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| Greg's diary |
| September 2021 |
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| Wednesday, 1 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 1 September 2021 |
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Getting Kirsch in Australia
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Topic: food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
One of our favourite dishes is fondue au fromage, cheese fondue. Basically it's bread and cheese, but it also uses Kirsch, a spirit distilled from cherries.
And in cosmopolitan Australia it has always been hard to find. Now, though, it's becoming impossible. The only thing available is made by Baitz, a company that appears to have no web site, but it tastes like paint thinner. Until recently I was able to get Weis, which was good enough to cook the fondue with, and marginally acceptable for the coup de mileu. But good Kirsch? Years ago Daniel Demuth used to bring us Etter, which is excellent but unobtainable in Australia.
OK, get some sent. It's available on eBay in Germany for 51.66 € for a 0.7 l, or $118.89 per litre. That's not cheap, but it compares well with the $106 per litre for the Weis Kirsch.
Of course, that's not all I pay. I have to ship it to Australia and pay duty, excise and GST. How much? After over an hour of searching, I don't know. A web search took me to the relativey non-intuitive Australian Border Force web site, with a page entitled importing by post or mail, relatively clear compared to the mess that the mess that the SARS-CoV-2 response team create.
But they don't tell me how much! All they say is, tastefully in pale grey on a white background:
If you import alcoholic beverages by mail with a value of AUD1000 or less, we will send you an invoice advising the duty and taxes payable. You need to pay this invoice before your goods will be delivered to you.
Called the only phone number they gave, 02 8339 6708, but it timed out on me. On closer inspection it proved to be a fax number. Who uses faxes any more? But there's another page, contact us, which gave me the numbers 131 881 (costs money) and +61 2 6196 0196 (free for me) for the Department of Home Affairs. That suggests that it won't work anyway. OK, call 02 6196 0196, and got a voice menu telling me that I could only be processed if I was calling regarding Æfgænistæn, and that I should otherwise call the Department of Agriculture on 1800 mumble 900, so fast that I couldn't write it down or recall the middle 3 digits, and without any option to repeat. There was also some mention of Coles, though my guess is that this is a homophonous code word designed to confuse.
“Tell us what you think of this page”. Gladly, but I was presented with a CAPTCHA that decided that I wasn't human.
Things didn't use to be that bad. What has gone wrong? As it is, it seems sufficient to take the risk and rely on this PDF document from the UK, which suggests 5% duty, $60.92 per litre of alcohol and 10% GST. But it's not authoritative, and what's a “litre of alcohol”? Hopefully that's pure ethanol, in other words round $17.48 for a 0.7 litre bottle of 41% Kirsch.
| Thursday, 2 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 2 September 2021 |
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More thoughts on “Phat Thai”
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
“Phat Thai” for breakfast today, not for the first time. Today, after my disaster with the Shan Xi noodles, I used Fettuccine, and also some of this jar of “Pad Thai” sauce:
The combination was not good. Last time I used 80 g of sauce for a serving, and it worked well with the unspecified noodles I used on that occasion, but the fettuccine are not very absorbent, and this time I ended up with a lot of liquid left over. Is it worth taking more notice? I don't see myself buying another jar.
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International money transfers
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne has bought Yet Another saddle in Germany, and we're trying to find a cheap way to pay for it. Bank exchange rates can be extremely expensive, so years ago I signed up with a company called “Transferwise”. Clever name, right, prone to false positives? But they've changed the name. Now it's just “Wise”, an immediately obvious (dare I say “intuitive”?) name.
We had to get 1,672 € to Germany. What would it cost? “Wise” had a comparison that's probably not that far from the truth, though not in a useful format. For me, they charged 2,694.90 AUD, which would have ended up with the following sums at the other end if I send 2,694.90 AUD:
| Company | Recipient gets | Comparison | Transfer fee | Exchange rate(1 AUD → €) | ||||||
| Wise | 1,672.00 € | 12.59 AUD | 0.623343 | Mid-market rate | ||||||
| Western Union | 1,655.67 € | - 16.33 € | 0.00 AUD | 0.614371 | ||||||
| Moneygram | 1,641.53 € | - 30.47 € | 2.99 AUD | 0.609800 | ||||||
| Remitly | 1,640.66 € | - 31.34 € | 7.99 AUD | 0.610613 | ||||||
| ANZ | 1,618.29 € | - 53.71 € | 9.00 AUD | 0.602512 | ||||||
| National Australia Bank | 1,606.28 € | - 65.72 € | 10.00 AUD | 0.598265 | ||||||
| Westpac | 1,606.03 € | - 65.97 € | 10.00 AUD | 0.598170 | ||||||
| Commonwealth Bank of Australia | 1,585.57 € | - 86.43 € | 12.00 AUD | 0.590990 | ||||||
That's not easy to read, especially since it doesn't look at it from the customer's perspective. I don't want to know how far my $2,694.90 will go, I want to know how much it will cost me to get 1,672 € in the recipient's bank account. And they don't tell that easily. After several iterations I established that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia would charge $2,841.50 for the same transfer, fully $146.60 more than “Wise”. Under those circumstances, it's amusing to note that “Wise” actually has the highest fees.
But I knew this was the cheapest way. Now to get the money into the account. Nowadays that's pretty straightforward, once I find my account numbers. And they have changed since I last looked! Somehow the “Wise” web site is completely confusing.
OK, money transferred into my AUD balance. Now make an EUR payment. “Please transfer money from a bank account”. Huh? I just did that. After much searching, found a number of options, most of them not applicable, but including, below the bottom of the screen, (“Not available”) “Your Balance”. The best was “Low cost transfer”, only 0.41 €, certainly cheaper than what they had advertised.
Why was “Your Balance” not available? No money in it. It only looked at the EUR balance. So I had to go and manually change the money from AUD to EUR. And then it worked—only 0.28 € fees, and, as they proudly stated in an email, it arrived in 7 seconds.
So: it works (and the recipient confirmed arrival), and it was even cheaper than advertised, but how I would like the thing to be easier to use. I have a similar situation in the other direction: Yvonne and I have pension transfers from Europe, and a quick check shows that we are losing $40 every month by going via the banks. But I'm concerned that “Wise” has changed my account number in Germany: getting the pension fund to change things is a real pain.
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Historical cameras in films
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Topic: photography, history, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
The explicit use of cameras in films interests me. One thing that's obvious is that in so many cases the camera and position make no sense: long teles, photographers far too close to their subjects, standing in ridiculous positions. That's not lack of understanding: any of these sets is teeming with photographers. Yes, they're mainly video photographers, but you need to be a rank amateur to make that kind of mistake.
The other thing is the choice of camera in films set in the past. This evening we watched “Miller's Tale” from the British series Heartbeat. It was first broadcast in October 2005, but it takes place in eternal 1969. Here's the camera used by a reporter:
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Clearly it's a Nikon, and the first lens is clearly identifiable. I didn't recognize the “Nikkor-H”, but “Auto” suggests that it's far newer than 1969. But I was wrong: this page shows that the lens model was made between January 1964 and February 1967, and the serial number (600010 < 685618 < 704258) suggests some time in late 1966.
The other lens isn't identifiable, but what about the camera? Clearly it has a Photomic head and a motor winder, but what's the grip on the right? I don't know of any Nikons of the day with a grip like that. And the Photomic head, the position of the flash sync connector and the lack of a pin for the rabbits' ears make it clear that it's not a Nikon F.
| Friday, 3 September 2021 | Dereel | |
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The pain of dog registration
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Topic: technology, general, animals, opinion | Link here |
It's bad enough that both Leonid and Nikolai died this year, but now we have issues with dog registration. Leo died before the registration was due, but we paid for Niko for what proved to be only 3 months. And Lena, his replacement, arrived after his death. In the past we have been able to transfer the registration, but now they have a new person, Alana, in charge of registration, and she's very precise. She confirmed that we could have had a refund for Niko's registration if we had applied before the end of June.
OK, where does it say that on the registration forms? It doesn't. Time for both a complaint and a request for refund anyway, since we weren't informed of the date. Alana had also wanted copies of our pension cards, since one of her predecessors seems to have dropped the ball when it came to pensioner discount.
Send off the mail, and get confirmation of receipt:
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2021 04:51:14 +0000 (UTC)
From: Mail Delivery System <MAILER-DAEMON@lax.lemis.com>
To: groggyhimself@lemis.com
Subject: Successful Mail Delivery Report
Message-Id: <20210903045114.8252E280EB@lax.lemis.com>
This is the mail system at host lax.lemis.com.
Your message was successfully delivered to the destination(s)
listed below.
<CS@gplains.vic.gov.au>: delivery via
filter1.gplain-1.mailguard.com.au[13.210.137.250]:25: 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued
as E0917ECBDB5 UID 6131a9bf3b910686
OK, nothing unusual about that. But then, over a minute later, I got:
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2021 14:51:22 +1000 (AEST)
From: Mail Delivery System <MAILER-DAEMON@mailguard.com.au>
To: groggyhimself@lemis.com
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
Message-Id: <20210903045122.2CDABF00C9F@smtp-relay-susj-omicron.mailguard.com.au>
This is the mail system at host smtp-relay-susj-omicron.mailguard.com.au.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
<cs@gplains.vic.gov.au>: host
gplains-vic-gov-au.mail.protection.outlook.com[104.47.71.138] said: 550
5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied. AS(201806281)
[SY4AUS01FT011.eop-AUS01.prod.protection.outlook.com] (in reply to RCPT TO
command)
What's all that about? I sent it to the address I was given, of course, and it was accepted into the system. It seems that something internal didn't like it, but was too polite (or, given that it's clearly Microsoft, stupid) to say what.
So what's code 550 subcode 5.4.1? It's not in the List of SMTP server return codes. Google shows a number of hits, all from Microsoft systems, and almost all without an explanation. This one came up with the statement:
You received this error message because of the Directory-Based Edge Blocking (DBEB).
By default, the DBEB is enabled for your domains in Microsoft 365 and will reject external emails with addresses that are not present within the Azure Active Directory.
Public folder mailboxes are not synchronised with the Azure Active Directory and as your emails are routed out to Exclaimer Cloud, then back to Microsoft 365, they are considered external from the DBEB purpose.
From my perspective outside the system, I think this translates to “configuration error”. It's interesting to note that the sample message bears significant relationship to mine:
Reported error: 550 5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied. AS(201806281) [LO2GBR01FT010.eop-gbr01.prod.protection.outlook.com] [Response from m365x609028-mail-onmicrosoft-com.mail.protection.outlook.com] (303416b4-2dd0-48a8-842e-4e5a577af035,8f335eb8-008d-4b5b-af96-7e651a9b3771)
Will they fix it? Maybe. But until they do, I don't pay any dog licenses, so they can take their time.
| Saturday, 4 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 4 September 2021 |
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X pain without end
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been using X for over 30 years, and on the whole I'm comfortable with it. But a couple of bugs make my life painful, and in all that time I haven't seriously tried to hunt them down, since they happen so seldom and finding the bug looks like so much work.
Today the “modifier key” bug bit again: one of the modifier keys got stuck in the “on” state. Which one? The code is 0x10. With xev I was able to establish that it wasn't any of the usual suspects. Shift toggles modifier bit 1, Ctrl toggles 4, Alt toggles 8—and that's all. CapsLock, the phantom key that I have disabled? A quick look at the output of xmodmap showed:
shift Shift_L (0x32), Shift_R (0x3e)
lock
control Control_L (0x25), Control_R (0x6d)
mod1 Alt_L (0x40), Meta_L (0x9c)
mod2
mod3
mod4 Super_L (0x73), Super_L (0x7f), Hyper_L (0x80)
mod5 Mode_switch (0x8), ISO_Level3_Shift (0x7c)
I haven't found a mapping between the names and the bits, but it seems that they shift left for each line, so lock would be bit 2. And I don't have that. Instead, it must be mod2. But no key can generate that. How could I end up with it set? And, more importantly, how can I reset it?
I still don't know. I had to stop X (conveniently on the wrong system, eureka, first) and restart it. I thought of using xmodmap to assign a key to a modifier so that I could toggle it, but that's all that would happen: after toggling it, the state would be the same as before.
That's only one of the issues. The other is almost certainly something to do with the mouse driver: it generates spurious events, and has been doing so for decades. 20 years ago it bit me badly by pasting a password into an IRC session, but it wasn't until last year that I tried to do something about it. If only the mouse driver code were easier to understand!
| Sunday, 5 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 5 September 2021 |
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Limes—or lemons?
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Topic: gardening, food and drink | Link here |
Finally the fruit on our Tahitian lime tree are ready for harvesting. It has taken a while, 13 years, so I wasn't overly upset that they weren't the best fruit in the world:
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It's not immediately apparent that the flesh, more lemon than lime, has an orange tint. But they taste alright, if a little too mild for a real lemon.
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Where was I when?
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Topic: history, technology, general, opinion | Link here |
For some reason my monitor number 0 (far left) started misbehaving today. Colours dropped out, and it got dimmer. All the signs of a flaky cable connection. I wobbled the connections, and things got better, for a while, but it didn't stay that way.
Maybe something wrong with the monitor? I had another on the floor doing nothing. Put that in, and hey, it was so much better. Nothing to do with the cable, just the monitor itself. First, it's larger, and secondly brighter. As a result, it made sense to put it in a better position, number 1 (second from left), and move the very old BenQ in number 0 position.
