This week the machinations of the tech bros was finally invasive enough on my consciousness, to bother me deeply. As an ungentlemanly as it may seem, I even err, cracked the sads on Friday. It was my one day off of the week, and the forces moved against me. Harassed from one end to the other for most of the day. I’ve some friends and acquaintances in the accounting profession, and they are reporting similar experiences. At the beginning of July there were some changes with an aspect of government reporting, and it’s been feral to administer for small business. Oh well.
As a canny and resourceful dude, after this week’s experience I’ve implemented some hard boundaries, which dare not be crossed! As someone who works six days per week, it is my observation that nobody is going to care more about my down time, than I do. So I have cracked it, and will henceforth switch my phone and emails off on such non-work days. Spare a thought for the hapless Sandra who on that supposed day off, also needed to talk to me about some work thing which was not urgent and scored an earful of whinge factor ten overdrive. Hmm. Some days you just don’t want re-experience.
Yup, the tech bros are not my mates, put it that way. To add further insult, whilst feeling somewhat out of sorts because of all this intrusive stuff, on Friday night a chunk of software, which had self installed onto this website, began blocking me from posting replies to comments. Memories of smiting the foolish mice who’d interrupted my sleep all night for three weeks recently,were flooding back fresh into my mind. The final sentence the rodents heard, resurfaced in the murky crawl spaces of the mind: I so hate this!
What had my life become?
The brain is a wonderful tool though, and mine processes on problems whilst sleeping. Saturday morning brought an entirely fresh perspective to the unasked for comment blocking software. Like Elmer Fudd, we went a huntin’! The software was tracked down and discovered, which was a good thing because the night before I had no idea what was going on. Once it’s hiding place was known, the quarry was flushed out and put to a timely end. It was a real pleasure to stop this latest mischief in it’s tracks.
I don’t see the upside of making life so unnecessarily difficult. It needn’t be this way, and with enough years under my belt, I can guarantee to younger readers of the blog, that long ago the day to day administrative activities of life were way simpler. The constant demands that bureaucrats and big companies pester us with, in isolation make a lot of sense. As a totality, the constant intrusion makes no sense whatsoever.
I’m not into it, and hope the tech bros run out of mad cash sooner, rather than later. The sensitive person hears rumours that they’re burning through a lot of borrowed funds, having possibly used up much of their own in a potential orgy of dream chasing. And when that latest money spigot runs dry possibly because you know, investors may want a return on their investment, it’s going to be a problem. Oh yeah, and people left holding the bits of paper that were once previously money, will be way more annoyed than my Friday experience!
There’s another rumour going around about that lot. Allegedly the tech bros are buying up second hand books, cutting the spines off, then feeding them into document reader machines. A whole lot of books apparently. They’ve had to stop scraping data from the interweb because they’ve already done that and not achieved their goals. Also plenty of clever people, perhaps those who’s creations got hoovered up, are working out how to poison the uploaded data. Plus look at the quantity of software generated content out there on the web now. It’s not healthy for the machines to consume their own product, which now I’ve typed that sentence out, all sounds a bit yuk really.
Reading is a true delight! In the comment section of this blog, there is a long standing tradition of the sneaky book recommendation. The other day I was snared in a top notch book recommend trap, only to be startled by the price. $50 for a paperback, delivered! Sadly a bit rich for my tastes.
The surprising book price piqued my curiosity. It was only a paperback, how could it have been so expensive? Turns out, it wasn’t the only one, and bizarrely my much loved Jack Vance complete collection of books, now costs twice as much as it did only a few years ago. And serious people tell me that the official inflation rate is 4%, except books now cost 100% more than they did only very recently. I’m sure the official number is reflective of what goes on in the real world, yeah maybe it does…
The thing I noticed about book prices was that a few years ago, I could get a paperback delivered from the UK for about $25 including airfreight. It was a pretty sweet deal and was the same price as the local sellers had. That situation makes absolutely no sense to me. How can airfreight be free? Anyway, fast forward to these more enlightened times, and the books still cost about the same as back, but now with about $25 of freight. Or, the freight is advertised as free and things cost around $50, which is kind of the same.
