ajft

Will I or won't I? The registration papers for Mr Damage arrived in the mail a week or two ago and I realised that I haven't ridden it at all this year. So its either get rid of it in an unregistered and poor-running state, or make it go again and make myself ride. First step is a new battery, the slow death of the old one being one of the leading causes of me stopping riding. A trip to Bikes 'n Bits and $75 later and I have a brand new battery, complete with a plastic squeezy bottle of "Battery containing acid" and a set of gibberish-like instructions.

FILLING METHOD

READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE FILLING (CHECK MANUAL)

OK, that's printed on the sheet of paper that comes with the battery and bottle of acid — there is no manual. Unless the sheet of paper is intended to be the manual?

Preparation for filling

Take off the sealing tape and remove the vent plugs ONLY right before filling the electrolyte.

What flipping sealing tape? The little red rubber bung that covers the end of the overflow pipe? Its a plastic plug, nothing made of tape...

Filling electrolyte

Fill the battery with electrolyte (dilute sulphuric acid) with a density of 1.280. Fill to the "UPPER LEVEL" as indicated on the battery. The electrolyte temperature should not be over 30°C/86°F when filling.

The big question is HOW? Little squeezy bottle has a nipple-like nozzle that needs to be pierced. No mention of piercing it, and the nozzle isn't long enough to reach into the vent holes, how the hell am I meant to do this? OK, call me an idiot, but the last time I got a new battery for the bike it came ready filled.

The plastic piece of tubing fits over the nozzle, and I manage to fill each cell one-by-one through the vent holes from the squeezy bottle — all up to the last one, where I ran out of acid when it's only half full. Bummer. This cannot be the right way to do this! Fiddle about for ages, take long exploratory pokes at the old battery for inspiration, no idea. End up pipetting half a teaspoon at a time out of five of the cells to top up under-fed number six. I guess one day someone will show me what the opaque instructions gloss past and it'll dawn with a great Aha!

Photos

  odo: 20507km
  dst: 77.5km
  max: 65km/hr
  avg: 26.92km/hr
  time: 2hr 52' 59"

Down to Shoreham for the day to visit Kath and John and Jack and Will in the caravan park.

Photos

Don't know why I bothered. Two years ago I went to the work Christmas function in the University Staff Club and got some pink, raw, half-cooked rissoles that made me sick for the rest of the evening. Last year I didn't go. This year we were assured that “concerns regarding the food had been addressed”.

On my plate I received:

• a tasty piece of steak
• some nice salad
• a rissole that turned out to be pink and raw inside
• chicken kebabs that were pink and bleeding when I bit into them
• a baked potato better described as half-baked that could have killed a man if thrown

I should have gone to Cinque Lira and had a bowl of pasta!

Photos

Photos

Courtesy of The Age:

A woman was bitten by a lion at Melbourne Zoo after slipping her hand inside the enclosure to get a flower, the zoo confirmed today.

It is the second time in the past month that an animal has injured a visitor at the zoo.

The incident has prompted a review of perimeter security around the lion enclosure, with electric fencing to be installed to prevent lions getting close to the barrier.

Um, how about putting up an electric fence on the outside to prevent the idiots putting their hands INTO THE LION CAGE? Sheesh!

Photos

Good news or the bad news? Good news is that I've got my photos back from Kodak, although the prints don't seem to be the same quality as I'd expect, and the CD seems to come from a third party... Are they subcontracting out their work? Is digital photography biting them that hard? Bad news seems to be that all the time and date information that the APS camera records on each frame has been omitted from the prints and the scans. I've got a helpful "24.03.2005 — 04.12.2005" printed on the index print, and that's all.

It'll be another case of a few hours of leafing through old journals and comparing notes to find when they were taken. At least most of them seem to be grouped on a few major days; Uluru, Adelaide, and the Wilson's Prom. weekend.

One other good thing may have come of it though. The CD of images seems to have been created by QFL Photos, and has their website printed on the disk. My curiosity took me there and I found that they'll scan exposed APS films to CD for around $10 a roll. Maybe I'll finally get all those old films scanned!

Photos

...and I use bike lanes just like cars do: When its convenient.

Driving home last night it was amazing to see some of the Christmas lights that people have put up, it seems to have all turned into a great testosterone dick-waving thing: “I've got bigger and brighter lights and reindeers and santas on my roof than you have.” None of the trees in peoples' houses seem to be set up so that they can see them, they're all placed in windows so that other people can see them.

Not for us! Out came the dusty box of decorations on the weekend, a handful of ornaments, a few lengths of tinsel, and a great tangle of fairy lights. A moment of panic when I thought we'd lost the power-pack for the lights, since we hadn't used them since before moving house, then I realised that it was the mysterious extra transformer that's been sitting on the bedroom floor for months.

Photos

Finally; the last frame has been shot on my last roll of APS film, roll #866-142. I'm still not sure whether it was a good purchase or not, the camera was pricey, the APS film and developing doubly so! Fast talking by the salesmen in the shop convinced me to go with the APS rather than an only marginaly larger 35mm camera.... Twenty-one rolls of film in seven years, and I only worked out late in the process to pay extra and get the photos on CD at development time — I still haven't got around to getting the rest of the rolls scanned from the negatives, mañana mañana....

Photos

Ah I love it. A company has a website that won't work. I send them an email.

The error has been fixed and you should have no problems going forward.

Regards, @@@@@@.com.au team.

Did I have a problem going forward? Did I, like a Rolls Royce, “fail to procede?” How about plain english guys? How about “you should have no problems submitting entries.”