Wrapping Up

The blog was supposed to be an exercise in creativity, but it has ended up as a little bit of a burden. I've read some great blogs that have been quite entertaining and also very educational. Part of what I've noticed of all the blogs that I've enjoyed, is that they've had a theme that has guided the posts and the author has been very good in following and maintaining that theme.

I just don't have that, at least not at the moment. All my posts have been random and scattered. If anything, they've just been inward focused.

So I'm going to close up for a while. I don't have the intellectual bent to provide the blogging experience that I enjoy so much in other blogs.

I'll leave you with a couple of blogs that I've recently discovered and found quite entertaining:

  Religious Policeman
 
  Lowering the Bar
 

Ernest Hemingway

I don't know much about Ernest Hemingway other than that he is quite a recognised author and what I have read on Wikipedia.

However, today I also leanred that he had a six-toed cat called Snowball. Apparently the descendents of Snowball live on today, many of them also with 6 toes.

http://www.hemingwayhome.com/cats

Sometimes the thought isn't what you'd expect

It is nice if someone brings you back a souvenir from their travels. It means that they gave at least some time during their leisure and fun to think of you, and spend a bit of their money to bring you back a small piece of their holiday. A sentiment that maybe doesn't have as much value these days when travel is much more accessible to the masses, but I think most people appreciate it.

It can get weird though when you start to wonder if much thought went into it. Some relatives of mine tend to travel alot, a slight perk of their income and career I guess. They have occassionally brought me back souvenirs and have opted for shirts for me, as its something that can be used. Its a gift that is practical.

Except for when they think you're hugely fat...

Now the general excuse is that in asian countries, the sizing is smaller, but I'm not a big person. Even in Australian sizes I'll generally wear between a small and a medium, even in the days when I used to frequent the gym, I pretty much was still medium.

So it confuses me when people bring back XL for their gift for me. They couldn't try it on themselves to gauge the sizing? Do I really look that big to them? Were they just diving in the tourist budget bin on their way to the airport on the last day?

The most recent time this happened was when I was brought this shirt from a Vietnam holiday. No matter how amusing a motif may be, when the shirt is two sizes too big, it loses the impact immediately.

Its a corny joke, and people might be embarassed to wear this in public, but just a couple of weeks ago though, I saw a guy at the train station wearing it and it looked fine; because it was the right size.

I'm going senile

For the past couple of days, one of my work colleagues has had 3 apples sitting neatly together on a corner of his desk. They've sat there untouched and every time I pass his desk, I have to fight the urge to pick them up and start juggling.

I'd also forgotten to bring my own fruit to work the past few days, so his apples only rub salt in my hungry wounds. However today I remembered to bring my fruit and weirdly, as I was walking past his desk with my apple after washing it in the kitchen, I noticed one of his apples were missing. For a split second I thought I had taken his.

I hadn't, but it still had me hesitate for a moment.

Stuff that makes me laugh

I think I have this fantasy at least once a day at work...

Amway follow-up

So, in declining the invitation to join Amway, my ex-colleague was obviously disappointed but also seemed unable to understand the reasons I gave on why I wanted to steer clear of their program. It was interesting that she couldn't (or perhaps wouldn't) see things from my point of view, and leads me to think that there might be more to people's view that Amway "brainwashes" their members.

Reason 1) Return on investment.

I explained that as far as business goes, for all my effort and personal expenditure, I share the rewards with those who are above me in the hierarchy. This is the case in many businesses, but at least you feel that your manager/boss is at least in the office and doing "manager" type work. Whereas in Amway and MLM schemes, the person who brought you in could just introduce you, then spend the rest of their life at home twiddling their thumbs and still getting a return on your effort. This aspect is a bummer, although the idea is that this also can work in your favour.

Note: There was some concern about percentage return as compared with other industries. However, it actually isn't too bad in terms of raw numbers. Take the real estate or vehicle industry where the salesperson typically gets a return of 1~2%. There is variation on this due to various factors such as prestige level, experience, ability and so on, but it is a fair comparison though. The problem though, is that 1% is fine if you're selling a single $1million dollar home a fortnight. It's great even. But what if the items you are selling range from a few dollars to a few hundred? How many now do you need to move?

Reason 2) Lack of transparency.

If I get a regular job, I know my salary and I know my tax obligations. If I run a business, then I get to know my fees, tax implications, and running expenses. Amway does not reveal this to you easily. On one hand, they claim that you will have no running expenses as you don't maintain inventory, and its just the cost of running around and bringing people into the system. But as I am not officially a registered business owner nor an employee of Amway, then they don't provide me transparency of how money will be coming in to me, and they certainly won't explain it to me if I'm not yet a member. If you don't like the Church of Scientology, then you won't like Amway.

Reason 3) Bias

Majority of people writing about Amway all state that the people looking to recruit them, would not provide a fair unbiased account of what is involved and what it takes to succeed. Instead, the pitch is always about the people who make fortunes. The lady I was talking to didn't get aggressive when I finally declined the offer after some discussion, but other people had experienced their contact becoming insulting when they refused. If a person can't be balanced in their presentation of an opportunity, then it may not be an opportunity at all.

If the entire business is built on bringing in people for them to get rich, then there will either be alot of victims like the GFC, or there just will simply be many disappointed hopefuls. A company needs to have some consumer focus in order to succeed, and Amway just doesn't.

End of the day, I hope she does find this business works out for her in the long run, but the odds are that it won't.

Amway or the highway

Amway is an interesting company, and like any corporation, there is a focus on their supplying goods/services with the intent to generate a profit for the company owners and stakeholders. I'm writing this as I was recently contacted by an ex-colleague who I hadn't been in touch with for years. Out of the blue they called to invite me to join in generating residual income.

Now Amway's approach is essentially to make members into stakeholders. The amount of stake that you have is dependent on essentially the revenue that you directly or indirectly generate for the corporation. The basic premise is simple and not a problem on face value. The issue though is on how they go about their business.

Firstly, you can only buy from Amway if you are a member. There is a basic annual membership fee, and in many ways, this is not different from a number of wholesalers or "Cash and Carry" stores. This membership provides you access to their buying their goods. (If you want to see what they sell and some prices you can check out the Australian site here https://www.amway.com.au/).

Increasing sales and market share is where things get interesting. Amway leverages MLM (Multi-Level Marketing, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing), so rather than putting money into advertising to the general community, instead they offer incentives to members for them to recruit new members and shoppers.

The incentives work on the following returns:

• For purchases you make, you get a percentage back.
• For members that you have recruited, you also get a percentage of the purchases they make.
• If your recruits then bring in new members, you also get a percentage of the purchases they make, and so on.

The percentage you receive of the purchases, reduces the more you are removed (in recruitment layer terms) from the member who made that purchase.

If you didn't already know about these schemes, then you can probably already see the problems; that for online shopping the discounts are reduced due to all the extra people who have to get paid commissions, and the people who want to use this as an income source now have ulterior motives when talking to people about Amway specifically recruiting.

A number of years ago, a Whirlpool forum user posted a basic guide for the number of sales needed to create a $400 / week income. You can see it in this Whirlpool link http://whrl.pl/Rck5QR . Essentially the combined total of purchases that I, and the members I've recuited, need to make in a week to earn $375 is about $20,000. This is not easy to achieve, considering that the regular purchase items from their website number 77. That's correct, 77 items fall under the category of groceries, and none of those are perishable items like dairy, fruit, vegetables or meat. The rest of the shopping categories are cosmetics, nutritional pharmaceuticals, and some basic home appliances and cleaning chemicals.


To give you a comparison, Coles "specials category" had 1,311 items alone. That's just the "specials and discounts" section, not including the rest of their regular full price items. Everything you can get in store, you are also able to buy online and have delivered.

Amway is not cheaper than your general supermarket brands, and considering that you now have to wait for that to be delivered while you also still have to go to the store to get your regular stuff (or pay a separate delivery fee for your regular shopping)? Not convenient. If you like the Amway products for yourself, that's well and good, but remember that you're also paying almost $100 per year for the privilege so you need to be making some good savings over equivalent quality brands for this to be worthwhile.

Of course Amway wants more sales, as they are a business after all, so there is the offer for you to make money by bringing in new members and encouraging them to buy. This is where Amway's reputation, and that of MLM schemes in general, have run into real trouble because of the conduct and behaviour of people trying to get new members in.

