David Pogue, the technology writer for The NewYork Times whose blog posts I read each week, had an interesting tale he posted on Dec 20, 2007 about the ethics of downloading and copying music etc., and the generational differences between his audience responses.
It’s already generated more than 250 interesting comments! I especially liked Bill Shepherd’s comment (#4).
I was sent a link to this inspirational three-minute movie today: http://www.stservicemovie.com/
Take 3 minutes out of your day to watch it—you may never forget it.
(For more movies in this vein, go to the main page: http://www.simpletruths.com/movies/; another one that got me was http://www.appreciationmovie.com/—being an ex-teacher and knowing plenty of other ex-teachers, this one struck home)
Enjoy your Christmas however and wherever you spend it!
And enjoy this Christmas ‘mashup’ song:
Sunday morning, 6:30am, summer time. The sun’s just up and so am I. So there I am, collecting the morning paper from the street verge, and I’m definitely not awake! What do I see at the end of the street? A sheep! Yep, a sheep. I looked twice, thinking I was dreaming, went back inside to get the camera fully expecting it to be figment of my imagination… Nope. A sheep. In the street.
As I’ve mentioned before, we’re in town, not out in the farming area. So where this sheep came from, I have no idea. But he hung around our street until at least 10am, when the heat forced me inside from gardening.
Proof:
One thing about living in the country (even though we’re close to town on a large suburban-sized block) is the plethora of bugs!
A new one to me is the pie-dish beetle, which my husband spotted walking across a paving slab in the back yard this morning. He recalls its name ‘cos as a kid he found one in Perth and sent it in to the Museum where Harry Butler, the famous West Australian naturalist, identified it.
Here’s a picture of this little beastie; it’s about 2.5cm (1 in) long and about 1cm (1/2 in) across:
I’m planning my March 2008 US trip now, getting flights sorted (done) and now car hire as I intend driving from Los Angeles to Portland, then on Seattle, Vancouver Island and finally Vancouver from where I’ll fly back to Australia (via Hong Kong).
My original intention was to rent a car from LAX to Vancouver, then, when no car rental company allowed me to do that, from LAX to Portland dropping off in Portland for the duration of the conference, then picking up another car in Portland and dropping it in Vancouver 6 days later when I fly home to Australia. Great intentions. Shame about the execution.
I’ve spent over a day checking out details on various car rental websites (direct and aggregator sites, both in Australia and the US), as well as looking at options with my travel agent.
I thought I had it nailed yesterday with an Australia company called Driveaway. Their prices were good, but they wouldn’t give the drop off fee for a one way rental on their website—you have to fill in your credit card and personal details before they’d let you know. I’ve been bitten with these fees before—sometimes they go into the hundreds of dollars, so I didn’t want to have to fill out my details before knowing the price. I called Driveaway and spoke to a lovely lady there. She confirmed that there was no drop fee between LAX and Portland (yippee!). But said that—despite their website saying to the contrary—I couldn’t pick up in Portland and drop off in Vancouver! I could only pick up in Seattle as it was the closest large city to Vancouver, not Portland (some 2.5 hours drive south of Seattle!). Something about the rules of all car rental companies. Unbelievable!
It seems NO car rental companies allow you to rent a car in just any city and drop it off in Canada if there’s a closer city you go through (e.g. you can rent in Boston to go to Montreal, but you couldn’t rent in Baltimore to go to Montreal).
Can you believe with all the NAFTA and other agreements between the US and Canada that I can’t rent in the US and drop off in Canada some two weeks later??? These are GLOBAL car rental companies, not “El Cheapo Auto Wrecks” on a street corner in East LA.
So this means I have to rent from LAX to Seattle (no drop off fee), park the car at the hotel in Portland for 4 days at around $20 per day, get to Seattle Airport, get all my luggage out of the car, get in line to fill in all the paperwork again, then pick up another rental car… which could well be the one I’ve just dropped off! Oh and the second rental is quite expensive because it’s not for a full week, and there’s a US$100 drop off fee.
I could just rent to Portland, then Portland to Seattle, then Seattle to Vancouver, but it’s actually cheaper to rent for the longer period of time and put the car in the hotel car park while the conference is on. Besides, that would mean THREE trips to a car rental counter and all the paperwork and declining insurance palaver…
Still, at least I’ll have a car in Portland if some of us decide to go out for a meal away from the hotel area, or take a trip to the wonderful Powell’s Books if the weather’s inclement! Or just be tourists.
And for all those wondering why I don’t just FLY to Portland from LA? Well, I’ve got friends and family I want to see in various parts of California, the drive is very pretty (along the Pacific Highway, not the I-5), and I also have friends on Vancouver Island I want to see who are some distance from the ferry terminals, which means I need a car. My Circle Pacific fare with Qantas and Cathay Pacific allows me to leave from Vancouver to go to Hong Kong then on to Perth, which means I don’t have to spend any more time than I have to in LAX! That’s always a good thing.
