Here in Emerald we are already about 250mm over out average annual rainfall of around 500mm.
Rain began falling around midnight last night and so far the official reading is about 50mm and from the looks of the weather maps, this rain is set to continue at the rate of around 5mm per hour for at least another 4 or 5 hours.
Rain and thunderstorms are predicted for the remainder of the weeks so it will be a wet finish to the year as well as a wet beginning for 2009.
With my recent move I had the phone transferred and in doing so they changed my home phone number.
No problems there. (Not yet anyway)
I get my invoices from iinet by email so when the invoice arrived I noticed that I had been billed for my old number up to February 2009 so I rang them up to arrange a credit on the account.
No problems there (Not yet anyway)
It was discovered that the old number had been included on the invoice because it was not disconnected and they were now telling me I had 2 lines (This is where the problems starts)
Please disconnect the old number as I do not live there anymore I asked ….. sure no problem we will do that for you and then fix your account up.
That was Tuesday …. Wednesday I find that my new phone number had been disconnected instead of the old number and as such I did not have the interrnet connected either.
Wednesday of course was Christmas Eve so there was not a lot of time to get this problem sorted out as I was well aware.
A call to iinet on Wednesday afternoon that took about 2 hours had the phone reconnected within minutes … that was after they said they would need to put the request through the normal channels and it would take about 24 hours. Of course the next day was Christmas day so I didn’t like my chances of getting the phone connected then or Boxing Day for that matter.
As it turned out, it was reconnected while I was on the phone to them blowing my top about the situation. All it took was a phone call from iinet to Telstra to make it happen as a matter of urgency.
Of course my threat to charge them $80 an hour for every hour I was not connected and my other threat to churn my account to another provider must have helped in resolving the situation in a timely manner also.
This though did not give me internet connection as provisioning for this has to be done separately and only after the phone line is active.
I was given the 31st December as the earliest it could be done given that Thursday and Friday were public holidays and followed by the weekend. I continued with my threat of charging them $80 an hour until I was reconnected and said that “OK I can handle that, given $80 an hour would be invoiced to iinet” to which they came back and said it could be done on Saturday morning.
Great, still OK by me because $80 an hour was going to give me a hefty amount to charge them still.
So now the phone is connected and then yesterday morning (Christmas day) I decided to rip some CD’s onto Windows Media Player and when I turned the computer on ………. I found to my surprise that the internet was reconnected.
Now given that it was Christmas Day, that means that sometime between 3.30pm and 4.30pm Wednesday, when our local exchange Techs knock off, the reconnection must have been made.
I guess iinet took me seriously about the charges and so they should have as I am still considering billing them for the stuff up and saw to it that everything was reconnected.
So that means that if they really want to, telco’s can connect a phone service and ADSL within hours and not days/weeks as they tend to do. It also means that Telstra can provide service to customers so why they continue to play the “waiting game” is unprofessional and totally beyond me.
Anyway, in the end I have the phone and internet connected. Oh and BTW with the “new” new connection, they gave me another phone number once again which means in the last 2 weeks I have had 3 phone numbers.
Today will see me take on yet another new role at work.
I will be staying in the shed until around 2pm and then I will be doing the Clermont afternoon mail and freight run.
Hopefully this will only happen until christmas and then I will be back out on the road fulltime. I dont like the idea of hanging around the shed all day or half the day for that matter as I tend to feel shed work is not very productive and it gives you a lot of free time whereas I like to keep busy all the time.
If there is a lot of bulk freight then it could be an advantage because that means I will be either delivering it or at least driving the forklift to places that do not have a fork to unload the freight.
With that in mind, maybe it will be for the good where we will be able to get rid of all the bulk freight on a daily basis instead of having it sit around the depot for what seems days on end as is the current case.
Oh well, time will tell I guess!
Come to think of it there are not many weekends left in this year and this one just gone was relatively quiet for me in terms of staying sober or thereabouts.
I worked on Saturday afternoon. I had to take a load of freight up to Clermont so that there would be plenty of room on the truck that went up at 3am this morning for the mail. It was a good thing I did too, because there was 16 cages of mail to go and that means it would take up about 8 spots on the truck and only left 4 for freight.
On Sunday, Speedy and I went and had a look at the unit we will be moving into in about 2 or 3 weeks time. It is not big but at least we will have separate bedrooms as it is a 2 bedder. I just need to plan everything out now but it would appear that the garage will either become the lounge room or an entertainment area and the lounge room will become the computer room. Both bedrooms are air conned so that will keep Speedy happy … me? well it wont worry me either way as I can live without aircons.