Because the system is not consumer focused, i.e. there aren't significant savings and you can't get all the things you want, then the pressure falls on the member to cajole or hook people into becoming members. This is where the sales pitch falls on the lure of riches, rather than any merit of the products or the system itself.

Amway has been around for more than 50 years, so the stuff above is already something you probably know. If a friend starts to talk to you about Amway, then be polite but firm; you don't need this in your life.

But if you really think you'd like to get into sales and make some good money, then go into an industry that properly rewards the effort you'll be putting in and consider finance brokering, real estate, vehicles, insurance, or travel.

Actually, no. Don't go into vehicle sales...

Scoundrels

Alot depends on the yard manager, but many of the larger caryards will keep a pool of umbrellas for that "extra mile" of customer service. This is because when it rains there are still alot of people who come into the yard with an umbrella of their own. Providing one for their use will not only make them more comfortable, but provides a convenient excuse for the salesperson to approach the customer uninvited and endeavour to work their way into a sale.

However, you will always get points where the customer insists on browsing alone for a bit longer, but wants to continue to avail themself of the umbrella. That's still good, because they'll come back to the office to drop it off, giving us a second line into probing for opportunities to make that sale.

Don't get annoyed, you're in the yard because you want a new car, right?

Anyway, what gets me, is that there are some people who don't bring the umbrella back. They keep it. And when I'm out and about, away from the yards and I see a person using one of those umbrellas, it burns me up.

It also means that the cheapskate yard I was at stopped providing umbrellas so I had to begin bringing my own. Believe me, I watched those ones like a hawk.

Sliding off the face

Ouch sorry for the extended absence. I always wonder how bloggers could just 'drop off' for several weeks, even months. And then when they say they're getting back on the wagon, much like I am hoping to say here, they then fall off again a week later.

Well I think I understand it a bit better now. Maybe it was writer's block that turned into a little bit of apathy, maybe it was just life. But hope to be getting back into routine again.

Milk tea

I've only started thinking about it in recent months, despite all the years that I've drunk regular breakfast tea with milk. I don't add much, just enough to colour it to a dark brown. But I do like my tea strong, so often I'll leave the tea bag in the entire time that I'm drinking it.

But I'd recently only started thinking about how milk affects the brewing (steeping) of the tea when we ran out of milk at work, so I had to drink tea black a few times. Now, leaving the teabag in for more than a few minutes resulted in very strong and bitter tea.

I'm a bit confused as to how this works, as a quick Google search turned up results saying that milk in itself does not stop the tea brewing. It's only the cooling effect of the milk dropping the water temperature and hence slowing the rate of brewing.

But I don't add much milk, and I've had cups of tea where the bag has remained in for over 30min and it is still no where near as strong as 5min of black tea. So I didn't really get an answer to my question from the internet, but I did learn that apparently milk is reducing any health benefits of the tea, so I'm supposed to be drinking black.

I guess that is kind of an answer.

Like a dog

Every now and then I remember why dogs love sticking their heads out of car windows. Although the whole looking into the wind thing does confound me a bit.

One of my friends used to drive trucks for a recycling company, and this was way before wheelie bins were around. Both the recycling and garbage were collected by different trucks that used runners who would grab the stuff from the curb, throw it into the truck and move on. Essentially the truck would just be slowly driven down the street while one or two runners would race between curb and truck constantly.

I joined my friend for laughs for a few months. Every friday morning we'd have to be at the depo by 4am to collect the trucks, squeeze into the cabin as we drove down to the start or our route, then the next 5 hours would cover a couple of suburbs. During the route, as a runner, we didn't go back in the cab, we'd either be hurling bundles of recycling into the truck, or seated on the rear step with a firm grip on a rail while the truck hurtled around to the next section of the route.

Halfway through the route, peak hour for the masses would start, and there was weird thrill in sitting on the back of a 5 tonne truck, the cold morning air whipping by and the ground just barely out of reach, while everyone else was bleary eyed and preparing to face traffic.

Oddly, I had an office job in those days as well, and the recycling gig was just for fun. So when the shift was done, I had to shuffle into the office to finish my friday and make up the lost hours.

Still miss those mornings though.

Trash and Treasure continued

Ok, so continuing with my attempts to sell stuff since last weekend, I have now had 5 people contact me making enquiries, and this includes the fellow who bought the lenses from me last weekend.

In every case, none of them volunteered their name. In all of their communications, whether by phone or SMS, they all defaulted to being anonymous. What is with that? Can anyone explain to me the culture today? I only got the name of the guy who bought the lenses when I outright asked him what his name was.

It isn't like I want proof of ID, I just think the fundamentals of etiquette are getting lost. They also aren't using 'please' or 'thank you' any more either. That all just seems weird to me.

... and makes me less inclined to entertain discounts as well.

Trash and treasure

Been clearing out some old junk from the spare room, last weekend. Came across a small pile of camera lenses that I'd accumulated when we'd gotten our DSLR. Back then I had visions of utilising a small arsenal of lenses for different settings to achieve perfect pictures. But well... that didn't happen. I'm just not motivated enough to lug all that equipment around these days.

So decided that rather than throw the unused lenses in the bin, I'd try my luck on Gumtree. Within an hour of listing, all 3 sold. Had me a little astonished, so I'm trying to sell some old exercise gear, but that has been online now for 4 days and no buyers.

Just goes to show that some of my junk is still junk.

Selling for a reason

Owning a supermarket is fairly good business. Sure, there are factors to consider to ensure that the store is accessible and is not in a location where competition is excessive, or the population density very low. But people need to eat, and the vast majority can't eat out every day, so they'll be visiting a supermarket reasonably often.

An ex work colleague now runs one, and he tells me that it isn't all easy money. Between shoplifting, outright break-ins, managing a moderate sized staff of low-skilled labour, the extended trading hours, 7 day trading, and not always being closed on public holidays, means you end up being faced with some potentially costly challenges. At the end of the day though, you can find it to be a good revenue stream if you have the commitment and mental resilience.

Oddly though, not every supermarket is guaranteed, and this became obvious to me today when I was wandering through the one near my work. It used to be a Coles outlet, but certain segments of their range constantly had items which were being discounted because they weren't turning over fast enough. Eventually Coles had enough and about 2 months ago, sold off that outlet and it was picked up by IGA. The IGA is now struggling a little as I see their stock changing slightly to try and work out what the local demographic wants. Bakery and dairy seem to be amongst the toughest segments, and I'm curious as to whether the new owner is now regretting their purchase.

Seeing as I'm grumpy enough with a 9-6 desk job in airconditioning, I'd be more unbearable if I had to deal with that aggravation. So no self-employment for me...

Value of an education

On the train home yesterday, there were three girls seated a few rows in front discussing the futures and dreams. I didn't go out of my way to eavesdrop, but they made it easy to overhear as they all seemed rather enthusiastic.

Listening to the conversation, it seemed the girls were still getting to know one another, but their acquaintance was due to them all attending the same dance college in the city area. So their discussion was about their backgrounds and dreams. None of them had finished high school and thus the only thing approaching tertiary training was going to be their dance training.

They each expressed an earnest passion to travel the world, working as a dancer as they enjoyed all the excitement of moving from country to country. Sounds nice, until you realise that although it isn't impossible, it unfortunately is more likely to end in tears.

You could blame movies, as many movies revolve around people chasing and achieving dreams that we all share. But perhaps it is because they also haven't had a wiser person around to guide and mentor them.

There's nothing wrong with pursuing a passion, but one needs to be intelligent in recognising levels of risk and being able to have a fallback, or being able to recognise when you may have to let the dream go.

I've had dreams of running my own business, and even got quite serious at one stage about running my own go-kart track business. To the point of beginning TAFE business training courses, and completing a draft of the business proposal and revenue projections to submit to the bank for funding.

In the end though, I weighed up risks and realised that there wasn't room in the market for it to succeed. People love the stories of underdogs that beat the odds and become success stories, but what they gloss over and ignore is the fact that countless more fail than the ones that succeed, and its often not due to a lack of effort. And in some cases, someone who succeeds will do so at the expense of another.

Basically, it isn't all as golden as the movies would make it out to be, and not everyone can win.

You need a back up plan, and these girls with the dreams of being a dancer and seeing the world did not have one. If you read the interviews with successful Hollywood actors, many of them share the same story of beginnings which involve living from hand-to-mouth, while going to every audition to try to make it.

So if only a few make it, imagine how many didn't. And if they don't have another career to turn to, what happens then?

