buter's BABY blog

You ever have one of those days where it seems you didn't sleep right, and you end up all fuzzy through the day?

Yeah, I had one of those yesterday.

I've decided therefore, that 5 days weeks are bad, we should have 4 day weeks for the main part, with the bonus that public holidays mean that we get a 3 day week every now and again.

This would solve so many problems!! There's the problem of long weekend traffic on the not-so-common 3-day weekends - Friday night traffic out of the CBD is utterly crapola and so if there was a 3 day weekend every week it wouldn't be so bad, since you wouldn't have 250,000 extra people all driving up to the Central Coast on that one long weekend, instead some of those people would drive up next weekend. Because they can. Of course you could say instead that every weekend the traffic will be utterly crapola, but I think that wouldn't happen. After all, we don't all drive up the coast every weekend already, why would we do it when we have a 3-day weekend every week? I'm sure it's only the specialness of the 3-day weekend that makes the traffic crapola.

Another problem solved would be the midweek hump day, commonly known as Wednesday, when weekends seem so far away in either direction. If you only have a 4-day week, no hump day, since on Tuesday the weekend was only a day or so ago, and on Wednesday, the weekend is only a day or so away! No hump day makes for no boring Wednesday-itis where all your coworkers look depressed because the weekend is so far away in both directions.

And here's a thing - having a 4-day week would help out all those Soccer mums - instead of losing a quarter to half of the weekend ferrying kids to and from school sports on a Saturday morning, and thus having less time to do grocery shopping, household cleaning and all that boring stuff, there would be the option to carry out the sport thing more spread out (no more 7am starts in winter...) or get it over with all on the one day and then *still* have a whole 2 days to do all the family catch-up stuff.

As for economic sense - since it seems most salaried workers in Australia work at least 10 hours a day anyway, but only get paid for 8, why not keep pay rates the same (i.e. paid for 40 hours) even though we're only working 4 days - that way we actually get paid for the hours we work, rather than the hours we are nominally employed for. Doesn't that sound fair? And maybe it would make the workplace more efficient too.

Look, to be fair, I think it would even work if we didn't all take the same 3rd day - some people take Friday and some Monday - the Sat/Sun common days are enough for sport, social events and all that, and meanwhile we all get our extra day.

Hey. I heard the public service can sort-of do this already with flexi time. Why isn't that standard for the rest of us?

now watch me disappear in a puff of ill-humoured smoke ..... grummble rummble grumf ..

There are so many reasons the internet is cool. Forget the fact that D™ and I spent another evening sitting on the lounge next to each other with our separate laptops surfing the web. The thing is just a huge repository of good and useful geeky information.

Take for instance those mistyped URLs in your address bar. Because of the friendly way Firefox remembers your URLs and gives you autocompletion, the broken ones show up in the options list as well. Sometimes, they show up first. But all you have to do is shift+delete the b0rked one and it goes away. Noice, thanks Lifehacker.

Or, how about those times you're typing a long complicated email (or even a short frivolous one) in Outlook and you get all excited and hit *some* combination of keys that somehow just *sends* your email. Just like that. With no warning. After putting up with that for 2 years of using Outlook, I finally g00gled for it and found two things:

1. the mysterious shortcut is Ctrl+Enter. I know you can avoid weird automatic sending if you just don't fill in the address line of the email, but it's likely that your long complicated message is a reply so has a long complicated address line comprising To:, CC:, and BCC: lines so that's not always an option; and

2. There is a regedit to disable it. Ignore the stuff he says about Word unless you use Word as your email editor. Who does that? Seriously?

Yay Google.

I've discovered something today.

Stories published in newspapers are quite likely to only present one side of any given story and in this age of internet debate, the fact that I can't add a comment to any news story that I want to (unlike on a blog, for example) is quite annoying.

Anyway what's got me hot-n-bothered now is the Shlock! Horror! idea that technology is taking kids' time away from their parents. You can go read the whole thing, but here's the key quote:

The research by telco AAPT has revealed that 16 to 20-year-olds spend an average of 3.2 hours a day using technology.

This compares with just two hours of face-to-face communication spent with parents.

Almost half of the 1000 parents surveyed believed two hours was not enough time and would prefer about seven hours of face-to-face time with their children throughout the day.

Ok. But "telco AAPT" didn't ask, or didn't report, whether parents have ever been able to get 7 hours of face-to-face time with their children.

