mike carey

Damn, I still haven't managed to get that right! (And as an aside albeit as part of the thread's Great Tangent, there is a thread about overnights. It is in the Ask A Provider forum so technically clients shouldn't be pontificating about our views, but that hasn't stopped us before. I'm sure that there are others as well.)

I haven't watched either Downton Abbey or the Gilded Age. They seem to provide a window (okay maybe a caricatured one, but a window nevertheless) onto a society that is more unfamiliar to us, so there is interest in that. But I can see the parallels with Housewives. What I hadn't specifically put my mind to was seeing gilded age or Edwardian society dramas for their campiness. Thank you for that!

Anyone whose read Christos Tsiolkas' novel The Slap or watched a TV adaptation of it would be aware that a single slap can be controversial and prompt all sorts of reactions!

A Boer who speaks Russian but not Afrikaans?

(Your) mileage might vary. Meaning (if it wasn't clear), your experience might vary.

It's a bit of a backhander to post a video about Qantas in an article about Air New Zealand, but given the specifics of the video it makes sense. (And interesting that they showed the 'Qantas 100' livery used to mark the airline's centenary.) As Ben noted in an OMAAT article a couple of days ago, you know that things are opening up when airlines in the two antipodean hermit kingdoms are launching new ultra-long haul flights. It'll be a bit before any of the Qantas Project Sunrise routes go into service, but they have announced an additional DFW service, from Melbourne, from December. It will be four days a week on a B787. They will also be reinstating A380s on MEL-LAX about the same time. This new ANZ flight will sell well here as they would be offering one stop connections from most big Australian cities (avoiding LAX and connecting flights on a US domestic carrier). It won't offer any worthwhile connectivity onto UA, but the ANZ non-stops to ORD and IAH will do that. It's less convenient for me because there are no direct flights from Canberra to Auckland, but if the fare's good I'd be there. I don't mind connections and longer flights if the price is right. Qantas haven't said if or when they will begin the Brisbane-ORD flights they had scheduled before the pandemic, but they have switched their BNE-LAX to be operated by A330s. That frees up their B787 fleet for longer-haul flights.

It's one of the icons at the top right of the screen, in the row that includes the Notifications and PM icons. It's the second from the right. Hover the cursor over them and what they are for shows up. When you click on it a box appears with the available background, but if you scroll down in it there's a font size option. Edit - what @latbear4blk said!

It is!

I see what you did there!

And you didn't do anything, as mentioned in a different thread the default pattern was changed in memoriam for Daddy to mark the anniversary of his passing. It has been changed again (on Sunday), this time to the new default design, as you will have discovered by now. The option to change your display back to the old default design is available using the Theme option at the bottom of the page.

It's a government agency or business entity that is structured as a corporation with the same management and governance structure as a a privately held company, but is 100% government owned. They are also called government business enterprises. They have a chairman/woman, a CEO and a board. Some, like the ABC, are government funded (with some money from its activities, like merch, selling boxed sets of its productions and selling rights to its shows to other broadcasters), others operate independently, to a greater lesser extent, of government funding. Australia Post is in the latter category, making a profit in recent years, paying tax and paying the government a dividend. The CEO concerned who was effectively sacked after that watch incident, was snapped up by a commercial logistics company, Toll Global Express, as its CEO. So a competitor to AusPost got its successful former CEO. Clever of them, huh?

Moderator's Note: Please stay on the topic of grocery shopping. I have moved a post that drew on earlier comments about installing bidets to avoid needing to buy toilet paper to discuss bidets in general to a new threat 'Bidets'.

I had chatted with him when he was in Sydney. Damn this pandemic!

A fourth shot has been approved in Australia for over 65s, indigenous people over 50 and people with compromised immune systems. I only had my third about a month ago, so no rush.

A short tangent, a couple of years ago the CEO of Australia Post (a crown corporation) rewarded four executives with Cartier watches worth $AU 5K each for landing a $200m contract, and was excoriated by the PM for wasting money. Never mind that if they had been given $50K cash bonuses nobody would have batted an eyelid. At a Senate Estimates hearing on the issue, she was wearing a $50K Bugatti watch. Two lessons to be drawn from it. For some people a watch is a watch and some who can afford a $50K one will. (Hers was beautiful, so counted as jewellery.) Second, people can be irrationally envious and judgmental about the idea that people have expensive watches.

Today's cartoon from the 'Tiser. (The 'Tiser being the Adelaide Advertiser, the city's daily paper.)

As I remember it, when she took time off from tennis in '15 or '16 it was a break from the sport not a retirement. She played professional cricket during that break. She describes herself as a homebody and misses the company of her family on the tour. She may well be back in a couple of years or she may take up another sport where she can travel less, or at least not as far. Golf wouldn't qualify on the last criterion but she apparently plays off 3. In her press conference today she told people to be patient about what, if anything, she might do next.

Moderator's Note. Please keep this thread on the light-hearted (and shamelessly superficial) topic of his attractiveness, or otherwise (but what are naysayers thinking). Avoid political comments on his leadership abilities.

In what I think fairly qualifies as actually being a genuine surprise, Ash Barty has announced her retirement from tennis. She said that winning at Wimbledon gave her a sense of fulfilment, to which winning the AO added. She's done it her way, going out at the top. She chose to make the announcement in a video interview with her close friend Casey Dellacqua that's linked in this article. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-23/ash-barty-announces-retirement-from-tennis/100932944 For most of us, this came out of the blue.

As I look at it, the icon to the left of the form name in the list (the rectangle with the two speech bubbles in it) is coloured for forums that have unread content and greyed out where you've read them. The text isn't bold the way it is for unread threads within the forum views.

And I could say, 'Where better to go for a hot date', but that would be off-topic so I won't.

Steven Draker is one name that comes to mind. I don't know if he is the one they thought of.

Veering off topic, I know, but I was listening to Dan Savage tonight talk about the Chicago book shops where he as a gay Catholic school boy bought books that the school library would never have, and how they let him sit for hours reading those that he couldn't even contemplate buying and taking home.

And the leadership adds to anything physically attractive about the man.

Funny how tastes differ (it's not really, everyone knows they do), I haven't met Damian (the years of living Covidly kept me away from that PS meeting) and share your apparent liking for him, but I have met William socially and chatted with him. Neither is off my list.