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Ah, yet again the wonders of the two newspapers. Same story, reporting the same court result, just look at the slant each gives:

Slow service killer gets 7 years

A restaurateur has been jailed for seven years for the manslaughter of a patron who complained about slow service.

...more

'Slow service' killer may be out quickly

A RESTAURATEUR who stabbed a patron to death after he complained about slow service could be free in little more than two years.

...more

So do you know what is going on in the world, or is your News Limited?

On it goes...

  Drivers find cyclists a road hazard
  from Herald Sun; State News

MORE than 60 per cent of Victorian motorists find cyclists are a road hazard, according to research carried out by insurer AAMI.

...

Anything to sell more newspapers, split the population into "us vs them", pick a minority and stir, this is the way of the little paper.

It contains such gems as "47 per cent of Victorian car drivers have had a close call with a cyclist", but somehow seems to neglect to ask what percentage of motorists have had a close call with another motorist.

Amazingly, in amongst all the diatribe and hate-mail posted in the feedback and followups, a few voices of reason have been allowed to be printed, and not (yet) removed by the editors.

Still the aggro continues.

Seems some bright spark decided a little vigilante action was called for on the weekend and spread tacks on Beach road, in amongst the reports from the police calling it callous, stupid and dangerous, and yet more diatribe offering to simply kill people on bikes, someone came up with this gem:

We may have finally found a use for all those new terrorism laws the Howard government was so keen on.

Provided we use the basic definition of a terrorist act as violence against civilians used in the persuit(sic) of a political aim (in this case getting bikes of Beach rd), then this should fit the bill.

So it goes on....

Meanwhile, outside it is magnficent late summer weather just perfect for cycling, the sun is out, its not too hot or too cold and there's not much wind, but inside, malignant spirits attack their keyboards and vent their spleens.

For the first day of semester it was amazingly uneventful; the mass of bods queued up for the bus at Huntingdale station delayed the bus for so long that I'd made it the entire way to Monash uni without being caught and buzzed by a number 900 "smart bus"

One brief hair-raising moment came in the carparks of the uni; the self-important security staff standing in the middle of the roads "guiding" traffic, telling people who wanted to turn left to turn left, telling people who wanted to go straight ahead to... um, go straight ahead. Unfortunately one of these geniuses told someone driving towards me to turn right straight across my path, then spun around and laughed as I slid to a stop to avoid going over the bonnet. A little traffic management training would be helpful guys...

Looking forward to my first encounter with "new student in shiny car going wrong way round ring road", it happens each year, somewhere before week 3...

Worst part of the day was the coffee machine — nearly three months old and its out of action again. Couldn't possibly be due to the rather haphazard weekly cleaning its been subjected to, could it?

I'd love to believe that Garmin's Edge 305 is a great piece of equipment, but unfortunately my experiences with the device — two so far — have left me unconvinced.

From day one it has been subject to battery draining hangs if you don't switch it off and disconnect it from the PC in precisely the right order, and even then sometimes it'll just hang. You get into the habit of switching off, unplugging, then switching it back on briefly just to check. A number of firmware updates haven't cured the problem, perhaps lessening the frequency though. Its the only USB device I've ever heard of that has this problem.

Another design flaw seems to be a loose mounting bracket and a mount almost at one end — it always seemed wobbly and eventually my first one fell out when I hit a bump and smashed the display. Just under ten months life for that one.

Four weeks later I received a replacement, still subject to the software hangs.

Nearly ten months into the life of the second unit, in early December 2007, and I noticed that one of the buttons didn't work anymore, but I don't tend to use the up/down arrows so I've no idea how long that was the case, then a few weeks later it started to randomly turn itself off if I hit a bump in the road. I resisted sending it back to GME until after the Alpine Classic in late January, then today posted it off for repair or replacement.

Now the wait, hopefully not another four weeks, until I get it back. A dodgy product or just bad luck and two bad items?

Updated: Ah damn, I guess I should have read all the data off it before I shipped it off, I think it unlikely that they'll send it back with the memory still full, especially if it gets replaced. Oh no, I've lost all records of my commutes since Feb. 8!