Wouldn't kids be diverting their time to playing outside, hanging out with friends, watching TV, hiding in their rooms, or on the phone, anyway? This is just a new way that they are not spending time with their parents. I'd be surprised if there are many families out there that get 7 hours of face to face time together daily where there is a TV, DVD player, VCR or even separate rooms for goodness' sake.

Jeez, D™ and I don't even get that. Not on weekdays anyway - maybe we get 4 hours a day? Some of which we spend watching TV so make that 3. Some of which is spent separate because of personal hygiene reasons, so make that 2.5. Some of which is spent separate because (for example) one of us is cooking and one is watering the garden. So make that 2. Oh dear. Technology has a lot to answer for doesn't it.

Although it is funny that the other day he said to me, "I read your blog at work because you're not there and it's like having a conversation with you." While being an alarmingly cute thing to say, it does support AAPT's other finding:

Despite this, almost 80 per cent believe technology has dramatically helped their family to stay in contact.

So there you go.

Edit:
D™ and I just spent about 1/2 an hour playing with Cozi. In the same room. With our backs to each other. In order to become more connected. Life's like that.

So, Premmia Iemma has sacked a minister for reasons which might be related to him being a man or might be related to domestic violence against women - "Australia says no" and all that. But Iemma denies the second reason, saying it's solely to replace a woman who left with a woman. (Isn't that positive discrimination anyway???)

The Liberal (and media) stance is that it's all about the domestic violence thing and that the press conference was a farce. Barry O'Farrell's comment though, is pure gold.

The Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, said Mr Iemma's statement that the decision had nothing to do with the violence allegations was "like saying the Easter bunny's got nothing to do with Easter".

I guess Bazza O'Fazza hasn't heard of Jesus? Or maybe he was just emphasising that he actually agrees with ol' Morrie.

Either way, my opinion on the outcome of the last NSW state election is reinforced. It's just too too depressing. I'm in the 126% of people in NSW who don't like either party (from disapproval ratings of 59% for the incumbent and 67% for the opposition).

So, you might have heard at some point that one of my favourite flicks is Clueless, for several reasons, if you know me, you'll know why the film appeals, and if you don't know me or you haven't seen it then there's no point explaining it to you!

It's full of American cultural references that I didn't understand the first time I saw it, but because of clever writing that doesn't really matter - the context makes it obvious. But as I've gone through experiencing life (or at least experiencing the internet) I've come to understand more and more of it. I wouldn't say the references have enriched the movie, but I find it highly amusing that a film I saw in 1995 is the first time I heard some of these terms.

Ok, so rather than bore you any more with the slow slow workings of my mind, here's what I mean.

MEL : Which reminds me, where's your report card?

CHER : It's not ready yet.

MEL : What do you mean, "it's not ready yet?"

CHER : Well, some teachers are trying to low-ball me, Daddy.

For years I thought she said the teachers were trying to lobe on her. No idea what that meant. But once I figured out the bidding thing on EBay, I got it.

And now, thanks to the Goog, I've finally got this line:

CHER : Here's the 411 on Mr. Hall. He's single, he's 47, and he earns minor duckets for a thankless job.

411 !! Information !! I get it !!

I still don't get "duckets" but at least the urban dictionary is always ready to offer a helping hand.

Oh, it's all very sad and ridiculous isn't it. But seriously, surely I'm not the only one out there who just lets things slide if you don't understand them, and if they don't seem that important. I mean, how often (in Australia) do you hear - or use - the term 411 in conversation? Really? So cultural references in film don't always translate, come to think of it, nor do they translate in books particularly well. How many non-Aussies find The Castle incomprehensible, for instance?

And then the other day I heard that the ad man who created the "shrimp on the barbie" campaign to send to America had passed away. But what got me was what the original campaign was about.

AD GUY 1 : How are we gonna advertise Oz to the Yanks?
AD GUY 2 : Guess we could invite them over for a couple of snags on the barbie?
AD GUY 1 : Hmm, good idea, but will they know what a snag is?
AD GUY 2 : Umm - "Banger on the barbie"?
AD GUY 1 : And we want to show that we have access to great seafood rather than just gristle and fat encased in sheep intestines. Might remind them that we're all convicts or something.
AD GUY 2 : Right. "Prawn on the barbie"?
AD GUY 1 : Prawn... prawn... would they know what that is?

And lo and behold, rather than reeducate the masses as to what a prawn is, they all come here wondering where all the shrimp are. No 411 there.

<sigh>

You ever have one of those days when you shoulda just stayed in bed?

