Life

Generation Y sees privacy differently.  Generation Y is the first generation to socialise daily using electronic means (eg Facebook, Twitter, SMS messaging, MSN/Yahoo messenger).  This is the main way that they communicate.

Complaining is a great life skill. Do the following:

1.  Start documenting your contact with the vendor. Document the method of contact (email, phone, post, person), and date and time of contact with the company. Use different methods of contact.
2. Stick to the facts when complaining. Do not use emotive language. List events in chronological order and be as precise as you can. At the end of the complaint, detail the impact on yourself and ask for what you want.
3. If it appears that the vendor is not processing your claim in a timely fashion, contact your ombudsman or consumer affairs and lodge a complaint. Fax, send or email a copy of the consumer affairs complaint you have made to the vendor. 

You require persistence and discipline to document what has happened. I have used this process to resolve several complaints. In one case a complaint took a whole year to resolve.

After attempting to avoid Catherine Deveny's annoying appearances on Q & A and stupid columns in The Age newspaper, and then hearing the deliberately obscene and hurtful comments she broadcast over Twitter, I was glad when The Age got rid of Catherine Deveny.

Government has done nothing effectual to correct the housing bubble in Melbourne, Australia that has been going for years. Do the Australian and state governments have a detailed plan on how to deal with it? Not that I have heard of - yet large mortgage payments are taking money out of the pockets of Australians every day. A popular misconception is that supply and demand is the only factor that determines house prices. I say that the housing boom is fed by three factors:

1. Crappy Presents. It’s hard to get excited about a small bottle of Avon talcum powder and a hankie, especially if you still have the one from last year.

2. Family arguments. Potentially they involve decades of history and people are quite happy to suppress them for 364 days (365 for a leap year), then why bring them up on the Big Day?

3. Shopping as a contact sport. Not deliberately, just because there are too many people searching for the perfect last minute gift.

4. Tacky Christmas decorations. I don’t think the fat man takes any notice of “Santa Please Stop Here” signs in someone’s front yard.

5. People who insist on the traditional Northern Hemisphere Christmas dinner, even when it’s over 30 degrees in the Antipodes in December.

6. People who dress their dogs up in an attempt to include them in the festivities. Dogs don’t need antlers. (especially Rottweilers)

7. The memory of the Christmas party when you had one too many apricot schnapps and did something you regret.

8. TV Sitcoms do a Christmas show with the plot stolen from a classic story. Although Michael J Fox is a fabulous actor, Family Ties' Alex P Keaton was just not believable as Scrooge.

9. Lame (American of course) Christmas Movies, especially ones that give rise to even lamer sequels.

10. The thing I hate most – I’m not a kid anymore, so there are no surprises from Santa on Christmas morning. What’s the point of getting up?

Thanks to Kathryn for this post!

Includes news, information and interviews about heaps of 80s stuff like Stripes, Huey Lewis, Andrew Dice Clay.

Check it out here: http://blogs.tampabay.com/80s/

Technology is evolving so rapidly that the "old" educational paradigm of memorising and learning facts is fast becoming redundant and less useful.

Eventually (normally faster than we think) there will be an easy to use web interface for the human brain. This may seem a bit way out at this stage, but I can foresee a "Google chip" that could be implanted into our brains so that we have instant access to the collective knowledge of the web.

I remember one of my classes in high school consisted of:

1. Students and teacher show up to class.
2. Teacher writes notes on the black board.
3. Student writes notes from the black board.

This was an uninspiring way of learning, and will not cut it in the future.

What will be important for knowledge workers in the future will be how to use information, rather than recalling information.

There has been problem with ebay Australia's listings. I listed a watch for sale, and it would appear if you did a particular search for it, but would not appear if you browsed the category.

I have emailed ebay about this 3 times, but I think that ebay support is in the USA, they cannot seem to see the same problem that I can.

It is disappointing that when I have sent messages to ebay they have sent back pro-forma pre-made responses and do not appear to have made any effort in investigating this problem.

It appears that ebay is losing touch.

It seems that Australia's economy is being pulled in two directions. The US and most of the rest of the world's economies are slowing down, while demand for Australia's mineral resources remains strong.

The dilemma I can see is that the Australian government only has two main "controls" on the economy:

I had an electrical safety switch put in 2 weeks ago, everything was fine, until yesterday when the light safety switch flipped and now refuses to go up. After quite a bit of diagnostic work, I think it is a particular light socket that is causing it, and I plan to replace it. So I found a really good site for information on doing home repairs. It is www.expertvillage.com. It has lots of guides on home repairs in video format, they are put together really well.