Rhonda Bracey: At Random

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.

I’m doing some family tree research on my summer break and part of that process is to check digitised newspaper articles for family notices (births, deaths, marriages, etc.). As I’m checking dates, names etc. I’m also correcting the electronically translated text for the entire section, not just for my relatives’ information. (The National Library of Australia has this amazing online collection of digital articles [http://trove.nla.gov.au/] that can be edited by anyone, thus harnessing the true power of crowd sourcing — for example, by noon today, some 150,000 edits had been made to newspaper text.)

Anyhow, I’d just finished editing the family notices for a particular date in 1935, when I saw this at the end in the classified advertisements:

Very strange! Fancy asking someone in 1935 to copy a letter 157 times (that would be BY HAND), then giving that letter to 891 friends (I’m not sure how 157 letters becomes 891… and even you did have 891 friends [or even 157 friends] then no doubt you’d have to mail some of these HANDWRITTEN letters at YOUR cost…) and then 793 of those friends have to purchase these ‘cabin weekends’ so that you get 33 million cakes at 74 cakes a day for 54.5 years! Even using a calculator I couldn’t get that maths to work.

And there’s no information on how you go about purchasing a ‘Fremantle cabin weekend special’.

Very weird… perhaps it was a coded message for someone? Or maybe someone was predicting Facebook and the like where you *could* have 891 friends and post something to them all 😉

I have two ‘protective’ pieces of cultural heritage in my house (actually, I probably have many more, but these ones are pretty unusual for someone living in Australia).

The first is an assegai that came from my maternal grandparents, who were both born and raised in South Africa, and who came to Western Australia in 1927. They returned to South Africa a couple of times in their later years, and my grandmother died there while visiting with her family on one of their trips back (1978); my grandfather died in Western Australia in 1994. In their house they had a few African pieces, and for some reason I have their old assegai.

I don’t recall how I got it — whether my Mum gave it to me after my grandad died, or whether I asked for it (though I can’t recall ever doing so, as I don’t even think I can remember seeing it when I used to visit as a child). Anyhow, I’ve always known it as an assegai, though some might call it a spear. When I checked Wikipedia, the description on an assegai perfectly fits what I have — a wooden shaft, with a crude iron spear, which is about 30 cm long. I guess I always knew it was some sort of weapon, but that Wikipedia article confirms it.

The other is a Mohawk ‘dancing stick’ that I purchased from a Tyendinaga Mohawk store in 1986 when I lived in Ontario, Canada.

I can vividly recall going into the store and wandering about looking at all the stuff. The only thing that really drew me in the store was this dancing stick, which was hanging high on the ceiling well out of reach and which wasn’t for sale, according to the chap serving in the store. He said it was a ceremonial stick and it wasn’t for sale as they still used in it ceremonies and it was a traded gift from another tribe. It was only in the store for display and storage purposes. At least, that was his story and I had no reason to disbelieve him. I kept coming back to it and looking up at it, and kept asking if it was for sale, and about the history of it and what it was made of (deer antler, white tailed deer hide, deer suede, eagle feathers, and blue and red beads). Then I’d move off, then come back.

I was drawn to this piece of Canadian First Nations culture for some reason. I was the only one in the store, and he could see me going back to it time and again. Eventually, I decided it was time to move on. But on my way out he stopped me and said he could see how drawn I was to this piece. So he sold it to me, knowing it would go to Australia to live out its days. I can’t recall how much I paid for it, but that’s totally irrelevant anyway.

Australian Customs is notoriously harsh about ‘fur, skin, and feathers’, so when my box of belongings arrived in Fremantle Port some four months after I’d sent it home from my year in Canada, I had to go down to Fremantle Port Customs to claim it and to declare the dancing stick. There was always a risk that it would be confiscated and destroyed by Customs, but that was a risk I was prepared to take. The guy at the counter was really good about it — he said it would have to be gamma radiated, but as their unit was a fixed size, they’d have to cut the stick in two! However, he said they’d try to cut it where the cut couldn’t be seen. A week or so later I got a call to come pick it up, and when I did so, I couldn’t see where they’d cut it in half. The guy at the counter told me they’d pushed back the deer suede and cut it in half there, then had joined it by using a piece of dowel in the centre and gluing it back together again. I still cannot see the cut!

The main reason I’ve written this blog post is so that I have some documented history of these pieces and how I came to own them (or they came to own me!). And the reason I’ve written about them now is that a small piece of deer fur fell off the dancing stick last night (possibly where that cut had been made and the deer hide glued back?) and I glued it back on today. And took some photos of it.