My Monday sucked - I agree, most Mondays suck, but especially when your day goes like this:

• got to work, that bit was ok, thought "i'd better put some dollars into my keycard account" so logged in to ANZ, sent the transfer, all seemed hunky dory
• called MBF to upgrade our hospital cover .. well that failed because apparently even though anyone with my mbf card can do it over the internet, I can't do it over the phone .. sheesh
• went to eastgardens at lunch, but started by turning the wrong way out of the driveway..
• finally managed to get there, so went to the ATM to get that cash I shoved into my keycard account, oh it seems I neglected to hit confirm at the new exciting second confirmation page of my internet banking so the extra cash was missing (at this point I should have given up)
• went to Target to try to exchange a funky cardy that I bought on Saturday that D™ reckons was too big, the woman helpfully took it from me at the refunds counter and gave me an exchange note, then I spent 15 minutes getting lost in an unfamiliar Target and then finally walked out cardy-less because not only did they not have the cardy in my size they didn't even have it in the slightly wrong size ... or colour ... or anything ...
• got takeaway for lunch, finally, and didn't really want it but I knew I needed it ...
• nearly lost my car in the carpark, pretty much chose an aisle at random to walk down thinking I had ages to go to get to the car and then discovered it was on the other side of the aisle I'd chosen - purely by chance ...
• got back to the work carpark and someone had taken my space .. had to randomly trawl for a spot in the sunny zone on a different level of the carpark to where I normally park
• got back to the office, sat down and only managed to eat half the takeaway because it was just .. not very exciting ..
• was putting the leftover in the fridge (this was about 1.50pm) when dude walks in looking like he wanted me for something, I said "what you after?" he said "that meeting you scheduled, I'm here" .... me: o_O ".... ? Oh. *That* meeting. Right. Let me just get my notebook ...."
• had a meeting from 2- 3.50 at which point I had to leave in a hurry so I could get to target at Macquarie to try to find my bloody cardy ..
• lost my car *again* as I walked to the wrong part of the carpark because I'd had to park elsewheres ...
• finally on the road, heading the right way this time, I think I ran a red light at broadway ... all the other cars had stopped ... Hmmmm....
• decided to take the bridge and new exciting tunnel, managed to get out before the M2 started (At which point I foolishly thought I'd made it through the day) - got to Mac in plenty of time ..
• and went to target. They didn't have the cardy in either the good size or the slightly too big size. Asked the ladies at the exchange counter to ring around for me, no it's not at Parra or Carlingford, so as far as I'm concerned it's nowhere and I don't even have the too-big one, all I have is a bloody credit note.
• Finally got home (didn't lose my car this time) through stupid "leaving north ryde heading west" traffic at which point it surely *had* to be over ...
• posted the monster laptop sleeve story and then today I heard that the image didn't post properly from picasa and so had to fix it tonight!

I'm so glad that next week due to a religious observance, there is no Monday.

A while ago I read about a place making monster sleeves for laptops, and at the time I thought "cool, kinda cute and quirky" ...

I described the concept to D™ and before you could say "Grr! Arrgh!" we were off to Spotlight to select fuzzy fabrics.

Unfortunately for the monster-in-waiting, you could then say Grr! Arrgh! a great number of times before I actually got connected to a sewing machine to create the fuzzy laptop muncher.

But .. it all came good in the end.



I feel like I have achieved something, if only giving birth to a monster. But that's still something!

Yes, I will take orders. Contact me if you want one and I'll see what I can do for you ;)

... you decide to do one of those internetty quizzes because you saw it on a blog you tend to actually respect now and then just to fill up a blog post.

1. Where is your cell phone? Elsewhere.
2. Describe your boyfriend/girlfriend? Smashing.
3. Your hair? Comfortable.
4. Your mother? Practical.
5. Your father? Kind.
6. Your favourite item? Pendant.
7. Your dream last night? Snored.
8. Your favourite drink? Milk.
9. Your dream car? Silver.
10. The room you are in? Kitchen.
11. Your ex? Dull.
12. Your fear? Ignorance.
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Older.
14. Who did you hang out with last night? D™
15. What you're not? Infertile.
19. The last thing you did? Dinner.
20. What are you wearing? PJ's
22. Your favourite book? Magician.
23. The last thing you ate? Bread.
24. Your life? Full.
25. Your mood? Calm.
26. Your friends? Gorgeous.
27. What are you thinking about right now? Chocolate.
28. Your car? Maxy.
29. What are you doing at the moment? Wondering.
30. Your summer? Humid.
31. Your relationship status? Married.
32. What is on your tv? Mythbusters.
33. When is the last time you laughed? Now.
34. Last time you cried? Then.
35. School? Private.

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