And that's where the fun really started. What a mess under the monitor! I've had my computer in position for over 6 years, since we moved in. OK, tidy up, in the process finding my old passport, in use from 1990 to 1998 (at which point it was full and had to be replaced). Just what I need to establish where I have been, at least in part. And how about that, some of the dates don't match my recollection. In particular, I was sure that we had a meeting with Jimmy Treybig in Sunnyvale—the one where he asked “What's the Internet?”—on 22 August 1991, but it seems that it was a week earlier, on 15 August 1991. Along with my Filofax notebook, this can help me reconstruct the Lost Thirty Years when I didn't keep a diary.
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More steak and kidney pie fun
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Steak and kidney pie for dinner today. It brings home how little we eat nowadays, presumably a sign of our age. Yvonne no longer eats even a small pie, just a filo-like pastry:
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And she didn't finish it! But I couldn't finish mine either:
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Part of that was because we had had an entrée, but I can't help thinking that we're gradually eating less all the time.
| Monday, 6 September 2021 | Dereel → Napoleons → Dereel | Images for 6 September 2021 |
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KL Hokkien Mee again
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
KL Hokkien mee for breakfast again today. I made the recipe pretty much as the last time, when I had thought that the 45 g of broth per serving was rather a lot. Now I think it could be more, maybe 60 g. But somehow there's something missing, and I can't put my finger on it. More garlic, maybe?
The other interesting thing is that the bucatini that I use for other dishes seems to make an almost perfect substitute for Hokkien noodles.
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Tracking with Australia Post
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I'm waiting for no fewer than four eBay items ordered over the last two weeks. According to Australia Post, two of them arrived in Wendouree (Ballarat) over the weekend, so they should have been in Napoleons this morning. But what did I see at 12:45? Two items with this tracking information:
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Of course, they politely hide the tracking details until you insist on seeing them. But when I did, I got:
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The thing had been in Napoleons for nearly 6 hours! And why the excessive delivery time estimate? You could walk from Wendouree to Napoleons in 4 hours. How can they expect it to take a week?
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To Napoleons with Google Maps
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So off to Napoleons to pick up my eBay items. The route looks like this:
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I know the way, of course, but I use Google Maps for the fun of it. This time I forgot to turn it on until I was half way down Grassy Gully Road, about 200 m from the main road. And somehow it got confused about the direction in which the car was pointing, so it decided to take my by the scenic route:
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Drove 50 m straight ahead and it got its bearings, changing to a sane route:
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But what is it about Google Maps that refuses to turn around, even when it's the only sane thing to do?
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Yet Another new camera
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Topic: photography, history, opinion | Link here |
The camera I picked up is a Contax D, almost the first SLR with a pentaprism. It's a nice example, almost completely functional. I'll investigate it in more detail Some Other Time, but what strikes me is how modern it looks compared to my Asahiflex and Exakta. Both of those cameras are older, but not as old as the first Contax S. I'm still trying to find the difference between the Contax S and the Contax D; so far the only difference I have found is in the shape of the shutter speed dial and the position of the (single) flash contact. And then we have:
| Camera | Introduced | My example | ||
| (Kine) Exakta | 1936 | |||
| Exakta II | 1947 | March 1949 | ||
| Contax S | 1949 | |||
| Asahiflex I | 1951 | 1953 | ||
| Contax D | 1952 | ? |
When was my Contax D made? That depends on the serial number, but I have found two: 67469 on the side of the body, only visible after opening the back, and 246688 on the back itself. I'll have to investigate more. More than with other old cameras, there's a lot of disinformation out there about the old Contax models. In particular, there's a persistent rumour, currently still on Wikipedia, that the D stands for Dresden, ignoring both the fact that all Contaxes were built in Dresden, and that between the Contax S and Contax D there were also models A, B and C, at least in planning.
But one thing is plausible: before the war, Zeiss built rangefinder cameras called Contax, like this Contax III in the 1941 „Deutscher Kamera-Almanach“:
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I wrote more on that camera a few years back. But they didn't make SLRs. After the war, they only built SLRs. Why? The Soviets dismantled the factory after the war, so they had to start again from scratch. And that suggests that the real successor of the pre-war Contaxes was the Kiev.
| Tuesday, 7 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 7 September 2021 |
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Powercor inspection
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Topic: Stones Road house, general | Link here |
Steve Howard from Powercor came along this morning, not at his carefully stated time of “between 9 and 9:30”, but at 8:35. Fortunately I was out of bed and saw him coming.
His assessment was pretty much what I had expected: nothing can be built under the power line, nor 6 m either side of it. Yes, they can relocate the line, but at our cost, and “you don't want to know what it will cost”.
And why didn't the council notice the easement? Ah, maybe it's not in the title: it's an “implied easement”. After checking, yes, it seems that there's no mention of it in my title copy.
So: who is to blame? David Rowe, without a doubt. He was on site and should have seen the power cable. Sarah Smith of the Golden Plains Council? She, too, was there, and interested enough to require us to spend nearly $3,000 on zincalume-coloured Colorbond. She, too, should have seen the power cable. And Powercor for not including the easement in the title? About the only people who weren't to blame (for once) were Yvonne and I. But as a result of this fiasco, we're round $20,000 out of pocket. Clearly I'm going to need legal help.
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Investigating the Contax D
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Topic: photography, history, opinion | Link here |
Spent a lot of time today reading up about the Contax S. It's confusing stuff, and I didn't finish. My current impression is that the evolution from Contax S to Contax D was slow and gradual, and it was influenced at least as much by postwar German politics as it was by technology. About the only thing I'm sure of is that the flash synchronization contact moved from the bottom of the camera to the top, and the shape of some of the knobs on the top changed, though it's not yet clear to me whether the changes were only in one direction.
Also took some photos. The camera is almost perfect:
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Only the self-timer is cocked, and I couldn't find a way to fire it. I don't seem to be the only one. While searching the web I found these photos, from this (sales) page and this page:
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Clearly my issue isn't isolated. Interestingly, neither of these cameras is a Contax D. The first is the original Contax S, and the second is a “Contax S model C”. That shows just how little has changed. The model C also has a flash sync terminal in the same place as on the D, near the rewind knob, but it doesn't look the same. And apart from that, the Contax S looks identical. The only difference is the marking on the pentaprism: „Zeiss Ikon“ with no additional text, and „Contax“ with no additional letter. And potentially the film sensitivity scale round the rewind lever (marked 6 to 400 ASA on my camera) is marked in DIN on the other two, but the photos aren't sharp enough to tell.
OK, what's wrong with the self-timer? Do I care? I'm never going to use it. Yes, I do, sort of. Apart from that, the camera seems to be in perfect condition, which I can't say about any of my other pre-1960 cameras. Can I at least reposition the lever so that it's upright? There's a screw holding it in place:
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Can I turn it with a pair of pliers? Yes, easily: it's quite loose. Take it off, however, and there's a lock nut underneath that requires special tools to remove:
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OK, put into the “too hard” basket for now. Put the ring back on and screw it tight. The self-timer fired! That seems to be the trick. Nothing wrong with it at all: turning the ring fires the self timer, the just a little different from what I was expecting. On checking my other cameras with lever self-timers, the Nikon F and Pentax cameras have a little button hidden by the lever. Only the Nikon FM2 fires the self-timer via the shutter button.
So finally I have some representative photos of the camera:
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In passing, the lens is the 50 mm f/2.8 Cassar that I got with the Edixa Reflex. Now to write a web page about it.
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Spring is coming
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Topic: gardening, general | Link here |
Walking the dogs today, spring is manifesting itself:
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Animal registration payments
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Topic: general, animals, technology, opinion | Link here |
A couple of weeks ago Yvonne processed the paperwork for our new dogs and paid by cheque for some reason. Not a good idea. We write about 2 cheques a year, and the cheque book that she chose was for an account that we closed decades ago. We have already handled one bounce, but there was a second that hasn't bounced yet.
OK, call up, apologize and try to pay. Account number, please? No, it will have to be a credit card. I'll get Elyse to call you back.
Elyse duly called and wanted a credit card number. NO! I don't know you from Eve. How can I tell that you're kosher? Send me email and I'll give you the details. Elyse confused, of course: “Our customers prefer the convenience”. But not the accident that's waiting to happen.
Paid that, and a little later got a phone call from Emma at the Golden Plains Council relating to paying dog registration. They were expecting an email from me, but they didn't get it.
Yes, I was half expecting that: last Friday I had the email equivalent of Schrödinger's cat, an email that was both accepted and rejected. Ah, says Emma, I sent it to the wrong address, cs@gplains.vic.gov.au. It should have been customerservice@gplains.vic.gov.au. Never mind that cs@ was the address I had been given. Bounce the message, and how about that, only a “delivered” message, no bounce message, and Emma called up and confirmed that she had received the message. So, at least for the Golden Plains Council, and probably for anybody misguided enough to use outlook.com, this message means “the user does not exist”:
<cs@gplains.vic.gov.au>: host
gplains-vic-gov-au.mail.protection.outlook.com[104.47.71.138] said: 550
5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied. AS(201806281)
[SY4AUS01FT011.eop-AUS01.prod.protection.outlook.com] (in reply to RCPT TO
command)
And could I pay by bank transfer? Again, no, credit card number please. But she did allow me to pay by BPAY, the service that only works during the working week and takes at least 24 hours, as compared to normal transfers that are instantaneous. And she supplied two separate numbers, just to annoy me.
| Wednesday, 8 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 8 September 2021 |
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Relocating power lines?
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
One solution to our riding arena problem would be to relocate the power line that runs over the site of the arena. That would be our preferred method—if somebody else pays.
But how practical would it be? While walking the dogs spent some time looking at how the lines are laid out, and in fact there's almost a line of sight from another (upstream) power line to the south-east and the other end of the link going over the arena. How do I display it? Once Google Maps allowed you to make custom maps, but I can't find that any more. The best I can find is this view, which clearly shows pole at the other end of the power link to the south-west, and a wide paddock to the north-east. What isn't visible is the power pole round the tree line:
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So it seems that it would be perfectly feasible to take a line across the paddock—if:
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Is it a viable option? I fear not, but we should at least investigate it.
| Thursday, 9 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 9 September 2021 |
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More garden issues
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Topic: gardening, general, Stones Road house, opinion | Link here |
Knock on the door this morning: Bryan Ross, the gardener. That was a surprise: we hadn't expected them until tomorrow. Off to discuss what they had done two months ago. To my surprise, it wasn't an inexperienced helper who had done it, but Bryan himself, the expert horticulturalist. And at least at the beginning he defended what he had done. In fact, he took such offense at my criticism that they all decided not to come again, and Bryan only did grass trimming. The garden (the reason for Bryan's coming) was untouched, and I paid for 9 hours of grass trimming:
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Was I too unfriendly in my criticism? I don't think so. The more I look at it, the more I get the impression that Bryan isn't nearly as experienced as he claims to be. And if somebody criticizes me in my area of expertise, I will at least listen to him.
And was Bryan right? I still don't think so. Bulbs need trimming to improve their vitality, he says. That's the first I have heard of it, and the best I can say for it is that it happened very early in the growth cycle, here in early June:
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On the way round the house, he saw the Camellia japonica and commented favourably on it:
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But why are the leaves so yellow? I had to point that out him, and he finally came out with “you need camellia fertilizer”. I've put that in, of course. What does this pattern mean? I have books that I have consulted, but they haven't helped much.
And the Alyogyne huegelii? It'll come. The branches are not dead, he says:
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I was thinking of having a bet on it, but by the time we got to the Persicaria odorata (daun kesum), he tripped over himself: he didn't realize that there were any remains, just the weeds:
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At the beginning of the year it was looking a little straggly, but it was still there. Here at the beginning of last year:
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Other indications were how to prune the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis: “Up” or “down”. And this sage bush “needed trimming”:
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So basically he has little idea of the material, and as a result has caused considerable damage.
So: it's a pity that he took offense, but if he thinks that is good gardening practice, then we really need a new gardener. I'm beginning to appreciate Mick Solly more and more.
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Changed COVID-19 lockdown
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Topic: health, technology, opinion | Link here |
From 23:59 this evening, according to the news outlets, we will have our COVID-19 “lockdown” restrictions eased again. Can the cleaner come? Take a look at the official site: “COVIDSafe settings” and, not to be outdone, the stupidly named “How we live”.
NOTHING! The pages still relate to upcoming changes on 2 September. I couldn't find anything about the upcoming changes this evening. Yvonne tried calling an information line, but it timed out after 30 minutes and hung up on her, claiming overload. The cleaner did the same, with the same result.
People, we can't follow the regulations if we don't know what they are! Followed a “contact us” link, which gave me a form with a number of reasons to contact “us”, none of them related to interpreting the regulations. In the end I was given the option to Provide feedback or make a complaint, which mutated into “Submit Your Complaint”. And there I had to give all sorts of irrelevant details, like my date of birth and local council name. Finally fought my way through it and tried to submit:
PLEASE supply information about lockdowns and COVID-19 related restrictions. You seem to have two pages which contradict each other, and as of now (9 September 2021, 11:20) there is no mention of the upcoming restrictions for regional Victoria at https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/coronavirus-covidsafe-settings or https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/how-we-live, and those pages refer to restrictions from last week. If you have moved them elsewhere, you could at least have the decency to link to them. As it is, I really don't know what we're allowed to do and what not.
