The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

The inner serpent got let off her leash today. Not before time too.

Still undecided between waiting for a special deal on some cheap and cheerful smartphone and losing most of the recent month’s top up or just biting the bullet and getting one this week while there’s still some coins in the piggy bank.
I googled most of the phones in my price range and they scored pretty dismally. Of course the geeks who write these sorts of column most likely have some $1,000 gadget in their pocket so anything less than $700 would be an appalling abomination in their eyes let alone the 50 −80 silver sickles that this serpent has in mind.

There was one at a post office that caught my eye on Friday. I guess I could have asked then but Izzie is not a creature comfortable making quick decisions. Too many ‘What if’s and “If only’s” to take into account and anyway I wanted time to consult the Oracle of Google again for more inspiration (and procrastination)

It got many reviews as being one of the best of the budget models and far better than anything I had seen so far. So the inner serpent decided that today was the time to take a second look. After attending to bills and other boring things, I asked the postal clerk if the phone was locked to a network which it wasn’t. That was the make or break bit . I hadn’t seen it on the shelves of any other post offices so it was likely to be the phone version of a bin end. At least with wine there is only one vintage per year. It seems that the phone manufacturers bring out a new model every 3 months.
No point in waiting for the newest supermarket catalogues like originally planned because they might have nothing and if they do it will not be as good and every day that goes by erodes the remaining days on the prepaid voucher.
I nearly died of shock when she scanned the phone and instead of the expected 99, she says that it’s a half price special.
That was very good luck indeed for if the reduced price had been displayed in the window, it would have been gone long ago.

So now I have got the phone I wanted without losing too much prepaid time. So the evening will be devoted to shuffling sim cards, charging batteries and doing other set up stuff and hoping that it will not take 3 hours like it did the first time around last April. After all, there’s a whole bunch of tasty morsels of Goblin Porn from Panama to drool over.

For the third time I get to download that green glowing Scrabble app and here’s hoping that it doesn’t disappear into another black hole for a long long time.

Izzie is a most pathetic procrastinating python. Many moons ago was getting most peeved indeed with the ridiculous price of the antiquated soap on a rope USB dongle that served as a life line to lurking in Cyberia.
While it is still a whole pile cheaper and faster than the dreadful days of paying $30 for 30 hours of dinosaur dial up, times have moved on and the serpent needs to move too. Not least because there's lots of silver sickles to be saved now that the going rate for 3gb is about half that price. Was getting annoyed about paying for 3 gigabytes per month but rarely going over two and not being able to roll over unused data

Did buy a Virgin usb stick at a half price sale back in December but it got stuck gathering dust. Had to bring it back to the shop as fumble fingered Izzie just could not work out how to get the cover off to put the SIM card in. They did in two seconds what Izzie could not do in two hours.
But before getting around to connecting it got our paws on the Vodafone version for only $19 on Wednesday and was determined to get the thing sorted out pronto. Once it is working can then go cancel the monthly plan before the next billing period starts.

This one was dead easy to open and to set up. There were no tedious piles of numbers to type on a stream of never ending screens and boxes to tick for configuration. It was all smooth sailing. In no time had gotten to the registration page. But it was too good to be true. It would not accept the original SIM pin number claiming that the card was invalid. Suddenly the whole thing became most annoying and frustrating indeed and more so when the old reliable USB dongle started having hissy fits. The little bugger must know that the serpent wants a divorce

It brought back memories of the long, arduous and complicated ritual involved in starting our previous internet relationship. Suspecting that fearing a repeat of this performance was the real reason for procrastinating
Figured that this is a Sim card problem and not a serpent problem and brought the thing into the store yesterday. The lady at the Vodafone store encountered the exact same problem when she tried setting it up on the store computer. But it was quickly fixed by using a new SIM card. This time we were able to get to the registration page with all the boring customer details and ID stuff. So was most happy indeed with the service there.

The true test was plugging it in with the new card this morning. It worked perfectly first time. Just as well since the old one has now taken to disconnecting for no apparent reason

The new little gadget is faster but has one big bright and shiny new feature. It actually tells you how much data has been used so there's no need to wait for the bill and worrying about outrageous excess fees. And it is prepaid. But it seems that Vodafone only has 30 day expiry periods on prepaid. At least they do let you roll over unused data when you top up.

The Virgin mob apparently have 180 day expiry options so their little gadget might turn up to be useful after all.

But the real trick will be dumping the dongle Goblins. No one likes to lose a regular income stream. The original two year plan is long over but that might not stop them finding some way to hang onto long time customers.

So here's hoping this little critter will behave itself and let Izzie lurk online as long as she wants to or at least until the 3 gigabyte ration runs out.

Once again struggling with the crappy cranky old Portkeys but finally got connected after five or so attempts

Happy New Year to all the goblins out there. May it be prosperous and profitable and may pesky greenies and insufferable shareholder activists and other communist pinkie lefties never diminish your big fat bottom line

The goblins at Borders and Angus and Robertson are far from happy but will save that gossip about the vulture serpent's stash for next week when they finally darken their gloomy bookstore doors

Still not done a proper serpent budget for the bright shiny new financial year. But so far kept the to the resolution of no unnecessary munchies. While keeping away from the groceries, indulged a bit in the Jacksons toy store instead. Art supplies, pretty papers and books are such an irresistible temptation.