Thread: last next

One chopper anyway. I wonder what it was all about? From before noon until at least four o'clock the police helicopter went around and around and around Oakleigh, there were no sirens, no fires, the trains were still running, but the chopper just kept going up and down Warrigal road, past the shops, sometimes right over the house, other times a bit to the south. Later in the afternoon we watched the police board a train at Huntingdale and go from carriage to carriage while it waited at the station, then get off empty handed and allow the train to proceed.

I wonder if we'll ever find out what it was all about?

[2008-Feb-20] Aha! From the little paper, the mystery revealed:

Cops keep track of train gangs

HUNDREDS of menacing youths from rival gangs spread fear across Melbourne's east as they rode trains and threatened violence yesterday....

I guess we must have missed the fear and threats of violence, all we saw was the helicopter and coppers. Amusingly, in reference to the police media spokesperson:

He was unable to confirm reports from several residents that the police chopper had been hovering overhead to monitor the movement of the youths.

Well Sen-Constable David Fitzgerald, you may be unable to confirm it, but I certainly can!

After what felt like such a hot summer its already starting to feel like autumn is on the way. The mornings are getting cooler, its not quite as sunny when we get the up, the air a bit chill and I start to debate whether the summer jerseys are enough for the ride to work.

Then around mid-morning we realise there's still a way to go, it's still hot outside in the middle of the day, here at work the cicadas sometimes sing, the birds are madly screeching in the trees and the sun beats down.

At home there's plenty of summer fruit around and the gardens are still dry. Plums hang over the back fence and figs ripening on the trees in the neighbour's garden — the lorikeets knew exactly when they ripened and there's been endless shrieking from the trees for three days or so. Nothing much in our garden though, a handful of tomatoes from a dozen bushes, a small handful of chillies, the corn all stunted with some small half-ripe cobs, the beans died off without flowering, the olive tree nearly dead. Maybe next year we'll have more success.

...or watermelon pips through the fingers

Sometimes it seems that just when you've found a favourite restaurant that isn't too expensive, isn't too far away, that serves good food and has good service, sometimes it seems that they just don't stay open for very long.

I've no idea how long Gasi Busi had been there on Poath road, from the freshness of the decor only a year or so I suspect — a suburban Korean restaurant with a little more atmosphere than the all-too-common laminex tables and bright fluorescent lights. The food was fantastic and the staff always friendly.

Tonight we went to visit and were surprised to find that although still a Korean restaurant the name has changed — they're now Kimchi Country, the owners and staff are new, the lights are turned up as bright as they'll go, the repainting makes it look a little too much like a factory floor, the food isn't as good as it used to be and the service could definitely be improved.

There's a lot of Korean competition in the nearby area, I guess Gasi Busi had their day and have moved on. I guess we'll be moving on too.

Do I feel inspired with confidence by this organisation?

Half-tempted to book an inspection of the house by Archicentre, to see what they have to say about the sloping floor and other oddities in our house, I had a browse around their website. It all looks a little amateurish and out-of-date, half the pages are on http://www.archicentre.com.au/, the other half appear as URLs off http://www.greenweb.com.au/. No proof-reading in evidence, the typos. are proof of that.

Apparently you fill out a web-form with your details and phone number and they then phone you back to arrange the inspection. Half-heartedly I filled out the request form — noting carefully that they've omitted all mention of costs from every part of their website — then hit submit. Internal Server Error

Bugger.

Tried from a different PC, different web browser, once again:

  Internal Server Error

  The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was
  unable to complete your request.

  Please contact the server administrator,
  webmaster@archicentre.com.au and inform them of the time the error
  occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the
  error.

OK, I'll send an email to webmaster@archicentre.com.au, letting them know.

Ten minutes later:

  Deliver Notification: Delivery has failed.

  Your message cannot be delivered to the following recipients:

  Recipient address: webmaster@archicentre.com.au
  Reason: Remote SMTP server has rejected address
  Diagnostic code: smtp;550 5.1.1 User unknown

So the website doesn't work, the email doesn't work either, and the only person we know who has had an Archicentre inspection of their house and got the report and ticks of approval had the hot-water heater fall off the wall three days after they moved in.

I think we'll save the $495 and not book their inspection.