My point? If you have a friend or family member who has an exciting dream, but one with risk or a limited lifespan (e.g. you can only be a professional soccer player while your body holds out), then be the voice of wisdom in their life. Don't extinguish their dream, but help them to at least think about a plan B, in the event that plan A doesn't happen.

Late bloomer

I've been a software engineer for 16 years now (well, just a glorified code monkey) and have now only just crossed a milestone:

I have finally actually used inheritance in some code I've written.

I've known what it is for many years, and I'd seen examples of it, but never actually ever created anything with it. I might have finally graduated from n00b. Go me!

Don't like...

In any corporation, one of the biggest outgoings is salary. If you talk to any corporate accountant or payroll master, and they'll tell you that alot of money goes towards people's salaries. Hence companies want to know what employees do, and hence timesheets feature quite commonly in the private sector of the corporate world.

I shouldn't really complain, because in many regards I have it easy. To hear a full rant, talk to any lawyer, clerk or accountant employed by a firm. They have to account for their time in as small as 5min increments, as it all gets billed to customers.

The reason for this, is that the clients who pay the money to a company for a service, often want an invoice so they can see where that money is going, and to give them a chance to see whether the costs are reasonable. You can understand it when you go shopping at the supermarket or take your car to the mechanic, as when you see a bill for a few hundred, then obviously you want to have a chance to make sure that no 'extras' are being slipped into that total.

So my company does the same. At the end of each day, I need to fill out a sheet detailing the time I spent on different tasks and different projects. My "cost" to the company is then recorded against each project so they can determine how much that project cost in the end.

Now where my gripes for this post come from, are that my role is odd. I'm like the courier that provides supplies to the office. I'm a necessary part that supports a number of teams on different projects to extend test automation, but I don't do any automation or test itself. So sometimes the work I do, supports several projects, and other times it is for stuff that isn't in the pipeline yet. Now from a project costing point of view, I'm an undesirable component, hence many projects that are tight on funds end up telling me to not bill to them. Way too many times, my timesheets get rejected by managers who don't want my costs on their project, even though my work that day may have benefited their team.

So I don't have to provide the fine resolution reporting that some people have to endure, but I do get the run-around alot when it comes to just filling that thing in.

Its the neighbourhood

I have a short route I like to walk when I need to get away from my desk. About 3 times a week, I'll just need to get away, and go for a 15min stroll for some fresh air and exercise.

On my stroll, the first 500metres will pass 5 law firms and one private investigator office. One deals with property actions, such as settlement and conveyancing, the second deals with corporate law for business. The remaining 3 law firms specialise in what they call "family law", which encompasses all those relationship breakdown items such as alimony, divorce, divorce settlements, contesting wills, custody, pre-nuptial agreements, and the like.

5 law firms seems like alot, and 3 out of 5 on family law also seems a little disproportionate. Part of me wonders if its to do with the 3 brothels that are also within a 400 metre radius of where I work.

More than a generation gap

One side of my family has chinese heritage. My wife's family has chinese heritage. There is a fair amount of immigration from various asian regions of people who have chinese heritage, and along with that comes people who have grown up with certain cultural norms.

Norms that I don't understand and really dislike.

Now this isn't a racist rant. It's a post about the "aunties" that come with this demographic. The aunties are the older ladies of chinese background, who are around my parent's background and fall into the age bracket where people are either close to, or already have, retired.

For some reason, these aunties feel they can take certain social liberties, particularly with the younger generation, when it comes to the things they do and the things they say. Some of these include:

• "Have you put on weight?" (Ummm... no, you haven't seen me in 3 years, and I'm actually the same weight as before)
• To get your attention, they pull your sleeve urgently, even though you're in the middle of a conversation with someone else. Or worse, they pinch your arm, or poke you firmly in the shoulder.
• They walk up to pregnant women and without asking, greet them by placing both their hands on the woman's pregnancy bump.

If I returned the favour in any of these ways, I'd be considered rude. So can anyone tell me how this works? Because the next aunty who asks me if I'm getting fat, even though they weigh more than me, is going to get the same question right back.

I'll pass thanks.

I like the occassional soda, and with Burger King doing their $1 frozen Coke, it makes it hard to resist on a scorching summers day.

But the Australian government has been pushing pretty hard with their adverts seeking to educate people against the hidden dangers of continual junk food indulgence. This one, which was in a recent saturday paper made me start thinking I'll have to look at skipping the frozen cokes now too.

They suddenly don't seem to taste as nice, now that I've seen this.

Watch for blindspots

One of the blogs that I read frequently was from a fellow who used to be a bouncer at nightclubs, but through a variety of opportunities created, in part through his talent with words and storytelling, he has been able to transition away from that world into something more office orientated and now runs his own business. He still makes amusing and occassionally insightful observations into a culture that I've never understood. Despite the coarse language, I had always deemed him to be thoughtful and balanced in his judgements.

One of the themes that crops up in his blog is about how much he notices that people judge by appearances and this is something that he has experienced personally. Being a fairly muscular individual and not being blessed with a welcoming, or even neutral, facial expression, he has occassionally suffered not being given the benefit of the doubt when accused of harassment or bullying. As a result, when stories come up in the media of an individual being accused of similar things (while investigations are ongoing) this blogger frequently takes the side of the accused, because of his own experiences.

His recent post seemed to reveal a degree of hypocrisy that surprised me though. He reiterated an instance where he had been deemed as guilty of bullying, just because his size was significantly larger than the other individual who felt intimidated by the blogger's appearance, although the blogger claims he had always been nothing but reconciliatory and professional towards the other individual. He then follows up with expressing his support for Richie Incognito who the blogger acknowledges has been recorded saying racist, misogynistic and threatening statements to another sportsperson. Its one thing to judge on appearances, but when there is a record of the individual speaking and acting in that fashion, that's no longer being discriminated against.

Which makes me realise that at times, it can be easy to get caught up in our own experience that it can completely cloud our own ability to evaluate things properly.

Its important to maintain perspective.

Socially stupid

This proliferation of social interaction on the internet that permeates everything just annoys me. Its worth because I am trying to work on a Mac which is being extremely difficult, so already in a bad mood.

But how can it possibly be a good thing that even going into Apple's application portal that it offers these options when choosing to install an application?

Are there really people who want to broadcast on Facebook or Twitter that they've chosen to install/update a given program on their computer? And how is that even socially acceptable?

In a face to face environment, I might share information along those lines if I feel it is relevant to their interests, or is something that is fitting to the current social environment. But using social media is akin to virtually getting all your friends/acquaintances/family together at once, and yelling it out, then going back to what you were doing.

Its insane, especially when you consider that most of the stuff that gets "yelled out" is not interesting or relevant to most of the recipients. Its probably even offensive to half of them. The reason why this is particularly bad, is because people can't really engage through social media. Not like when you are face to face. So it all ends up being highly superficial, or else a flood of aggravated noise.

And I'm still mad at how hard it is to use Macs.

Don't try this at home

Going back a few years, at least back to 2007, there was a trend of holiday makers photographing themselves jumping on hotel beds. A quick search on the internet turns up more and more ridiculous photos of people getting some pretty good height as they treat hotel beds as trampolines.

Obviously the hotel owners aren't impressed as this is not an activity that beds in general are designed for, so bed frames and mattresses have their service lives prematurely shortened.

Well I managed to break my own bed doing a similar thing. I don't stand on the bed and jump, but sometimes after a hectic day, I'm eager for a nap as a reward, so its tempting to leap into bed rather than ease myself in.

While it seems that the pine planks can manage holding up a heavy mattress, they don't do well with sudden applications of weight so two of the planks which had knots in their section, fractured and broke yesterday afternoon.

If you have an annoyed wife telling you to get that fixed before Bunnings shuts, then you pretty much learn to treat the bed with a whole lot more respect from then on. No more of this, I guess.

Warning signs

I think I've gone senile. Time to put me out to pasture, or the glue factory, whichever is closer.

There's been a few occassions now when my wife and I are going out, I drive down the end of our street and get ready to join the main road, then I realise that I've completely forgotten where we were going. Its happened often enough now that she's actually started getting into the habit of reminding me when we reach the end of our street.

Its probably what I get for being grumpy most of the time. Blown all my brain cells from the blood pressure.

Grumpy just keeps on going

Our public transport isn't the best financially managed mass-transit service in the world. Far from it in fact.