But I couldn't submit the complaint. “Error: Mandatory information is required”. What mandatory information? They don't say. I had to step back to a previous page to discover that the local council information wasn't set. OK, set that. No can do: there was no input field. With a bit of experimentation, I discovered that I could set it indirectly by reentering my address. Forward a couple of screen, add to the complaint:
This form is also broken. It removed the local council information (irrelevant, but required) and I had to re-enter the form to get it entered, since it wouldn't just let me type in the council name.
Then answer this emetic CAPTCHA again (is that even in keeping with the government's obligation to be accessible? What if I can only submit this thing indirectly?). “Error: Mandatory information is required”. Go back. It had erased the local council information!
Doubtless the department doesn't get many complaints. I did try again, though, starting from the beginning. It redirected to https://login.microsoftonline.com/dhhs.vic.gov.au/oauth2/authorize?response_type=id_token&client_id=79c27c88-48ca-47c5-b6bf-a6ac810a4a05&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Ffeedback.dhhs.vic.gov.au%2Flayout.html&state=54cffb02-be4a-495b-935c-305d946ee8ee&client-request-id=b6311b93-eaa7-4e15-acaf-a3c38f93d00a&x-client-SKU=Js&x-client-Ver=1.0.17&nonce=c9a8b4ba-4f9b-4554-9134-453a5d8fa003. Savour that URL. That's not the first time this week that I have had difficulty with government departments using Microsoft services.
While writing up this article, I discovered that the complaints page has been updated. Now it contains:
Step 1. Discuss your complaint with a staff member from the COVID-19 service provider to see if it can be resolved.
Now isn't that helpful? What is the COVID-19 service provider? How do I reach it?
Ultimately, Yvonne proved successful. After a lot more waiting for an answer from the hotline, she finally got a human being. Yes, the cleaner can come.
WHEN are they going to get their act together?
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Paying for the dogs
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Topic: technology, general, animals, opinion | Link here |
Buying Larissa and Lena proved to involve more than just paying for them. There were three different registrations: transfer pedigree, register microchip numbers, and pay the annual registration. I grumbled about the pain on Tuesday, but it's not over. Elyse sent email telling me that my credit card number was wrong, one digit too little. I explained that I had included the 3 digit code on the back of the card. No, still didn't work. Sorry, I can't help, that's the correct number. Send me a bank account number.
After a while, another email:
I???ve re set my computer and tried again and it seems to have gone through now. Sorry for the muck around.
In other words, the Microsoft “solution”, which in this case had no relationship to her problem whatsoever.
And then pay the dog registrations. Two separate BPAY transactions, each requiring a phone call from the bank to confirm that yes, I really wanted to pay $16.00 to a BPAY number that was too long for it to read out. And for all that effort, there's a good chance that the council will get the money by Monday, instead of immediately in the case of a bank transfer.
| Friday, 10 September 2021 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 10 September 2021 |
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More “Coronavirus” web problems
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Topic: health, technology, opinion | Link here |
One of our neighbours appears to be flagrantly violating the “lockdown” rules, walking unmasked and uninvited into other neighbours' houses. Not our business directly, but I looked up how to report the matter. The URL is to be savoured: https://onlinereporting.police.vic.gov.au/s/covid19?language=en_US.
Why lang=en_US? Where are we? But probably the best would be to call the police on 131 444. Filling out the form will probably require irrelevant information like the date of birth of my paternal grandfather.
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Another physiotherapy session
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Topic: health | Link here |
Into town today for another physiotherapy session for my epicondylitis. All is well, and I probably won't need any further attention.
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More Google Maps strangeness
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
For once I didn't get my phone to guide me to the physiotherapist, but when I got there, I did think to turn on maps. How about “where am I?”? Not quite what I expected:
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Still in Dereel? How can that be? When I asked it to take me to the physiotherapist, it obliged and told me that I was there. Clearly something hasn't been updated. And when I subsequently wanted to go to Big W, it did pretty much the opposite of what it normally does and offered me no less than 3 in an area of 5,000 km²:
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Shopping in Ballarat
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Topic: general, health, opinion | Link here |
One of my tasks was to buy dog food at Big W in Ballarat. Not a place I like. And despite the partial “lockdown”, they allow people there without masks:
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Bloody UPS!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Call from somebody calling herself Jane Guevara from United Parcel Service today. A saddle had arrived for Yvonne, and we should pay the customs duty and GST.
Why to them? Normally I pay to the Customs. OK, send me the invoice. That arrived quickly and showed four items: duty and GST as expected, but also a SECURITY FEE and a CUSTOMS ENTRY FEE (their capitalization). Those two totaled $98.95. Who gets them?
This looks very much like hidden and non-authorized charges. What do I do? Yvonne is, of course, waiting for her saddle, and if we fight it, we could delay arrival significantly. Came to no decision beyond not having anything to do with UPS again.
| Saturday, 11 September 2021 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 11 September 2021 |
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Puppy training
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Into Ballarat this morning to take Larissa and Lena to puppy training classes. The people who did the training for Nemo over 10 years ago are no longer active, and the current COVID-19 pandemic makes things even more difficult, but finally we found a course at Petstock in La Trobe Street. It looks very different from last time. Here Nemo in 2010, and our training area today:
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Apart from being cramped, it was also quite noisy. Yvonne had difficulty both hearing and making herself understood. I had intended to take a lot of photos, but in fact there wasn't much to see, and only 5 puppies. The trainer, Annette, went to some trouble to explain clicker training, not exactly unknown in our household, and got us to do some basic obedience stuff with them, which, of course, they already knew. Still, I was able to get Lena to sit on command, something that she had previously not been able to do. About the only issue was walking them round the shop, which involved the dogs encountering the first steps that they had seen in their lives.
Probably a good start, from a rather basic level, but my main concern was socialization, and there was precious little of that. There are another 5 weeks to go.
While there, checked the prices for dog food. Petstock are not the cheapest game in town, but I was still surprised by the price of Supercoat Puppy. Yesterday I paid $35 for a big bag; here it's $54.99.
Oh, wait. My bags were 12 kg. Here they sell them in 18 kg bags. That's equivalent to $36.66 for 12 kg, only a little more expensive.
But wait, there's more! As a Petstock “member” (whatever that means), we get 15% discount. So only $31.16 per 12 kg. I really hadn't expected that either.
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Æfgænistæn and 20 years of 9/11
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Topic: history, politics, opinion | Link here |
Almost 20 years ago today I woke to hear of the terrorist attacks in the USA that came to be known as 9/11, leading to US involvement in many wars that they couldn't just not win, but which made life worse for the man in the street in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now the US has pulled out of Afghanistan, a country they understood so little that they can't even pronounce its name correctly, and whose US-brokered government collapsed so suddenly that even the Taliban were taken by surprise.
The Taliban are evil, right? They're certainly no friends of mine. But they promise to do better this time round. Lots of people are keeping a critical eye on them, sometimes, it seems, too critical.
For example: the country is in ruins. Hospitals have to close down because of lack of supplies. Government employees have been waiting for months for their salaries. What chaos!
Months? Yes, months. That greatly predates the Taliban takeover. It's gradually becoming clear how completely incompetent the previous government was. And even so, they were living on credit, ridiculous sums of foreign aid. That has now been cut off, making a bad situation even worse. There's little that the Taliban had to do with that, though it's clear that re-enabling aid payments is a tricky affair. The best I can think of is that it be administered by a capable and relatively incorrupt country in the region, like Qatar, which has already got the airport running again after—apparently—the US military put it out of action when they left.
And then the Taliban have promised a government including other ethnic groups and even women. But they have now formed a government almost entirely composed of the people who were in power 20 years ago. How can that be?
It doesn't take much thought to see that the country is in crisis. Not time for an inclusive democratic government to find its feet. The people they have chosen have government experience. And they specifically call it an interim government. So that, too, makes sense.
So all is well? I'll see it when I believe it. But the Western media, including in this case Al Jazeera, run by the government of Qatar, are highlighting these issues as if they were the fault of the Taliban and evidence of their bad faith. And I really can't see that.
And the USA? Clearly they have proven once again that they don't understand the rest of the world. Ten years ago I wrote:
In principle, the terrorists have won. “9/11” was just the start.
I don't know how accurate that is, but it's clear that US society is in turmoil. How much of a role did “9/11” play in that?
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More greetings from Bryan
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
I had mixed feelings when Bryan Ross decided not to come again, but he did things this time that made me feel better about the situation. This is all he left of my Clematis “Edo Murasaki”:
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Now's the dormant season, of course, but in April it looked like this:
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And those stems shouldn't be removed. Now it will have to start all over again.
And of course there are more shaved Narcissus, and also (arguably accidentally) a damaged sweet pea
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So: we still need a gardener, but we would have done so anyway. This way I don't have to tell Bryan not to come again.
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Feeding dogs
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Topic: animals, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne has been feeding our dogs on a mixture of beef cubes, “chicken frames” (what's left over after removing all the meat) and dry dog food pellets. Since Larissa's growth problems, and as recommended both by Pene Kirk and Kelly Bond, we've dropped the rather one-sided beef cubes, and now they're just getting chicken frames and pellets. And that after I had bought 4 kg of expensive calcium carbonate to supplement the beef.
Borzois are fussy eaters, more like cats than dogs. If they have had enough to eat, they'll leave the rest behind. Lara and Lena are no exception, but lately they've been eating everything.
So: how much are they getting? Previously it was 100 g of pellets and 400 g of beef a meal. Now it was 200 g of pellets. Probably the pellets are more nutritious than the same weight of beef, but that sounds too little to me. So we decided to give them more than they can eat and weigh the remains to find out how much they really ate.
Things didn't quite turn out as I expected. Here our records so far:
| Date | Time | Lara | Lena | |||
| 10 September | 18:00 | +200 | +200 | |||
| 11 September | 9:00 | 25 | 21 | |||
| 11 September | 18:00 | +241 | +245 | |||
In the evenings they ate all that was in the bowl (thus the + sign), and in the morning only a tiny amount. Is this an indication that they are ready to be fed only once a day? I'll keep my records here.
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Expensive packaging
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
While in town, bought a couple of beef filet steaks:
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They were wrapped in plastic foil to form them into tubes; the larger one must have been 10 cm high before I compressed it. But the foil! There were ridiculous amounts of it round the larger steak:
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So the “182 g” steak really only weighed 170 g or so. And at $60 a kilogram the foil cost me $0.72. I wonder if the butcher realized that. Next time we'll have them unwrapped before weighing.
| Sunday, 12 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 12 September 2021 |
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Lena vomits
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Noise from the lounge room this morning, Yvonne shouting at the dogs. That's unusual: what happened? Lena was about to vomit on the carpet. Yvonne managed to get her onto one of the dog cushions, which she was then able to wash:
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What is that? This was before breakfast, so it can't be food. Had she eaten something bad? One of the interesting things that we learnt at puppy training yesterday was that, though dogs have an amazing sense of smell, their sense of taste is far inferior to ours; thus the number of incidents of “dietary indiscretion” that we've experienced.
Whatever it was, Lena didn't seem to be any the worse for it.
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Another greeting from Bryan
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
I've discussed my issues with Bryan Ross over the past couple of days, and I thought it was over. But I had wondered why one Arum was still not flowering, though the others started flowering months ago. Now it's trying:
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That should be a flower, but it seems the bud was half-formed when Bryan trimmed it. Sorry, Bryan, you can't argue your way out of this one.
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Power failure insights
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Topic: Stones Road house, opinion, general | Link here |
Beep from the UPS in my office this morning. Power outage? For some reason the inverter doesn't cut in seamlessly, thus the beep. But no, just another 1 second grid power failure.
But after the inverter recovered (it takes 60 seconds to trust the grid again), looking at the inverter display on screen 0, I saw that it was using lots of power from the grid. Why?
mysql> select tstamp, Status, PacBat, PacPV, Pac, W1 from powerstats
where tstamp > "2021-09-12 11:15";
+---------------------+-------------------------------+--------+-------+------+------+
| tstamp | Status | PacBat | PacPV | Pac | W1 |
+---------------------+-------------------------------+--------+-------+------+------+
...
| 2021-09-12 11:15:35 | Waiting to connect to On-grid | -4817 | 7593 | 2776 | 0 |
| 2021-09-12 11:15:36 | Waiting to connect to On-grid | -4798 | 7573 | 2775 | 0 |
| 2021-09-12 11:15:37 | Waiting to connect to On-grid | -1065 | 3839 | 2774 | 0 |
| 2021-09-12 11:15:38 | Waiting to connect to On-grid | -561 | 3325 | 2764 | 0 |
| 2021-09-12 11:15:40 | On-grid | -553 | 779 | 226 | 3316 |
| 2021-09-12 11:15:41 | On-grid | -553 | 590 | 37 | 2927 |
| 2021-09-12 11:15:42 | On-grid | -556 | 588 | 32 | 2947 |
| 2021-09-12 11:15:43 | On-grid | -547 | 599 | 52 | 2905 |
The battery had 99% charge, and it was bright sunshine. The PV array was generating round 7.5 kW (PacPV). The house was using about 2.7 kW (Pac), and the rest was going into the battery (PacBat).
