Someone needs to check the offices of the Local Puppy Trainer for strange substances in their water cooler.
First it was the column on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and now you have a columnist, Wendy Victoria, complaining about the Sunday liquor laws and the proliferation of religious symbols on the desks at the tax collector’s office.
This is no place to be discussing the separation of church and state, much less endorsing it on principle.
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
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8 comments
Ahhh… Nice to see things are mostly the same after my 3 week forced absence from the internet’s. 😉
Things I learned:
1. I never want to move ever again and will joyfully kill anyone who suggests it! 😉 (OK… maybe just harm slightly)
2. The *country* (Regional Victoria) is SO much more friendly, cheaper, easier to deal with, and saner in almost every way than the Big City!!
3. I almost died of shock when Telstra *ACTUALLY* fixed a problem without me hiring several lawyers and contacting every media personality in the phone book!! AND… they did it FAST! I musta slipped through some kinda weird dimensional shift thingy into an alternate Universe! Maybe Telstra employees here never got the memo that they are NOT supposed to be helpful or actually do any work to earn the billions in profits the company get’s. Amazing. (Alternatively, I died and this is a last second dream of the way things should be). 😉 The contractor that turned up replaced the entire phone line and conduit all the way to the main telco junction down the street, replaced all the phone jacks with new ones with dual phone/ADSL sockets (built in filters) and added a new one in the bedroom, and did it all in less than a day! Amazing! (I know… I said that already… but… it’s just Amazing!!) LOL
4. Doctor’s here are much better than the quacks I had to deal with in the city and actually treat me like a patient with problems that need fixing rather than a nuisance that wastes their valuable time they could be using to give hopeful stupid old women (you know… the 50-60 YO’s who think they are still 18 or can look 18) botox injections for exorbitant sum’s of money! Ie… They actually seem to practice *medicine* here! Amazing! 😉 LOL (It’s my new fave word… you can tell…) 😉
In a strange twist of irony… I now live about 8km from the phone exchange, where I was living before was about 2km… But the quality and performance of the connection here is SOOOOO much better!! And I don’t just mean subjectively… the line SN ratio is much better, Noise Margin much higher (20dB! Was only 12 when I was 2km away), etc. Amazing! 😉
Anyway… Just thought I’d let anyone interested know what’s happening. 🙂 I have so much to catch up on.
Still sad about Andante. 🙁 *sigh* it’s always the good ones, and the bastards seem to live forever. Maybe that does prove there is a God. Why would he want the bastards? I dunno. *shrug*
I know what you mean about moving, and agree that it is to be avoided at almost all costs.
It has been my experience that the monopolies tend to subcontract everything in rural areas, and the contractors are paid by the job, so they have an incentive to finish their work quickly to be available for the next job.
In urban areas they overschedule people to ensure their employees have no time to relax, and the techs are all stressed.
There are fewer connection points in rural wiring than urban and fewer sources for interference so the S/N ratio should be better. When they converted from wirewrap pin blocks to the the current punch blocks around here everything turned to crap. Those punch blocks save a lot of time on installation by eliminating the need to use a wire stripper, but they don’t always make a good connection especially in our salt air environment.
I would think that you new doctors live there to practice medicine, rather than making money, which makes a huge difference. The older doctors around here are fine, as was the old hospital, but the new crew moved in with the rising housing market and the wealthier retirees and they are a royal PITA. All we have any more are specialists. The primary care physician does nothing more that route you to a specialist. When you go to one specialist for an infected wound, and different specialist for an internal infection, things have gotten out of hand. If it were possible I would have myself declared a cat so I could go to a vet to be cured, rather than routed.
I’m still trying to put together a post on Andante, but the task is still too difficult at the moment.
every time i take curmudgeon cat to the vet, i try to accidentally on purpose stick my hand in the way of the needle that’s meant for the cat. he feels better after all the shots, why can’t i have some of that?
glad you checked in kryten. you were gone so long, i was afraid you might have moved to the u.s. or something. and if you tell me that the doctors in your new place all make housecalls, i’m going to be seriously jealous.
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I know what you mean about living in rural areas and the attitudes of people there. Here (in Aus), we have classified 3 distinct community types, metropolitan, regional, and rural. The rural communities are small in population but cover a huge area and get the minimum of services possible! Regional are generally the towns that exist just outside of the metropolitan centers and have a medium population covering small-to-medium clusters of towns. Metropolitan are the main city’s of course. I now live in one of the biggest regional centers in Aus with a population of about a qtr million, there is a main city center and it has several suburbs. It has only 1 main exchange servicing all those people (though there are a half dozen small sub-exchanges, but they are Telstra only and primarily for POTS). Where I was living was a large suburb of Melb, but was less than half the size of this town. My ISP (same one I had before) doesn’t use Telstra (one of the reasons I chose them) so they can only feed from the main exchange. Telstra use a loophole in the regulations to only supply wholesale services or rent space in the main exchanges. Legislation conveniently forgot to mention sub-exchanges, so Telstra keeps it’s monopoly on those. (Yes, Politicians are as bad here as in the USA! What a shock.) 😉 So… In terms of numbers of users etc of this exchange, my service should actually be worse. 🙂 I’m not complaining of course, but I am curious. I’ve heard rumors for years that Telstra deliberately give the minimum service they have to in the metro area, because if you sign up with Telstra (on a 3-year blood contract) your service amazingly improves (for exorbitant prices). 🙂 It took two weeks to get a connection here because Telstra have 14 days in regional areas to comply with a connection request, it’s 7 days in metro and 30 days in rural areas. If we had signed with Telstra, we would have been connected within 48 hours. The ACCC keeps taking Telstra to court, and Telstra keep paying the $million fines. *shrug* When you make $billions in profit… who cares?
What a system. *sigh*
I understand about Andante mate… Yeah. Been there. There’s nothing I can say to help, but you know how I feel.
And, for what it’s worth… It’s good to be back. I missed this place! 🙂 Was my first stop when I got online! How sad is that? 😉 😆
Heyyy hipparchia!! 😀 We posted at the same time (almost). 😉
I missed you too! Really. 🙂
I understand about pet’s and vet’s… I was the same! 😀
Hope you and family and all your cat’s are doing well! 🙂
If you start typing in all caps, Hipparchia, we’ll know that you succeeded and Curmudgeon has been getting steroids. 😉
I see “deregulation” works as well in Australia as the US. The rules on leasing space are very similar, as well as the dodges that make them annoying. If there were a little prison time for the directors in the case of multiple offenses I think the situation would probably improve overnight, but as long as it is just considered part of the business plan, nothing will change.
I appreciate the vote of confidence, Kryten. This is US “dead time” as we are approaching a holiday weekend and Washington empties out. You didn’t miss much.
RAWR [as in wishful thinking]
we’re all still hanging there, kryten, and i’m going to spend my 3-day weekend sleeping late and getting up just in time to go to picnics. after which i’ll need some afternoon naps.
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