Posts by Rachel Prosser
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Slightly off-topic (but related to political posturing)
When did the Public Service become the Bureaucracy?
And when did bureaucracy become a bad thing? It originated as a good thing sometime around the French Revolution (I think) when bureaucracy replaced patronage, favouritism and nepotism with a fairer system !
-
Get rid of the bonus points system because it didn't work for Auckland?
And here I come in with my valiant defence of the bonus point, based on being someone who actually goes to the Air New Zealand Cup in person, in rain, hail and sleet (yes literally. That was me wearing 2 hats and cocooning under a waterproof blanket last week)
The bonus point makes it more interesting! We spent most of the second half against the Bay (um, sorry, can't remember which Bay, we had two in a row) feeling cross that Canterbury had stuffed things up and not got the fourth try. Although I think they did get the fourth and fifth in the end. And God was in his heaven, and all right with the world, despite the rain.
I should add a disclaimer. I am not born and bred, one-eyed Red and Black, just living here now after previously living and supporting Wellington (as a child), King Country/Waikato (as a teenager) and then Otago (because everyone likes Otago and wishes they too had been a student there at some stage). And Mid Canterbury because my Dad coached the under 19s.
I came to Canterbury via the Crusaders (so Tasman is my second team, which makes Friday interesting). The brass band in the Tui stand will be pulling out the Blackadder theme!
And while I am on my "bonus points are good" theme, I'll add my "there is too much manufactured so-called entertainment" theme. And "tickets are too expensive when the ground is mostly empty theme"
That brass band is great (and I think, unpaid) As is the ground announcer's dead pan delivery when he says "and Canterbury's first try has been scored by Adam Whitelock/Tim Bateman/Scott Hamilton." The implication that there will others is sweet, and and his intonation of the scores is pitch perfect.
And if they brought the average ticket price closer to the average return per seat (half the seats return $0) then they might have a full ground. They could introduce the Easyjet system where tickets are priced on demand, and go up and down. Or maybe not.
In any case, go the Bonus point! (and whichever Bay you happen to support - I can't remember if it's Go the Bay, Up the Bay, On the Bay, Wi-hay the Bay - whatever)
-
I'm experimenting with Genius - I like it!
Was a bit perturbed that Apple wanted to know what I had in my system (Digital rights enforcement anyone?), although they claimed anonymity (what's the bet the terms and conditions change sometime in the future?)
Funnily enough, it won't produce Genius recommendations from my most-played track, which happens to be from the Shrek soundtrack (in my defence, it's because it was my nephew's favourite when he was little). Or anything else from the Shrek soundtrack either - like the Rufus Wainwright Hallelujah, although it does one for my Jeff Buckley Hallelujah, no problem.
Maybe I just don't have enough other music like Shrek?
-
@ Che
but at the office? in the artificial quiet and the air conditioning? almost possible to concentrate.
the $3.50 is money well-spend.You got it! I do my best writing by far surrounded by people. Also the fact that I cannot procrastinate easily - no "polishing the goldfish" is possible if I'm at my table. Or reading comments on public address...
@StephenRachel: as your investment adviser, I must point out that $3.50 per weekday, invested at a net 5% return (not unreasonable for KiwiSaver) would return almost $12,000 over 10 years.
Thanks Stephen. You will no doubt approve of my Lotto strategy. I "win" approximately $300 a year on Lotto, by not buying a ticket 50 weeks of the year. No tell what compounding will do to that (can't remember how to do the NPV calculation on Excel!)
That said, I think on an input/output basis the investment in coffee is worth it. My chargeable hours (and other income-producing outputs) are much higher if I'm based in a cafe than at home. And pesky admin goes faster too.
I am cheered though, that netting $35.00 a day after tax and investing it would return $120,000 over 10 years. Now all I have to do is use my cafe time rightly, up my billable time, and voila!
-
with your current setup you will never be able to get espresso as good as what a cafe can make.
I had realised that. Home coffee is restricted to "working from home need caffeine hit urgently" time. My niece is more than happy wiht the quality of the fluffies though.
