Drifting through life

Lady please, just follow the instructional diagram! Here in Adelaide, South Australia, we have small, rectangular, paper, bus (tram, train) tickets. Well, not quite paper, they're more a thin cardboardy thing. Each single ticket is good for two hours after validation, each multi-trip ticket is good for ten two hour rides. We've had them for years, so you'd think people would know how to use them by now. But no!   Time after time, people insert their tickets into the validating machine the wrong way. Either upside down, back to front, or both. These tickets have a directional arrow printed on one side and the magnetic validating strip on the other side. (I have photos, but we all know I can't be uploading any) AND there is a small cardboard instructional image cable-tied to the pole that holds the validating machine.  It's a very clear instruction.   The ticket must be inserted this way! Yet every day those of us on the bus h

Since I stopped posting with photos, my commenter numbers have dropped quite a bit. I never had a huge number of people commenting, but I did have a loyal few. And I treasured all of you.  Only two of you are still here. Hello Delores , and Joanne . I know some commenters are still scared off by thoughts of a malaware site infecting their computers, so I don't expect them back anytime soon. Perhaps after they have run their own anti virus programs? I've had an inkling that those who are getting warnings are working via Google Chrome. If you are not with Google Chrome, please drop in and let me know if you are getting warnings or not. But my regular crowd who haven't been having any trouble visiting here? Where are you all? It's getting kind of lonely over here.

I bring you WAHL (brand name) Wednesday. Because I still haven't bought extra storage space at Picasa, so can't upload any whimsical pictures. The WAHL is a hand held hair cutter/trimmer that I bought for my son when he was thirteen. It also trims beards and moustaches.  It comes neatly packaged in a box with a range of combs for different hair lengths and a spare blade, plus little cleaning tools and instructions on how to best clean the trimmer. J has very curly hair which he didn't like much back then, so he started shaving his head with a regular shaver. I went to The Shaver Shop here in our Adelaide Arcade and asked the assistant what he would recommend for a teenaged boy. He showed me a couple of trimmers, then said if I wanted a gift that would last much longer, I should buy the WAHL. I surprised J at Christmas with  the WAHL.   He was ecstatic! He loved it! And has loved it ever since.  Since that Christmas, he has trimmed, shaved and carved pat

I was sort of watching TV the other night, (day?) but the program I'd planned on watching wasn't on, because the powers that be had decided to screw around with everyone's planned viewing.  Again. As I sat on the couch idly changing channels, searching for something worth looking at, I heard this >>> "...as you are all aware, one of our deposits has been stolen. A relatively small amount, $68 million dollars." I watched a little more of that movie, but couldn't really get into it, probably because I'd missed the beginning so had no idea of the story line. Something about drug trafficking and money laundering maybe. Big business. Big illegal business. I could have picked it up easily enough by watching more, but I couldn't stop thinking about $68 million dollars being a "relatively small amount".  Heck, if I've got $68 dollars to spare, I feel like I'm doing okay, but $68 million? 

6.30am: stagger out of bed after being awake half the night because it was too hot to sleep comfortably. I should have got up and turned the fan on. am: sometime before 7, I smelled rain. Rain! I raced to the door and watched as about two dozen fat drops splatted onto the dusty driveway. And then it stopped. :( 9.30am: leave home and wander up to the bus stop. Up until now I'm feeling pretty good, but once at the bus stop I start yawning. This is something I only do on days that I'm working. The yawning I mean. I think it's a subconscious/psychological thing, since I find the work boring. 11.30am: start my four hour shift, getting increasingly more headachy because of the heat. Yes, the store is airconditioned, but it's cooler in the main part of the store than it is at the checkouts (why? why?) and packing groceries is warm work.  (buy more panadol) I was well hydrated, drinking almost a litre of water during the four hours. Because of the self-serve chec

