A few weeks ago I began entertaining the idea that the time is fast approaching when I should be considering a new work car. Strangely enough, this didn’t occur to me back when a steering rod snapped – a fatal issue if it happened at any speed – but when the engine started getting noisy and the car began making odd smells. Annoying, but hardly dangerous.
Continue Reading »

As most readers of this blog know, I make my living tootling about the city making people’s computers run less horribly. Naturally the price of petrol of late has been weighing heavily upon me (as well as the general running state of the car, which really wasn’t purchased with this kind of usage in mind).

So… I did a little experiment. A week ago I filled the tank to the brim and set myself a goal of driving as slowly and grandparent-ly as possible. The idea was to see if my normal driving style has been hitting me in the hip pocket.

Now, normally I fill the tank until the pump clicks off for the first time and leave it at that. The low fuel light comes on when I have about 20 litres left in the 60-litre tank, and when that happens I have usually done about 400 kms.

Over the last week, and including a job in Melton (ie, more efficient highway cruising), I managed 460 kms before the light came on.

I can only conclude that my normal driving style is very, very slow. I really thought I was going to do better.

I just sent this email to the webmaster of Australian Unity:

Hi,

Why does your website require Windows and Internet Explorer when getting a quote? I just tested with a Macintosh running Firefox (and spoofing its user-agent as IE on a Windows XP machine) and the site worked perfectly – as it should. If I was a regular non-technical user I would have given up and you would have had no chance of getting my money, which seems counter-productive.

Please open your site up to standards-compliant browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Opera. Microsoft has enough money without web designers forcing us to give them more.

Regards,
Paul

Who wants to bet I get a canned response?