The Pencil Guy: Hourann's illogical blog

A mixed bag of rants

  • As much as I was saddened to read of the execution of an Australian (despite the media frenzy), it was even more saddening to see John Howard use it as a chance to ram through his new industrial relations laws while avoiding media scrutiny.
  • Equally worrying was the news that he used a similar ram-it-through-the-Senate technique last night to get his welfare “reforms” and changes to police powers passed. Then again, if I had a Senate majority in my back pocket, I guess I wouldn’t bother with silly things like reasoned debate or committees of inquiry either.
  • From yesterday’s news, yay for the AIRC! Now there is some hope that the traffic mess in the CBD will clear up some time this century, even though the union heavies are pretending like nothing’s changed.
  • Also yesterday, Big Kev died! I feel sorry for the poor man, but did he think about the rest of us? Now who’s going to front our cringe-worthy commercials for cleaning products?
  • For me, yesterday was a really eventful day, from the stupid Canon scanner that refuses to install on a Powerbook with 10.4, to me locking the keys in the car last night at Burswood. Fortunately the RAC are teh awesomest … once I finally figured out what number to call.
  • Last week I got myself a new camera (woo!). It is a Kodak Z700 which was on sale for only $199 at like half a dozen places (which is lucky, since the first two places I went to were sold out). Despite the mad rush to clear stock it is an awesome camera for the price, although the 5× zoom doesn’t feel quite as big as it really is through the smallish screen, and its auto-exposure always seems to be just a bit too high.
  • My cat seems unusually calm and lazy lately. This bodes well for the poor souls who’ll have to look after him in the coming weeks :-)
  1. Camera stealer!
    My father is also looking for a digial camera, and saw that one at that price. He was going to get one, except there were none left by that time…

    But anyway, you’ve got yourself a nice peice of hardware. And half the price of mine!

    Have fun.

  2. [...] indeed, later that year the majority was used to rush through WorkChoices and a couple of other changes (like voluntary student unionism). But since then, there have been [...]

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