The ongoing dust up in the middle east is beginning to seriously bite down under. Australia is a big sparsely populated country, and moving items around costs a lot. Diesel and the pretty similar Jet Fuel, are what you need to move freight fast. And that stuff is going up in price. Probably why the book sellers finally had to charge realistic prices for freight.
I’ve long suspected that literacy rates will eventually return to their historical norms. Hint, it wasn’t all that widespread a skill to be able to read, let alone write. With books getting more expensive though, and people atrophying their skills by outsourcing their brains to dross producing software, we’re probably in the early stages of that reversion.
Most of the week was quite cloudy and often damp. The house batteries only reached full charge by Sunday, when the sun shone strongly.
There are meant to be two small mountains off to the west, and the thick low clouds obscured both of them. Anyway, on Sunday the sun finally shone and we headed down below to the forest edge so as to continue the clean up work. As usual, the area worked on was particularly messy with a few upside down loggers tree stumps. Other than one enormous exemplar, the rest were easy to roll down the hill into the bonfire. I left that monster for another year.
The heat radiating off the bonfire was quite intense. The dogs had been running around for hours, and by the time the photo was taken, Ruby in particular was happy to spend time cooking her head and relaxing by the fire.
The previous day due to all of the tech hassles, I was feeling a bit out of sorts, and decided to potter around at my own pace fixing things here and there which needed some attention.
The two water inlet pipes to the house water tanks, had flexible connections added in-line. When full, each tank weighs around 25,000kg / 55,000 pounds, which is quite a lot. The clay they both sit on, moves ever so slightly with the seasons, and the flexible connectors allow for a bit of shifting and repositioning if needed. You’d imagine it would have been a quick task, but it took a couple of hours to ensure the pipes sat at the same height and out-flowing water ends up in the filter basket.
With a few hours to spare that day, I decided to check out whether the blades on the scary old wood chipper required replacing. They’d been in use for about two years now, and my initial belief was that they were worn down.
I like that second hand machine. The old farm repair machine dude, who passed away a few years ago, convinced me to buy it over a much newer chipper. I was initially dubious, and the Tecumseh 8hp motor is as old as the hills. But then, bowing to greater experience, I acted on the advice. Since owning, I’ve replaced the tyres with solid tubes, chucked on a new fuel tank and replaced the blades a couple of years ago – but that’s it.
Surprisingly the replacement blades are readily available and quite affordable. I’d not expected that given how old the machine is. It takes a bit under an hour to open the guts of the cutter mechanism. And the blades were perfect. Another thing I’d not expected.
It’s a beast of a machine, and I’ve fed two inch thick hardwood sticks into the cutters, and it produces a really nice and useful mulch. The trick to why it works well, is that there is a heavy flywheel, two cutting blades and four lots of flails. The guts of the cutting mechanism, were also in far better condition than I’d expected.
Steel of that quality in home machines, is rare nowadays. It probably also assists longevity that at the end of every use, the motor is allowed to cool down and lanolin is sprayed into the cutting area. The oil cleans and protects the steel. Well worth looking after equipment, and I thoroughly clean all of them after use.
Almost forgot to mention, in the forest area we’re cleaning up, I discovered a wombat hole. At night the large marsupials roam among the fruit trees and garden beds.
Late winter, early spring is the lean time of year for all of the forest critters. We often receive the most wonderful donations of bread and scones. The chickens love the scones, and we spread those treats out over a couple of days. If there is too much to store in air tight containers in the fridge, we occasionally feed a bit to the local birds who appreciate the extra feed.
If any is ever left by night time, the rats and mice will attempt to eat the treats. Presumably rats also try to eat the mice. Owls will perch in the nearby trees, and they’re into equal opportunity and will eat rats, mice or possums.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 11’C (52’F). So far for this year there has been 822.0mm (32.4 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 810.6mm (31.9 inches)
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