One of the examples of poor management is the way that they happily go with lowest bidders on infrastructure almost everytime. Escalators are a good example of this. Think about how many escalators there are in the world and just how long they've been around for. The first prototype was built in 1899 (courtesy of Wikipedia) and they've been getting built and refined ever since. So, much like cars, its not that the technology is new, just that you get to know that some manufacturers make them a little better than others. The ones who don't generally sell their stuff cheaper in order to remain in the market, hence the general view that "you get what you pay for".

Well that view seems to have been ignored when our PTA bought escalators, and also when they bought the equipment to support an electronic ticketing system and automatic ticketing gates.

The problems we have with the electronic ticketing system, is that I'd guess about one in every 200 passengers will tap their pass, have it registered but then the gate doesn't open. Leaving them to either jump the gate, or reverse out and go to the manned opening. What compounds this, is that the gate recognises the error and will not register any more swipes for 10 seconds.

To further this, the touch pads are a little particular, preferring that no other proximity devices be with the electronic ticket when the user taps, and that the ticket not be wrapped in any thick materials. So when people put their ticket in the wallet with their bank cards and work swipe cards, it often fails, and that also screws up the flow of passengers. When you have tens of thousands of commuters moving through, this is not going to go well. Again it isn't a problem with technology as you just have to watch how well electronic gates work in other countries to see that some are better than others, or in this case; most are better than ours.

I need to just take a chill pill and relax, but the problem is that there is always an advisable maximum dosage, and I hit my pill limit very quickly on public transport. I need to get my ass in gear and start cycling again.

More grumpy old man

Kids are back at school. They've been back at school for their second week now, so the space and peace on the public transport has vanished as the children now seek to get to and from school. Now I'll state right up front here that this isn't a problem with just children, as I see adults do the exact same thing, but because the bus I catch in the morning goes past two rather popular high schools, it means that easily 80% of the passengers are kids.

The buses have the same configuration that they have in most countries of doors at the front and at the middle. When people get on and have to stand, they frequently tend to congregate one of the doors as no one wants to be stuck halfway up the aisle when their stop arrives. The front door is less of an issue as everyone has to get on there, so the issue here is the middle door. So the sequence that leads up to my grumpy rant today is this:

• Some people get on, and move along to the middle of the bus so they are near the centre doors.
• More people get on, move along and stand near the people at the centre doors.
• Repeat, until the bus arrives to where I get on.

By this stage, the group of standing people now back up to the front doors. The people standing have their room, so they aren't applying pressure for people to move up, and the people in the centre are insulated by the crowd, so they don't hear the driver urging people to move up, and they are also don't see (or its easier to pretend to not see) that people can not get on anymore.

The killer though, is that the standing room extends to the back of the bus. So there is capacity for another 12 adults to get on if everyone shuffles up.

A couple of days ago I finally reached the point where I can't avoid the fact that I need to do something rather than just whine about it here. So I now yell down the bus to get the rugrats to move along so we can all get on. Annoyingly, my first day of beginning this, I also had to yell at the driver to re-open the doors as a lady didn't make it to the centre doors in time to get off. A lot of yelling that day. But its a chance to begin a new chapter in my life of 'the real grumpy Kingston'.

Get off my lawn.

Watch out for that.... tree

My skateboard is a little different most, mainly because it has drum brakes integrated with the rear truck. If you search google for skateboard brakes, you'll see that quite a number of people have enquired about it at various times and there have been a number of attempts at filling that need with various degrees of practicality.

http://www.longboardshop.de/shop/product_info.php?cPath=62_213&products_id=2158
Interestingly, there's even a few YouTube videos showing how to make similar brakes as this out of PVC plumbing pipes. Nasty engineering, and with either the professional assembly or the PVC version, both mean you now have even more holes in your skateboard.

http://skatebrake.com/kits.html
But I don't like the idea of the cable flapping around. It works well though, and is a much more affordable price.

http://brakeboard.com/
This is what I'm actually using. They're expensive, I won't deny that. But they work well, and there is no odd pipes or pistons sticking out from the skateboard for you to trip on or to get snagged on bumps.

There's a bunch of techniques for braking without some fancy assembly, but they really only work when you've got space and on a fairly smooth predictable surface. Around town, its much harder to use foot brakes or slides to take off speed at a moment's notice. Just this morning the brake saved some lady who suddenly decided to sprint for the bus and ran straight in front of me.

The brake is unusual enough that I'm getting comments and looks quite a lot of the time on the train, and even recently had one guy walk into a sign because he was more focussed on trying to get a look at the brake assembly than where he was going.

That event really made my day.

Ooooo, Shiny!

Often when you get into a car and drive, you don't check stuff. Most people don't even check the fuel gauge, let alone more critical stuff like oil levels, coolant, braking and steering fluids, tyre tread, air pressure, state of the spare wheel, tools for changing said spare wheel.

I can't blame them, you just start to assume as it takes a modest effort to go through all those checks, its dirty work, and if anything does go wrong; then it'll be expensive and inconvenient, but unlikely to be catastrophic (compared to an aircraft, for example). When its your own car, you also get to know its state, and assume that your periodic servicing, plus regularly being around it, will mean that you'd notice if something had degraded unexpectedly. I know that's not the case for everybody though.

When you pick up a vehicle from a rental yard or vehicle dealership, you just naturally assume that various maintenance and safety checks have been done by them. At dealerships, especially the larger ones which are part of an overall corporation, you begin to expect they mean it when they say that all their vehicles are well maintained and of high quality. Barring fuel levels, I should be able to just grab the key and go.

I got a surprise when I was told to go refuel one of the utes in our yard. It was a Ford Falcon 1-tonner, so a 4Litre inline 6, and these are popular with the lads as the rear end is easy to spin when the tray is empty. It seems my dealership wasn't always regular with checking tyre wear as even taking off from rest at the lights was a tricky event. The ute had to be slowly eased into motion if you didn't want to end up sliding into the next lane. When I finally got back to the yard, a quick inspection confirmed that the rear tyres had both been polished smooth from past over-enthusiastic use.

No wonder that the young sales guys loved taking that car home.

Buggered

Man, it's barely half way through friday (yeah I know its midway through the afternoon, but I started late, so I'll be finishing late) and I can't even stand to look at the computer screen anymore. I'm just getting snowed under by requests from managers from all directions, as well as still slipping behind schedule with the prototyping I'm supposed to be doing.

I could really go a beer right now. It doesn't make me work better, but it does help numb frustration.

And I also just remembered that I haven't been updating my timesheet all week. Crap.

American entertainment

In past posts, I'd written about Ninja Warrior (Sasuke), the physical challenge game show from Japan. I'd watched most of their episodes through SBS2 to the point where SBS had caught up to the latest show. Kind of the downside of SBS overdosing us on it. Doing 1, sometimes 2, episodes a day means that they exhausted 29 seasons within a few months. I still think about the show and scan the tv guide for it though, as many of the competitors just have normal day jobs, and I find it an encouragement that I could achieve a similar fitness if I get off my butt.

Anyway, it relisted on tv again in the past month and it wasn't flagged as repeats, so I tuned in thinking that we had a new season. It turns out that SBS has learned and is now just broadcasting a couple of episodes a week, but starting from the beginning again.

The reason why it isn't flagged as a repeat, is because they are showing the American edited version of the Japanese telecast.

This is bad because the American networks know how to milk everything and leave it tasteless:

• Regular pauses in the original show to have an American presenter rattle on about hype
• Constantly going through top 20 lists. Top 20 competitors, characteristics, fails, costumes, etc
• Doing a short segment covering just the female competitors that seems more gratuitous, rather than giving any respect to what they achieved
• Even more editing, so that we actually get slightly less of the original content

American entertainment networks just can't leave well enough alone. Still a fan of the show, but I'm only going to watch the original  Sasuke edits.

OfficeWorks and printing

I got myself into a bit of grief the past couple of weeks. We're changing the curriculum for our sunday school program at church, and I've been madly trying to finalise the details before this sunday, as that when the sunday school program begins in earnest.

We only just finalised the material a few weeks ago, and I'd been in touch over the phone with a girl in our church who works at a printing company. Almost 2 weeks ago, I sent off the material to her to get printing going, but then after a week of silence, I found out I was using the wrong email address as she'd changed to a new one a short while ago. So now I was down to 6 working days left before classes start, and I have nothing printed.