I've been to my Picasa web albums site and there is one of those sliding arrow type things that reduces the size of the images. So I did that with all of them, but it hasn't helped at all with being able to upload from my files to the blog. I discovered that the "Paint" program on my computer also has an option for reducing my photos by pixel size, reducing a ---MB sized photo to a ---KB sized photo. So I have spent a couple of hours working on reducing any photos I might want to use on the blog, but again, that isn't going to help with being able to upload, because Picasa is insisting my free 1GB allowance is 100% used and I need to buy more storage. I downloaded a free photoshop program, but I may not use it much since discovering the "Paint" option. I only wanted it to resize photos anyway, I don't do any other fancy alterations.  I might learn how to make collages though, that could be interesting, and possibly calendars. Enough rambling

Christmas is fast approaching! What?  You already knew that? Well okay then. Now for the rest of my announcement. Bag snatchers, pickpockets, grab'n'run people. They're out there. NOW.  Well, all year round, but they're much more prevalent at this time of year. I may have touched on this topic before (last Christmas?), but I'm going into it again. And again and again if necessary. People, please beware of your surroundings! Keep your bags, purses, small electronics etc secure. I've just watched A Current Affair, with a young magician showing just how careless people are and how very, very easy it was to relieve people of their belongings. This young magician sat next to an older man who was eating his lunch and taking absolutely no notice of the young man who sat down next to his open backpack. And stole something from it.  The magician then moved on to a woman whose handbag was hanging from her shoulder, but wide open. No trouble at all

I began working on my Sunday Selections post for this week and when it came time to upload a photo (or eight) I was informed that I had used 100% of my 1GB free photo storage space with Picasa and I would have to upgrade my storage, with a choice of 25GB or more at a monthly cost to be paid by credit card. In the meantime, I cannot upload any more photos to my blog.  Phooey!! I emailed my friend Kim , who is the originator of Sunday Selections, and she has suggested that I resize my photos. I have no idea how to do this of course. I went to the Picasa site and deleted a few of the photos they have there, because there were multiple copies of the same photo. I thought of deleting some of the others, but got a message saying they would also disappear from the blog and I don't want that happening.  I think I discovered there an option to resize them too, so I'll spend some time there tomorrow and resize as much as I can before my bum goes to sleep from sitting so long an

Welcome back to Whimsical Wednesday! The weekly googled giggle that gets you over the hump that is Wednesday and sliding down into the weekend. I like this one! Light Beer.

Last night's dinner was crab quiche that I had made on Sunday,  and salad. I'd bought the lettuce and tomatoes and other stuff on the way home from work, so I knew they were all fresh. Well as fresh as they could be after sitting in a supermarket for who-knows-how-long. The crab quiche was yummy, but the salad,   seemed a little....... not quite off......but funny tasting. So I checked the expiry date on my bottle of salad dressing. Oops! Time to buy a new bottle. Now, I've been using this same bottle of dressing for as long as it's been in my fridge. I've not been ill from it and the food has been alright. Until yesterday.  Just another example of how foods do not necessarily have to be tossed the minute they "expire". Although I did keep this a little too long.

I've done everything I can think of - deleted all comments in my spam folder, deleted tracking cookies and temporary files, deleted several newish blogs that I'd been meaning to follow but didn't get around to, I've defragmented my hard drive, and had my antivirus program run a full system scan at the end of which I was informed that my system is secure. Should I split that up into several separate sentences? Nah, leave it as is. Anyway...according to Norton, I have no problems, no viruses, no tracking cookies etc. I can't think what else I could be doing, it would seem the "malaware" notice preventing some people from reading or commenting here is not coming from my system. The message said my blog contains content from redsultana.com which is known to distribute malaware. As far as I know, this is untrue. The only redsultana I know of is a blog I used to read by a woman in Perth. Commenting on her site became extremely difficult and I gave up

Welcome back to Sunday Selections! This once-a- week-meme was originally begun by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock, as a way to showcase some of the many photos we all take, but don't get around to showing on our blogs. The rules are very simple:- 1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title 2. link back to me, River , somewhere in your post 3. leave me a comment so that I know you've joined in and can come over and see what you've posted. I usually go with a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week I'm featuring Patterns. These photos are of things I saw while walking around my neighbourhood soon after moving here.  The recurring triangles, diamonds and hexagons on this climbing frame are very pleasing to my eyes. The patterns in the "Iron Lace" on this grand old home are equally pleasing to me. A long line of identical spear heads and curlicues make a great fence. Another long repea