When you make a quilt, you always end up with bits of fabric left over, none of which seem to be much good for anything. But being a pack rat, you don’t want to throw the leftover bits out, and so you keep them for “Justin” (that’s “Justin” as in “Justin Case”… just in case). And that’s where a scrappy quilt comes in handy.
I saw a picture of the “Road to California” block and thought it would be a good candidate for some of my scraps—and so it was. I made the block, then yesterday I quilted it and made it into a 20″ cushion cover. I had to buy the fabric for the back, but the rest of the quilt was made from scraps. Now my scrap stash is a little less!
Eyeballing a quarter inch is still a bit of a black art for me. When I’m using my standard sewing machine foot, it’s easy as the foot is exactly a quarter inch from the outside edge to the central needle position. But when I’m using my ancient Bernina’s walking foot, the measurement is 3/8, not 1/4… as I found out yesterday. Fortunately, I noticed the seam allowance seemed a little wider than usual before I’d stitched too far.
I solved the problem with some painter’s tape, laying it so the left edge was exactly at the quarter inch width from the central needle position (see the picture below). Another solution is to use a small pad of sticky notes so that you get a little ridge and can’t move the fabric so that it has more than a quarter inch seam allowance. But that doesn’t work for my walking foot as the foot would be up on the ridge and thus lopsided.
I’d never even heard of white tea before last week, then my friend Whitney sent me some (and some other Adagio teas). I’ve now tried it and it’s delightful. Tasty, very calming, and just wonderful. Highly recommended! I have it without milk, sugar or lemon—just plain.
Much excitement in town the other day. I popped in to see a friend and she asked excitedly if I’d been in to town yet, or heard the news on the radio. I hadn’t done either, so she told me that some protesters had stopped a logging truck in the middle of the main street and chained themselves to it.
To put that in to perspective, Bridgetown is cut in two by South West Highway which runs from Perth to Bunbury, then on down through Donnybrook, Bridgetown, Manjimup, etc. to Albany. Manjimup is the heart of timber country and over the years logging protesters have done some interesting stunts to prevent the logging of old growth forests. As a result, old growth logging has almost stopped, and most timber logged in the area is plantation timber. Manjimup was hit very hard economically with the closure of many of the timber-related industries and a massive loss of jobs, and is only now starting to get back on its feet (truffles at $3000 a kilo anyone?). Other towns in the region were also hit hard. Personally, I supported the move to stop logging old growth forests as many of these ancient trees only grow in this part of the world and their species and related ecosystems are under threat both from logging, agriculture, and development. I have no problem with growing and logging plantation timbers, especially on land previously cleared for farming.
Anyhow, back to the other day… It seems these protesters had dressed up as road workers, erected some bogus “Roadworks ahead—prepare to stop” signs, then someone with a ‘lollipop’ “Stop/Slow” sign stopped a truck outside the video store. (The double-bogey log trucks all go through the town’s main street, but that’s another issue…)
Once they stopped the truck (which appeared to me to be carrying pine logs, not jarrah, marri, or karri), they chained themselves to the axle or somewhere underneath the truck.
It seems this happened around 8:30am. By the time I was in town, it was 11:30am and the truck and the chained protesters were still there. Traffic was slowed to a crawl through town, some 15-18 police were in attendance from other towns in the region, an ambulance was in attendance, as were other emergency and shire workers. Oh, and the local media from Bunbury were there too.
I’m not sure when the protesters were cut from the truck, but the statewide regional TV News had footage that night (the butcher cynically said that the police wouldn’t cut them off until the media got there…). And when I drove past, some enterprising local had painted another sign—”Slow protesters—Stop the dole!” (or something like that).
So my question is “why?” What did these protesters hope to achieve? Fame? Notoriety? A spot on the TV News? People like me writing a blog post? Arrest? Well, they got most of that, but as a local I have NO idea what they were protesting about—the logging industry, the trucks going through town, or something else. They were arrested and charged with creating a public disturbance or somesuch. They got their pictures on TV, just reinforcing the ‘rent-a-feral’ image many people have of them. I still don’t know what their cause was, so they didn’t achieve their aim of getting their message across.
More importantly, they tied up the emergency and security resources of people across the region, thus placing others at risk. The local police station would be lucky to have three officers, I’d suspect, so the other police had to come from somewhere—Manjimup, Donnybrook, Nannup?, Bunbury? The local ambulance was in attendance, so it and its volunteer staff were out of action for other work for those hours.
There’s talk of charging the idiots who set off flares up north last week for the $200K cost of sending out the search and rescue boats, helicopters etc. These protesters should also be responsible for the costs of wasting police, ambulance and other emergency services time and efforts.
There have to be other ways of protesting and getting your message out.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 