$15,000,000 spent on staring. (By Ozzyfrog)

It was a clear, smooth Sunday morning and I was at a flying lesson, holding short of Runway 17R for takeoff. We got our clearance, lined up and applied full power. At takeoff speed, I lifted the nose gracefully (well, I like to think so anyway) into the air and the Cessna began climbing. All was perfect, until I banked at 500 feet. With a loud “wumph” my door spontaneously decided to unlock itself and open. Being in a car doing 60kph with a door open would be interesting, but being 700 feet in the air, and halfway through a turn with nothing keeping you in the plane but your harness is even more interesting. As I went to shut it, I caught a glimpse of the Melbourne Ferris wheel, and even in a situation like that, I marvelled at how silly it was.

I have written about it before, on Ozzyfrog’s Rants, but times have changed. When I wrote about it, the views and the prices were just as bad, but now it’s worse. For now, our beloved Ferris Wheel is broken. I see. And this is no ordinary breakdown, it will in fact be out of action for 6 months. Apparently, it cracked due to the 40C+ heat we experienced. Last time I checked, Ocean Liners do not fall to pieces when it gets a little sticky. Buildings do not collapse if it gets a bit nippy. And, dare I say, most other Ferris Wheels do not crack when it gets a bit hot. And where did the engineers think they were building it? In Norway? Of course it’s going to get hot, we’re in Australia. So, in the Global Economic Crisis, we have built an expensive Ferris Wheel in the yuckiest part of Melbourne, which is now broken. No wonder our economy is going a bit downhill.

But, I have an idea to save our money. Firstly, of course, don’t build stupid things that we don’t need and then break. That’s the obvious part. But for my second point, I will dive deep into a mystery that I have pondered over for many minutes. And it is this; why are roads and intersections so expensive? Whenever you drive past an intersection that will be repaired the council puts a sign up, telling you how much it will cost. And then you try not to choke on your chewing gum when you read the price. $15,000,000! How can a bit of asphalt with some white lines on it cost squillions of dollars? And I’m not talking about the Champs Elysees, this is an ordinary intersection. Quite how they spend so much on asphalt still mystifies me. And they still haven’t done anything on the South Eastern Freeway. It’s still at 80 kph, and I have seen no improvements or changes made at all (except the closure of a lane). I understand that they need to repair it, and that takes time. But how they expect to repair it by hiring a couple of men in hard hats to stare at it is beyond me. Every single time I go on it, the men are either not there or staring at the road, using there mind powers to get the road to fix itself.

Another example is a roundabout on Belmore road. It was perfectly functional, but then the men with their mind powers spent months painting white lines everywhere, and left it in exactly the same state that it was when they first arrived. What they did was turn up, do some staring, remove the old lines, paint new ones 3mm to the left of the previous ones, and made the surface all patchy. Every morning  I go round it I try to spot something that has been changed, but I still haven’t seen anything. So here’s a hint to the government and the councils; next time you build a road, just put some inexpensive asphalt on it and don’t spend the equivalent of a Learjet on it. And make sure that it actually needs fixing. And last but not least, tell the workers that staring rarely gets the job done.

What Pilots Do (By Ozzyfrog)

As many of you will know, I am a keen flyer. I love flying and airplanes as much as Tamasys loves anything with RAM and a Hard Drive, and as much as Caiphas likes drama, comedy and acting. While browsing on Facebook, I stumbled across a  group called “what pilots do”, and I must admit, it is rather true, even in my case. Because I’ve been neglecting this blog, I decided to post some of the ones that I think are true and even apply to me…

