Pooka rolling in a really good smell

Our home internet connection is working today after more than three weeks of… er… not working. This has been annoying and expensive. My Blackberry has been good, but for things that work better on a proper computer I’ve been using a couple of pre-paid 3G modems (the USB stick ones). They’re on different phone networks, and I must say that my prejudice against the nation’s biggest phone company has not been lessened by my experiences with their 3G internet.

I tried their modem on the Windows XP desktop first. First go elicited a blue screen of death. Second go elicited a blue screen of death. Third go we got stuck on the loading screen.

Next on the Macbook – software installed ok. Then came the bit where we try to put money on the account. This took about 45 minutes, partly due to the terrible interface but mainly because of “the request has been time out!” again and again and again.

Eventually we won the right to put some credit on the account. Unfortunately you don’t actually know what you’re buying until you’ve bought it and can access the company’s web site to see that your $lots bought minimalMb.

In other news, I am glad that the ADSL2+ connection is going again. Very glad.

If your patient has a high potassium level (nb. This is bad), it is indeed a good thing to cease a medication that can raise potassium levels.

If the potassium level remains high, and you feel that the patient needs to go to hospital for management of this problem and your letter says “Dear hospital, Mrs X’s potassium is high despite me ceasing Z medication. Please help”, much mirth will ensue in the emergency department when it is noted that you did not cease the frigging POTASSIUM supplement.

Oh and failing to mention what the potassium level was in your letter or to provide a print-out of the results with the letter will also raise your doofus score.

So I’ve been driving my mother’s car a bit this week (I don’t think I blogged about the Incident involving my car and a mystery jerk who ran into it while I was at work SAVING LIVES….). It’s a Ford Festiva from the early 90s. There are several things I miss about my car:

1. Power steering. How can a 2 door hatchback be SO FREAKING HEAVY? It’s like steering a tank! Well I’ve never driven a tank. And maybe they have power steering these days…
2. Air conditioning.
3. Clear windows that don’t distort things. Someone who owned the car before my mother applied that tinting film to the windows. I think I can see why that stuff is not so popular. It sucks.
4. Volume/CD/radio controls on the steering wheel.
5. CD player
6. Rear passenger doors. Pooka has to get into the back seat via the boot. Luckily she’s very adaptable.
7. Central locking
8. Keyless entry

However, on my way to church tonight I was bemoaning the lack of CD player when I noticed that my brother has left one of those cassette-shaped dealies attached to a 3.5mm plug in the car. “Oh but woe is me I don’t have my iPod with me”

But then I remembered that my Blackberry syncs with iTunes and my Blackberry has a 3.5mm headphone jack. So I could listen to my music via the Blackberry and the cassette deck.

The point of this post is that those adaptor things are really very clever. I wonder who invented them.

2. Why do ice skaters have to all go in the same direction when racing?

3. And surely hurdles could be included.

4. Why are there only guns in the biathlon? I’m sure they could be accommodated in a number of other sports.

5. And the guns are only used on targets… paintballing other competitors would be far better for the competition.

6. Now I acknowledge that figure skating is very clever and grueling and whatnot. But if dance isn’t in the summer Olympics, I’m not convinced that figure skating has a place. But then I’m not sold on rhythmic gymnastics or synchronised swimming either…

7. And where are the toboggans?

8. Heh I just found an excellent example for suggestion 10 and now I can’t think of 8 or 9.

9. Oh well.

10. Roy and HG would make any events more entertaining even without any of the alterations suggested here.

The other day I arrived at work to find the main entry of the emergency department cordoned off with red and white tape… crime scene style.

” ‘ello ‘ello!” I thought “What’s going on ‘ere eh?”

Well it turns out that cockatoos (possibly even the ones shown above – hard to say) have been throwing rocks onto the glass roof above the main door. One of the panels of glass is all cracked and not looking so sturdy. I am fairly sure the same thing occurred towards the end of last year too. Perhaps we need to take out an AVO against the perpetrators or something.

My typing speed on the new toy is going very well – it’s a weird keyboard to get used to: QWERTY layout over 14 buttons. The predictive text is excellent and deals with unknown words far better than my Nokia did. After the first few days I was fine with it – speed and accuracy are definitely better than with the old phone. And when I use it for MSN messenger, suddenly it looks like I use capital letters and my words look lovely and polished!

Anyway, the phone company guy arrived today (a Sunday afternoon…) and did some tinkering around up the phone pole and at the thing up the street that does… stuff…. and fixed the phone. This got the internet back to how it was functioning before the phone died – ie. cutting out after a couple of minutes. So I fiddled around with cables and made the phone cable bypass the surge protector. This seems to have fixed the problem. Slightly concerning that it probably caused the problem in the first place however.

There is only one reason that I am sure this is not Pooka. Pooka doesn’t smile in the bath.

But anyway, sitting at the table chopping onions and browsing a few forums, it occurred to me that onions don’t make me cry anymore. Why is this? I can’t think when I last had eye troubles with onions but it was definitely more than 3 years ago.

Possible reasons:

1. I’m taller. This doesn’t apply for the current situation because I’m sitting at the table. Also I don’t think I’m any taller than I was 10 years ago. But certainly when I was shorter, I had more onion problems.

2. I’m better at peeling onions. My current technique I learned from a TV chef while I was meant to be studying for my HSC (year 12 exams). I think it has made a difference. Year 12 exams were 10 years ago too. This confounds matters somewhat.

3. Onions are less potent. I suppose that tomatoes are less potent than they were in the good old days… perhaps it’s somehow related to the rise of the seedless watermelon…

4. I wear contact lenses. Perhaps the onion vapour adsorbs onto the outside of the lenses…

5. My onion receptors have become insensitive or have been downregulated or something…

Others?