The Chronicles Of…

3 Sux. As in the telephone company “3″.

This our second 24 month contract with 3, and the second time that both of our phones have crapped out just after 12 months in… which means that they’re just out of warranty to be fixed for free and not quite far enough into the contract for them to offer another phone…

They’ve got good capped plans but the hardware is guff and there’s no love and no help from the Indian call centre…

So my phone broke again on Wednesday leading up to the long weekend. Just won’t read the sim card. And I’m in Dubbo and no one fixes phones in Dubbo… But there is a Dick Smith electronics in Dubbo and they happen to sell “outright” phones which aren’t connected to any telephone company. So I picked up a cheapy and now I’m set to see out my contract with 3 but $150.00 poorer for the experience (not including the new phone we had to by for Fi, whose phone crapped out too).

No thanks to 3. 3 sux. or maybe nokia sux… but this happened on our last 3 phone which was a sony erricson… so I figure it’s all 3′s fault.

So this afternoon I was excited to be heading home for the long weekend. I finished PT, packed my bags, and drove… as far as McDonalds at Sutton Forest, where my car’s water pump blew up.

To cut a long story short, I’m now back in my room at the college, my car is at a mechanic in Goulburn, and I’m fairly upset. I’m still holding out a faint hope that either I can get the car fixed tomorrow, or that someone who’s still here by some fluke will be heading back near my place (and would also be willing to drive me back on Monday afternoon), but at this stage I’ll be spending the weekend here.

On the plus side, there’s plenty of study/fitness/boot polishing to be done, and I can get my laundry and ironing done while the place is empty. I also have a number of West Wing episodes, the second season of The Wire, and can catch up on sleep.

Trying hard to be positive.

Travelling to work this morning I hear that the first game in the State of Origin series is on tonight.

Now I’ve seen a little bit in the sports shop windows about it and heard a tiny bit in the news about team selection… but c’mon NRL, for the last couple of years, at least, you’ve had really poor advertising leading up to it, I remember almost missing it last year because it was hard to find out exactly what date the games would be played.

So all I’m asking is that the NRL pick their game up, I don’t watch that many games as it is but I will watch State of Origin and the Grand Final, and you should be thinking that maybe if I watch them I will be sucked into watching more games and thus become a supporter and a money spender into your market.

I dunno… maybe I’m asking too much…

There is also a small thought in my head that this is also channel 9′s fault, put some decent programming on, then I might watch your channel and see an ad for the State of Origin!!

Both of you, NRL and Channel 9, focus a little, concentrate on what you’re doing and maybe the State of Origin will have the hype and excitment it used to!!

Beyond 2000 has got a lot to answer for…

I don’t have my own personal robot… my car isn’t made out of banana skins (I saw that on an episode once), and I’m not living in a cashless society…

I tried to go without cash for just one week but it’s not easy.

How do you buy your egg and bacon roll from the greasy down the road? Cash.

How do you buy your single return ticket for the train? Cash.

Can I use credit? no.

Given that the NSW government is for the large part – let’s say… incompetent… Here is my bid to be the transport minister for NSW (if not a bid even for premier).

My first actions as minister for transport:

1. Start a policy of common sense (no one seems to have introduced the policy yet)
2. Print bus maps. This is fairly obvious. A map for each bus route in sydney which will displayed at all bus stops on the route and displayed at all major bus terminals so you can see what bus to catch and where it goes… Also accessed online. (why don’t we have this yet?!)
3. Part A: Build Sydney’s second airport at Goulburn. They actually want the airport there… no Badgery’s Creek resistance, plus there’s plenty of room, and it’s half way between Canberra and Sydney.
   Part B: Build a high speed train from Sydney to Canberra via Goulburn. You could be in Sydney or Canberra from Goulburn airport in under an hour! Plus more housing opportunities for commuters to Sydney or Canberra.
4. Ring up the person who made the travel card system for Hong Kong and say “hey could you build the same system in Sydney? Sydney’s transport system is 3 times smaller than Hong Kong but we managed to spend a couple of million dollars over about 8 years and have diddly squat to show for it”
5. Continue the Tram line to Dulwich Hill. The train line and the land are already there… what are we waiting for?
6. (this is ambitious) Build two autobahn style 6 lane tunnels through the blue mountains to Lithgow. You could be out in western NSW in no time! And yet again more housing opportunities…

I was traveling out west on Saturday down Richmond rd at Glendenning (Blacktown) and saw these signs…

I’ve seen these signs before, but now I have photo evidence of perhaps the dumbest poster campaign EVER.

