Rhonda Bracey: At Random

After I left Asilomar at Pacific Grove, I spent the night in Monterey, then, because it was stormy, I headed to Bakersfield and then on the Palm Springs on the Sunday. My conference started on the Monday, so having Sunday to drive for just a few hours, pop into the outlet mall near Palm Springs for a few things, check in, unpack, catch up with a few friends I spotted in the lobby when checking in to the conference hotel, was nice and relaxing.

Some of my impressions from the second week (the conference notes are on my other blog, so I won’t repeat them here) include:

• Californian radio is pretty awful, especially when you’re on a long drive and don’t have your own music to listen to. No doubt Australian radio is as bad or worse, but as I have my own car and my own music in that car, I never have to listen to it! In California, searching the radio stations takes you through a vast array of mariachi-type music, Bible-thumping preachers or ‘uplifting’ gospel songs, (c)rap music, heavy rock, a little bit of classical, maybe some country (I like country!), or perhaps some classic rock or ‘yacht rock’. Latino and evangelistic stations seem to dominate the airwaves.
• Californian traffic is fast and furious. Well, not so much furious, but it is fast. You have to keep up with the traffic more so than obey the speed limit, otherwise you’ll get squashed between trucks. US drivers are polite and let you in, though some (mostly on LA freeways) weave in and out of lanes for no apparent betterment in position. There’s also a lot of tailgating — not malicious ‘get out of my way’ tailgating, but just driving too close to other cars for the conditions. That’s a bit scary. And when it rains, as it did for the first time in months while I was there, the drivers going over the passes on the I5 north of LA didn’t slow down from their 70+ mph speed while going down steep hills in heavy cloud and slick rain — I white-knuckled it through that section, wondering if a truck or car in front of me would slip in the conditions and go out of control, causing a pile-up. Leave some space between you and the next vehicle… don’t see it as an opportunity to slip in and fill it as the other driver might be deliberately trying to stay a safe distance from the car/truck in front.
• Palm Springs was hot (85-90F) at the time I was there (early March). I’d hate to be there in summer. There were LOTS of people in and by the pool at the hotel, some of whom were getting very burnt as they’d likely flown in from a snowy state and were wearing no sun protection. The nights were balmy and cooler than the days, but definitely not cold. The hot climate plants were growing well — e.g. the palms of course, bougainvillea, cacti, aloes, etc.
• The Palm Springs VillageFest markets (held every Thursday night in the main street) are pretty awesome and very big! Fresh produce, gourmet foods, arts and crafts, buskers, street food, and thousands of people all behaving well. The restaurants are all very busy on the night. If you go and you like BBQ beef, do yourself a favour and spend $8 on a Tri-tip BBQ brisket in a toasted bun from the CVBBQ food stall. Delicious!
• The TSA rules on taking off your shoes might work better if someone actually checked the area for potentially dangerous things that can poke into your bare feet! I was at LAX going through the TSA screening area, and had got to the other side ready to grab my shoes and bags when a small and very sharp screw pierced my heel. It hurt like hell! I squealed a bit, hobbled around, and another passenger asked if I was OK. I pulled the embedded screw out of my bare heel pad and hopped over to the TSA agent and handed the screw to him…. and got absolutely NO response. Not even a question asking me if I was OK.

I spotted this dead something near the back door. At first I didn’t know what it was, but when I turned it over, it was clear it was a large stick insect/praying mantis. I picked it up by one of its now-dry wings, and saw the most amazing pink gossamer wing hiding underneath the green of the outer wing. So pretty.

Like many parts of Western Australia, my local shopping centre’s surrounding parkland is overrun with Little Corellas. They are a very social, very noisy native bird, and they are also very destructive, digging up lawns and making small sand hollows in the lawn as a result, pecking at wood and anything else that intrigues them, and flocking in huge numbers. They are super cute as long as it’s not your property they’re attacking 😉

On a very hot day last week I was walking back to my car in the local shopping centre’s car park when I spotted this pair. They had moved away from the main flock and were pecking away at the old tree stump/pole under the shade of the peppermint tree. They weren’t afraid of me at all and I was able to get within a metre of them to take these photos with my phone. At one stage the one on the left put its foot on the back of the other one as if to hold it in position so it didn’t fall off the narrow perch, or if you want to get all anthropomorphic, it looked like one had it’s arm over the other one’s shoulders, just like good friends do 😉

Perhaps they were a mating pair — it seems they pair for life: http://birdlife.org.au/bird-profile/little-corella

Update: This flock of Little Corellas has nearly decimated the main signage for the shopping centre. This signage was replaced less than 12 months’ ago, and these birds have attacked it with gusto the past couple of weeks. As a result, there are bits of styrofoam everywhere near the main doors to the shopping centre, and the sign is looking wrecked. Either the signage will have to be replaced with something more sturdy and less attractive to birds, or the corellas will have to go. I wonder which it will be….

I’ve just been on the receiving end of some AWESOME customer service from Living Edge/Herman Miller.

Back in 2007, I bought 2x Herman Miller Aeron chairs as I was now working from home full time.

Recently, the gas lift in one of them started to fail, and I’d slowly sink to the floor.

