with anyone. Although normally, I'm a caring,sharing person, I draw the line at sharing my kidneys. 😄

I'd avoid architects at all times unless I wanted to burn up a lot of money. They're good at producing offbeat designs, but often, they're impractical or costly to build. Some can produce superb results. I've found a young structural engineer, he's great, I tell him what I want, I draw a sketch, and he produces the designs and plans in a straightforward manner, and even does all the council paperwork, ready for submission. Here on the Left Coast, there was a big change in the building permits setup in 2012. Previously, you submitted plans, and the council had to do all the legwork figuring out if it was legal and safe, and met all the requirements and laws. Now, you submit plans, and either you, or your engineer, have to personally guarantee they meet all the regulations and safety standards, and all the councils have to do, is look over all the paperwork, and either pass it, or reject it.

The docs discovered I had high blood pressure when I injured my left shoulder about 2-1/2 years ago. The Asian woman doctor I went to first, went ballistic when she found my blood pressure was 200 over 100. I told her it was because of my injury and pain levels and simple stress of being in a doctors surgery, but she went on a rampage about my blood pressure and concentrated on that, and barely looked at my shoulder injury. She put me on Perindopril Arginine, which is an enzyme blocker, it stops the enzyme that hardens your arteries. It seems to work, my blood pressure came down, I went off the pills for a couple of weeks and my blood pressure shot back up again. I like to think I'm pretty healthy, but the internal damage with advancing age is unseen.

There is a way to express dissatisfaction with an elected representative, and it's called a petition. You need to gather up a lot of signatories before a petition can be presented, though. In many other countries, a process called Recall Petition is used and it has electoral and legislative support. A Recall Petition can be brought to the Govt of the day to express disenchantment with the elected members performance and to request that they be replaced. In Australia, there is no Recall Petition process - simple petitioning must be used. There have been discussions on introducing a Recall Petition process, but the discussions have bogged down in how the fine details would be worked out. https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/researchpapers/Documents/recall-elections/Recall Elections E Brief.pdf

Litespeed, I owned a business and employed a number of people (up to 103 at one time, much later in my business career), and a lot of the utes were "work" utes. But they were all registered in my name and I drove them all at various times, some a lot more than others. Sometimes I'd drive them a lot myself (mainly when new), then they'd be utilised by employees. We used to rack up some miles, often working 75 and 80 miles from home base. Over that distance, we'd camp out in caravans, motels, or whatever other form of accommodation was available. A lot of work was remote, so not too many facilities. I was in business from age 16, and I've never worked for anyone else in my whole working life - apart from 2 years National Service.

I think there's been a substantial degree of original photo manipulation in all of the above! 🙄

That's quite a large degree of heating!

Oh dear, talk about "knee-jerk" politics! She sounds like Gina Rinehart! I wonder if she's going to propose poisoning all the Aboriginal watering places, too!! - like Gina's old man suggested!!