Dreamworld, printer

I went to Dreamworld with R on Saturday. We went on the Tower of Terror, the Log Ride, Thunder River, Spooty Spin, Runaway Raptar, Vortex, the Reef Diver and the Claw once each; the Giant Drop twice (it's scary, but only for a fraction of a second!) and Wipeout four times. I liked Wipeout the most. It's one of the longest rides -- I think it lasts for over two minutes -- but it's just the unpredictability of it which I enjoyed the most, never knowing which direction you will go next. It's a shame these fun experiences are forgotten so quickly!

On Sunday I went to my friend Y's place to fix her printer, a Brother MFC-210C. It kept displaying "Unable to Init" and the solution in the manual was to look for obstructions inside the printer. This failed so she suggested trying an Epson VP-600 a Japanese friend had given her. After we found the right adapter for the power cord she plugged it in and grey smoke started coming out of the printer from the bottom in all directions. It seems that the printer only accepted 100V power! Never mind, I looked at groups.google.com and found the first reference to the printer was in April 1998, so it was more than nine years old.

I bought some furniture from Ikea a few weeks ago -- a Smille chair, a FLÄRKE computer table and an Expedit book case. After I got home I noticed that I could have got a DAVE laptop table instead! It has a hole in the back for the power cable to sneak down through. But I am happy enough with this combination for now. The FLÄRKE is better for reading or writing on than the DAVE, I think. But the DAVE is lighter and lighter == better for the environment. My room is much more organised now.

Speaking of the environment I think it's a bit hypocritical of the free newspaper MX to write about water saving. Think of all the water that gets used to produce a rag that nobody would read were it not free. Because of my work (particularly the Transpower job) I think about water as energy now... I think about GWh of rain, falling from the sky! The hydro inflows are not measured in cumecs (cubic metres per second) so much as in GWh -- so for example, the South Island of New Zealand, on average, gets about 17500GWh of hydro inflows per year.

New Zealand was great fun! Here is a picture of me on the ferry between the North and South Islands.

real men use nukes

"Republican candidates for U.S. president agreed on Tuesday that Iran must not develop atomic weapons even if a tactical nuclear strike is needed to stop it and accused Democrats of being soft on the issue."

Does the average American realise how crazy this sounds to the rest of the world? "Democrats are Birkenstock-wearing, Prius-driving softies who think diplomacy works, but we SUV-driving Republicans know when Evil Countries should be put in their place and we aren't afraid to use nukular weapons to do it!"