willedoo

I never clicked on the link so I guess if they weren't marketing anything we could put it down as benign spam.

By it's nature, LNG contracts are normally long term. Typical export contracts for gas are in the 20 to 25 year range. If you contract to buy someone's gas for the next twenty years, you would want it at a cheapish price to reflect the contract length. Oil has always been easy to ship and handle so there's a spot market for oil. Because of the required infrastructure for gas handling and storage, there hasn't really been much of a spot market for it until recent times where it's happened on a small scale.

FB don't give two hoots about fraudsters operating on FB Marketplace. A lot of them try for small amounts of $50 or $100 because they know FB don't care, the cops are too busy to bother chasing up small fry like that, and if a bank transfer has been done, the banks don't really care either.

It's been an interesting time the last few days getting a heap of demolition building materials from the house flippers I met. At a rough estimate I've brought home around $1,500 worth of hardwood, bricks, pavers, plywood and steel. Today I picked up some lengths of structural angle steel in 150x90x8 and 100x100x6 sizes. The 150x90mm angle is 3.7 metres long, the others 2 and 2.4 lengths. I was fairly close with my guess of new price for the angle. I had no idea of the price but with the cost of steel these days I guessed around $500 worth. I just priced it and it's worth $556, so not bad for free. All up I've used half a tank of fuel running into town to get the stuff and given the body a bit of a workout. They don't own a regular house and live in the houses they renovate, so they don't have storage for any excess materials between jobs, so it usually gets dumped. It's fairly late in the renovation so I won't get much more from this job. I was talking to the bloke yesterday and he said if I'd met him earlier in the renovation I almost could have built a house from the gear he threw out, about four bin skips worth. There was quite a bit of hardwood thrown away. They do high end stuff, so a lot of the houses are completely gutted to make way for an entirely new floor plan. In older houses, that can mean hardwood internal wall frames thrown out.

Trump held a rally in California on private property where the nearest parking was four to six miles away. They provided twenty buses to bus in thousands of people in from the parking to the rally then left them stranded there when it finished. The rally finished at 7.00pm and thousands were still there in the dark at 10pm with only one bus provided for the return trip.

I'd describe it as an underwhelming government.

It's sometimes hard to figure out what goes on in bird world. My resident raven has been back here on a daily basis for about four months now. He and his wife lived here for years as they had their yearly broods and my place was their sole territory. Then she disappeared, presumably deceased and the great crow war began. The torresian crows regularly did raids in numbers, and were clearly trying to take over the raven's territory preying on his age and new found single status. Mr. Crow the raven started appearing less frequently, sometimes only once in two weeks rather than his daily presence. Meanwhile the gang of torresian crows were coming up and making a racket and generally making pricks of themselves. At one stage Mr. Crow disappeared for about three months and I assumed he'd died. Then one day he came back and you would see him every two or three days. Now he's found himself a new friend and is back here on a daily basis like he always was in the past. It's also very quiet regarding torresian crows. They only come here occasionally now and usually in small numbers and are easily scared off. I'll never know what really goes on but here's my theory. The old raven was fairly vulnerable during the war when the torresians were trying to drive him out. Now that he's got a new mate he's got a bit of lead in the pencil and incentive to re-establish his original territorial boundaries. How he did it I don't know. Maybe he killed the torresian boss. Cut off the head of the organisation and the body shrinks away possibly. As far as breeding with his new mate, only time will tell there. I still think she's a widow he's found and they are just together for company and security. He's still as active as ever but should be getting toward end of life soon. They're not a long living bird.

The only one I do it with is rates via a weekly direct debit arrangement with council. It's great not getting a big bill twice a year. Vehicle registration in Queensland can be paid in 1,3,6, or 12 month periods. I think you pay a little bit more doing the shorter periods.

You see the GM engines a lot in Bangkok in the river taxis. They have a fairly quick response so my guess is they are more nimble docking and maneuvering around the jetty. Fairly good fuel economy as well I seem to remember. Someone might be able to verify that.

It's easy to understand how the two stroke GM's got the nickname of bird scarers. I spent a year working on a trawler that had a 671. That high pitched drone was constant even though it was muffled a bit by being down in the engine room. I used to envy those boats with Cummins and Gardner engines.

Yes, it's a 371 GM. We had ours for 49 years and the only time it stopped was when it did a crankshaft in the late 60's.

In this part of the world the DB tractors don't seem to be so popular with collectors. John Deere, Caterpillar, Lanz Bulldog, IH all seem to be the popular ones. The older Chamberlains like the Super 70 and Super 90 are very sought after.