• you say or hear “niner” and think nothing of it (I’m even guilty of saying it in maths)
• information Whiskey has a special place in your heart
• You know way too many acronyms (AGL, MSL, VFR, IFR, VMC, IMC, CFR, ADM, AIM, AFM, POH, ATIS, ASOS, AWOS, CTAF, NOTAM, FSS, VOR, DME, NDB, ILS, VASI, PAPI, REIL, HIRL, MIRL, RCLS, ATCRBS, TRSA, KIAS, KCAS, the list goes on)
• you know “kilo” is a letter, not a weight
• you watch every plane that flies overhead, even though you’ve seen them up close and fly them
• you know the call signs for many major airlines
• you play every video game with the controls ‘inverted’… cause the default setting is WRONG, just wrong
• you see red lights up ahead while driving and use both feet to brake (that’ll probably happen on the odd occasion)
• you know exactly what “Flying the Victor 181 from Gulf-Foxtrot-Kilo to Foxtrot-Alpha-Romeo” means
• you can tell what maneuvers the plane above you is doing and say it aloud
• and you can critique those maneuvers and offer suggestions to perform them
• you are at the airport and name all the planes for hours without thinking twice
• you don’t think of weather as good, bad, or ugly, but rather as VFR, MVFR, or IFR
• whilst discussing skiing holidays and the fun to be had on the slopes, you consider it funny to say “The only slopes I have done recently are glideslopes,” only for the entire room to go quiet and look at you with a look on non-comprehension
• you wish your car had magnetos
• your desktop background is a picture form airliners.net
• you understand that Zero is a number and Oscar is a letter; there is no ‘Oh’
• you actually consider driving with the hood on

There are litrally hundreds more, and I’m sorry if you don’t understand some of them. You can always ask me to explain them….

Come on Brumby, on your bike. (By Ozzyfrog)

Premier Brumby has today announced part of the new transport plan in Melbourne. Good stuff, was the initial response I had, but it appears that this response could not have been more wrong. Brumby has decided to have a push for motorbikes and scooters, and urging drivers to leave their cars at home. Oh, ok Brumby, I’ll just forget about my nice $30,000 Peugeot in the garage, and I’ll go buy a new motorcycle for a few thousand dollars. And get a motorcycle license. And all the gear you need to ride motorbikes, like helmets. And extra insurance. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because in a few weeks I’ll be in hospital with a broken spine, or dead. No, no, it really doesn’t matter that motorbikes are just about the most dangerous means of transport there are, and that they cost a huge amount for what is basically a road bike with a noisy engine. It’ll be fine.

Also, is there a more useless way of getting what you want other than ‘urging’ the public to do something? Last time I checked, we do not do something because some twat ‘urges’ us to. It doesn’t work. But back to the point. Brumby has said that the government will try to make the roads safer for motorbikes and scooters, and the important word of this sentence is ‘try’. What on earth can they do to make the roads safer for bikes? Motorbikes don’t use bike lanes, for obvious reasons, so extending those will do nothing. Maybe we will end up with humongous yellow signs everywhere warning us to look for bikes. They’ve already started that on television. Don’t think that the timing of those recent ads to “look again for bikes” is a coincidence. Of course, there will be so many signs that they will simply obscure the view of oncoming bikes, and so they will be mown down like pigeons (and no, I don’t know why pigeons are mown down, it just sounds cool).

And we should remember that we currently have a shortage of nurses and doctors, and hospital waiting lists are enormous. So sending halve the population to serious injury is not really going to help. Of course, as Brumby points out, the alternative is public transport, and he is correct. Unfortunately, we don’t have public transport. We have a few bus routes that are always late, trains that don’t turn up and trams that can’t stop because of their pathetic brakes. Imagine going to work on a tram surrounded by people on motorbikes. The windscreen will be so full of pieces of bike and people that the tram has run over that the driver won’t be able to see, and so trams are out of the equation. And buses, for that matter. Trains will be safe, but they’re overcrowded as it is so that won’ t do.

In my book, if adding a seat belt to something makes it more dangerous, then that thing is not worth travelling in. Normal bikes are the exception, as they are fun and don’t go fast enough to cause serious injury. But motorbikes? Uh uh, no way Brumby. Keen bike enthusiasts of course will be jumping for joy, and will all go out for a ride and be killed, because of humongous yellow signs and extended bike lanes. So what are waiting for Brumby, go on, on your bike.