My office at home (I work from home exclusively) faces west, so come the afternoon on summer days, the windows get the full force of the sun and heat. Even if there’s a sea breeze blowing from the west (we’re close to the ocean), I have to close the windows (which have blinds, and 70%+ window tinting on them) so the sun and heat don’t come straight into the office and overheat me or the computers. Closing the windows on a hot day and thus preventing the sea breeze from coming in also means turning on the air conditioning (A/C) to keep the computers at a happy temperature (I’ve got one computer that tells me it’s getting hot by ramping up the fan speed once the ambient temperature in the room hits about 28C!).

I’d been thinking about getting shade screens on the front of the house since we moved in, but it wasn’t until we sold a property and had some ‘spare’ cash from that sale that I could justify such an expense. Fortunately, since I first thought of doing it some four years’ ago, technology has moved on and the days of manually unwinding/rolling up these screens are long gone — it’s all automated and done by remote control from inside the house now 😉

The roller screens were installed just before Christmas and already they’ve made a huge difference on those pleasant summer days where it’s not really hot enough to have the A/C on and the days when a nice cooling sea breeze is blowing. I no longer have to shut the windows mid-afternoon and turn on the A/C, just to keep the direct sun out.

I choose a light colour for the screens as the window tinting already adds a lot of darkness to the office, so with the screens down, I can keep the office windows open to catch the breeze, while still letting light in, but not the direct sun or heat. Of course, if it’s REALLY hot, then the A/C comes on AND the screens go down.

(Yes, I need to talk to the company about the ‘slack’ in the screens as I had expected them to be quite taut.)

You can see how the screens minimise the direct sun from the front of the house — there’s a LOT of shade between them and the front door and windows

The day after they were installed, I checked the heat coming through the bedroom windows (which aren’t shaded, but which have the same tinting on them) — I put the back of my hand on the inside of the window and it was HOT. I then went to one of the shaded windows and the temperature of the glass facing into the room was pretty much the ambient temperature of the room.

I should have done this years ago…

I think I have discovered the ideal tradesperson (my new handyman)! Why? Well, here’s a list for starters:

• arrives on time (never more than 5 minutes after he’s told me, or else he’ll phone and let me know that he’s delayed and by how much)
• cleans up after himself
• protects my floors etc. with drop cloths
• explains what’s important on my list and what’s not
• explains in plain language why some issues are happening
• takes extreme pride in his work
• notices other things and fixes or lets me know (e.g. was checking something in ceiling and noticed a pinhole elsewhere in the roof, so fixed it there and then)
• charges a reasonable hourly rate
• works at a good pace but not so quick as to be rough-shod and not so slow as to eke out the hourly rate
• looks me in the eye when speaking to me
• tells me if something is beyond his capabilities (e.g. plumbing work other than minor stuff) and then offers his recommendation for another tradesperson (but only if asked, so he’s not trying to fob off others on to me)
• treats my house like his own (e.g. takes off his shoes when inside – without asking)
• can turn his hand to most things (though he’s quite young, he has built his last two houses himself)
• does a good thorough job.

Notice that ‘does a good job’ is not the first thing on my list, so while that is very important, all those other things add up too, and any one of them could have relegated him to ‘so-so’ status.

He’s an absolute keeper for future handyman work around the house and I’ve already recommended him to others. He’s only recently gone into business on his own, so I’m more than happy to give him my business now and in the future.

Update December 2022: He’s definitely been a keeper! Everything I wrote 9 years ago about Tony remains the same today, and even though he now lives about an hour away, I still get him to come and work through my ‘Tony list’ each year (typically just once a year unless there’s some sort of emergency) to keep our house in good condition.

So I’m looking at the Google Play store for a relaxing ambient noise app to see if I can mask my mild tinnitus at night when trying to fall asleep, and I come across this review:

Too funny! No, I haven’t downloaded/tried the app yet…

(Text for those who can’t read the image: 4 stars: Maybe too effective. This app works great. My body is now trained to quickly fall asleep to certain sounds. However, I inadvertently activated your app with my car’s hands-free system today and before I realized what I’d done, I had fallen asleep at the wheel. I awoke in the duck pond in the park. Nobody was hurt, and it isn’t very deep, but there’s an extremely hateful goose patrolling the pond that won’t let me exit my vehicle. It’s like a little honking Cujo. Will rate 5 stars if you bring bread to appease this goose.)