At the moment I am finding my $3.50 - $4 a day gets me space to work on my laptop, read the paper, meet people, generally be productive, and enjoy a good cup of coffee. It might be better to put the money in Kiwisaver, but a little bit of luxury in your life goes a long way.
Right, off to Metro for today's hit!
Cultivating connoisseurship beyond what you already like is making a rod for your own back.
There's one for the quotation section in the Saturday Press. Time they had some new stuff rather than recycling Billy Connolly.
-
Ok caffeinistas
Dare I ask, but if you don't feel like shelling out $500 for a perfect burr grinder, and you've currently got a basic spice grinder thingie and standard home espresso machine (not plumbed in to anything!) then:
Which is best:
Basic el cheapo grinder (less than $100) or
Buy beans pre-ground?
Pay for someone else to make it?Answers on a coffee cup.
-
oooh, all those asterisks made the formatting look interesting. Not intended on my part
-
I listened in to the Pretender while doing some work. But the other two people in the room, who were watching it decided to channel hop after being distracted and irritated by the inordinate amount of Quaxing (if I use that term correctly).
In other words: no f****g sentence was f****ing complete without using the word f*****g, so they f***ed off and changed the channel.
When I tuned in I felt that that got old really quickly.
-
What's so bad about the Adidas uniforms? At least they're not so multicoloured that you can't tell which team is which in a ruck (a problem with some of the modern designs.
Although I have to say that David Campese is very pretty in that picture.
Re the Ranfurly Shield, I can still remember my disappointment at Wellington losing to Canterbury. It took an awfully long time for me to forgive Wayne Smith for scoring the winning try.
When told we would be moving to Mid Canterbury when I was 14, I said "But Wayne Smith is the only All Black I don't like!"
That said, I've well come around since then (and admire Wayne Smith now). Ironically, I have become a Canterbury/Crusaders fan...to the extent that I go to the games when I have a free ticket (which is most of the time), and have a red and black hat and scarf and everything. Not something I would have believed as a 10-year old!
I wish the CRFU (and others) would price their tickets closer to those in almanac days. It' quite possible their average return would go up (at the moment vast numbers of seat return them $0 as they are empty (with no extra $$ for hotdogs and pies either)
I'd rather they charged $10 a seat and had the place full each week. Or at least adjusted the PA system so it's not set for a full crowd each week.
-
I admit to just wanting to switch off the whole business.
But I am aware of way people constantly make assumptions like "she must have known", 'if you knew x you would do y", "You would remember that wouldn't you" or "you'd definitely ask more questions about that, wouldn't you". Or "it's obvious when you think about it"
The assumptions are made about management and leadership of any kind, and politicians in particular.
"You" would, do that "when you think about it" but the workload and volume of other distractions is amazing, particularly for politicians let alone someone of ministerial rank. They will be talking to dozen of people every day about issues great and small.
I bet Winston forgot, or mis-remembered.
Helen Clark's conversation about Owen Glenn (whatever it was - and I haven't been paying attention) would be likely to have been one of a dozen issues which passed her desk that day, one of hundreds in a week including security briefings, random constitutent issues and a whole lot of others.
To the ordinary person, who never deals in such things, it seems huge. To someone for whom important stuff happens a dozen times a day, six-seven days a week, it's one more detail.
She simply wouldn't get time to take half an hour and think "hmm, what do I do, or say here or to play the "what if" game, she'd have been 3 or 4 issues down the track by then.
I sometimes like to think of it as a map. For very busy people, overachievers, can often lose slip of details. Their maps are like a GIS with 7 layers, all visible at once, with a resulting mess.
I guess my point is that commenters look at these actions in isolation - one layer of the map - as if they were the only things happening at the time, or even the most important thing at the time.
Draw a map of Queen Street and you draw 1 line, marking with an X a particular feature - a piece of art or street furniture. It look easy to find, impossible to miss. Walking down Queen street, with dozens of people, noise, jostling, weather and advertising means details, even big ones, can get lost in the crowd.
That's an imperfect analogy, but my point is that taking things in isolation and then second guessing makes it easier to judge others out of context.