But then the power came back. Almost immediately, the inverter only took round 600 W from the PV array, but round 3 kW from the grid. My best interpretation is that the PV power went to charging the battery, while the grid supplied the house. Why? It went on for about 3 minutes, while the PV array gradually generated more and more power, and the grid used less and less.
And then it started discharging the battery, though still drawing from the grid:
+---------------------+-------------------------------+--------+-------+------+------+
| tstamp | Status | PacBat | PacPV | Pac | W1 |
+---------------------+-------------------------------+--------+-------+------+------+
| 2021-09-12 11:18:40 | On-grid | -529 | 3422 | 2893 | 353 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:42 | On-grid | -533 | 3481 | 2948 | 347 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:43 | On-grid | -534 | 3490 | 2956 | 284 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:44 | On-grid | -534 | 3499 | 2965 | 277 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:45 | On-grid | -25 | 2994 | 2969 | 279 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:46 | On-grid | -99 | 3087 | 2988 | 46 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:47 | On-grid | -114 | 2992 | 2878 | 18 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:48 | On-grid | -48 | 2926 | 2878 | -28 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:49 | On-grid | -25 | 2907 | 2882 | 16 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:51 | On-grid | 33 | 2831 | 2864 | -13 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:52 | On-grid | 4 | 2837 | 2841 | -7 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:53 | On-grid | 192 | 2702 | 2894 | 359 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:54 | On-grid | 555 | 2563 | 3118 | 112 |
| 2021-09-12 11:18:55 | On-grid | 695 | 2454 | 3149 | 104 |
The discharge is clear: the sun had gone in, and something (air conditioner?) started using more power than the PV array is using. But why still the grid? It stopped during this period, modulo the normal fluctuations. But it's still puzzling.
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Web: all our operators are busy
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
While checking yesterday's puppy training article, came across this:
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I've never seen that on a web site before. I was going to say “that shouts Microsoft”, but in fact Netcraft tells me that it's Linux with a Cloudflare server.
It's been a while since I looked at Netcraft. They seem to have given up on site uptimes, but there's still the “Date first seen” field, where I can confirm that lemis.com was first seen in April 1997 (strange in itself, since I was traveling almost the entire month), while Google didn't show up for another 1½ years.
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Dubious product, wasteful packaging
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Topic: food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
On Thursday I bought some “Shrimp Hot Pot Seasoning” at the Fruit Shack, in the hope that it wouldn't be too hot for Yvonne:
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OK, before we actually eat it, check what it tastes like. Surprise! Mainly plastic:
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Why do people do things like that? It doesn't seem to serve any useful purpose.
The good news: it wasn't hot. The not-so-good news: it tasted like nothing I know. It was quite salty, the only indication of how much I should dilute it by.
Instead we made some “Mini Chicken Kiev BALLS” that we had bought yesterday:
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They were interesting because they didn't leak in the deep fryer, though they floated to a surprising degree:
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In passing, it's interesting to note that they also dragged down the temperature of the fat by a surprising degree. I put them in with the fat at 190°, set to 180°, but by the time it was done, we were down to 145°:
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On eating them, things became clear:
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When I see “Kiev” (a transliteration of the Russian name for Kyiv), I think of Chicken Kiev, which contains butter. Was there some in there? It's hard to discern. The food tasted acceptable, but I don't think we'll buy another package.
| Monday, 13 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 13 September 2021 |
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New rice noodles
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Cooked some new rice noodles for breakfast today:
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They're a first in one sense: they have no cooking instructions whatsoever. Given that rice noodles can require from no cooking at all to up to 18 minutes, that's a serious omission. This time, after soaking (to see if they needed any cooking), I cooked them for 4 minutes, which is about as much as they can take.
I later reduced this time to 2 minutes, which seems best.
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Imports: the pain
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Topic: technology, language, general, opinion | Link here |
So why has UPS charged me all the extra money when they had promised on acceptance that there would be no further charges? Reading the fine print on their invoice, I see:
Effective from 1st January 2020, the formal Declaration Fee (formerly known as the formal entry fee) imposed by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection will be AUD $88.00 for shipments over AUD $1,000.
What's the Department of Immigration and Border Protection? Off to the other end to ask Customs about the matter.
Ah, “Customs” is an old, worn-out magic word. Now it's the Australian Border Force, something that sounds more like what an illegal immigrant might do. After much searching, I found a page on importing by post or mail, without any clarification what they think “post” and “mail” mean. Very little of clear help. After a lot of searching, including many Google false positives, found:
Call the Department of Home Affairs on +61 2 6196 0196.
Why the Department of Home Affairs when it's Customs Border Force? Who knows?
There was also a warning not to call on Mondays, so I put it off until tomorrow.
But on my way one of the pages refers me to this PDF, where I read
From 1 January 2016, Import Processing Charges (IPCs) will be restructured and implemented under the Import Processing Charges Amendment Act 2015.
These changes were announced by the Government as part of the 2015-2016 Commonwealth Budget. The restructured IPCs are cost recovery based and are aimed at improving the integrity of the border while removing cross-subsidisation and delivering efficiencies to industry.
And there, if I interpret the table correctly, they talk of a charge of $50. But look at the date! That's over 5 years ago, and UPS speaks (probably correctly) of updated pricing from January 2020. So after all my searching, almost all I could find was an out-of-date document.
Almost? Well, yes, it confirms UPS' claims that the money goes to the government. An 8.8% additional price on items round the $1000, like Yvonne's saddle.
Why am I having so much trouble with web sites lately? Could it be because I'm trying to use them?
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The Seventh Spring
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Topic: gardening, Stones Road house, opinion | Link here |
This is the seventh spring we've spent in Stones Road, and of course things are repeating. But somehow I keep seeing new things. This flowering Eucalypt has of course flowered every year before, but it still strikes me:
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And what's this bush?
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I haven't investigated it before. At first I thought it was an Acacia, but it clearly has leaves:
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| Tuesday, 14 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 14 September 2021 |
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The legacy of 9/11
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Topic: politics, history, opinion | Link here |
I've already commented on the anniversary of “9/11”, but the world, particularly the USA, isn't letting up. Somehow that country isn't what it used to be. In particular, you need to wonder what is motivating the Republican Party. I've never been a fan of the Republicans—they're far too right-wing—but I was able to admire many of their representatives. No more. They seem to have completely forgotten that they're elected to better the lot of the USA. This cartoon shows one of the differences (the elephant marked GOP represents the Republicans):
Apart from that, I've been watching a documentary about the connections between the “9/11” attacks and Hamburg, where I studied briefly in 1967/1968. It seems that a number of the suicide bombers were active there. And there's reference to a detail of which I had heard at 27:09 into the film:
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“In Rethwisch in Schleswig-Holstein there was a company with links to the terror cell. The owner was a Syrian called T.”
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He was accused, along with his wife and two sons, of assisting the terrorists. They tastefully removed all details, suggesting that they weren't able to pin anything on them, but you can find them elsewhere. The company is Tatex, and the owner is Abdul Matin Tatari. Google image search, with its usual accuracy, provides me with these images:
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Clearly the first image is the one used in the documentary film. And the last is from this report, where his involvement is discussed.
And the others? My friend Dave Rozalla and his sister Teen, taken in Kuching in July or August 1969, and Sue Fortescue, taken in Bow, Devon in (probably) September 1972. What do they have to do with Matin? He did meet Dave (in Hamburg on 23 December 1969), but he never met Teen or Sue. I can only guess that they came via my people in diary page.
And Syrian? I'm pretty sure he got German nationality years ago, and he married a German (Karen Weißbach, whom he met while Matin and I were living in the Winterhuder Weg 114, of whom I understood that she was the daughter of a Lübeck senator). Was he really involved in the matter? He was certainly rather hot-headed when it came to Arab affairs (“Let's all go to the Golan Heights and piss at the same time, and wash Israel into the sea”), a sentiment born of the outcome of the Six-Day War. But suicide bombing? I can only imagine that he mixed with the same people, and wasn't involved in any way but socially.
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Breaking MPEGs
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Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
The documentary about the “9/11” connection with Hamburg had a strange issue: random artefacts (something like flashes) in the display. That happens, of course, with damaged video files. But this one remained when I paused the display, and went away when I power cycled the TV. And it caused similar random artefacts in other windows. Backspacing frames also didn't work correctly: I got so far, and then it stopped.
What causes that? The backspacing issues suggest that there's something basically wrong in the MPEG stream. But why the flashing? My guess is that it's a problem with the TV that it can't handle correctly.
Should I report this to Hisense? That way madness lies. I wouldn't get beyond the support people.
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International transport pain, continued
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
The current state of affairs with UPS appears to be that just
about all the charges they are asking for go to the Customs Australian Border Force. Only the “security fee” of
$10.95 has not been explained. Carry on complaining? I don't see much chance of success,
and of course Yvonne wants her saddle. So pay first,
complain after delivery.
How? The invoice says that I should send a copy of the remittance details to UPSCODAOC@ups.com. OK, do that. But I had received email asking me to send it to cronalyn@ups.com. OK, bounce to that address.
And wait. Nothing happened. After a few hours, contact them again. “No email received from your bank”. That despite DSN confirmation that it had arrived. OK, bounce it again to gjane@ups.com. But why don't you just check if the money has arrived? That's more important. But after another exchange that only served to confirm my impression of incompetence at UPS, they found it, and the thing is now on its way. It's currently in Melbourne; based on my experience with UPS, it should be here in another week or so.
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Can DHL do better than UPS?
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Topic: general | Link here |
Apart from my fun with UPS, I'm planning a shipment of Kirschwasser from Germany. Ruth Viebrock will help and send it via DHL. Are they going to cause as much pain? Checked their customer service page, which gives me the encouraging number +61 37 0356818, clearly written by somebody who has no idea of Australian area codes (should be +61 3 70356818). Called that and was connected to Fahad, who told me I had the wrong number: he was only responsible for tracking, and he was located in Europe. I should call 131 406. But that's not what the web page says. It appears to be broken. Yes, agreed Fahad, but he wouldn't take an error report.
OK, call 131 406, get connected to Luke, who told me he was the wrong person to talk to, but passed me on the the booking team, where I was connected with Sonia. No, they don't have any additional charges, though she repeated three times the charges to be expected. And she wouldn't give me a confirmation number, but all calls are recorded. So it's a good thing I have the call time, 4:52 minutes starting at 14:42:14.
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Understanding Kirschwasser
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Time to finally bite the bullet and decide on what kind of Kirsch to order. Or is that Kirschwasser? Both come from the German word „Kirsche“, meaning cherry. What's the difference? I can buy the Weis Kirsch that I know and tolerate for 16.95 € per litre, or another seller offers a bewildering number of Kirsch from Prinz, who offer:
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What is all that stuff? And how much does it cost?
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That's clearly a case of terminally broken markup and documentation. The bottle prices are in bold (29,50 € and 17,60 €). The prices at the beginning of the line are per litre. And there's a spurious 1, not in bold, in front of all the bottle prices.
More importantly, though, what does it mean? It's clear that „Kirschela“ (a fantasy name) is not the real thing: it's only 34% alcohol. The description translates as “The mild schnapps with typical cherry flavour”. The next one is clearly also schnapps, whatever that means. “Fruity schnapps with the distillate of best, fully ripe cherries from the region”. Then there's the “old cherry” with “the incomparable taste of juicy cherries paired with the fine wooden barrel note”. And finally another fantasy name, “cherry hafele spirit”, “a noble spirit with the marvelous aroma of best sweet and sour cherries”.
I still don't understand. It's reasonable to believe that each one is better than the previous one. My guess is that „Schnaps“ suggests alcohol that doesn't come from cherries, so the flavour would be less pronounced. I don't (yet) want barrel ripened Kirsch, and the Hafele (whatever that means) is too expensive.
And Weis? By comparison, a model of clarity. Of their „Schwarzwälder Kirschwasser“ (Black Forest cherry water) they say:
Kirschwasser is fruit spirits that is made exclusively from the fermented fruit of cherries...
So they get my money.
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International payments, next pain
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
I bought my cherry water on German eBay, so I have to pay in Euro. No problem: that's why I have my Wise credit card. Type in the details, press pay now... wait.
After a while, the message “please enter your payment details”. eBay had removed the saved credit card details, and I had to start again. Why? And again it failed.
The simple answer, of course: pay with PayPal. I didn't want to do that because I end up paying exchange rates. In this case it's minimal, in the order of $1, but why do I have the Wise card, and why didn't eBay accept it? It has always worked before. Still more things to investigate.
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Indemnification for the shed
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
So now we have a planning permit, a building permit and the components for the riding arena shed. But Powercor won't let us build.
I've two questions: who is responsible, and whom should we get to indemnify us? Peter O'Connell gave me the name of Graeme Hills, a lawyer, a while back, and as usual I've been dragging my heels. Today I finally called up the practice and was connected with Carmen, who told me that the best person to talk to would be Dean Bloetz, who pronounces his name “bloats”. And he charges $330 per hour, starting immediately, even before we have any indication of success.
We can do better than that. First I should try the free services to give us an idea of what we should do.
HOW I wish we had never got started with this mess!
