Holidays

3 weeks, well 2 and a bit left.
A bit of chilling, a bit of landscaping, some good work out at Mum & Dad's.
And a bit of packing...

Tomorrow [Sat 4th]  05:00 I'm heading to Mt Hutt Snowboarding.
If you cycle through the webcams (like I've been for 3 months now) You may just see a highspeed grinning Bob.
I'm more invested in this holiday than anything for many moons. My emotional barometer has tracked the Snow Base Graph. I've read every tip page I can google
I've researched gear. I bought a helmet from the US.
I've basically used it as a happy place for the last 5 or 6 months.

So If y'all excuse me I'll be Fking off, but before I go.

Apostasy. 
This completely boggles me.
Not only do these schmucks believe that they have The Way, Light & Truth, but deviation from the norm is met with an extraordinarily passionate deadly force. It would seem the most torturous and F'kd up ways of killing someone is reserved for apostates. To the extent that if I believe something entirely %100 different then I'm to be pitied as I'm doomed to eternal yadeya, you may even reach out an act of love and attempt to bring me into the ciricle. But if I believe something %5 different, you'll be sharpening your smoting stick?
This impassioned exclusivity freaks me out. How can you be That sure?
I guess it's where 'dogmatic' came from.

And apparently an average Australian annually eats 193 eggs.
I find that a surprising figure, but I'm not sure if I thought it'd be < or >.
What do you reckon?

Furphy tanks

Ok, you're looking at the wall of my Dad's shed.
And proudly mounted there is a Furphy Tank end.
A convex cast iron disc about 1.2m in diameter and massing about 40kg+/- with a spigot fitting.
As I understand it Furphy cast 2 ends or caps then shipped them to the client.
The client then rolled sheet metal around the ends to make a tank.
The little legs were for mounting on a stand or jinker - a bullock drawn carriage.

Why my Dad has one on his shed is beyond me. That's just the kind of Krazy Kat he is.
So there you go. It's not a Furphy, yet it is.

Making it worse?

Disclosure - I'm "a lover not a fighter" I haven’t been in a blue for almost 20 years and if possible I'd like to keep that trend. If that makes me chicksh!t, then so be it. I'm also a bit of a Dud when it comes to the protective intimidating father bit. I have a policy of not getting involved in the Bobette's dramas as I'll usually just make a minor thing much worse.

But there is a line over which one crosses at one's own risk.

If you don't know the details, click back to my Fathers Day post, last year my daughter saved my fathers life by giving him CPR until the Ambos got there and much to her distress they made her keep it up until they had lines in and done their basic set up stuff. I have had several Dr's & Nurses not just compliment her tenacity and persistence, but the quality of her CPR as his heart muscle was minimally scarred, so not only did she do it for a long-arsed period of time, on her own, but she did an excellent job. It still chokes me up a bit to think about it.

Last December she started saying "I don't want to talk about it anymore" OK, it's her trauma I'm not going to interfere. Then she said "Some of the people at the Surf Club don't believe I did it." When I asked who? she evaded, again it's her trip I'm not going to stick my big nose into it. Recently, she has decided that "everyone at the club hates me." Now this is a problem and I have tried to get to the bottom of it, but in my ham-fisted and clumsy way I haven’t got very far, but it greatly alarms me that she thinks this.

So on last Wednesday Night SWMBO and I are sitting on the back deck and it comes up again. I express my great concern that The Bobette feels this way. SWMBO then says "Well you know who is behind it don't you?"
"No"
"Mr. X" as if this is old news.
"Please tell me more."
"Apparently one day at training Mr. X said to a bunch of kids he was training that "There is no way The Bobette resuscitated her grandad, the Ambos did it. She is just cashing in on the glory".

Right. OK then. I start having some pretty unpleasant daydreams about how & when Mr X will get his. But I decide that the mature & adult way to approach this is to ask him of his perspective on this. Before I unload some consequences on him.

After the annual dinner on Saturday night I approached him and had only just started to ask him WTF when he gets up in my face and basically threatens me to "Drop it, drop it right Fkn now." I back pedal & disengage, I don't want a blue, particularly not here. So I retreat to "the Naughty Kids corner" for a smoke. I'm halfway through when SWMBO comes steaming out "we are leaving NOW." I am surprised but recognise That Tone, so head for the car. We are almost home when she tells me that Mr X had gone straight to her while I was out having a smoke and had abused her roundly in front of 20 other people.

Apparently I had breached her confidence by approaching him about it. But she appreciated me "sticking up for" The Bobette.

I want to F'k him up for the disrespect he has shown SWMBO & The Bobette. Without making it worse.
Hm.

Cascade of consequence. Have I got this right?

Once upon a time in lots of far away lands.
Some people who really couldn't afford them were enticed to take out mortages that they (obviously) couldn't afford for up to 100% of the purchase price on "bubbled" or over-priced properties. As was always going to happen they couldn't meet the repayments so the properties were forclosed. Then when the mortagees in posession tried to sell the properties they could not realise the dollars they had lent to the home buyers. This led to the arse falling out of the market for securities that had been crafted to fund these mortages. It was discovered that the finance companies who had crafted these products had been playing fast & hard with these securities and had investors from all sorts of areas of the economy. The Fear contagion spread impacting far and wide from pension funds to local governments. Money had been streaming into these products from anyone looking for a good return on some spare cash they had. Unfortunately for some (See Storm Financial) some people had even borrowed against personal assets to invest in theses instruments.