The photos aren’t real good quality but they read “POWER POLES KILL” and “BURY CABLES NOT PEOPLE”.

Now I’m not Dr Power Poles or anything… but the last time I checked, power poles don’t really kill people… People driving cars into stationary power poles kill people… People who throw other people off power poles kill people… But power poles actively killing people…? I don’t think so… Unless of course there are indeed some psychopathic power poles out there that lurk the streets at night waiting to jump out in front of unsuspecting cars… that is a possibility… Maybe the people behind these posters know something I don’t?

But hey… Everyone is allowed to have a hobby horse, and maybe these guys are right… Maybe the government should spend the next 30 years inconveniencing the public and spending billions of dollars digging up streets and footpaths and under houses so that we don’t have big stationary objects to crash our cars into? And while they’re at it, maybe they could remove all the trees near the road too… so that we don’t drive into them. And maybe they could bull doze any other large stationary objects that people have to go out of their way to hit… like… say… houses? Traffic lights? Street lights? Post boxes? Street signs?

Yeah that sounds like a good use of money…

Maybe these campaigners will be happy if we turned the world into a desert so there’s no other stationary objects for miles that might kill us…

DUMB.

…earlier in the week, I got out of bed and went outside to find that someone had crashed into my car’s front end. Not enough to write the thing off, but enough to make me wish that they had.

I’m finding it really hard to think ‘forgiving’ thoughts towards the (unknown) driver who did it, and then left without leaving a note (beyond the single green P plate that was left behind at the scene). I have to admit that I feel similarly annoyed at the people who violated my first (and beloved) car ‘Brown’ (a 1982 Corolla), while he was left alone overnight on the side of the Princes Highway at Waterfall a few years ago.

Why am I so ‘protective’ towards my posessions? Shouldn’t I just accept my losses and enjoy the fact that I’m being humbled again, while remembering the things in life that really matter?

Because I find that hard to do. I want to hold a grudge, and be angry.

I watch Deadwood and think that the characters aren’t brutal enough with the people who cross them. I watch The Sopranos and think that Tony is really quite justified in his anger. I’m finding myself tempted to watch Fox news (that’s not actually true, I would only watch Fox news if Chuck Norris was the full time anchor, and someone paid for my cable tv subscription).

I think I’m in all kinds of trouble.

Um, hello? Has anyone spotted a problem with the rationale in taking down the “want longer lasting sex?” billboards? [The SMH article is here if you want more background]

The argument is that these billboards – which are text only – might be over-sexualizing our children. Now it might be the case (if they can read) that they’ll want to ask their parents what that sign is all about, but hey, kids start asking “where did I come from?” long before they learn to read…

But really, we haven’t hit the real heart of the flawed logic behind the removal of these signs yet.. Here’s the big problem with the rationale: everyday I go past bus shelters, shop windows, news stands, and billboards that have all sorts of erotic images on them – half naked women in underwear, swimwear, lingerie or whatever… Men and women in seductive sexualized poses, (and who knows what they’re advertising!) and yet there is no complaint.

What’s worse? A billboard that says “sex” or a billboard that shows sex? I’ve got no problem with the text. In fact these billboards are at least giving a voice to men who have real sexual issues and need help…

I think once again we’ve missed the real issue here… Print the word “sex” and we go ballistic… Try to sell me some shoes by putting a sexy brunette in underwear with big cleavage… hey, no problem…

Personally I find the image more distracting than the word.