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COVID-19 in Ballarat
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
The news is not good: cases of COVID-19 have been detected in Ballarat. It looks as if we're heading for another “lockdown”.
And where? The Ballarat Courier currently has details, though I don't trust them to keep the information online: COVID in Ballarat: Lake View Hotel, The Forge and Big W among new exposure sites .
In the article, it states:
The Department of Health and Human Services has currently listed the following exposure sites: ...
BIG WFriday, September 10 from 4.45pm-5.30pm (Tier 1)Tier 1 exposures must get tested immediately and quarantine for 14 days from exposure.
I was at Big W on that day! And I took a photo and complained:
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The only good thing is that I was there a couple of hours earlier than the stated window, as my camera confirms: the time of that photo was 13:37:33, and I was on my way out of the place. And if the tracking app is working (which requires proof), I would have been contacted if I had been in the target group for test and quatorzine. But it's not surprising that Big W is one of the sites: the management is neglecting its duty by allowing unmasked people in the shop.
| Wednesday, 15 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 15 September 2021 |
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Lockdown!
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
It has only been 6 days since the SARS-CoV-2 “lockdown” was eased in the Ballarat area. But now we have at least 3 cases, doubtless due in part to companies like Big W that don't enforce the restrictions.
Is it going to help? Victoria has had “lockdowns” for months on end, and until the end of the last one they proved very effective in reducing the number of infections: 2 weeks from 27 May until 10 June, maximum of 12 infections per day, none at the end. 12 days from 15 July to 27 July, maximum of 26 infections. And now the 6th “lockdown”, started on 5 August. 41 days and counting, 423 infections reported today, tendency increasing.
Clearly something has changed, presumably the Delta variant, and somehow “lockdowns” are an old, worn-out reaction. Will even vaccinations help? We'll see, of course, and that's what the government is—belatedly—aiming for.
Dare I even hope to get clarity from the web sites? The best I can see is this stupid “how we live”, which now claims to be “COVIDSafe Settings for Victoria”, which is the title of another page, but in fact is now titled “How we live: metropolitan Melbourne and City of Ballarat”. No mention of the rest of Victoria. And it doesn't clearly define the area under “lockdown” in Ballarat. For Melbourne, it specifies the exact Local government area, but for Ballarat it just says “City of Ballarat”. Does that include Sebastopol? Delacombe? My guess is that it does: they're suburbs. But for example the term “City of Melbourne” explicitly excludes most suburbs:
The City of Melbourne is a local government area in Victoria, Australia, located in the central city area of Melbourne. In 2018 the city has an area of 37 square kilometres and had a population of 169,961.
After some searching I found the City of Ballarat Wikipedia page, where I read:
The City of Ballarat is a local government area in the west of the state of Victoria, Australia.
So why don't they say “Local Government Area”, or, better, provide a map:
That's a very different definition, and people who have moved here from Melbourne could be forgiven for assuming that the restrictions only apply to the city centre. In any case, it's clear that it doesn't affect us here in Dereel. But probably our puppy training will be cancelled this week.
Even the Ballarat Courier doesn't know:
At this stage, it appears to only include the Ballarat local government area, but this is yet to be confirmed. The Courier is seeking clarity on this.
Does nobody care about clarity?
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Obfuscation lives!
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Topic: language, technology, opinion | Link here |
Spam in the mail today:
21 N + 15-09-2021 To Greg Lehey (1756) Vonex N + Welcome to Vonex ????
What's that about? I had a quick look:
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2021 01:43:08 -0500
From: Vonex <residential@vonex.com.au>
Subject: Welcome to Vonex ????
Message-ID: <20210915064327.27065.1346418792.swift@vonex.activehosted.com>
Changes for MyNetFone Residential Customers
??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???
Since acquiring MyNetFone Residential, our team have been working to
ensure our systems can make your customer experience as seamless as
possible through this transitional period. Hopefully the only thing you
have noticed is all of our email notifications, which we intend to keep
to a minimum!
Ah, the people who bought MyNetFone, a URL that now redirects to the middle of some random page on the Vonex web site. I thought the name MyNetFone to be a little silly, but at least it was clear what it's about. What earthly meaning does “Vonex” have? They're really lucky that I didn't just delete it as spam.
This seems to be happening more and more. I wish I knew why.
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What's this bush?
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
Another flowering bush seen while walking the dogs:
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What is it? My guess is that it has been planted, and I have a feeling that I should know what it is—after all, I've been walking past it for the last 6 years. Yvonne found a seedling and ripped it out by the roots, leaving it to me to plant it again.
| Thursday, 16 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 16 September 2021 |
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New frying pans
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I was pleasantly surprised by the ceramic frying pans that I got six months ago, and when ALDI had a new kind on special this week, I got Yvonne to get me two of them in different sizes.
Today I tried the smaller one, the same size as the one I got 6 months ago. It's certainly different: instead of a smooth cooking surface, it has a honeycomb pattern on it:
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Arguably that helps things stick, but of course it also captures oil or fat in the dips. The real question is: how flat is the surface? Here a drop of oil into the cold pan, then after heating it:
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That's not much difference from the old pan:
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No obvious advantage over the old one. But then there's more, frying Ćevapčići in the evening:
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That has stuck to the surface quite nicely. We'll see how easy it is to clean.
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Piccola: caught after the act
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
While taking the photos of the frying pan, found this on the work area:
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Wouldn't it have been nice if Australian kitchens had doors?
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Chasing markup breakage
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Callum Gibson is obviously bored. He spent some time today analysing this excerpt from this page:
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He came to the conclusion that the spurious digit 1 in front of the prices was the letter l. But I don't see that. The two characters occur in the top line, and it's clearly a digit 1.
Spent some time trying to analyse the markup, not made any easier by the fact that my firefox on display :0.2 doesn't respond to ctrl-u. Got a brief lesson from Callum in using the “web inspector” lurking behind the F12 key. With that, I was able to extract the HTML, which was laid out with horrible random indentation. After aligning it to make it legible, it's:
<td class="col">0,50l - Flasche
<div class="price-box price-final_price" data-role="priceBox" data-product-id="58" data-price-box="product-id-58">
<span class="price-container price-final_price tax weee">
<span id="product-price-58" data-price-amount="17.6" data-price-type="finalPrice"
class="price-wrapper ">
<span class="price">17,60 €
</span>
</span>
</span>
</div>
<div class="baseprice">
<span class="price">35,20 €</span>
/ 1 l
</div>
</td>
So here we have a td element with two divs. The first one is the price per bottle (17,60 €, the text in bold) and the second is the price per litre. But only the 35,20 € is in a span element; the rest is outside (and without the  ), and somehow the browser puts the text where it feels fit.
I'm sure the web programmer has never looked at this text. What's the purpose of the last span? Why is the “/ 1 l” outside of it? Is this invalid HTML? It doesn't seem to be. So why does it render incorrectly?
Callum thought that “Internet Explorer” would render it correctly, but that's an old, worn-out magic word. Tried with Microsoft “Edge”, and yes, it looked OK. Tried it with other browsers, and it all looked OK. Even the older firefox on eureka:0.1 and also Callum's firefox rendered it as (presumably) the web programmer expected.
Or did it? Revisiting the pages while writing this article, many things seem to have changed. The Microsoft-based firefox now shows the error, and the firefox on eureka:0.1 shows a completely different layout.
What a mess this stuff is!
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Household appliances: the power of documentation
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Last week I bought an LED torch at Big W. Not quite what I was looking for: it was operated by 4 AA cells (included). But the price was right: $4.50, including the batteries, marked down from $15.
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Why? I discovered when I tried to put the batteries in it. Unscrew the top, and what I see is:
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How is that supposed to work? It proved that the springs were attached to a removable battery compartment:
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OK, the battery compartment is straightforward enough. But to close the thing, you need to screw the light assembly to the body. The springs make contact to the middle and somewhere on the periphery. What a construction!
It works for me, but is that just good luck? My guess, though, is that it's less this Heath Robinson construction than the lack of any documentation that has resulted in the thing not selling.
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More plant investigation
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
What is the plant that I saw on Monday? I still don't know, but I've taken a cutting for more controlled photos:
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| Friday, 17 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 17 September 2021 |
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Vaccine efficiency?
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Every day the Victorian government publishes a summary graphic about the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic, like this one:
Now wouldn't it be interesting to see how many of the new cases had been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2? They must know the numbers, and presumably the cases would be weighted strongly towards the unvaccinated. But since they can't even produce a clear web site explaining the current situation, what hope is there?
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Sorting tables
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I have a relatively easy-to-use PHP function that builds tables for me. But wouldn't it be nice to be able to sort them by column, like this one?
That's clearly a task for a JavaScript function, and obviously they exist. But how can I get just that without having to work my way into the innards of an enormous library? Asked on IRC and got one promising-looking response from Jamie Fraser: Sorttable. Is it a good or a bad sign that it hasn't been updated since 2007?
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More wildflowers
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Peter Jeremy has come up with the suggestion that yesterday's bush belonged to Proteaceae, probably Hakeinae. Does that help me pin it down? Wikipedia currently doesn't even know about Hakeinae, but the subtribe includes Grevillea and Hakea, both well-known genera.
Another flower that blooms frequently at this time of year is this one:
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Again, I don't know what they are, but they're everywhere at the moment, maybe more so than in other years.
| Saturday, 18 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 18 September 2021 |
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No endpoints?
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Yvonne had photos to process today, requiring access to distress, our Microsoft “Windows” 10 box. But not for the first time she got a display
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It's not the first time, but it has only happened to her. What does it mean? I found details in this Microsoft-related page, but it's far too much pain to read, and on a retry things have so far worked normally.
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Kartoffelknödel
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Rinderrouladen (apparently “beef olives” in English) for dinner this evening. For that, you typically need Kartoffelknödel (potato dumplings), also called „Kartoffelklöße” in German.
But our supply of Knödeln/Klößen has dried up. What to do? Make them ourselves? “That's far too complicated” says Yvonne. OK, look for a recipe. There are hundreds of them. For some reason I ended up with this one. The web site offers clever things like selecting the number of portions (default 5). Click on the - button a couple of times and you end up with:
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No idea where the 0.01 portion came from. Not from me. But that implies 400 g potatoes, 40.2 g (wheat) flour, 40.2 g cornflour, 0.8 eggs, an unspecified quantity of salt. Clearly this is a recipe for 2.5 people. So I did pretty much what they asked for, adding 10 g of salt (why do people never specify the quantity of salt?). And the mixture was too soft, probably because the unspecified egg that the cook used weighed less than our 800 ÷ 12 g eggs.
But it was pretty straightforward, and though the lumpthings were somewhat deformed, presumably because they were too soft to start with, they tasted fine.
But there's an obvious lesson to be learnt here: up to the time that I formed the dumplings, what I made was mashed potato. You can buy that in dry form and make an appropriate quantity. Next time.
| Sunday, 19 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 19 September 2021 |
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More ceramic frying pans
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Bacon and eggs for breakfast today, requiring frying bacon, Rookwurst, tomatoes and mushrooms. Tried the larger of the two new ceramic frying pans.
It wasn't a success. I had guessed that the honeycomb structure would keep oil over the surface, but it didn't work. All the oil ran to the edges, and somehow the honeycomb structure remained effectively dry:
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One of the results was confirmation of my hypothesis that the mushrooms fry better in a little oil. I fry them upside down first until liquid comes out of the heads:
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But that's in the oil (at the bottom of image). The one that wasn't showed almost no liquid:
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So basically we have the disadvantage of the domed surface, and another disadvantage of a honeycomb that makes it marginally less slippery. Nothing that we can't do better with our existing pans. So these two go back.
Why do they all have such domed surfaces? Is it a construction constraint?
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More non-intuitive names
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
Received in the mail today:
We have changed our company name from SurveyMonkey and relaunched as Momentive.
I know SurveyMonkey from various surveys. Yes, “monkey” sounds a little silly, but it's clear even to people who don't know them that they must have something to do with surveying (in itself nothing to do with traditional surveying, but a modern word meaning “poll”). And “Momentive”? That vaguely suggests “buzzword”, but otherwise seems meaningless.
These name changes seem to be becoming more frequent. “Wise” instead of “Transferwise”. “MyNetFone” to “Vonex”. What do people promise themselves from these meaningless name changes?
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Hugin strangenesses
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday was my house photo day, when I take a weekly set of panoramas of the garden. One that has proven difficult is this one outside the laundry door:
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That's extreme, of course. It's a cylindrical view put together from 4 fisheye images, and I'm really looking for a way to display things interactively. But normally it stitches without any problems.
Today, though, for some reason, the control point detectors didn't find any control points between these two images:
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Why not? Last week the control point detector found 10 matches between exactly the same 2 views. And the images are sharp and correctly aligned. After I added some control points, the optimizer found them all to be within 2 pixels of perfect. It makes no sense at all.
For further reference, the full-size images are here and here.
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Flowering fern
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Seen while walking the dogs:
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The first impression is that the fern is flowering, but in fact it's a creeper that I have seen elsewhere, and which I haven't been able to identify.
| Monday, 20 September 2021 | Dereel | |
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Novice phishers
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Received in the mail today:
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2021 09:34:45 +0000
From: PayPal <support@wordpress-662118-2165168.cloudwaysapps.com>
To: groggyhimself@lemis.com
Subject: wir haben eine ungewöhnliche Aktivität auf Ihrem Konto festgestellt
body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
table,
td,
tr {
vertical-align: top;
...