I calling Living Edge in Perth (who I bought them from) and got a callback almost immediately from the Sydney office, who look after maintenance and warranty issues. I was told that the spare part would be free AND that they would fit at home for me, even though I live 160 km (100 miles) from the nearest store! All I had to do was take photos of the product/serial number label on the bottom of the chairs and send them to the Sydney office.

The guy from Living Edge arrived today and fixed my chair AND replaced the same part in my DH’s chair as it was purchased at the same time. And cleaned/serviced/regreased our chairs too. ALL under warranty, including the travel/callout/labour time. ALL for free.

It’s nice to see that a big company like Herman Miller stand by their products so well. They were expensive chairs, and although they have a 12-year warranty, I was surprised that something like the gas lift was covered under warranty AND that there was no labour charge. FTW!!

Would I buy another one of their chairs? Very likely, just based on that awesome customer service. They’re good chairs too 😉

See also:

• https://rhondabracey.com/2007/10/05/aeron-chairs-have-arrived/
• https://rhondabracey.com/2007/10/15/update-on-the-aeron-chairs/

I saw this beautiful glass sculpture of a stingray at a friend’s new house recently. I love the colours — the iridescence, the shape, the sinuous lines. And the sandstone/limestone block on which it’s mounted just adds to the effect of a stingray flying low through shallow water over the white sand.

I really don’t like the heat of an Australian summer. It may be a dry heat (humidity is FAR worse, in my opinion), but it’s still darned hot. And the threat of bushfires is ever-present.

Last week we had a run of days over 35C, with a couple of days over 40C (105F). One night it was still 33C (91F) at midnight, and according to my car, it was 34C just after 8:30 am the next morning… and rising quickly.

That day the temperature peaked an hour or so later at just a tad under 40C, then the sea breeze same in; the photo below was taken just after the sea breeze started to hit — only a minute or so before my car reported that the outside temperature was 40C. Note that I was very responsible and only took the photos when the car was stopped and pulled over to the side of the road 😉

We’ve got another batch of extreme heat again this coming week. I am forever grateful to Mr Carrier, the inventor of modern air conditioning!

While searching Trove for newspaper articles as part of my genealogical research, I spotted this advertisement (yellow highlights) in the 22 November 1919 edition of a state newspaper:

Makes you wonder what currently acceptable and ‘worthwhile’ material will be as deadly to us in 100 years’ time as asbestos was proved to be several decades after this ad was published.

Note also the ad at the bottom of the column for getting rid of grey hair! Some things never change…

Ah, Facebook and Twitter! How I love the times when the feeds coming through either match in content or colour or some other attribute.I don’t think it’s deliberate… just a quirk of circumstance.

I’ve collected these examples of interesting juxtapositions over the past few weeks:

Steph lives in Australia and Gretchen lives in the US, but both Tweeted about their pets and food at Christmas.

Air quality discussions by two people I know who live at opposite ends of California

Steph in Australia has several cats; Char in the US has a menagerie of pets (Cassie is a dog, and Sagwa and Midnight are two cats). No matter the location, the pets want to take over!

Sarah’s picture has a big diaper box in the right corner, and Paul’s Tweet just a short while earlier told of an interesting diaper situation on his flight.

Sometimes I see interesting headlines in my travails around the internet. Here are two recent ones from some Australian news websites:

In the one above, there really was a link to a page titled ‘This story has been removed’ which mentioned some doctor up on a sexual assault charge. The story was there, but the headline was odd. I suspect there was some threat of legal action and the story should have been deleted, but instead it remained and the headline and thus the summary headline/link reflected the changed title. Oops.

The one below was a lovely mismatch of the headline/picture with the abstract. The headline/picture matched, but neither matched the abstract. Puts a new meaning on ‘successful swimmers’ I guess 😉

Facebook continually wants me to complete my profile. Well, sorry FB, but I don’t want to. I really don’t think it’s any of your business where I went to school (how many decades ago was that?), where I grew up, where I work, etc. and I’m not going to tell you. My friends and family who might need to know either already know or can ask me directly and I’ll tell them. But honestly, of what concern is that past history to anyone else?

So it’s with some delight that I realise that FB knows very little about me and tries to predict what it does know from the people I interact with (see the images below). The problem with these automated ‘predictions’ is that like most people I know, I have far-ranging and not necessarily overlapping groups of people I ‘know’ on FB. There’s my family scattered in Australia and the US mostly, there are my fellow professionals scattered right across the world, there are people I’ve worked with in various companies, and there are my quilting buddies who are also scattered across the world. And there are some others too, but those groups I listed would cover most of my FB ‘friends’.

As an example of how FB’s predictions about me are wildly off the mark, try these:

Ummmm… neither. Ever.

I’ve only heard of two of these and have definitely not attended any of them. Besides, high school was SUCH a long time ago who on earth cares?

Where’s Mordialloc? Never been there or travelled through there as far as I know. And while I may have lived in Perth, I didn’t ‘grow up’ there.

Well, I driven through Austin (over the top of it on the interstate is the closest I’ve come to that fair city), and I’ve never even heard of Sugar House in Utah, though I did visit Utah once LONG before FB came along. And while I lived in Perth for some years, I sure didn’t grow up there, and left there long before I joined FB.