So in frantic searching to at least get printing done for the first few months, I had called OfficeWorks and asked how long it would take if I submitted online. Now I had been given a warning, as there was a review on YellowPages about the printing service of the OfficeWorks near my workplace. But the staff at OfficeWorks said that if I submitted that night (Friday 31st Jan), they'd have it done by the saturday afternoon as things were quiet.

Sweet!!

So my order was submitted and I had fully expected to collect monday afternoon. Well monday morning I called, as the online document tracking service even tells you if your order is in the process of being printed. And my online tracking said that it hadn't even started.

Well they now said that the friday night guy wasn't from the printing department and didn't know what he was talking about. As apparently there were 36 jobs in front of mine. Hence the earliest may be thursday.

Dude... not happy Jan.

They've got a whole department dedicated to printing documents and photos, and when I passed on Monday to get my other order, the three guys in that section were milling around reading, rather than sweating over a commercial printer spraying out paper. If I had access to a binding machine, it would have been cheaper for me to do this on my home printer.

Anyway, Tuesday afternoon I get a message saying its done. They're only just 500m down the street, so I was going to go late in the afternoon. Just before I leave, I get a call from one of the printing guys 90minutes after the original message:

"No it isn't ready. I clicked the wrong button. I meant to click  the 'in progress' status. And by the way, our machine broke and can't do the binding option you wanted. We can only do a more expensive binding option."

Ouch. In one way, I'm glad I hadn't rushed down straight away to collect the order, as its hot out and a 500m walk each way in the sun, would not be nice.

Wednesday afternoon, another call:

"It's done, and we won't charge you for the more expensive binding."

Which I'm glad they clarified that, as I didn't really feel like being railroaded into paying even more. Ok, so thursday morning on my way to work, I wander in to collect. It's done by this weekend which is what I really needed, so all is good.

The staff are young and not really customer service orientated. I get a cheerful greeting from the only guy at the checkout as I guess its quiet and he hasn't had to deal with any difficult customers yet. But the printing section was a whole different story. The staff behind the counter seemed kinda busy and they weren't even making eye contact with the people in the queue, let alone even the customer they were serving at the time.

There were no smiles or pleasantries from the people in this section. Seems like printing is perhaps not the department to be in. I got my stuff and didn't have to go back through the checkout, so I'm done and satisfied now.

Ultimately, I think sometimes the smaller print shops can be better and similar in competitive pricing. I've now found out about one near one of my train changeover stops. They're doing the rest of my less time-critical printing. So far its going well.

Dr Life

Last year I was wandering through a bookstore and came across an eye catching book by Dr Jeffrey Life. The thing that made the book eye catching was the cover, which featured a shirtless 72 year old man with the body of a professional body builder.

I'm always into wanting to stay fit, although I don't have the discipline to carry it out. So I decided to flip through and find out what he was offering in terms of getting fit.

Dr Life's story is interesting as he claims that his fitness pursuit started at the age of 64. He includes a photo of himself at, presumably, 64 to see that it wasn't a case of already being of good fitness, but that he was more of the stereotypical 64 year old american male.

The bulk of his fitness is through careful diet and serious daily exercise, but the bit that threw me off was that he also resorted to hormone replacement therapy and testosterone injections. His main motivations were due to aging, the male body naturally loses testosterone and that results in making it harder maintain large muscle mass.

Dr Life was not just about being fit, but being a body builder. I pretty much gave up at that point on reading any more of his book. But the underlying part of discipline and effort is still solid, so I need to start eyeing my pull-up bar again...

Is it really love?

Ok, so McDonalds has a promotion on nationwide for this whole "Amore Deal", and I was curious as to how it works, and whether this sort of thing can recoup the cost of:

• advertising
• menu changes
• administering and providing the prizes (listed as $528,736.00 total)

Apparently, this really is stacked in McDonald's favour. If you buy any of their special overpriced meals, you get a random code, which of itself has no bearing on whether you are a winner or not. How it works is only one car can be won each day, and there is a narrow timeslot allocated to each day. The first person who submits their code in that timeslot, is the winner for the day.

The timeslot is not announced, and apparently will change each day.

They also don't announce what will happen if there is no winner that day.

Now the prize pool is not worth $528,000. The "valued worth" of the vehicles are the full recommended retail of the vehicles by Suzuki, which also includes a provided margin for the dealership. However in truth the vehicles are actually worth less as McDonalds sources these directly from the Subaru national distributor. Dealership yards are only involved as collection points, but don't come from the dealership's own stock.

• So the 24 base model Suzuki Swift GL probably have an actual wholesale value to McDonalds of $11,000 each. They may actually even be provided for less, as Suzuki is getting free publicity out of this as well.
• There are 4 Suzuki S-Cross GLX (which is one tier up from base model for the S-Cross). These would have a higher wholesale worth in the region of $25,000 each.

But fair enough, there is website administration costs, staff to chase down and handle vehicles, television and internet advertising costs, distribution of material and updated menus to restaurants, training of staff, software updates for the registers, and probably more things I can't think of. Additionally they may have to pay for independent auditing for approval by the ACCC.

Lets say the full cost to McDonalds is $1,000,000. That may be slightly conservative.

Can they recoup that cost? They most likely wouldn't be wanting to turn a profit from the whole venture, but just try to get more people into the restaurants to develop a greater market share and cultivate the habit of eating there in a larger number of people. That would pay off in the long run.

So the approved menu items to get an entry code start at $10, with options to further add cost by upsizing or picking more premium menu items. But lets assume that each meal sold is $10 and 15% goes to the McDonalds corporation.

So they need additional sales (not conversions of existing regular sales) to recoup cost and achieve their goal of increasing market share.

So at $1.50 per sale, that means 666,667 additional meal sales over the month of February, or 23,810 per day.

There are 900 stores across Australia, as reported by McDonalds themselves, so they need 27 Amore meal sales per store per day, without a drop in their regular sales.

Does that seem unachievable?

Most McDonalds operate 24 hours, with the exception of the ones within mall food courts. Even if the outlets were averaged out of operate 13 hours a day, then they just need 2 people an hour. That's 2 people an hour who either make an added trip to McDonalds, or normally wouldn't go but want to have a shot at getting a car. Even if I was under with my estimate of total cost to the company, I think that the potential to cover their cost is still very reasonable.

Would sales die each day after the car was won? Apparently no. You wouldn't know if you missed out, as McDonalds won't announce the details of the winner for at least 3 business days, as they seek to contact and verify the eligibility of the winner, including sighting the related ticket. So it is quite likely that the announcement that the prize for the day has been won, will only come the following day, if not several days after.

There will be 28 fortunate people across Australia with a new car that only cost them $10 by the end of the month. But the real winner will be McDonalds who won't be out of pocket, but would have potentially trained Australians to eat McDonalds 666,667 more times each month.

If there's love, then its the board of directors loving the sound of money.

Sombre thoughts because its only mid-week.

I started thinking about general scams this morning, and as I pondered ideas on how criminals in scams could be traced or caught, it eventually led to bigger problems.

Any solution to counter crime, winds up with measures that the general population don't like, and the reason for this is because the measures have to applied across everyone, as any person could be a criminal. So everyone is impacted because of a minority.

For example: the security tags now on clothes. Now your clothing item already has one or two very small holes before you've even gotten it home, and its an additional wait at the checkout while the tags are removed.

But this is minor when we look at serious problems. Take a country which is experiencing serious anarchy or militant activity. The presence of security checkpoints at a number of places means that going to markets, hotels, government offices, crossing into safe zones, all slow down what should be a easy and quick trip.

The application of civilian ID cards, tracking devices, detailed surveillance and phone tapping, all help detect possible threats and trouble, but also mean that a malicious government could use it for their own purpose, such as ethnic cleansing or factional bias.

It makes me see all my 1st world problems for the petty issues they are, when I see that much of the trauma and heartache in the world stems from the corruption and self serving that exists in all of us, but because it isn't always restrained, then it causes loss and suffering around.

God tells us of the sin that exists in every person:

"None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands; no one seeks for God." Romans 3:11

Maybe you believe, maybe you don't. But ponder why people are the cause of much of the suffering to each other, and see if that does not illustrate a world that has turned its back on its creator.

Bad calories are bad.

At the office we have one of those commercial fridges available for the staff to use. All our lunches, snacks, milk for tea and coffee, etc all get put into there as a convenience for employees.

I think most larger offices tend to also run social clubs. Clubs which organise social activities to keep employee morale up and to try and reduce staff attrition. To fund the activities of the social club, then the sale of snacks and soda is one of the main sources of revenue, otherwise they'd have to have a monthly fee for the social club members.