The Subject: line translates as “We have detected unusual activity on your account”. But clearly our script kiddy needs to work on his code, not to mention covering his tracks.
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Who's to blame for the shed fiasco?
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
I've been dragging my heels on what to do about the arena cover. The first question is, of course, who's to blame? David Rowe for making the application in the first place (this sounds like a good choice), the Golden Plains Shire Council, for approving it, or Powercor for not having its easement entered into the title deeds? But it has to be done, so off to see who can help me for free.
The usual maze of twisty little menus, starting with Consumer Affairs Victoria, where Anna tole me I should be talking to the Victorian Building Authority. Called them up, followed the menu, and was connected with the COVID-19 exception person. She told me to go back and select 3 from the second menu. Did that, and was put on hold for 25 minutes.
That's too long, right? Yes, the phone system thought so too, and so it disconnected me without even a “goodbye”.
Try again tomorrow, earlier?
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Annual credit card fee: $360
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Credit card bill today, a little higher than usual. Much of that was to the Bannockburn Veterinary Clinic for Larissa's problems, but then there were three additional charges: $240 for an annual fee, $10 for an additional card, and $110 for the “reward programme” that we don't use.
That's ridiculous! Time to look for an alternative. The problem is that we have direct debit arrangements that refer to the card, and I need to change them all. I should get started right away.
| Tuesday, 21 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 21 September 2021 |
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Still more masa proportions
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I have nearly a full bag of blue Masa harina from “El Maizal”. I bought it out of desperation because I couldn't find any yellow masa, and I don't particularly like it. But it's time to finish it off.
I've cooked it before, but don't seem to have noted the proportions. The only reference to blue masa is for Minsa, nearly 10 years ago. And on that occasion I discovered that it needed much less water, only 1:1.3 or so.
And though the yellow El Maizal (sometimes) wants very little water, the blue didn't. In the end I went with a ratio of 1:1.6, and it worked. But I still don't like the blue masa.
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A new gardener?
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
Nick Macdonald along today to take a look at our garden and decide whether he wanted to have anything to do with it. It's clear that he is a lot more knowledgeable than the last people. He confirmed that the pruning job that Bryan did was not up to scratch, not even the relatively unscathed Alyogyne. The big problem is price: he's round 50% more expensive. He expects to be able to do about 2 sweeps through the garden per year, which doesn't match well with lawn mowing. But potentially he has somebody else to do that for us.
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Credit card alternatives
|
Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
So what do I do about replacing this ridiculously expensive ANZ credit card? An obvious choice would be “Wise”, despite the stupid name. The one I have is not a credit card—in fact, it's not even a debit card: I have to manually ensure that I have enough balance before using it.
But maybe they have something else closer to a credit card. Before thinking about it, though, why did my attempt last week to pay for an eBay transaction in Germany fail?
Looked at my balance, once I found my way round their horrible web site. Yes, two transactions, “declined”. Why? How do I contact them? “Chat with us”. OK, if you must. Select “chat” and watch a new window pop up and hang.
Web programmers with Microsoft mentality? OK, fire up a browser on distress, my Microsoft “Windows” 10 box. No offer of a chat, just a phone number: +61 2 7202 6518. Call that, get connected to mumble. Sorry, what was the name? mumble. Spell, please? “w-u-” click. Did she hang up because I asked for details?
Tried again and was connected with André, who spent some time investigating and discovered that eBay had rejected the transaction because of a billing address mismatch. So why didn't they tell me? Should I call eBay or just not bother?
The real question, though, was: can I get a real credit card from Wise? Sorry, no.
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Arena cover: a solution?
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
I've been wondering what to do about the shed for the arena for nearly a month now, and I'm still not sure how to handle the situation. But today I had an obvious solution: put it in the “north paddock”, where we normally keep the horses when the weather is bad:
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It would fit almost exactly between the cypress trees at the back, the fence at the right and the blackwood tree on the left (though possibly this would have to go). The advantage: it would be almost invisible.
But how far from the boundary can we build? Off to check the building regulations, not an easy thing. But according to this document, it seems that the distance is called a “setback”, something that we've had enough of already. And in our case it would be only 1 m, which is completely acceptable except that it would completely waste the 18 m² between the shed and the boundary. But we can live with that, and so can Graeme Swift (the neighbour), whom Yvonne consulted. After all, he would never see it.
So: things are looking better. Theoretically we could just get the permits altered and erect the shed, but in practice we'll need to move a fence and put something more solid on top of the soil. Still, things are looking better. In fact, if we had had that idea in the first place, it might even have come out cheaper: the requirement for Colorbond may not have arisen, and potentially we could have omitted the long wall. That would have more than offset from my expectation of the costs of the earthworks.
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A new saddle for Yvonne
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Topic: general, animals, opinion | Link here |
I had been idly wondering when Yvonne's new saddle would arrive. I had speculated last week:
based on my experience with UPS, it should be here in another week or so.
And sure enough, today a courier arrived with the saddle, catching UPS' tracking system by surprise: it had not noticed that it had moved in the last week. My experience with UPS is clearly still accurate.
And Yvonne is happy:
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More amateur phishers
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Another novice phisher sent me mail today:
From: Microsoft Store <microsoftstore@microsoftstoreemail.com>
To: groggyhimself@lemis.com
Subject: Trade in and get up to $800 cash back
<!--
en_au
@templateVersion = "Templates_v01"
-->
<span style="display: none"></span>
<html lang = "en">
<head>
<title>Trade in and get up to $800 cash back</title>
<style media="all" type="text/css">
div.preheader {
display: none !important;
}
table td {
border-collapse: collapse;
}
body {
background-color: #f2f2f2 !important;
-webkit-text-size-adjust: none;
}
That's very similar to the broken message another novice phisher sent me yesterday. Only this one managed to put a plausible email address in the From: header. Where did it really come from?
From bounce-866153_HTML-1727791097-7674968-10359607-4112@bounce.microsoftstoreemail.com Tue Sep 21 16:33:51 2021
Return-Path: <bounce-866153_HTML-1727791097-7674968-10359607-4112@bounce.microsoftstoreemail.com>
Received: from mta22.microsoftstoreemail.com (mta22.microsoftstoreemail.com [64.132.89.196])
by lax.lemis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA70028087
for <groggyhimself@lemis.com>; Tue, 21 Sep 2021 06:33:48 +0000 (UTC)
Received: by mta22.microsoftstoreemail.com id h95uco2fmd45 for <groggyhimself@lemis.com>; Tue, 21 Sep 2021 06:33:47 +0000 (envelope-from
<bounce-866153_HTML-1727791097-7674968-10359607-4112@bounce.microsoftstoreemail.com>)
Oh. It's not a phishing email. It really comes from Microsoft.
No wonder phishers have it so easy.
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More lumpthings
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
The Kartoffelknödel that I made on Saturday weren't bad, though the dough was a little moist, one of the disadvantages of having to use integer quantities of eggs. It also meant that most of the dough was left over.
OK, do the rest today. Oh. It was moist before, but over the intervening time it got even more liquid, and I was only able to process them at all by rolling them in liberal quantities of flour. The result was some even more irregular looking lump things:
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The good news: they still tasted alright, though it's clearly not an experiment to repeat. Next time we start with dried mashed potato.
| Wednesday, 22 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 22 September 2021 |
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A new credit card?
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been thinking about a new credit card for a while now. Why not ask what other people have? Peter Jeremy has a Bankwest “Platinum” card offering zero fees and 55 days to pay—effectively the same conditions as my ANZ card except for the $360 fees. OK, if they're free, I'll take 2.
Yet Another Silly Web form. Fill out what we want, not what is on your documents, nor what make sense. OK, I'm a pensioner. Accepted. And then:
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People, I've just told you that I'm not employed! Adjust to $0.01 and it accepted it. And why this requirement for cents? Is that going to make the difference between acceptance and denial?
And then I had to supply two forms of identification: driver license, Medicare card or passport. OK, can do. Enter the date of expiry of the driver license as stated on the license. Fool! We don't care about niceties of driver license, you need to do it our way!
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And at the end, after (once again) having difficulty authenticating my credentials,
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Somehow the whole computer industry is broken. This isn't a Bankwest problem: they all do it. Why?
In passing, it's interesting to note that “Platinum” is an old, worn-out magic word, like “Silver” and “Gold” before it. The Bankwest “Platinum” card is only second-best: the best is “World”, another modern obfuscation.
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Google Maps translation of the day
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
Ran across this diary entry of 5 years ago today, not completely coincidentally ranting about poor official web sites. As an example, I wrote
it would be interesting to see what would happen if i entered, say, جالان بودو لاما.
What does that mean? i can barely stumble my way through Arabic script, but what's google translate for? asked it to identify the language, and it came up with Jalan Podo Lama, a Sindhi expression.
I don't know Sindhi at all, but that rings a bell. The vowel in the middle word is a و (Wau), normally transliterated as u. So “Jalan Pudu Lama” is more appropriate, and that is the name of a street in Kuala Lumpur. So what does a translation from Malay say? “Go to the temple”.
Huh? Where did they get that from? It should translate as “Old Pudu Road”. Never mind, next time I looked it had changed its mind. Now it says “Don't go there” after all.
One issue, of course, is the letter ب. That's a b. But at some point Google Translate turned it into a پ (3 dots under the line instead of 1). And that brought something back to me: decades ago (about January 1962) I showed my stamp collection to Fadel Abdul Kadir, a Kuwaiti. The Malayan stamps had the state name, both in Rumi (Roman script) and Jawi (Malay adaptation of Arabic script, of which جالان بودو لاما should be an example). Instead of Perak, he read “Ferak”: there is no P in Arabic. The Jawi spelling is ڤيراق. The characters are ف (fa) and ڤ (pa), so he had just omitted the other two dots.
And that has nothing to do with پ. “Pudu” should presumably be written ڤـودو. Where did I get بودو from?
OK, try again: جالان ڤودو لاما becomes Jalan Voodoo Lama, and it's Arabic. Force Malay and we get “Don't go there”. No change.
But then who, relies on Google Translate? More interesting is where I got that snippet from, and why: Jalan Pudu Lama is a tiny road behind one of my mother's offices. I'm not sure I have ever been there, and how did I get the Jawi transliteration?
| Thursday, 23 September 2021 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 23 September 2021 |
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KL Hokkien mee again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Last time I cooked KL Hokkien mee, I noted that something seems to have been missing. After re-reading some of my links, I noticed that many others, notably this one, which asks for “anchovies powder”.
What's that? “Anchovy” seems to be a new translation for ikan bilis. But in fact the recipe is quite detailed and asks for
Substitute for anchovies powder
Actually, dried sole or flounder powder is used in the preparation of Hokkien noodles and not anchovies powder. Due to the rising cost, hawkers decide to skip the ingredient even though only a tiny bit is added as a natural flavour enhancer.
The trouble is, I don't know what any of these mean. What I know as sole or flounder doesn't occur in Malaysia. What's the Malay name?
In any case, I had some old heads and broken bits of deep-fried ikan bilis, so I ground some of them (10 g) in a mortar:
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Also added some “baby” choi sam from Woolworths. If that's a baby, I wouldn't like to see a grown one:
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To be on the safe side, I also added more garlic. The result? Better, but now too salty, presumably because of the ikan bilis. Next time I'll reduce the light soya sauce, though I'm also planning to look for some KL dark caramel soya sauce, and if I find some that, too, might alter the salt balance.
Apart from that, also too much sauce. I had used more than the original recipe asked for, so this, too, is a matter of adjustment.
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Bankwest Credit Card: next step
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Call from a very excited sounding Steve from Bankwest, interesting because he didn't hide his phone number , asking if I had forgotten to add attachments to the email I sent them. Checked, and found that I had written:
Please let me know what supporting information you would like to see for my situation, which is really not uncommon.
But I had made a big mistake by putting that at the bottom of the email message, further than anybody ever reads. Discussed the matter with him, and he understood relatively quickly and sent me an email message with a spam-like subject line and 4 paragraphs of boilerplate and no useful content beyond a PDF attachment with a list of require documents which looks easy enough to fulfil. I need some documents from the superannuation fund, but the rest is easy enough.
What a difference from these horrible web forms!
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Goodbye embossed cards
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Somehow this is a week for credit and debit cards. Today my new Bank of Melbourne Visa debit card arrived. No number on the front! It's all on the back in groups of 4 digits. A big difference from the card it replaces:
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When did they last have those machines that actually took an imprint of the card? Are they even valid any more? I haven't seen one for years.
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Garden flowers at spring equinox
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Today (in the early hours) was the spring equinox, time for the monthly garden flower photos.
Somehow things are still not up to expectations in the north-east part of the garden. It really looks as if the Schinus molle is dying. Here in January and now:
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And the Corymbia ficifolia is once again looking worse than it did a couple of months ago.
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About the only glimmer of hope is that there are new shoots this year.
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I had asked Bryan Ross about this a while back, thinking of protecting it against the elements, but he thought it wouldn't need it this year. Another indication of lack of expertise.
