1.  ”Wow, am I lucky that I get to work so close to wildlife?”
2. “I hope that 1.5m ball of muscle doesn’t get too close to my car.”

When I was about 10, a kangaroo hopped into the side of my parents’ Datsun 1200. This was a very solid (and slow) car, yet the ‘roo made a large dent in the door. So I have good reason to be wary!

1. Elliott Carter – 99 years 3 months
2. Norman Dello Joio – 95 years 1 month
3. Wilfrid Mellers – 93 years 10 months
4. Milton Babbitt – 91 years 10 months
5. Harold Shapero – 87 years 10 months
6. Lukas Foss – 85 years 7 months
7. Serge Nigg – 83 years 8 months
8. Pierre Boulez – 82 years 11 months
9. Tristram Cary – 82 years 10 months
10. Ben Johnston – 82 years 0 months

So, why is “Smart Buy” (usually) so much cheaper. My wife and I had a bit of a think about it. We’ve come up with a few ideas:

1. The packaging costs more for “You’ll love Coles”. Possible – considering that they would have to pay the people on the front for their photos.
2. Coles uses older stock for the “Smart Buy” brand. This is possible, but unlikely, considering that the use buy dates are similar. However, Coles could be artificially shortening the use by dates for the “You’ll Love Coles” brand.
3. Advertising.

Can you think of any others? Because apart from that, you’re paying for advertising, dubious freshness and the pretty packaging.

“What’s that noise?”

“I hope it isn’t me” (Slows down, and hears noise lower in pitch)

“Oh crap, it is me”

“I’m in the fast lane” (Moves over asap to the slow lane)

“There’s nowhere to pull over on the slow lane”

“Take the slip road”

All of this happened in a few seconds. Luckily for me, I managed to take the old tyre off and get the new one on in 10 minutes. I wasn’t even late for work.

I’ve only blown one tyre before (the rear-left of a Mazda MX-5), and it’s thanks to my Dad that I know what to do now. So, if you don’t have roadside assistance – or, like me, you can’t wait for them, it’s a really good idea to know how to change a tyre!

To celebrate, my wife made a pie with the pi symbol in pastry on top, and I wrote one of my transcendental etudes (pi of course).

What am I to do? Well, I could donate it to someone out in the countryside (where analogue transmission is going on to 2013) or I could scrap it.

This brings up an interesting issue – we can’t use ‘antique’ tvs as they were used in the past, just like we can’t use analogue mobile phones. Maybe 50 years in the future someone will set up an analogue transmission system for tvs and mobile phones. It would be a good attraction in the museums – Hey Kids, try to stop the image moving by twiddling this knob! Maybe I should hang on to this relic…

Here’s a hypothetical. Imagine that the gaps between all of your generations is 33 years and 4 months. Going back 100 years you’d have 8 great-grandparents. Going back 200 years, you’d have 64 ancestors. Already we’re talking large numbers, but there’s a catch. This catch is called in-breeding. Rather than being the “my sister’s also my auntie” type associated with rural Texas, there are often cases of 3rd cousins (people who share great-great-grandparents).

Say that instead of 64 ancestors over 200 years, you have 50. Then over 400 years you have 2500, over 600 years you have 125000 and over 800 years you have 6250000. If your family goes back 800 years in a place with a limited population, there’s a good chance that 80 – 90% of the people in that area are your ancestors. Some of the families would have moved away or died out, which explains the other 10 – 20%.

Does this sound plausible, or have I botched the maths somewhere?

The quote: “Anderson was quick to point out that a square wave is not the most pleasurable or representative musical experience (as anyone who’s ever heard one can readily attest).”

I happen to love square waves. In fact, I think of an A Minor square wave chord to relax when I’m having a busy day. Crazy? Maybe, but it works for me!

Example 1: On “Officeworks FM”, the pre-recorded music and announcements broadcast in Officeworks stores, you will notice promotions for things such as fly-bys, catalogue requests and the like. You may even notice that at the end of these there is the friendly tag “Ask a friendly Officeworks team-member for more information”, or something similar. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you actually asked a team-member? Most of them wouldn’t know. The fact is, the team-members are simply not taught about the things mentioned in Officeworks FM. I asked a manager about ordering a catalogue once. They said two things that disturbed me. First was “I don’t know” and the second was “You’re the first team-member who’s asked me”. The fact is that Officeworks should train its team-members better.

Example 2: Once a customer came in saying that his chair was missing some casters. No matter, it happened that this particular chair had a lot of returns, owing to a faulty back mechanism. I asked a manager if I could use the excess casters from the faulty chairs. Sure, I was told, just tell the customer that some machinery damaged the chairs. That’s right. A manager told me to lie to a customer to deceive them about the quality of the chair that they had bought. Of course I didn’t. I went out, got the casters and then told the customer that we’d had issues with that particular chair. I also told him to get that chair back quick smart if he had any problems.

Example 3: We got a touch-screen information kiosk, sponsored by Canon. When a customer wanted to use it, I didn’t know the password. Neither did the manager on duty. So there was a kiosk that nobody in the store could use… great!