In our case, we have the snacks. Part of that is a large shoebox which is filled with those kids sized mars bars and the like, and this sits prominently in the fridge. Quite often, including just a few minutes ago, I saw the usual battle of people who wrestle with the afternoon calorie craving and stand in front of the fridge staring at the chocolates while they try to weigh up between a guilty conscience and gratuitous snacking.

The most recent case involved our CTO, and this time it seems his conscience won.

Good effort!

Pop Culture

I don't know how much anime Japan turns out each year. I tried a quick Google search, but the vast majority of articles that turned up were all focused on the shrinking financial returns, and concerns that there was no longterm viability with the way that the industry currently operated.

I'm not going to go into that here as many people cover it better, but rather I was surprised by coming across this advert on YouTube:

Although the manga version started almost 5 years ago, the animated version of the series was apparently quite successful both in Japan and overseas. Even so that Subaru used it in their recent advert. Maybe that is common in Japan, in the way that I'd posted about aspects of Matrix featuring in a US car advert?

I just find watching pop culture trends interesting, guess I'm still new at paying attention to this stuff.

Not happy with Officeworks

Today I went to collect some office supplies for home, from OfficeWorks. They have some stuff that can only be ordered online, but with the option that if you don't want to pay for delivery, then you can collect it from the nearest Officeworks outlet of your choice.

This sounds pretty sweet until I went to collect my gear today. I hadn't ever made use of this before, but when I wandered into the store, the first thing that became apparent was that there was nothing clearly labelled as a collection point. The order is already paid for online, so all that is left is to turn up, present my order receipt and go.

The guys at the print desk only dealt with printing orders, so I found a guy at a checkout who was just finishing up serving a customer and he happily took my paperwork. After about 3minutes he came back and told me to line up in the only other checkout which was now 7 people long.

Despite my protests that it was already paid for, the answer remained the same, so another wait to stand in line to just pick up my box from the checkout desk.

To be honest, all up, it was only about 10min in store. But I didn't quite see why I had to queue in a checkout queue to pick up the box that the first guy had already run around to the back to bring up.

To top it off, I was reminded once again why you should open the box to check stuff in store: OfficeWorks no longer puts packaging in their boxes for online orders. The idea is to save materials, and reduce costs, to result in "savings for the customer". It also means that they jammed my ream of paper in sideways, now meaning I am the proud owner of 500 sheets of bent paper.

*sigh*

Well, later this week will be interesting as I also have a document printing order in with them that is still being processed, so I'll post on how that goes in a few days time.

Smelly socks?

Even though I sit at a desk in a airconditioned office all day, I find my feet get hot in my sneakers during the day, so I'd taken up the practice of taking my shoes off once I'm at my desk, for quite some years now.

OH&S issues aside, I only just realised that wondering into the mens washroom in my socks isn't actually the best practice, as alot of guys have terrible aim. It's also made me realise that there have probably lots of invisble nasties infesting my footwear.

Not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Anyway, I'm pleased to reassure you that I've changed my habits, although you most likely still will never ever ever borrow my shoes.

Hot potato!

I worked for Motorola, one of their Australian software houses, for almost 10 years. I was actually about 3 months short of hitting that milestone when my final day came after being retrenched.

But it was pretty much my first permament job and I'd developed an odd passion for it while I was there. I poured money into buying their shirts, pens, desk ornaments, phones, commemorative memorabilia, and other really useless junk.

I'd also get into occassional debates at why Motorola was the better phone, even though the market was showing we were getting outstripped by Nokia and Sony-Ericsson, and hounded by the likes of LG. This was even in the days before Apple and Samsung. Those debates were always lost, heh. Should have known. When you are trying to defend a electronics brand, and the general person on the street doesn't even know that they make that? Kinda means you're unlikely to convince them that its a good item.

Well the old guard lacked innovation, and Motorola was the first to crumble, followed by Sony-Ericsson and, to my surprise, even Nokia.

Motorola's mobile division eventually got sold to Google, and a little part of me that still cherished my 'Moto' t-shirts, fervently hoped that Google's innovation would revitalise the brand.

No luck. Its still dead. It is so dead, that Google who bought it at US$12.5 billion 2 years ago, has just agreed to sell it for US$2.3billion to Lenovo. Of course the article at SMH states that Google is keeping a large portion of Motorola's patents. Which means that if Lenovo uses parts of Motorola tech that rely on any of those patents, they will then have to pay royalties to Google.

It makes me sad. I know I should let go of any attachment to that company, but there were some pretty good people and some really good times working there.

My dad's recent foray into the smartphone industry means his current and previous phones are Motorola. I love the fact that my dad wants to support the company that I was a part of for so long.

But Dad... you can stop buying their stuff.

Fun and games with Windows Calculator

In Microsoft Windows, there are a bunch of default applications, one of which is Calculator. A fairly standard application that I just discovered something interesting about today. A picture of the application from Win 7 is below.

As computers only really know two numbers (1 and 0), there is interesting work that happens in the background when trying to deal with complex math. Take for example the following scenario:

• 3 x 3 = 9, also known as the square of 3 is 9.
• Conversely, sqrt(9) = 3 (i.e. the square root of 9 is 3).
• Hence the expectation is: sqrt(9) - 3 = 0.

Try that on Windows Calculator, and you'll get a very interesting result. Calculator is reporting a very small number, but it isn't actually quite zero.

Also if you use different numbers, e.g. sqrt(16) - 4, and so on, you'll get slight variances in the result.

The math behind why this is so, is discussed more here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/79124007-4127-4d50-a182-f91bde71e0fe/issue-in-calculator?forum=w8itprogeneral

Morpheus again

I really enjoy the Matrix movies. It's probably the slick corny lines, there-is-no-spoon messing with your head, added into a weird mix of retro, steampunk, and over the top kung-fu.

But I just saw this advert that Kia has released for the US market where they brought Laurence Fishburne in to reprise his role as Morpheus. I don't know how much that cost them to make, but if that car was being sold here, I'd be "just take my money already!!!"

I'll never get tired of 'bullet time'.

No running in the halls

They always tell children this in school. And its generally viewed as good wisdom.

But when I know that the train is coming, and the next one will be another long 10min wait, the desire to sprint just takes over.

Now I have enough restraint that I don't do this at the crowded stations, particularly in town as there isn't often the room to weave through crowds without bowling people over. But at the suburban station near the office, crowds aren't an issue, but yesterday the stairs were.

I was tired, I wanted to get home, and was already slightly fatigued from pushing the board from the office. So as I started running down one flight of stairs, I actually slipped and lost my balance near the beginning.

The human mind is kind of amazing as how so many thoughts and decisions kick in all at once, however it wasn't really the slow motion that I would wish for from the movies. It was more like 10 options suddenly thrown up on a HUD during a car accident. You almost hit one out of reflex.

Anyway, I almost saved it. Some quick foot work got me half way down while staying up right, and as I neared the bottom of the stairs, my mind whipped up two options:

a) Keep going with what has been working, or
b) Jump the remaining portion of steps

I went with (a) and ended up on hands and knees at the bottom with a stack of skin missing from one elbow.

The train was still rolling into the station so I had to pull myself up, run over to and up the next flight of stairs.

The whole thing wouldn't be quite as raw if there wasn't any spectators. Damn.

Smash it babe

In the last season of My Kitchen Rules, one of the teams was a pair of young ladies who were themed as that season's headline villains. Ashlee and Sophia were interesting for their distinct confidence and trash talking, but the thing that stuck with me the most were their favourite phrases:

"Smash it"
"Babe"

These words, and their delivery, amused me so much that I started trying to work it into my daily conversations, however my wife told me it is a "guy thing" and to "stop it".

MKR has just started up again, and I think the editors of the show are getting better at working out the psychological buttons to push on general populace to hook people in. Its now a well worked mixture of oddballs, narcissism, as well as regular conflict between extreme personalities. It does kind of work too. I find myself wanting to watch to find out about whether the girls from WA really have travelled as much as what they claim. One of the things that they didn't show in the MKR adverts, was that one of the pair, Kelly, had worked in London for 4 years, which does open up the chance to travel more easily around Europe. It still takes money though, hence I am itching to know how extensive the travel was. But honestly, I think it is some sort of jealous hope that it is more of a case of embellishment, rather than 4 years of extensive and in-depth travel.

