We’re off at 4pm, and hopefully around 36 hours later should hop off a plane in Vienna. Hopefully.
I’ll be uploading pics to the online gallery, and maybe – just maybe – will put some stuff on the Blog that Never Changes.
I’ll be using my gmail address while away, so you’ll either know it, or know someone who does. I hope everyone is well, and look forward to seeing you some time toward the end of September 🙂
http://www.simpsonizeme.com is the place to do it then.
When my picture has finished processing, I may remember to edit this post and include it.
If I remember that is…
I saw this on our street driving home from the gym.
Yes, that’s a supercharged 5.5 litre, 368kW, 700Nm, V8 Mercedes Benz E55 with an L-Plate on it. One of the 3 fastest sedans in the world – 0-100km/h in 4.5 seconds – with enough torque (that’s the happy juice that makes the car go sideways) to pull a train backwards.
If one is going to get confused between brake and accelerator why not do it in style? At least it has 10 airbags to make the stop at the end as fun and exciting as getting there. I personally can’t think of a better set of wheels to learn to drive in…
When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go….but could you?
Outside: 
Inside: 
There’s either a very large baby out there with a serious case of the squits, or considerable precipitation is about.
Regarding TelstraClear’s announcement about axing 100 jobs in NZ and moving some core activities to Australia:
“Dr Freeth says the changes will reduce TelstraClear’s cost base and should improve its efficiency. Because of Telstra’s scale, “they can do things much faster and much cheaper than we can”.
How on earth are we meant to take the piss when they do it so well themselves? Not fair!
Two blonde girls were working for the city public works department. One would dig a hole and the other would follow behind her and fill the hole in. They worked up one side of the street, then down the other, then moved on to the next street, working furiously all day without rest, one girl digging a hole, the other girl filling it in again.
An onlooker was amazed at their hard work, but couldn’t understand what they were doing. So he asked the hole digger, “I’m impressed by the effort you two are putting in to your work, but I don’t get it — why do you dig a hole, only to have your partner follow behind and fill it up again?”
The hole digger wiped her brow and sighed, “Well, I suppose it probably looks odd because we’re normally a three-person team. But today the girl who plants the trees called in sick.”
The entry below about ticket agencies is reminiscent of 6-8 years ago when banks were pushing customers to use telephone, and later internet banking, as it would be ‘less expensive and everyone would win!’.
This did occur for a while, until the prices were hiked, and the banks started making even larger piles of profit by charging as much for an automated transaction as they were for a much more resource intensive manual transaction. Further to this, creating tertiary accounts with no transaction fees can be very habit forming for students who graduate and start earning reasonable money; a reasonable portion of which go to banks in the form of transaction fees and interest on credit cards obtained while studying.
The fee structures for banking has also contributed in large part to the increase in credit card transactions in the past few years. Many people take advantage of the fact that there are no transaction fees, a reasonable interest free period, and many have their day to day funds linked to (relatively) inexpensive long term borrowing.
The banks are of course more than happy for the consumer to use their money, instead of their own, as there are transaction costs, interest costs, etc etc.
Earlier this week there was an interesting piece on Fair Go examining the amount the consumer pays for booking fees for tickets to various types of events.
The show examined three vendors; Ticketek, Ticketmaster, and TicketDirect. The first two charge a flat transaction fee. Hence the consumer can pay $8.00 for the privilege of doing most of the work for the agency.
Considering this, I’m sure it’s just coincidence and a genuine care for the customer that has prompted the move to limiting the number of tickets that can be purchased in one transaction to make it more difficult for ticket scalpers and the like.
TicketDirect has a different structure due to it’s existence coming about because a large number of venues and organisations wanting to bring in house control of the ticket selling process once more. From what I’ve seen, the transaction costs on this site range from free to $2 a ticket, and is set by the venue/organisation themselves.
This is far more reasonable when purchasing a ticket for $10-$20 with a maximum 20% booking fee as opposed to 80% from one of the other vendors.
Consumer: be warned (or afraid; very afraid).