Presently listening to the rain pouring down outside and lamenting the fact that it could have filled the tank ten times over in the last week or so.
It is just over two years since getting it installed. The original intention was to get the rainwater tank plumbed to the house so that it could be used to run the loo and laundry. That way it would constantly be emptied and refilled during the winter when it rains rather than the ridiculous situation of sitting there big fat and full because you don't need to water the garden when it is raining
But the cost of connection to the house would involve the installation of an electrical pump and new piping and the services of both plumbers and electricians. That would have been an extra $3,000 of which only $500 could be offset by government grants which have since been discontinued. That would make it very expensive water indeed.
The previous state government did intend to bring in legislation requiring all new residential houses to be plumbed in such a manner that a rainwater tank or grey water system could be just plugged in and ready to go. The present lot listened to the whingeing of the building lobby groups who claimed it would add to much to the cost of new housing
This rule would be no use to the serpent but it would be of enormous benefit to those wanting to instal rainwater tanks some 20 something years from now.

And then there's the insulation. When the government was subsidizing the cost completely, they set up the scheme in such a way that sharks and shonks just appeared overnight and soon crowded out the more reputable firms. It also meant that everyone was picking the low hanging fruit - the single storey houses in the city and suburbs. Two storey houses and those out in the country areas hardly got a look in. Got turned down by one of the reputable companies and did not want the shonks - free or not.
But after the summer from hell, figured that there was no way we could endure it again for another summer so bit the bullet and called Bradford
Business is quiet these days since folks no longer want to pay for what the government had been giving away for nothing. So even the good guys would be desperate for work

But not that desperate it turns out. The man who came to do the quote said that for health and safety reasons their installers require a minimum of 4 metres height and the ceiling of the Lair was only 3. This problem could be solved by accessing the ceiling through the outside of the roof. But that's mainly for single storey houses.
He also added that they guarantee their work for five years. He said the ceilings are starting to sag and will not bear the weight of insulation for that long. That with the limited access meant that their company did not consider the job worth taking on. But he suggested that we could always get some one else who would be prepared to do it

So basically the options now are to pay loads of money to get the ceilings restored so that they can support new insulation, sizzle again for next summer or go over to the dark side and instal an air conditioner

At least it's not all doom and gloom. Some time on Wednesday afternoon the little inverter 'clock' ticked over to 4,000 kilowatts. That's 4 megawatts in electro geek speak. That is for three years and three months worth of sunshine.
Vernon and Petunia were rather intrigued and fascinated with the pretty solar panels and thought it was a pretty good idea. That was until November 2008 when their darling Dudley darkened the door.
This is a creature whose house and garden is full of car parts, and bodies of half dead rust buckets - half of them Hummers and other assorted suburban assault vehicles.
He has about ten roadworthy offerings - all of them gas guzzling beasts. So he flies half way around the planet, visits the Izzie one sunny November afternoon when the panels have clocked up a rather respectable 4-5 kilowatts and sneers about what a waste of space they are and how the evil greenies have conned the gullible masses to adopting this time and money wasting useless technology

Ever since then, the old folks have been regaling Izzie with the latest sob stories from "A Current Affair" and "Today Tonight" how solar panels cause cancer, set your house on fire and 101 assorted awful side effects.
Even when the government lifted the freeze on electricity prices which kept them at a ridiculous 13 cents per unit for a good 12 years or so, it still did not convince them. It was in fact knowing that 2009 was going to be the start of the price hikes that was a major motivator in getting in at the ground floor before the mad rush and while the government subsidies were still quite good. That was before they brought in the crazy phantom credits and renewable energy certificates - a pathetic scame that would make even an Enron accountant blush with embarrassment
Then the state government brought in a 40 cent net feed in tariff last August and suddenly the whole market went feral. It was a bit like the insulation schemes where all these fly by night solar panel installers popped up like mushrooms. One even has ridiculous full page adverts promoting its 'female friendly service" with silly pink type face and the inspiring title "A Woman's Spark" What next - a kosher company that produces solar panels that are programmed not to collect sunshine on Saturdays?

In the meantime, the serpent smirks smugly while all the muggles at the day job complain about their astronomical electricity bills. Now that the new financial year has started, the price has probably gone up again. Somewhere above 20 something cents per standard unit. Izzie's on a smart meter with peak, off peak and shoulder rates. Even a greenie pays attention to economic incentives.