Realising that about myself is disappointing. I think I'll just steer clear of MKR from now on. Roll on World Cup.

I'd rather have quantity

I love ice cream. When I used to work on short expatriate assignments in the USA, the range of flavours and brands of ice cream were like a dream come true. There were even the oddball seasonal flavours that would come up, like pumpkin pie flavour during the thanksgiving season.

Not all suited my taste, but I'd discovered the cookie & cream flavour there, and after that, wasn't so interested in anything else. The other thing I liked, was that American supermarkets often did the "2 for the price of 1" sale, including on ice cream. So, at probably my worst peak, I was buying 2 half-gallon tubs of ice cream each week.

Started looking a little chubby for a while there.

Since getting married and having some wisdom and restraint provided by my better half, I definitely am in better shape and my face isn't like a moon anymore. However I just found out that the Cash and Carry stores (bulk purchase outlet) do 10 litre tubs for $15.

Dude... that is value that just can't be passed up.

The flavours on offer are a little less complicated, but if I learnt anything from Cold Rock Ice Creamery, you just need to apply a little creativity to dress up vanilla. Now these wholesalers don't just let in any Joe Public in to buy. You have to have a membership, but my road-side assistance membership includes access to Cash and Carry as a member perk.

Whee!! Found a cure for the summertime blues.

Offline for a bit

Its Australia Day weekend this weekend. I'll be without internet for most of it as I'll be off running some leadership training.

No posts for a couple of days.

Picking this post title reminded me of the movie "The Internship" where Billy keeps referring to things on the internet as being "On the line". Heh heh, makes me smile everytime.

Who? Lil' ol' me?

We have a small IT team in the company I work for, with a few IT guys on the east coast and a couple on the west. One of them has the same first name as me.

Now this isn't a big deal, but when it comes to email most people don't know, or just can't remember the email address of all their friends let alone all their work colleagues, so people end up relying on address books to do auto-completes and provide the email address they're after.

You can already see where this is going. Every now and then I get included on a systems administration email by accident when the sender meant to get the other guy, but didn't check the full name before hitting send.

Its always confusing for me, not because of the subject matter of the email, but some stupid part of me feels flattered that the sender thought I'd have some meaningful contribution to their request for help, even though I know they meant to include the other guy.

I can't workout why that part of me gets a buzz from it. Guess I'm just starved for direct positive reinforcement in my workplace...

I'll take those odds

I was checking the weather today (not sure why I bother, as its summer and I'd just spent an hour commuting through the stuff - it's hot), but I noticed this for the first time today in terms of the "chance of any rain".

 

5% chance of rain. It isn't really cloudy, not like this:

But actually more like this:

 

If that's 5% chance on a 38 degree day, and people in this country are willing to collectively throw several million dollars each week into lottery for a 0.0001% chance...

Then why didn't I see a single umbrella being carried on the train today?

Whoa, watch out.

Another odd thing I see people do comes out from when they walk, and I haven't quite got my head around why they walk this way. I tried to find some videos or pictures online to help illustrate this, but no luck, so does this mean I'm the only person who's noticed it?

I'll try to explain it here, and see whether you notice it in people as well. It's more common with ladies than men, but its still only a minority of ladies who do it.

When people walk, their arms move by their sides and generally there is just a small swing, with your arms keeping to a certain space around your body. But I've encountered a few people now, whose arms swing a moderate distance away from their hips. Some of them seem to completely have their elbows relaxed, so the forearm flicks out on the backwards stroke. This is compounded if they've relaxed their wrists as well so now the hand flicks out too. So at the point where their arm has mostly straightened and finished the backwards stroke, it is also extended sideways some distance from their body.

Now the post is not about how it looks, but what it means for me as a fellow pedestrian, particularly in a growing city with more crowded walkways and congested malls. It means its harder for me to walk past them. The space they occupy is almost double what it should, but it often catches me out as I don't notice the flicking arm thing until they've almost caught me in the leg (or worse).

And it gets more exciting when we're climbing the stairs, and I'm tearing up alongside trying to catch a train, as now their hand is at a height to catch me in the face.

This post really has no point, other than highlighting something else that irks me when I commute. I need something to balance it out.

So I found this; apparently if you swing your arms in sync with your legs (i.e. swing right arm forward when your right leg steps forward, etc), you use 26% more energy while walking, as well as also messing with your mind. (See indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/swing-arms-walking/).

I'm going to try this out next time I go walking in the evening. Just for laughs, try it too.

Don't. Stop. There.

When I catch the trains in the morning, I've noticed that by the time they reach the station where I get on, the trains come in pairs. There is the express train, and about 4 minutes after, there will be the local train. After that, its generally a 10 minute wait for the next pair.

Now the express is always full. It always starts from the furthest station, and because there is a considerable time gap between it and its preceding train, then more people have accumulated on platforms waiting for it. Now by the time it reaches the station I'm at, its generally full, so most of the time I end up having to wait for the local.

So far, this is all good. Now stuff gets interesting when the bus drops us all at the station, and we all realise that the local has just arrived. Naturally, we don't want to miss that one, as it means almost a 15min wait doing nothing; 10min for the express we can't get on, then another 4 min for the next local.

So we rush for that train.

I've noticed on a few occassions that there are people who rush down the stairs/escalator, sprint across the platform, dive through the open doors into the carriage, and then stop.

Not just stop at their seat.

Not just move down the carriage and then stop.

Not even take a couple of steps in and then stop at the centre support bar.

But actually stop in the open doorway. They do it while they decide to go left or right for an open seat.

So I'm right behind them, and now I can't get on, even though there's room in the carriage. I'll make my presence known, a tap on the shoulder, a subtle cough, a muttered "excuse me".

But I know one day I won't be able to pull up in time and I'm going to end up ploughing through one of these jokers.

The Nod?

I drag my skateboard with me on the bus and train every day as I commute to work. It's been just over 2 years since I started doing this, and I can definitely say there has been a noticeable growth in the popularity of people now carrying these things around.

Before I started skating, there only be one or two occassions where I'd spot someone carrying a board. But now it has risen in popularity to the point where I now regularly see a couple of people a week, at least.

When I used to ride a motorcycle, most riders would nod to each other as they passed in traffic. It was some sort of acknowledgement that we were a minority and only seconds away from a terrifying accident or death. But here is my question: Should skateboards do a 'nod' to each other when they pass on public transport?  There are moments where we make eye contact and it seems as though the quesiton is floating through their mind as well.

My conclusion: .... I don't think so. They've all got a reputation as ratbags for a reason! ha ha ha ha.

P.S. It's not called a "wheely plank"!

Bogan fashion

First time I'd seen the 'recession collection'. Fashion just rolls on, leaving me tearful in its relentless wake.

Ice Queen

One particular experience that sticks in my mind, from my car yard days, was a particular encounter with a young lady. Amusingly enough, I never encountered her in person, only over the phone.

In this yard, we had a hotline phone, so for our online and paper adverts, the number that was dialed would come through to the hotline phone that sat on a lecturn with some notepads, separate from the our desks. The rule was to take turns in answering calls that came through. If a caller enquired about an advertised vehicle, it was the responsibility of the salesperson answering the call to set an appointment, and to make sure that the caller asked for them by name so they could continue the sale.

On this occassion, the lady who called had seen an advert for a Chrysler Sebring convertible that she liked, but it turned out she had already been into the yard, and found out that the car was not available due to some mechanical issues that were being fixed. She had called through to the hotline to see if any other options were available. It seemed odd that the sales staff from that side of the yard (the Chryslers were handle by a different division) hadn't taken care of her properly, but I was happy at any opportunity presented.

Now this lady was interesting. She was a fairly high powered HR executive, and had recently bought a Holden Captiva SUV brand new. It had been a great deal at the time, but now, 6 months later, she just wanted to have the feel of the wind in her hair, and hence a convertible was now what she wanted. Knowing what Holden Captivas really were (re-badged models from when GM had bought out failing Korean car maker Daewoo), I also suspected there may have been other reasons she wanted out of that car.

Anyway, digging through the stock, I mentioned to the lady that we didn't have anymore Sebring convertibles available, however we had a nifty Astra convertible available at one of our other yards and that I could bring it down for her to look at. She seemed pretty sweet on the idea, so I was going to call her back when I found out when I could get it there.

