Archive for the 'General' Category

This made me laugh

Thought this was interesting (if a little depressing).

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.

 garfield minus garfield

Here’s one of my favourites:

A couple of months back both Leanne and I suffered Catastrophic Chair Failure (CCF) when the chairs we use in our home office failed with a week or two of each other.

I had been thinking about a new chair for a while, and Leanne was using a very old and not particularly good quality chair too.

After much searching (and some advice from a friend – thanks Stu’ !), we went and looked at some Aeron chairs.

I had used these while at IBM (one of our conference rooms had them), and thought they were okay – but they always seemed to be set wrong for me.

I found a company here in Sydney that sells them and arranged to visit to have a look and try them with Leanne. The sales rep started by showing us how to adjust the chairs correctly – and once I realised how flexible they were in adjustment, I was sold. Particularly important was the tension adjuster on the tilt function - because I am heavy, most of these chairs feel really “floppy” and unsupportive, but by dialing up the tension, I was able to set it to give me enough support to feel comfortable and actually be able to make use of the tilt function.

They also come in multiple sizes – so I was able to get one wide enough for my body, while Leanne got a smaller model that suited her better.

Given that I work from home, I use my chair a lot, and with the neck problems I’ve had in the past, posture is really important. It took me a while to get used to the chair, but now that I am, I find it quite comfortable. It will be interesting as we are coming into summer and warmer weather – the mesh back and seat allows more air circulation, which should hopefully keep me a bit cooler.

They are expensive chairs, but come with a 10 year warranty, and given that my last chair (which was also fairly expensive) only lasted about 5 years, I’m expecting that the quality makes it worth the extra cost. By the way – we didn’t get the chrome version shown in the picture, just the regular version!

We drink a lot of water, and given the strong taste of water coming in through old pipes in our area, we filter our drinking water.

Previously, we used a Brita On Tap system, which conveniently connected to the end of the tap on the kitchen sink.

This worked reasonably well, however we also use a mobile dishwasher (standard Dishlex dishwasher on wheels) with a connector and hoses that we also plug onto the end of the tap on the kitchen sink. To connect the dishwasher, we had to remove the filter unit. This was pretty straight forward, until the Brita connector got a bit old and stopped sealing properly. This lead to difficulty putting it on correctly and having it leak everywhere. The entire unit was also pretty bulky and the filters were quite expensive.

I decided to go around to The Water Shop in Cammeray and have a look at their benchtop units.

We decided to try a Royal Doulton counter top unit, which also plugs into the end of the sink tap, but the filter unit itself sits beside the sink with a hose running to it. More room taken up beside the sink, but less on the tap itself.

Advantages of this unit include a higher outlet for the filtered water, which makes it easy to fill up 1.5 or 2 L water bottles, much easier and cleaner to use, and we can also connect the dishwasher unit directly to the bottom of the connector on the tap, which means not removing the filter connector while using the dishwasher. The filtered water selector is also pressure based: you pull the pin out while the tap is running and it diverts water to the filter unit, then when you turn off the tap, the selector automatically pops back in ready for the sink to be used as normal. This means no forgetting to turn the tap back to normal mode after finishing with the filtered water.

Apparently the filters are supposed to last 12 – 18 months with this unit, and if water flow rate decreases, you can pull it out and scrub it clean to increase the flow rate again.

Will be interesting to see how it goes over time, but so far I am quite happy with it … and the water tastes … well … tasteless ! (as it should).

Thought this might get a chuckle:

Ha-ha