One thing that is definitely doing well are the bulbs and tubers, in this case the Irises, which seem to be increasing considerably every year. Here this time last year (first image, where I also commented on the number) and now:
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Indoors, the Abutilon that we grew from cuttings taken in January is already flowering profusely:
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Now just to find a place to plant it.
I've moved the curry tree outside, mainly because it's a losing battle fighting the mites that appear on it over the winter.
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That's probably another candidate for staying outside with protection in the winter.
And the Spathiphyllum in the bathtub is flowering more than ever before:
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That's a total of 6 new flowers, along with the old one from last year which I'll remove once the others are all visible. Currently the newest flower is only just showing itself.
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Doctor's appointments in times of COVID
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne was due for an appointment today with Rod Reddy, the cardiologist. But it ended up being commuted to a phone call. All OK: the only issues were not with the results of last week's checkup, but with her gradually increasing blood pressure. I thought that that could be an indication of excessive medication, but it seems that it's more an indication that the heart is (finally!) working normally. But that requires additional medication, and there's also an alternative to some other medication that has fewer side effects.
And that's the issue with phone calls. Visit a doctor and he can print out the script and give it to you. Here he offered to send it to a pharmacy. Problem: tomorrow is one of those sport-related public holidays so popular in Victoria, so they wouldn't get it before Monday at the earliest.
It wasn't until the call was over (all of 11 minutes!) that it occurred to me that I could pick up the script at their clinic. So off to Ballarat, somewhat hampered by the fact that they have moved from the hospital to a small brick building on the corner of Mair St and Drummond St. Still, Google Maps to my aid:
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OK, went there. But first I needed to park. Meter zone! Grr! But in this case, I genuinely couldn't understand the parking meter:
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I had the wrong glasses on, which didn't help, but the contrast was so poor that I couldn't read it. I had to take a photo and come back and enhance it to read what it said:
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Is that really sufficient? Even after enhancement, the text is barely readable. How do they expect anybody, even with perfect eyesight, to read that? At the very least they could do something about the reflections.
OK, off to the brick building. Not cardiology: a restaurant, and currently closed. Damn! Inaccurate instructions. OK, Google, what's the number of Ballarat Cardiology? +61-3-5329 2111. Call that.
“If you are experiencing chest pain, please hang up now and call 000. Otherwise call us during our business hours, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.”
That was at 16:20. Damn! I had driven all the way into Ballarat and arrived too late, because nobody told me that they shut at 16:00!
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Cooperating protesters
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Topic: politics, general, opinion | Link here |
There have been a number of yourchoice(riots, disturbances, demonstrations) in Melbourne over the last few days. Today they chose the Shrine of Remembrance, the holiness of Melbourne. The authorities are in agreement: that's disgraceful behaviour. The agreement on the word suggests that they couldn't think of any other description. Still, the word has a ring to it, and it suggests that I should call my next Microsoft box disgrace.
And the protesters? Didn't cooperate with police, they say. But that's a one-sided view: several of them produced clear identification for all to see:
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It's not exactly a QR code, but those tattoos should be absolute identification of the people in question. Bravo!
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Urination as a form of protest
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Topic: animals, general, opinion | Link here |
One of the actions at the Shrine of Remembrance that particularly infuriated the authorities was that various protesters urinated in not very clearly described manners. Certainly not good behaviour.
But it seems that humans aren't the only ones to protest like that. Today I let Larissa and Lena into the house from their kennel area round the back. They wanted to go out the front, but I didn't let them. And a couple of minutes later I saw:
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I suspect Lena, but why did she do it? The last time we saw that much urine was with Pedro three months ago, and we have since decided that that was a protest.
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Spring equinox and full moon
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Topic: photography, gardening, opinion | Link here |
Not only was it the spring equinox today, but also full moon. And not a cloud in the sky! Just the chance I wanted for a moonlight panorama.
Taking the photos one view (house from the north garden) took about 30 minutes: the longest exposures were 60 seconds each, and it took me a while to get something like correct parameters. One of the failures was this view, interesting mainly because of the stars in the sky:
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It'll probably take me a while to produce a workable panorama from the others.
| Friday, 24 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 24 September 2021 |
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Shed: next step
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
Just as we were preparing breakfast, I looked out the door and saw a motorcyclist messing around the control box for the gate opener. How dare he! What was he looking for? Called out to him, but he didn't react (maybe because of the helmet).
Dammit, out to see what he wanted, so quickly that I still had my reading glasses on. “What do you want?” “It's me!” “I don't recognize you, but I have the wrong glasses on”. “It's me, Warrick”.
Aaah. Warrick Pitcher, the earthworker, who usually comes with vehicles 30 m long. Clearly he has downsized. And I had told him a long time ago that I intended to put a press button to open the gate near the control box. Fool Warrick for thinking that I would really do it!
And we had wanted to talk to him about the location of the new riding arena. That all seems OK: he needs to put in about 20 cm of gravel under the existing soil, and cover it with kaolin sand. But not until the ground dries out, and that could take a month or two.
Back to look at his bike, which he has had for about a month. A far cry from what I rode when I was a kid (typically a 150 cc single cylinder 2-stroke). His bike has a 1500 cc 6 cylinder engine, radio with automatic volume adjustment, and a reverse gear. And for all that it's 30 years old:
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Getting Yvonne's prescription
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
As a result of yesterday's disaster, we still don't have Yvonne's prescription. Today was a public holiday of the kind we can only have have in Victoria: the “Friday before the AFL Grand Final” football match hoiday, so there wasn't much hope of getting the prescription. But Yvonne rang up Ballarat Cardiology and was able to leave a message on voice mail. Later Maddy called back and told me that they were working as usual today, and that they don't close until 17:00; they just turn off the phones at 16:00.
OK, and where are they? On the opposite corner of Mair St and Doveton St (second image):
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Well, maybe there's a brick house behind the wall, but you'd have to know. And there's a car entrance a little further down Doveton St (the one on the right). But even easier, she can fax the script to UFS in Sebastopol, who could then make up the prescription so that Yvonne just needed to pick it up. Now why didn't they say that yesterday?
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Life by sixths
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Topic: history, opinion | Link here |
Three months ago I noted that my life had been neatly split into three equally long periods: 24¼ years of childhood and education in Australia, Malaysia, England and Germany, then 24¼ years of work in Germany, then 24¼ years of work and retirement in Australia.
Those first 24¼ years are further subdivided, of course. Today my calendar email told me:
Sep 24 Greg starts school in England, 1961
60 years ago, and not quite 13 years into my first 24¼ years. The first time I was away from home. Yvonne asked me how unhappy I was, but strangely it wasn't all that bad. I was much happier to leave England than I was unhappy to arrive there.
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Comparing IBIS
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
All my more modern Olympus cameras have in-body image stabilization (IBIS). That was one of the reasons I bought my original Olympus E-510 14 years ago.
Today I wanted to take a photo of a replacement battery for my Pentax Spotmatic. Nothing special, use the E-PM2. 1/10 s with the 30 mm macro.
Not a success:
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OK, try with the E-M1 Mark II. Slightly different lighting, 1/15 s, but a difference like night and day between the two images:
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Is that just the camera, or was it a coincidence?
| Saturday, 25 September 2021 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 25 September 2021 |
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Dog training again
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Into town today for the second dog training session at Petstock (last week was cancelled due to the COVID-19 “lockdown”). At least we got some photos this time:
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The brown Labrador in the second-to-last image looks really ferocious, but in fact he's very friendly.
Another useful facility at Petstock is their dog scales. With some difficulty manoeuvred the dogs into the corner where it had been placed and weighed them: Lena 26.1 kg, Larissa 24.0 kg. Compared to a month ago, that's an increase of 3.1 kg (13.3%) for Lena and 4.2 kg (21.5%) for Lara. The difference in the increase is interesting; could that help with her hypertrophic osteodystrophy, or be an indication that the issues are gone? Certainly she doesn't have any symptoms any more.
In that connection, it's interesting to note that their appetite today was much more than on previous days: they ate nearly double what they ate yesterday. I'm still trying to see some kind of pattern in their appetite, but today really stood out. I have bought marginally different food for them (Purina Supercoat Large Breed Puppy with real Chicken instead of Puppy with real Chicken (yes, that's what they say, though it seems that there's only chicken in there). I asked, but they weren't able to give me alternatives with fake Chicken.
Was it the new feed that made them eat so much? No, I don't think so. They showed their hunger long before they saw the food. I also noted that the pellets are considerably larger than the old normal puppy food. But that seems to be a general change, if I understand the web site correctly:
Research showed that you wanted our kibble to be larger… We listened!
The SUPERCOAT® core range now offers the same great taste in a slightly larger kibble size.
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Shopping at Woolworths
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Topic: health, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
While in town finally picked up Yvonne's prescription at UFS in Sebastopol, which went surprisingly smoothly. Finally!
While Yvonne was picking up her prescription, in to Woolworths (next door) to buy some dried beans.
Straightforward enough, eh? Yvonne had already instructed me: go past “Asian Food” and “Indian Food” to “European Food”, and there they are. But I didn't find them; I didn't even find “European Food”. So after Yvonne had picked up her prescription, she showed me:
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Clearly that's the (unmarked) “European food”: after all, there's Thomy mustard, Pumpernickel and Kühne Sauerkraut, all at shin height:
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Not anything that I would associate with beans, and I didn't see any there.
But yes, they were there:
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They were also at shin height and only further back. The packets showing are polenta that had spilled over into the beans section. I had removed 3 of them, but even before that they weren't visible. You really have to know that they're there. Or maybe understand how culinary choices have changed in the last 50 years.
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Prosciutto-wrapped chicken
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Prosciutto-wrapped chicken with lemons, spring onions and potatoes (what a mouthful!) for dinner tonight, for the first time in nearly 5 years:
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It wasn't bad, but there were a surprising number of details to tune. Probably cooked too hot (note the charring on the edges), not enough potato, not enough salt on the chicken, lemon pieces too big. And the original recipe wanted the whole thing to be cooked on baking paper, which makes no sense. But that's why we write down the recipes, and I've updated it.
| Sunday, 26 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 26 September 2021 |
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Lens colour differences?
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Spent much of the weekend processing photos. A couple were interesting. This photo is interesting, but the background is suboptimal:
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That photo was taken with the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-200 mm f/3.5-6.3 at 112 mm and its maximum aperture of (only) f/6.3. OK, I need a wider aperture to blur the background. How about the Nikkor 85 mm f/1.4?
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Certainly the background is nice and unsharp, but so are half the flowers. I really need to do some form of focus stacking to get only the flowers in focus. On the tuit queue.
But there's something else about the photos. Here the two lenses next to each other:
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Why are the colours so different? Is it the lens, or is it colour balance guesswork in the camera or processing software (DxO PhotoLab)? This relatively trivial photo looks like causing considerable work.
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Self-crystallising sugar
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne decided to cheat for this evening's dessert: she bought some pre-prepared “self-crystallising sugar”, whatever that may mean:
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That appears to be the only name they have. The rest is the brand (“Wicked Sister”, a choice that I don't understand). It proved to be a relatively tasteless flan:
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But why “self-crystallising”? I can only assume that the advertising droids don't understand the term “crystallize”.
| Monday, 27 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 27 September 2021 |
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Yvonne: another fall
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne came into my office today panting and obviously in distress. Heart problems? No, she had slipped on moist earth round the south side of the house, and fallen onto a gas cylinder:
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Why does this always happen to Yvonne? It's the third time now. A year ago a horse knocked her over, then three months ago she slipped on something while shopping, and then this. Yes, there are (different) explanations for all three, but why do so many happen? Normally if you slip or stumble you catch yourself and recover from the situation. Is there something more serious at hand here, like the discovery of her osteoporosis after her horse accident 4 years ago? She has an appointment with Heather Dalman on Wednesday. Clearly something to discuss.
On the topic of Heather: I saw her the first time 11 years ago after slipping while taking my weekly house photos. And they never forget! I was with Heather again almost exactly 11 years to the day later for treatment for epicondilitis. But the invoice still mentioned my leg pain.
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UPS: We have delivered!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Email from UPS today:
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2021 02:47:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: UPS <pkginfo@ups.com>
To: groggyhimself@lemis.com
Subject: UPS Delivery Notification, Tracking Number 1ZYA57966791000081
Your parcel has been delivered.
Delivery Date: Tuesday, 21/09/2021
Delivery Time: 12:37 PM
Amazing! That was a week ago, and they've noticed already!
No company can be really that incompetent, though UPS do a convincing job. My guess is that the delivery company was subcontracted to deliver the item, and they log manually and maybe once a week. But even then they could write a mobile phone app to do the job a little more efficiently and convincingly.
OK, check the tracking information. Delivered to YVONNE Z. What kind of proof is that? We don't know any YVONNE Z, though the spelling suggests misinterpreting a manual log, and they only have a claim. Since they didn't want a signature, the only real proof is in this diary. And the detailed tracking (which they call Shipment Progr...) shows that it left Melbourne on 14 September, disappeared into limbo for a week, and was then delivered. A far cry from the step-by-step tracking from Germany via the USA, 20 entries in 3 days.
| Tuesday, 28 September 2021 | Dereel | Images for 28 September 2021 |
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International mail: next surprise
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Email from Ruth Viebrock today. After all the trouble I have gone to to get a reasonable shipment price for my Kirschwasser, DHL have decided that they can't offer their shipment rates after all: all mail to Australia must go by airmail, increasing the charges from 15.89 € to 70 €.