It's an all round rough bit of gear in that photo. That marston matting leaning up against the wall is just about toast. The nose wheel beside it would be a nice item but they had a go at cutting the tyre off it with a 9" angle grinder. They put a couple of good slices in it before giving up and ditching the whole thing. It looks like the bearing blew out.

They're only just shells of engines. A lot of the parts have been stripped out.

It's a Continental, there's another one behind it somewhere under the rest of the stuff. I'll have to have a closer look as I haven't paid much attention to them for along time. Early 206 engines from memory, so probably O-520 engines.

Noddy's predicament is that they are potentially losing the votes of women voters and any of their men who are supportive of them on the abortion issue. He repeatedly says they have no plan to change the laws if they are elected. But he refuses to answer the question on whether he would allow a conscience vote for LNP members if Katter got his repeal bill up in parliament. In theory, if Labor cops a hiding and loses heaps of seats, the LNP will have a lot more numbers. If Noddy allows them a conscience vote, the bill could potentially receive heaps of LNP votes. Katter has four seats currently and one independent. It's probably unlikely to come to anything but refusing to answer questions about a conscience vote makes him look shifty, as if he's covering up the fact that he would allow a conscience vote if the bill was voted on. Added to that is his past coming back to bite him on the bum. When the abortion laws were decriminalised a few years back, he voted against the legislation. The two of them are having one more public debate before the election. The premier won the first one and should have no trouble in the second debate with this abortion issue front and centre.

I don't know what his game is, he's usually relatively sensible. Maybe his party is courting the religious vote thinking they might pick up another seat or two. I can't think of any seats where the bible vote would sway the result.

I searched a few folders and found a photo of mine. It's in pretty rough condition.

I found a photo of a 24D. The one I've got is definitely the same model, although nowhere near as good as this one in the photo.

This is my bottom shed, it's the worst one. It's still half full of cow dung and the old cow died almost two years ago. She used to camp in there when it was raining. The shed needs a total clean out to make better use of the space. There's a bit of old stuff in there like a vintage lawn mower and an old BSA side valve stationary engine that was on my grandfather's mower. I've even still got the 32 volt generator and 240 volt inverter in there that was our power plant when I was a kid. About half the shed is taken up by an old David Brown petrol engine tractor that hasn't run for years. I think it's an old 24D, circa 1950's.

On the subject of positives, I've been in salvager's heaven this last week. I just have to make sure I use all the gear so it doesn't turn into a hoarder's nightmare. I answered an ad on Facebook Marketplace for some secondhand bricks. They were solids, from the old local brickworks when they were operating. Solids are like hen's teeth now; brickworks that still make them often only do it to order and they are very expensive. I rolled up at the renovation site and picked them up, about 200 of them. The people doing the renovation are a nice young couple and it turns out they are house flippers. They usually end up with heaps of building demolition material that goes in the bin skip and would prefer it if someone could use it instead of throwing good material away. As it is, they found the right bloke for that. I went back in today for a couple of loads. I ended up with 100+ split face retaining blocks (retail $6 each) and a pile of good fill for the driveway holes and a few sheets of non structural ply. The second trip was more driveway fill plus a couple of 3 metre long 6x3" hardwood beams that had been used as lintels and a whole bunch of hardwood 3x2" short studs. They're only 2 metres long but will be ok for jack studs and the like. Tomorrow I'm going back for another short 6x3" beam, some more ply, a hardwood bench, some treated pine posts and there's heaps of pallets there if I want them. It might be ongoing as they do two or three houses per year. It's mutually beneficial; I get good recycled building material for free and they get the site cleaned up.

It's hard to stop those sisters. Mine is heading toward 76 and she still teaches dance classes.

The Super 70 was far from the safest tractor to drive. That hand clutch could be a bit jumpy. They work opposite to a dozer clutch; with the Chamberlain you push it forward to engage. It makes for a lot of fun reversing up to an implement to hook up.

We had a Super 70 with the 371 GM motor, one of the models before the bench seats. Just a drawbar, no three point linkage and you climbed on from the rear of the tractor. The seat was a single seat. It was the same as this one in the video:

I bet he's really p*ssed off with Robbie Katter saying he will sponsor a bill to criminalise abortion if the LNP win government. It's the sort of election issue they could have done without. Until this point it's been an easy run for the opposition leader repeating his four issue mantra but now some tricky questions are coming at him.