Leo turned up twice yesterday so I took advantage of his first trip by helping load his BBQ and chair onto the ute so he could take them back to Springsure with him. That’s 2 less thing’s that we have to move when we leave here. lol
Two eagles are soaring along when suddenly a passenger jet screams past
them.
One eagle says to the other, “Wow, did you see how fast that thing was
moving?”
The other replies, “Yeah. You’d move fast too if you had three assholes
and they were all on fire!”
Beside Kangaroo’s other major source’s of road kill in Australia are cattle and horse’s. Wild Pig’s, Goats and many species of birds, in particular the pink and grey Galah would be the most common of the birds to fall to road kill.
You will also see the occasional wombat.
Domestic animals also make up the road kill toll with cat’s and dog’s being the most common but these tend to occur in the towns and cities so should be referred to as Street Kill rather than the tradional Road Kill IMO
Proudly showing off his newly-leased downtown apartment to a couple of friends late night, a drunk Samoan led the way to his bedroom where there was a big brass gong hanging on the wall.
“What’s that big brass gong for?” one of the friend’s asked.
“Issss nod a gong. Issss a talking Maori clock” he drunkenly replied.
“A talking Maori clock - seriously?”
“Yup.” “Hmmm (hic).”
“How’s it work?” the second friend asked, squinting at it.
“Just watch” he said. Picking up a hammer, he gave the gong an ‘EAR-SHATTERING BASH’, and stepped back.
His three mates stood looking at one another for a moment in astounded silence.
Suddenly, a Maori voice from the other side of the wall screamed,
“For f*#k’s sake, you stupid Coconut-
It’s ten past three in the f*#king morning!!!”
There once was an Indian who had only one testicle, and whose given
name was ‘Onestone’.
He hated that name and asked everyone not to call him Onestone.
After years and years of torment, Onestone finally cracked and said, ‘If anyone calls me Onestone again I will kill them!’
The word got around and nobody called him that any more.
Then one day a young woman named Blue Bird forgot and said, ‘Good morning, Onestone.’
He jumped up, grabbed her and took her deep into the forest where he made love to her all day and all night. He made love to her all the next day, until Blue Bird died from exhaustion.
The word got around that Onestone meant what he promised he would do.
Years went by and no one dared call him by his given name until a woman named Yellow Bird returned to the village after being away.
Yellow Bird, who was Blue Bird’s cousin, was overjoyed when she saw Onestone. She hugged him and said, ‘Good to see you, Onestone.’
Onestone grabbed her, took her deep into the forest, then he made love to her all day, made love to her all night, made love to her all the next day, made love to her all the next night, but Yellow Bird wouldn’t die!
Why?
OH, come on… take a guess!
Think about it
You’re going to love this!)
(scroll down………….)
You can’t kill two birds with one stone!!
A 5-year-old boy went to visit his grandmother one day. Playing with his toys in her bedroom while grandma was dusting, he looked up and said, “Grandma, how come you don’t have a boyfriend now that Grandpa went to heaven?”
Grandma replied, “Honey , my TV is my boyfriend. I can sit in my bedroom and watch it all day long. The religious programs make me feel good and the comedies make me laugh. I’m happy with my TV as my boyfriend.”
Grandma turned on the TV, and the reception was terrible. She started adjusting the knobs, trying to get the picture in focus. Frustrated, she started hitting the backside of the TV hoping to fix the problem.
The little boy heard the doorbell ring, so he hurried to open the door and there stood Grandma’s minister. The minister said, “Hello son, is your Grandma home? ”
The little boy replied, “Yeah, she’s in the bedroom bangin’ her boyfriend.”
The minister fainted.
My job as a truck driver requires me to travel out of town quite a bit.
During these travels I tend to notice the road kill … I mean who doesn’t notice it lol
Apart from the mandatory Kangaroo, some other road kill that I have come across are Echidna which I find sad to see as they are a wonderfully strange little creature and this week I have come across quite a few that have fallen to drivers.
One unusual one I found this week was an Emu. I have never before seen an Emu as road kill.
Only yesterday, I scored my first “hit” on the roads in more than 3 years of driving trucks but I was not saddened by the fact that my hit was a crow of all things.
Here in Qld, Wedge Tail Eagles are fairly common when counting road kill especially when they have just had a very large feed and they find it difficult to get into the air when traffic is approaching and because they need to “circle” to get air borne they quite often fly into the path of oncoming vehicles.