Why? And is that even correct? More research to do. But why is this all so complicated?
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Baked beans again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Today was my birthday, so I got the choice of what to eat: baked beans.
The recipe calls for whole pieces of meat and sausage, but that's not what I had. A total of 860 g, but only 120 g of duck and 100 g of schinkenspeck were a single piece; apart from that I had 500 g of lamb cubes and 140 g of rookwurst slices.
Is that serious? I didn't think so, and after eating it I still don't think so. My best bet about why the recipes want the meat to be cooked whole is that it was once simpler than with smaller pieces of meat.
So: I have these pieces of meat mixed with the beans. Do I really need to take them out and layer them? Again, I don't think so. And that makes the dish so much simpler.
The only issue I still had was with the garlic, 25 g of it. The recipe states “Crush the garlic into the broth and mix”. But that still means that it's difficult to mix it into the beans, and the result showed that. So I think that it would be better to mix it, too, into the beans about half way through cooking, maybe along with the salt.
And finally there's the question of the breadcrumbs on the top. I used the fat from the speck and the duck, but once again I didn't get a uniform spread:
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It seems better to mix the crumbs with the fat first, and then spread it on top of the cassoulet. But for that I need to know how many bread crumbs, and that's one thing I haven't weighed.
Then there's the question of the broth. It boils, and it spoils the crust on top:
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I still don't know what to do about that. Less broth isn't an option: this was pretty much the minimum. Maybe I should lower the cooking temperature so that it doesn't boil as much.
How many portions? That depends on who you are. I put couennes (strips of pork skin) on my side, but Yvonne doesn't like them, so she got the other side:
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That's one portion for me and one for Yvonne. Hers isn't as deep as mine either. My guess is that we have about another 5 double “portions”.
| Wednesday, 29 September 2021 | Dereel | |
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More courier insights
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Why does DHL want me to send my parcel by airmail? Why, does DHL want me to send my parcel by airmail? Off to investigate, and came up with this page, which explains that the cheaper services to Australia are a combination of air and sea freight and can take over 40 days. More to the point, though, the service can only be booked on line. Somehow the whole thing is confusing, especially since they don't say where the “online” packets should be delivered. For that I need to find a different page, which tells me that I can deliver the packages to a number of places, including a post office. Somehow it all doesn't make sense. I'm left with a feeling that there's DHL and DHL Deutsche Post.
As it happened, I had another interaction with a package service today: I had bought some 250 GB SSDs from Megabuy last week, and they had bombarded me with package progress, up to the point when they were shipped with an unspecified company 2¾ hours later.
But that was a week ago (Wednesday). And then nothing until today, where I got another message asking whether I had received my package. No, I hadn't, but checking the tracking I found that it was sent with StarTrak, which seems to have the same symbiotic relationship with Australia Post that DHL does with Deutsche Post. And that showed that it had arrived in Wendouree and was out for delivery. OK, that means picking up in Napoleons, and by chance Yvonne was going there anyway today to pick up another parcel.
But to my surprise, somebody came and knocked on the door and delivered it. I commented that that hadn't happened before, and he said “We deliver round here every Wednesday”.
That's an interesting insight. Once upon a time I had to go to the post office for StarTrack or the railway station for UPS. That means that the transfer from the depot to the pickup point is a couple of hours.
But now they deliver to our door, typically once a week, so it can take up to a week until they get round to it. And that explains the long delay we had between paying duty last week and the actual delivery seven days later. It also probably explains the lack of tracking information in this time.
Somehow this sounds like a good intention gone wrong. At least the companies should allow pickup from their depot.
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More spam?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Found in my mail today:
53 N + 29-09-2021 To groggyhimself@Fre ( 105) FreeBSD.org Login No N + New Login To groggyhimself@FreeBSD.org From Safari on Mac OS
The subject is the bold text at the end. Who did that? It took a few seconds to realize that this could only be some kind of phishing. How can you log in to FreeBSD.org via a web browser? The only authentication is via ssh. But it did take a few seconds. How easy it must be to catch unsuspecting users with this sort of trick.
| Thursday, 30 September 2021 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 30 September 2021 |
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Planned power outage
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Topic: Stones Road house, general | Link here |
Another planned grid power outage today, from 9:00 to 12:00. Or at least that's what Powercor said. The weather was bad, and I was half expecting them to postpone. But in preparation I had charged the battery to 95% and turned the heat up to 23° so that I could turn the heating off when the power failed.
OK, what's the Powercor web site for? Went there looking for outages. They offer a live outage map, but they don't deliver. I looked at it round 9:30, and was somewhat put off by the claim “Last Updated: 1:33 pm”. Under those circumstances it would be good to know the date. And the first one read:
Can't find your outage?Let us know
Under investigation
Alfredton
Under investigation
Est. restoration: 3:30PM 24/11/2020
That was transient: the next time I looked at it, it was up to date. But how can you rely on something like that? And they seem to have no way of tracking planned outages on line.
The outage finally came at 10:41 and lasted for only a little more than an hour. The battery state of charge didn't drop below 97%. But it still required monitoring, and I'm not sure that things would have run so smoothly had I not been monitoring things.
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Mail configuration pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Mail from Jerry Dunham today, telling me that his ISP was shutting down, and he was looking for a new mail provider. OK, for him I can do that. But what is he going to do about his current email address? It relates to his current provider. He can't take that with him.
This is the ultimate “I told you so”. I even published it. From the last edition of “The Complete FreeBSD”, page 317:
It's certainly a very good idea to have your own domain name. As time goes on, your email address will become more and more important. If you get a mail address like 4711@flybynight.net, and Flybynight goes broke, or you decide to change to a different ISP, your mail address is gone, and you have to explain that to everybody who might want to contact you. If, on the other hand, your name is Jerry Dunham, and you register a domain dunham.org, you can assign yourself any mail address in that domain.
That dates to November 1997:
1.16 (grog 26-Nov-97): Does it matter? That's for you to decide. It's certainly a very good idea to
4.6 (grog 14-Mar-03): have your own domain name. As time goes on, your email address will become more
1.16 (grog 26-Nov-97): and more important. If you get a mail address like \f(CW4711@flybynight.net\fP,
1.16 (grog 26-Nov-97): and Flybynight goes broke, or you decide to change to a different ISP, your mail
1.16 (grog 26-Nov-97): address is gone, and you have to explain that to everybody who might want to
1.16 (grog 26-Nov-97): contact you. If, on the other hand, your name is Jerry Dunham, and you register
1.16 (grog 26-Nov-97): a domain \f(CWdunham.org\fP, you can assign yourself any mail address in that
4.6 (grog 14-Mar-03): domain.
Amusingly, since I wrote that, somebody registered flybynight.net, though they don't seem to have any web presence.
The silly thing is, Jerry does have his own domain, dunham.org. What do I need to do? I already have an MX record pointing to my domain:
$ nslookup -q=mx dunham.org
dunham.org mail exchanger = 20 mx1.lemis.com.
So I just need to update my Postfix configuration. That should be as simple as adding dunham.org to mydestination.
But it didn't work! Try as I might, it bounced:
<dunham@dunham.org>: mail for dunham.org loops back to myself
Now why am I getting that? It works on eureka. Surely it can't have anything to do with MX records?
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Another fishy hardware failure
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Topic: technology, language, opinion | Link here |
I'm still not convinced that my TV really failed exactly when I installed more memory in teevee last month. But it seems that I have another case: yesterday I got a new USB hub for my external backup disks, and this morning I came into the office to find lots of:
Wed 29 Sep 2021 21:04:12 AEST: Partial backup of /home/grog since 26-Sep-2021
zstd: error 25 : Write error : No space left on device (cannot write compressed block)
There should be plenty of space on the disk. How much? It wasn't mounted! Further examination showed:
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): WRITE(10). CDB: 2a 00 2a 50 35 1e 00 00 20 00
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: CCB request completed with an error
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Retrying command
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: ugen0.11: <Western Digital> at usbus0 (disconnected)
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: umass0: at uhub2, port 16, addr 16 (disconnected)
...
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: 0:0): Error 5, Retries exhausted
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: g_vfs_done():
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: da0p1[WRITE(offset=2907748794368, length=131072)]
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: error = 5
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: g_vfs_done():da0p1[WRITE(offset=2907748532224, length=131072)]error = 5
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus3 target 0 lun 0
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: da0: <WD My Book 1140 1019> s/n 504C313333314C414745485A5248 detached
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: ses1 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus3 target 0 lun 1
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: ses1: <WD SES Device 1019> s/n 504C313333314C414745485A5248 detached
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Periph destroyed
Sep 29 21:05:53 eureka kernel: (ses1:umass-sim0:0:0:1): Periph destroyed
Sep 29 21:05:56 eureka kernel: Device da0p1 went missing before all of the data could be written to it; expect data loss.
What happened there? It has all the hallmarks of a disk failure—the next time I used it after changing the hub. Was it a problem with the hub? I had 3 other disks on it, and they all worked OK. The port? Put the disk on a different port and was able to run fsck on it, though the messages weren't encouraging, lots of:
WRITING ZERO'ED BLOCK 2123546880 TO DISK
CANNOT WRITE BLK: 2123546880
CONTINUE? yes
THE FOLLOWING SECTORS COULD NOT BE WRITTEN: 2123546880, 2123546881, 2123546882, 2123546883, 2123546884, 2123546885, 2123546886, 2123546887, 2123546888, 2123546889, 2123546890, 2123546891, 2123546892, 2123546893, 2123546894, 2123546895, 2123546896, 2123546897, 2123546898, 2123546899, 2123546900, 2123546901, 2123546902, 2123546903, 2123546904, 2123546905, 2123546906, 2123546907, 2123546908, 2123546909, 2123546910, 2123546911, 2123546912, 2123546913, 2123546914, 2123546915, 2123546916, 2123546917, 2123546918, 2123546919, 2123546920, 2123546921, 2123546922, 2123546923, 2123546924, 2123546925, 2123546926, 2123546927, 2123546928, 2123546929, 2123546930, 2123546931, 2123546932, 2123546933, 2123546934, 2123546935, 2123546936, 2123546937, 2123546938, 2123546939, 2123546940, 2123546941, 2123546942, 2123546943,
Tried again and got a hang, which fortunately went away when I removed the disk. OK, try a different system, dereel. There, too, I had errors.
So: dead disk? Disks die, and I'm prepared for that. But why exactly when I changed the USB hub? Could the hub be defective after all, and could it have killed the disk?
In any case, one thing's clear, I need a new disk. What do I have lying around? To my surprise, I found a 6 TB disk, an old iteration of my video backup disk (currently 8 TB and nearly full). I had already started overflowing to another disk, 2 TB, but it, too, is nearly full. So if I remove all the duplicates from the 6 TB disk and move the contents of the 2 TB disk to it, I should still have a lot of space left over.
And in any case, 6 TB is too big for my current purpose. The old disk is 4 TB, and it wasn't overly full. 3 TB might be cutting it a bit fine, so where do I find a new 4 TB disk?
To my surprise, eBay had a really good offer: 4 TB SSD for only $33.18!
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What kind of nonsense is that? It's almost worth buying one to find out. But it's nothing that I would rely on for a backup. And there were really slim pickings for real, plausible disks: Verbatim for $222 or WD for $198. And clearly there's the delivery time to consider. Tomorrow's the monthly full backup. What does Officeworks have in stock? How much of a premium would it cost over eBay?
Somehow their web site was particularly broken today, but after a few attempts I was able to find a 4TB WD disk for only $156! “Limited stock”. What does that mean? Zero stock?
Called up and discovered yes, they have them in stock in three different colours, only one black one. OK, please reserve, I'll pick it up (at the cashier, as I was told to do). Got there and spoke to Rose, who was barely audible. No, no disk drive here. Called somebody from the department. A disk drive? Don't know anything about that. For CDs? No, a perfectly normal external disk drive. Aaaah! A hard drive! Yes, here it is.
Rose had asked (I think) if it was a USB device. Good point. I had assumed that, but was I right? Maybe it was Wi-Fi connected or some such nonsense. Looked at the box. Oh. 2½" form factor. I hadn't really expected that. But it was far too polite to talk about sordid things like interface. Just “My Passport™ Portable Storage. Password protection.”. But it did show the thing with a cable connect to a laptop, so it's probably USB.
Back home. Yes, USB. Put the thing in dereel and partitioned it with no trouble, probably because I didn't try to save the data that was probably on the partition. And backups ran with no trouble. So at least that worked.
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Kirschwasser: sent
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Topic: food and drink, technology, opinion | Link here |
After numerous further discussions with Ruth Viebrock, we found that we can send the Kirsch for 19.98 €. But due to COVID-19 related issues it will take at least 40 days! Still, I've been planning this for 30 days, exactly the length of this month, so it's not that big a deal. Paying another 50 € would have been.
Tracking shows that the shipment documents have been received, but they don't mention receiving the item. Should I follow its progress? No, I don't think so. In the past I've seen tracking that bears no relationship with what actually happens, and I have enough to irritate me as it is. And she had it shipped via the shipping department of her employer, one of the biggest newspapers in Germany. Things won't get lost there.
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
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