Many car yards are actually part of a chain, and not in the sense of "all Toyota yards are owned by Toyota", but more along the lines of a company that owns several yards of different manufacturers spread across town, and mixed with new and used vehicles. Even though all the yards are part of the same company behind the scenes, they are all still competitors in a tough business, so it can be hard to convince another yard to pass a car from their stock to us, as it means we found a buyer and the sale will be recorded to us, instead of them. This all means that it takes time and some effort to get a vehicle from a sister yard.

It was the next day when I was able to call back my customer, and it turned out that she was rather enterprising, as befitting of her executive background. She'd dug around online, found the yard that actually had this car, and had been there to look it over.

Now I don't know how her conversation with the sales staff there went, but as she told it to me, they were rude, not very understanding, wouldn't let her test drive the car, and also wouldn't tell her how low they'd go on the car.

It seemed odd to me that these sales staff would treat a customer so poorly, but their loss was going to make an even better opportunity for me. So looking to work a silver tongue, I sought to sooth her frustrations and assure her that she would be treated as a queen at our yard. Now, still on the phone, she enquired as to what ballpark she'd be looking at if she traded in her Captiva for the Astra. She didn't want to come in, she wanted that answer now.

Over the phone she told me all the details of her car, Holden Captiva LX auto 5 seater and just under 10,000km. The car was basically new. But this was where things got interesting. Relaying the information to the yard manager, I got a shock with what he was prepared to offer. The car was a 2009 model, even though it'd been bought in 2010, and she'd gotten it during the first round of sales prior to the next model of the Captiva that was coming out as the true 2010 model. Her car, in 6 months, had dropped $9,000 dollars just because Holden yards were dumping these things to make way for the new model.

The switch from pleasant and curious to the venom and fury this lady now expressed at this news, was not something I can adequately describe, but it also made me think that perhaps there was more to the story of what happened between her and the staff at the other yard. It just conjured images of the White Witch.

Needless to say, I did not sell a Holden Astra that day.

No way....

I'd mentioned in the past that I love watching the Japanese game show: Ninja Warrior. Of course, with many things of rising popularity, other countries take on their own variant. Malaysia has theirs, and USA has American Ninja Warrior. There are most likely other countries that have their own branch too.

Occassionally competitors from those other countries show up at the Japanese course, but they rarely seem to do well. The one American I saw do quite well, though he fell out on the 3rd stage due to a technicality, was a massive US Navy Diver. A bit too much brute force in his approach, but I was quite impressed.

Anyway, I have watched a couple of episodes of the American Ninja Warrior, and you can see the differences immediately in terms of the character of competitors, and also how you get alot more sports professionals appearing.

The thing is, they generally don't seem to do as well, as more strength and muscle also means more weight and that almost always wipes out the larger competitors. So when I read that in the first formal team Ninja Warrior competition of Japan versus USA, it was a complete whitewash with the USA team winning everything (http://grantland.com/the-triangle/game-of-secrets-the-conspiracy-the-controversy-and-the-ninja-warrior-cover-up/).

I find myself thinking that it may not have been entirely legitimate either.

Persistence can pay off

There's more to that story with the lad looking at having a Ford as his first car. We did get him back a week later.

Most yards have a purchaser, or the yard manager may also take on this role. A purchaser is a person who is constantly scouring the private market and auctions to look for vehicles which can be bought cheaply and then resold through the yard. Their qualifications are simply experience in recognising a serviceable vehicle and negotiating skills in getting a good price to suit the vehicle's condition.

Our purchaser dropped in 2004 Ford Fairlane Ghia, and this car was in really good condition, complete with headset mounted television screens, and a pair of wired Bose headphones. If I was in the position to buy a car myself, and had the money, I would have bought this thing too.

Sometimes its just a matter of having the right combination of features, and as a result the young fellow was all over it even before the test drive. Occassionally, you get a car that sells itself, and it makes the job easy. I wished that had happened more than just the once...

The sweet smell of desperation

The thing I hated about being a car salesperson was the constant pressure. You have monthly sales targets to hit, and your progress towards these are charted weekly. So even if you had a great month and hit your numbers, the next month you're starting from zero again.

The yard I worked in was not a very good yard (bad location and some slightly sad stock), so I soon learned that you had to leap on any whiff of interest and also recognise the cars in the yard that appeal.

One friday, we had a family come in looking for a first car for their son who'd just gotten his license. The young lad, much like many other young men, wanted a car with a bit of shove but also communicated that they were inclined towards Fords.

We only had two Ford Falcons in stock at the time, one being a FPV that was only a couple of years old, and way out of budget, and the other being a much older XR6 that was a little tired. They left their details, but went to look further afield.

The next day, early on a saturday morning, one of our trade-ins got delivered after the customer collected their new car. It was Purple Falcon XR8, and would fall into the ballpark that this young man claimed to be looking for. Problem is that customers rarely clean their trade-in when they collect their new car, and cleaners don't work saturdays. So after calling the young man to confirm that he could come in that day, I was off into the cleaning bay with the trade-in, rolling up my sleeves and trying not to get the dirt, grease, old burgers and other junk on me, while scrubbing this car inside and out.

It wasn't as grand as a professional detail from the cleaners, but the car was presentable and the nasty stink on the inside was gone.

Didn't sell him the XR8 though. I think the dad had an unfortunate moment of clarity realising that his son behind the wheel a 5L powerplant was a bad mix, and it was his money funding the deal. I also managed to annoy the other salesmen, as the yard manager was now asking why they didn't clean cars too. Bad day, that one.

Getting a bargain

On quite a few occassions, when people find out that I worked as car salesperson for a time, they will then ask what can they do to ensure they get the best price. Its actually quite a silly question, but I do understand where they're coming from. The answer actually isn't something most people want to hear though, as it is the same answer for any purchase you make:

Do your research.

Basically, if you want to do minimal effort and just show up and buy something, then you need to be prepared that most of the time, you wouldn't have gotten the best deal around. When it comes to thinks like milk, or a pair of sneakers, then it isn't a big deal. But when it comes to the bigger things in life, such as cars, a little bit of effort goes a long way.

It surprises me that people don't accept this for cars. Instead they want some magic keyword, like a secret masonic handshake, that unlocks the wholesale price without haggling. Or they can't understand why, when they ring the dealership and ask for the "best price", the sales person just laughs them off.

Ultimately, the salesperson wants you in the yard, as they make money by making a sale. Selling a car cheaper than anyone else, means that they aren't making as much money as they should. And as I've mentioned in a past post, they're still a business and bills need to get paid.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't anything you can do. There may be some tricks to torture and put the screws on the salesperson, but ultimately that is both inconsiderate and hypocritical for the buyer.

Just do your research. This means:

1. Get to know what you want. You can't know what a good price to pay for a car is, if you don't know what car you want. You need to invest time in writing down your needs, then looking at different cars to see what fulfils those needs.
2. Once you have a shortlist of cars you want, or ideally have even identified just the one car you want, you can then start utilising the internet to see what price this car is going for in different dealerships across your city. If the car is not brand new, then you can even start looking at the private market to see the prices there.
3. When it comes to new cars, not all dealerships will list the price of what they have in stock. But there are many that will, and this will give you an idea on what to expect. Some yards will be cheaper and they can achieve that as perhaps they focus on getting more of their profit through finance or accessories, and they won't have room left on the price to haggle. Generally the cheapest price on a new car that you find online, is going to be the lowest price you can haggle to. If that dealership is not close to you, you can take their advert to your closest dealer, and see if they'll match it.
   NOTE: Occassionally you'll get a yard who has a new vehicle ridiculously cheap. This is because they have allocated 1 or 2 vehicles to be sold at cost but to serve as a legitimate headline to pull customers into the yard. Once those 1 or two specific vehicles are sold though, you won't be able to get that price. So if you want to use their advert to beat another yard down, you need to know if that first yard still has those headline vehicles still available.
4. Ultimately, be prepared to walk. Just because Dealership A has the car at $20,000, doesn't mean that Dealership B (closer to your house) can beat it, or even match it. Every dealership has different margins and may have different amounts owing on their stock that they need to recover, so if they can't (or won't) get to the price you want, then just politely thank them and bid them good day. Sometimes the price they are offering you, really may be the lowest that that yard can go to.
5. Just a reminder that a used vehicle dealership can't match the prices you see in the private market. This is because any business has overheads, and you're getting a warranty (however limited), whereas in the private market its 'caveat emptor'.

Bottom line; if you don't do your research and don't know what the best price is, then its pretty silly to ask the salesperson to give it to you.