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Cake day: July 30th, 2026

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  • Before I went to a laptop with somewhat shakey suspend power consumption my desktop PC was going on 18 months uptime. The reason it was only 18 months was that we had a power outage. Unfortunately Debian became a bit boring so now I use Arch BTW. So many of the problems I deal with are caused by the insistence we use Windows “because it just works”. Worst part is 95% of my workflow is browser based. Its only bloody stinking Outlook that means I couldn’t use Linux to do everything.









  • I always thought the decision was made a lot earlier than that. Wasn’t it largely due to Westinghouse that America settled on 60hz 110v? Where AEG pushed 50hz 220v in Europe? That was late 1800s early 1900s from memory. World war 2 may have resulted in some rebuilding but they rebuilt along lines that were already established, the bump up to 230-240v with time and gained efficiencies is mirrored in the US with the move towards 120v at least that’s what I recall, but I must admit that outside of some Technology Connections videos I haven’t delved too deeply in recent years (and yes I know Alec would say the US technically already sends 240v but that’s not what your general appliances are rated to).


  • Takes a couple of litres of water before we get hot water. I have filled the kettle twice before the water was too hot to hold my hand under before. That’s roughly 3.5 litres of water just to get to the hot stuff. Luckily boiling water was a key consideration in our voltage level (actually that’s something I made up on the spot 😜) but more power equals good so… Its weird that this is a field that the US apparently just decided to let a large portion of the world be more “powerful” almost expect that if there were parts of the world settling on 240v the US would arbitarily decide they needed 500v.



  • It all used to be very easy in Australia, you bought the phone at a supermarket and gave bogus info when registering the SIM. Then the “War on Terror™” began and the government started taking things a bit more seriously started mandating the paper registration forms needed to be completed or the retailers could get in trouble. But your average supermarket worker wasn’t going to take the time to do that and it was way too widespread for the government to actually crack down on it.

    Took a few years but the Telcos started actually paying attention to the fact that the majority of prepaid phones weren’t getting completed paperwork at point of sale so they just moved to make all sim card activations require online or over the phone ID checks.

    Every bit of training I ever did made it clear it was all about catching terrorists, drug dealers and paedophiles, which of course means “We want all that juicy data without citizens asking any annoying questions.”





  • There was a time, before Google showed their hand, that I would go out of my way to leave Google reviews. Good, bad or somewhere in between I would document the customer experience.

    Since Google made it clear what trajectory they are on I have returned to the old ways. Amazing service gets a letter, great service gets a quiet word to the manager. Bad service gets a word to the manager at the end of the transaction, terrible service and I just never return again and tell anyone who asks why. Everything in between those extremes gets me acting as a polite customer and that’s about it.

    Have I over thought this?