So now the banks are massively constrained with no more funds coming in the banks had no funds to lend out to new homebuyers. Profits and divedends fall, sparking a migration out of banking & finance stocks. Banks often trade on the capital they have in a porfolio of shares in their own company so as the share price dropped, the value of that protfolio dropped, so they could borrow less against it for lending to all sectors of the economy. This further constrainined the suply of cash into the economy. The banks wobbled & some (none in Australia) but some like Northern Rock got a big chunk of pretty pretty government bail out cash. In Australia we responded with a suite of measures from ca$h handouts to bans on short selling and the government bought up some of these mortages, to inject cash into the system to keep it rolling.

Some of the finance companies that had provided streams of cash into the banks through these securities products saw the banks get some and claimed they were "to big to fail" and got some lolly to. Some of them anyway, others were thrown on the pyre of political expediancy.

Some US car making companies who had been staggering for years put their hand out and got some after a dog and pony show about arriving in Washington on private jets, then hitchiking in sackcloth & ashes.

Now Governments are in difficult straights. Governments funded much of this largess with Bonds issued and sovereign wealth funds. The bonds are sold on a competitive market where they have to in effect out bid other bonds with return over risk. Some governments espescially in Southern Europe have reached a risk level were they have to pay credit card rates of return on bonds to get anyone to buy the things. The Bonds are also fixed period devices so when they are due, the holder expects his cash. Some governments are now having to borrow (issue more bonds) to pay out previous loans (bonds) sort of like paying a Visa card debt (at 15%) off with an American Express card (@25%.) Not good.

So now some supra government bodies like the IMF and the European Central Bank are providing bail outs to back these bonds.

Let's recap.
Joe Sixpack can't pay his mortage on his 3 bedroom brick & tile.
Banks struggle through losses and increased costs of funds.
Finacial institutions who were supplying the banks collapse.
Big corporations like car companies fall over.
Governments step in to supply emergency funding measures.
Some Governments then have problems with their income streams.
So SupraGovernment organisations step up to back the failing Governments.

Who the hell is going to bail out the IMF & ECB?

Horses? pah get with the 21st century.

Over @ JB's place he's got a shoot 'em up game, looks pretty cool. But why on horseback? I mean really. Shall I fire up my steam launch or bone drilling awl? Get with the technology.
Motorcycles are far, way and hella better than horses.

215kph. English motorway. 04:00 Julyish 1991.

Really pretty simple when you put it like that.
Motorcycles are better. Indisputable fact.

I will grant the following.

Motorcycles can't feed themselves from the surrounding environment. (but really neither can horses)
Motorcycles can't swim.
2 Motorcycles can't make a third one.

But I am convinced that in every other circumstance motorcycles are better than horses.



[edit 18:00 5.5.10]

Dawn Service

Just home from the ANZAC Day dawn service and the traditional BBQ breakfast at the Surf Club after the service.
As I stood there in the predawn gloom many thoughts rolled around in the ol' brain. I thought I'd get some of them down before the disapear like the morning mist.

Better than 400 punters dragged themselves out of warm & comfy beds to give honour to the fallen in what is a small beachside community. I didn't recognise most of them so I'm guesing many of them are touristanistas. They are very welcome to share the morning with us.
The mob seemed made up of a couple of identifiable groups; the young families with sleepy eyed under fives wondering what the noise was about, the old timers there to remember mates and kin who didn't come home and a single USMC officer in full dress regalia, he's been there for a few years now so I suspect he is a local. I haven't noticed him at the local shopping centre or corner store so I wonder what his story is. But the most touching to me was the grommets. Young men 15-18, in bare feet and board shorts standing stock-still heads bowed listening to the ceremony with more dignity than I thought they could muster. It was only when the ceremony was over and there was more light that I noticed the stack of surfboards stashed beside the public bogs. These lads had got up earlier than they needed to, put aside the first couple of waves of the day to give respect to the diggers. Well done those men. The lives lost that they were commemorating were not much older than they are. Mum and dad were not making them be there. They didn't leave in a mob, so I doubt it was pre-arranged. It was just young men giving respect. Kinda makes me regret some of the Less Than Charitable things I've said about that age group. The Bobette insisted that we go this AM. SWMBO is away and The Bobette was insistent. She said "If you don't go I'm going anyway." How's that for the young people of today!

Recently two lost Diggers from the Malaya campaign were found and returned to their kin, the last 2 Australian MIA in Vietnam were found and brought home and the HMAS Centaur (a WW2 Hospital ship torpedoed by an IJN sub) was finally located off the SE QLD coast. It made me think that war is the second most abhorrent thing I know of and the remarkable bravery of the men and women who take up the challenge and fight on our behalf deserve all the support and honour we can give them. The worst thing I can think of is when we don't fight when we should have. EG Early 1930's China, if the international community had stood up against Imperial Japanese aggression then, could that have changed the next decade?

I won't say that our servicemen were supermen or beyond reproach. As with all human endeavours there are failings, mistakes and terrible accidents. But every last man Jack (or Jill) one of them deserves our thanks and honour.

I did a bit of history at Uni, so have been exposed to the culturally relativistic approach of historiography, placing events in a cultural context. There has been many stories of volunteers in WW1 setting off for a grand adventure, or to see off the hun or whatever. I've heard about a bazillion times about the WW2 recruits stepping up with the ANZAC myth of their fathers their eyes and about the horror that they discovered on the front line. I think this is so much myth making and horesh!t justification. The bottom line is that young Australian men and women for more than a century have stepped up and taken the fight to the enemy not for any geopolitics or foolish imperial ideal, but instead they fought and died for the man standing next to them.

I honour and thank them.

I think I'll leave comment off on this post.

You have got to be sh!tting me

29 September 2009

19 March 2010

Same roundabout, same direction, even the same damned lane.
At least this time I was in front.
Goes to show what a high set tow hitch can do to an unsuspecting (or inattentive) Nissan.