The next big expense is the ant man. Thanks to the heavy rains of the last week and the lousy design of the Lair where the back garden slopes towards the house, all that rain that was falling too fast to be absorbed by the soil ended up pooling outside the glass sliding door and slowly seeping through and forming bit fat stinking puddles in the carpet.
Only just torn it up today and tossed a big slab of it outside. The smell of damp and mould was becoming unbearable and unlike after the soaking it got during the hailstorms of March 2010, could not leave the doors open for the sun to shine in and dry it all out.
All this rain and damp has turned the Lair into termite heaven. In the meantime, must find some way of keeping the rest of the rain away from that door.
Some boxes of books soaked up the sludge and ended up consigned to the weekly landfill collection. Lucky they were mainly second hand pulp fiction things acquired from op shops. Had previously rescued a most gorgeous book from that box full of pictures of the quirkiest hand made houses.
But the delightful Anthony De Mellos and Hofstadter stuff was less than a metre away from the scene of the crime. Did manage to move that very heavy book shelf away from the danger zone but will not happy until they are safely upstairs.

You know you've got an addiction when you got so many books that you did not even know you had stuff until you have to throw it out.
Yessss - no buying unnecessary munchies and no new books are the two biggest resolutions for this new financial year. Let's see if we can make it past the first week

Izzie has been a bad bad serpent slinking around gardens and graveyards in possession of a new toy.
The seed for such a wicked treat was planted about a week ago while following a link to a totally unrelated story in Wiredmagazine
(The resident frog and the serpent had been talking about the Goblins of Wall St and the geekish math freaks so Izzie went searching for a recent radio program about that very topic)

Seen the wee beastie in a department store yesterday but they had sold out of the more basic Windoze free versions. But it turned out that Myers - the department store in the city not only had plenty in stock but much cheaper too. It's stock take sale time.
So got to drool over all the pretty penguins and open source software. It's got Skype, Picasa, all sorts of Googlish Goodness, Firefox and Open Office. Just the sort of thing to appeal to a Scrooge Serpent. Especially that it's less than half the price of the Windoze versions. It's also only got an itsie bitsie teenie weenie 8gb storage space but that problem is easily solved.

So now we've got our own Baby Linux laptop - we thinks that netbook is the proper term. But going over to the ma's tonight and back at work on Monday so will have to wait till later in the week to test drive the new toy.
Soon will be able to tick off 3 whole things on that evil 101 list
Such an insidious thing it is indeed. Most magical one could say.

In August, Izzie adopted a new policy of fiscal rectitude. Due to too many visits to the jungles of Amazon, declared that any new flashing of the plastic would be permitted only if the funds were placed in there before spending rather than after. In other words, the intention was to use it as a debit card only.
So no clicking on that ever so tempting wish list until at least one hundred silver sickles were added first. But there were other fiscal fish to fry at the time. First item on the agenda was the ma's birthday present - a year's membership of a certain seed and weed club.

By the time the Amazon wish list finally got to the top of the queues, all sorts of strange things had happened. Gloom and doom everywhere and merchant bankers and stock brokers jumping off sky scrapers and stuff. All this misery was supposed to be in America but for some inexplicable reason, they dragged down the Oz zloty into the gutter too. Tumbled from Everest levels of 95 cents plus down to the present 60 or so. So in less than a few months, all those delicious and tempting books had pretty much nearly doubled in price for Ozzie Izzie.
The couple of cents possible interest that a bit of decadent indulgence would have added to the balance on the plastic was looking most miniscule in comparison

Several weeks ago at the local farmers market, one of the evil greenies had one of those books with her. It was called Nourishing Traditions and was full of all sorts of wonderful old fashioned recipes and scary tidbits about the processed food industry. Especially spooky were the little snippets of ingredients titled "Guess the product"
She had this book for forty silver sickles which was most reasonable indeed since it costs $$25 in the US and the Oz Zloty was already buying less than 70 US cents
But Izzie didn't have 40 silver sickles and the place is nowhere near a hole in the wall machine
So figured that we'd come back another time and get it then
She wasn't there the next time and Izzie wasn't the one after that but Saturday just gone she was there and Izzie was there as well as a little pile of silver sickles looking for a new home
But she had sold that last copy and the next batch she would be getting would cost 60 silver sickles due to the falling Oz zloty.
Oh damn and double damn thinks Izzie. But we wants this book as it is so seriously good. Must think of other ways and means
So it was a most pleasant surprise to go for a quick peek in the Jungle and to discover that instead of the recommended retail price of US$$ that they had 3 months ago, it was now down to $$16.50. Adding the five dollar cost per book and the fixed charge for the whole order got the price up to $$22.50 which is just under the original 40 silver sickles even with a seriously lousy exchange rate of 60 cents.

Was also the perfect excuse to add a John Seymour book that sells here for Oz $$60 and they had reduced from US$30 down to $20 as well as some tarot cards that had been the object of serious Izzie droolery for the last four months or so
There was something else that Izzie had wanted to acquire but never got around to back in October. It would have been the perfect birthday prezzie for Uncle Vernon who turned 70 in October. But it was nowhere to be found. But that was until last week where it appeared in a sales leaflet for two thirds the price it was back then if you could even get your hands on the little bugger in the first place.
Got our snaky little paws on this pretty little preciousss today - looks like this serpent is not the only one sniffing out a bargain. It was the last one left in the store.
Was certainly not silly enough to let that all those new policies of fiscal rectitude get in the way. Once bitten, twice shy.