Simon Rumble’s blog

A question for any DIYers out there. I'm going to be installing an Udden shelf tomorrow and I'm wondering what kind of fastening to use. Ikea are very coy in their instructions: "Choose screws and fittings that are specially suited to the material in your wall/ceiling and have sufficient holding power." Which isn't very helpful.

I was thinking of using green wall plugs and 10G x 50mm screws but that shelf only has four screw holes, which would place quite a bit of load on such fixings. I've been trying to find some specs on what you can load on such screws, without much success. Given that we'll probably be storing glases and plates on it, I'd want something that's well and truly strong enough.

Should I consider one of the more technical fixings like Dynabolts and similar? There are varieties that don't seem to need special tools, and their web site gives excellent technical and installation information, not that I know how to interpret the technical specs.

Suggestions?

Virgin Blue's clock is a little out...

Tony Abbott, the man who would like to tell all Australians how to behave in bed, and wants to have control over womens' bodies, has called Krudd a control freak. That's a bit rich doncha think?

I'm rather forthright with my opinions of our servants in blue. They're all bent as a peg. My reasoning here is that I've seen enough petty and very serious corruption, whether it's collusion to suppress evidence to cover up for cops who assaulted people (there's names for that: conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and plain old perjury), passing a blind eye over major offences, letting off their mates and the like, to allow me to reason that every NSW copper has either been bent, or has witnessed and not reported bentness.

Yes, I hold coppers to a high standard. A higher standard than for ordinary citizens. I think that's reasonable when you consider the enormous amount of power we give them individually and organisationally.

Now we see a report showing coppers in revolt because a number of them have been accused of very serious dodginess. These are the same fuckers who would use the "if you've got nothing to hide..." argument, so why are they scared of a little investigation?

One line from one of the coppers describing the Police Integrity Commission (hmmm, just like Military Intelligence) could just as easily describe the NSW Police Service: "It's damaged careers and reputations, for what? Someone needs to pull this organisation into line."

I don't know what the solution is to the bentness of coppers, but certainly the government should back the PIC to the hilt. I doubt they will though. A Wood-scale Royal Commission every five years would probably be a good idea.

The key problem is that the sort of people who want to become coppers, low-intelligence frustrated bully-victims-turned-bullies, are the last people you want as coppers. NSW Police recruitment processes have an upper as well as lower IQ range, from what I've heard, with the excuse that smart people would get bored being coppers. My interactions with most coppers bears this out.

As BDP put it: You were put here to protect us, but who protects us from you?

Last night while upgrading the Firmware in my (otherwise excellent) Billion 7404VGP-M ADSL modem/router/wireless thingy, I managed to brick it. It lost connectivity at 20% through the upgrade (though the entire file had transferred to the modem) so I left it for forty minutes or so, then rebooted it. Nothing. Reset to defaults does nothing. Gah!

My gripe is that the recovery utility they supply for such situations runs only on Windows and requires a serial port. I have neither.

Why can't they just provide a technical description of what it'll do? I suspect it'll do some trick to verify the modem is alive, then upload by xmodem the new firmware. Or something.

Anyway, I'll go around to a mate's place to do this, probably. Fortunately I work for an ISP so I can probably borrow a modem/router until I get this one fixed.

Mary laments the limitations of car share companies. Holly is in GoGet, so I thought I'd share our experiences.

First up, "car share" is a misnomer. I'd consider that to be when you let people jump in the car with you for a journey. I'd class this service more as a car micro-hire.

It works like this. You pay a monthly subscription ($15 in our case) and can then hire cars for $6.60/hour plus $0.35/km (higher monthly subscription means lower hourly rates). Petrol is included.

When you want a car, you either log onto the web site and book a nearby car, or you phone up. The phone system is surprisingly useful, and there's normally someone around if you get in trouble and need to speak to a human.

Contention on the cars would be the most common question, and to be honest we've rarely had a problem. Sometimes if you try at the last minute, you might need to walk a bit further or find another form of transport. But if you plan ahead, it's no biggie. We booked a car last week for the four days around Xmas, in a nearby location to our place. Long weekends can be a bit tricky, though you just have to book a week or two in advance. It's really in their interest to ensure there's enough cars. There's also some useful utility vehicles available: a ute and a Tarago in Erskineville are particularly handy and cost no more.

The day rates, it should be noted, include 150km of travel (including petrol!) and if you do the kinds of trips we use it for, driving somewhere, staying there a few days with only a few short drives, then returning, you'll find the 150km included in each day more than covers all the kilometres used in the trip. We find it's good value, and unlike car rental companies, there's no hidden charges and you don't have to be alert for all their sneaky damage, insurance and excess reduction scams.

Now we live in the inner city, which is where most of the cars reside, so it's particularly good for us. The best thing you can do, Mary, is find a few more people out in Hornsby and convince them to promise they'll sign up if GoGet put a pod out that way. They've been pretty rapid with their expansion, and they're not averse to trialling a new area.

The problems with licenses are also a problem for us. I'm on my learner's permit, and basically it seems we're going to have to buy a car if I want to get enough practise in on my provisional license. That's a shame. GoGet are pretty responsive to requests for changes, so perhaps we could propose something like a higher insurance charge for provisional license holders?

As well as the cost savings, these schemes are great because of the convenience. Sure, we have to walk a couple of blocks to the car, but we don't have to book in services, rego, insurance, repairs and all that. For me, that's the best thing about it -- my life is busy enough without having to deal with all that!

Russell makes the assumption that linking to someone's blog is some kind of unconditional recommendation. Far from it! If you look at the standard version of my blog you'll see I've just added the text "Blogs I read", to clarify this. I don't recommend any of these for anyone's reading but my own. In fact, some of this stuff I very strenuously disagree with, but I find it interesting to hear ideas that are well argued, passionately held but that I disagree with. It's an intellectually challenging thing to do.

However, where a blogroll is interesting is similar to the way I browse a person's book and CD shelves when I visit their homes. You can learn a lot about people by what they read, listen to, watch and otherwise consume. It's interesting and gives you more of an understanding of the person.

Similarly, I quite enjoy the various Planets I read because I get to read more about people. I read about their cats, their struggles with the landlord, their healthy problems, all kinds of stuff. While the Planets themselves represent a particular interest, the people posting to them are human beings too, and have more in their life than just the interest. This is a good thing.

Of course, the shadowy cabal who run Planet Linux Australia clearly don't agree with this thinking, by silently dropping all of my blog except the geek category.

We moved into our new house last Thursday and spent Friday and Sunday nesting. The move was pretty painless, with the removalists getting it all done in one truck load taking about two hours all up. We hired a cleaner for the old house, so we did some outdoor cleaning while he worked. I'd strongly recommend this option to anyone moving!

The house we're moving into was pretty filthy. We kinda wish we'd got the cleaner in there, and even did some painting before moving in. As it is, we spent a lot of time washing walls and will probably paint at some point.

It's a pretty amazing feeling being a home owner. Knowing we can make any changes we like is very liberating. Though for now there's a lot to do!

Oh yeah, the new place is super quiet, after living next to the airport and before that in a very noisy city. Holly got a bit freaked out on Thursday night when we went to bed and there were some noises around the house (possibly a possum?), which we never would have noticed in the other place.

Quite a week. Australia signs Kyoto, we get our first (acting) prime minister, Howard is formally unseated. Oh and we bought a house!

Holly and I had a poke around the house this afternoon, met the neighbours, checked the place out. Move in tomorrow. W00t! Our new neighbour Marcel was on hand to capture the moment.

Holly and I are now home owners. Settlement just happened and we are officially (part) owners of the house. We move in tomorrow.