The totally off-topic thread

[Denali]

Oh. Groan. I feel your pain.
Do you think there were any red flags from last year? Unusual activity (not unlawful, just out of the norm for you?)

Nothing to ring alarm bells, covering 2013 to 2016 so I have to go into storage to find boxes of documents.

Just a PITA as its time consuming and its not as if we are ripping them off

On the plus side, reading my health fund stuff and found out we can claim $80 on the Tens machine we just brought

Every now and then I find stuff on our policy thats covered.

 

[TheEmu]

No.But I can reassure you it was not being staged and filmed in Rabaul.

Buzz Aldrin sometimes "reassures" conspiracy theorists that it was real with a real punch in the face!

 

[GarrettM]

What prompted my post was an interesting story in that august journal, the Guardian, which is supposed to have some standards. It was about a new 'contraceptive' for rat control developed by these two women researchers in the USA. Overall the article was pretty good where it just reported what researchers said but when the journo claimed that in the 1970s DDT "the active ingredient in Agent Orange" was used for rat control I had to shout at the screen. For one, DDT has a pretty high LD50 for rats so it would take a LOT of chemical to kill them and you'd have to force it down their throats. And of course Agent Orange was NOT DDT. Agent Orange was 2,4,5-T, a defoliant (herbicide) and nothing to do with DDT. DDT is an insecticide and not as bad as everyone thinks toxicity and carcinogenicity wise. The problem with it was that it built up in vertebrate systems like most organochlorine pesticides which are now all banned here.


Anyway there were a few more howlers and questionable statements but the rest was fine!
(I noted they later deleted the reference to Agent Orange).

I read that one too.

 

[JohnK]

Buzz Aldrin sometimes "reassures" conspiracy theorists that it was real with a real punch in the face!

Genesis is also real but some choose not to believe.

 

[TheRealTMA]

Genesis is also real but some choose not to believe.

No Johnk! They broke up some years ago and Phil Collins has a medical condition where he can't play drums anymore so there won't be a reunion.

 

[anat0l]

Oh. Groan. I feel your pain.
Do you think there were any red flags from last year? Unusual activity (not unlawful, just out of the norm for you?)

I thought the targets for ATO were mainly random, i.e. they either choose some professions or demographic slices this year, or the good ol' throw a dart at the board.

Only the biggest red flags that come up from some "obvious" criteria will ever fall automatically into the audit basket. By that time, those schmucks just might be amongst the world's worst white collar criminals.

 

[cambriamarsh]

It's funny how we accept news stories and articles about subjects we don't know much about as more or less correct but as soon as it's about something we know it's full of wild inaccuracies. It makes me wonder about how accurate anything in the news actually is.

How very true, sitting in the AKL Koru Club and showed my wife (who thinks this site is odd) despite us being here on an Amigo status match, she smiled

 

[JohnK]

No Johnk! They broke up some years ago and Phil Collins has a medical condition where he can't play drums anymore so there won't be a reunion.

Up to you....

 

[JessicaTam]

That's not hoping for too much is it JT?

Gas - check
Water - check
Electricity - check
Foxtel - nope
phone/internet - how does Monday sound?

Apparently there is an outage at the exchange and I should be fine by Monday morning! I am tipping that that is when the tech is going to bother going to the exchange to push a button.

Tethered to my phone at the moment and have just had a warning txt regarding my data usage. I think I will be keeping a low profile on AFF for a few days.

Oh well, more time to unpack boxes.

P.S. dinner was at the pub - I'm still looking for the box with the frypans.

 

[anat0l]

To anyone who knows how to, or does for a hobby/living, design and code websites (and no, that doesn't include if you run a blog using off-the-shelf platforms):

I just finished teaching a unit on Responsive Web Design to my students, which also involved them learning the nuts and bolts of HTML and CSS. So, of course we coded in those languages, and I taught them good code writing practices and blah blah blah...

It got me thinking - a lot of websites actually have pretty rubbish code. On top of that, there's so many more languages, and you have lots of "interpreted" languages for HTML and CSS which allow you to use something pretty but then it gets interpreted into the final HTML and CSS as something either repetitive, complex, and/or resembling code as if it were typed by a dog.

Question: is it worth teaching how to write HTML and CSS any more, or is it a waste of time?

 

[Flashback]

To anyone who knows how to, or does for a hobby/living, design and code websites (and no, that doesn't include if you run a blog using off-the-shelf platforms):

I just finished teaching a unit on Responsive Web Design to my students, which also involved them learning the nuts and bolts of HTML and CSS. So, of course we coded in those languages, and I taught them good code writing practices and blah blah blah...

It got me thinking - a lot of websites actually have pretty rubbish code. On top of that, there's so many more languages, and you have lots of "interpreted" languages for HTML and CSS which allow you to use something pretty but then it gets interpreted into the final HTML and CSS as something either repetitive, complex, and/or resembling code as if it were typed by a dog.

Question: is it worth teaching how to write HTML and CSS any more, or is it a waste of time?

By HTML are you referring to HTML5?

 

[wandering_fred]

And as for the webserver what are you using? Apache will present fairly basic material with no "translations"

Happy wandering

Fred

 

[anat0l]

By HTML are you referring to HTML5?

I was going to leave it general, but OK, yes, HTML5

 

[beefarmer]

To Denali, are you a run of the mill paye tax payer, or a corporate set up and have you had some fancy deductions that warrant an audit?

Just for interest sakes.

 

[docjames]

Depending on your carrier you can get a data pack for an extra GB for usually ~ $10.

Gas - check
Water - check
Electricity - check
Foxtel - nope
phone/internet - how does Monday sound?

Apparently there is an outage at the exchange and I should be fine by Monday morning! I am tipping that that is when the tech is going to bother going to the exchange to push a button.

Tethered to my phone at the moment and have just had a warning txt regarding my data usage. I think I will be keeping a low profile on AFF for a few days.

Oh well, more time to unpack boxes.

P.S. dinner was at the pub - I'm still looking for the box with the frypans.

 

[coriander]

phone/internet - how does Monday sound?

Apparently there is an outage at the exchange and I should be fine by Monday morning! I am tipping that that is when the tech is going to bother going to the exchange to push a button.

.... And that exchange is brand new after the last one burned down four years ago, causing local outages that lasted for many weeks.

 

[Warks]

My phone plan with Telstra expired as the phone hit two years old. I thought about getting a new phone but the current one is still good and a new one would have cost another $15 a month. Telstra, of course, didn't actually tell me my plan had ended and was quite happy for me to keep paying the same rate for the paid off phone. I managed to go online and via chat got a plan which was $25 a month cheaper (sans phone of course) and gave me a big 10GB in data instead of the 1.5GB I had before.

 

[Denali]

Coworkers family has applied for citizenship and the 15yr daughter had her interview.

Interviewer: So, Jane. If you were overseas and were in trouble and need to phone someone for help, who would you phone?

(The answer is the nearest embassy)

The daughter says, "My mum and dad"

Interviewer: Now, Jane. Nooo, if you were in trouble and you couldnt phone your mum or dad, who would you phone to get help?

Jane: My Gran?

 

[Foreigner]

Unpleasant 9-hour flight for Italian lawyer on EK:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...during-nine-hour-flight-seated-obese-man.html

 

[RooFlyer]

Genesis is also real but some choose not to believe.

No Johnk! They broke up some years ago and Phil Collins has a medical condition where he can't play drums anymore so there won't be a reunion.

Up to you....

I really don't see how the break-up of Genesis is up to TheRealTMA. Or is TheRealTMA some big-shot in the global music industry?

C'mon. Fess up. And can you fix my iTunes subscription?