willedoo

I copied and pasted that from an illiterate person. It should read 100 kg of potatoes.

You have 100 kg potatoes, which are 99% water by weight. Then you leave them in the sun to dehydrate until they're 98% water. How much do they weigh now? Answer: 50 kg.

Jerry might know more about that David Cameron business. The way I read it, King Charlie gave Cameron a life peerage which allows him to be appointed to the House of Lords and be Foreign Secretary without having to run for and win a lower house seat. There's a big question here. Is it normal for the monarch of the U.K. to grant a peerage at the request of the PM so the recipient can take up a government minister's position. I thought the monarch was supposed to be politically neutral, but making someone a Lord to fit the agenda of one political party stinks in my opinion. If Charlie gets involved in dodgy business, the case for a Republic here can only strengthen. Thankfully we don't have an upper house of titled twits and all our senators have to be elected by the people. For sure, there are some twits in our Senate, but they don't need a title for it.

Or should it be spelling police. It reminds me of one unhealthy activity as a kid - melting lead and breathing the fumes. Luckily we didn't do it too often.

Should send this one to the grammar police thread. We led a healthy, outdoors existence.

The world is getting too serious. I think it's time Dad's Army came back on TV.

I tripped mine once. I was in a hole jackhammering a shed post foundation and the lead was between the jackhammer and hole wall and rubbed through. I was soaking wet with sweat and only got a small tingle from the lead before the power cut. Without the circuit breaker I would have got zapped big time.

Things have gone up a lot since covid and have kept going up since. Hopefully prices will stabilise some time soon. That blue painted RHS in your photo is around $700 to buy now. I'm kicking myself for giving away a lot of scrap steel two years ago. I was cleaning the place up to sell and was in get out of Dodge mode, so just dumped it all and now after a few health issues, I've decided to stay on here for a while. I probably dumped thousands of dollars worth in today's replacement value. When you're used to just picking up a bit of your own scrap steel to do a job, it suddenly comes as a shock to the system to have to go and buy it new again. This is what I'm starting with (photo below). Ignore the dodgy props, that was a rush job yesterday afternoon to get it off to return the hire trailer. The rust looks bad in the photo, but it's all just light surface rust where paint has come off. It has all the dropsides in really good condition. They are the heaviest I've ever seen as far as the gauge of steel used; it would take a bit to dent them. The tray is 1900 wide at the outside. Most trays seem to be around the 1800 to 1850 mark. It's a professionally built tray from NSW originally. I've never seen that type of RHS before. Three sides are flat and one of the long section sides has a concave. One problem with some single cab trays and those Chinese imported gal trailers is that they are 2400 long inside which means you can't fit sheets of ply that are usually around 2440 or 2420.

From a defence perspective, we're very cosy with them. One example is the Israeli corporation, Elbit Systems. https://elbitsystems.com.au/defence/

I guess there's different ways to look at cost vs quality. Looking more carefully at the Repco site, the price is $171 each but the offer an auto club discount so the price with RACQ membership is $136, so that's almost $70 cheaper for the pair. Looking at it that way, it would be about $220 a pair more than the Chinese ones, or about $110 more per side. I don't know much about the subject, but I would assume the Narva lights would be basically plug and play. Thanks Pete, that's a good tip. I'll keep an eye out there and on FB. I've got a bit of time up the sleeve to decide as the tray is not native to my vehicle and needs modifications. I'll have to crack the chassis rail welds and bring them in a bit and might have to cut off the rear mudguards and toolboxes and move them rearward a bit. There's a bit of work involved but I can do it all myself. The tray is ideal, steel with a timber floor which I prefer, solid tubing headache rack almost roll bar standard and decent sized lockable under tray toolboxes. I thought about building one but slapped myself when I found out how dear steel is these days. For the cost of this tray from the wreckers ($440) I would only be able to buy the chassis rails and cross beams and very little else. Even timber prices have gone through the roof. The tray is a dual cab tray and only 1750 long but new hardwood 80x19 T&G flooring sets you back $400. Luckily, this one has an acceptable floor. To get a tray like that made new is around 5 to 6 thousand and I probably couldn't build one for much under $3,000. Just the three dropsides wouldn't give much change out of a grand to get proper folded metal ones with latches. This one from the wreckers should get me a good tray with not too much work involved for around $1,500.

Unless you're an immigrant whose former language doesn't do diphthongs well. Then it would be four syllables: ta-wen-ti-too.

Bruce, I voted no specifically because of the clauses in the proposed constitution where a handful of powers the existing GG now has would be transferred to the PM and not the President. They tried to sell the thing as minimalist whereby the word GG would be replaced by the word President, but it wasn't entirely true. I didn't like all of the examples of where they replaced the word GG with Prime Minister. I don't know if I still have a copy of the mailed out constitution. If I find it, I'll reread it to refresh the memory. At the time, I thought some of the powers Howard was proposing to move from the GG to PM would be problematic down the line. I didn't think the proposed model was a good one overall. Most parts were ok, some not. I don't know if this is correct, but I was under the impression a lot voted no because they wanted to publicly elect the President and not have the President appointed by the vote of 2/3 majority in both houses. Bearing that in mind, a lot of people in this country have very little understanding of how our system works. It's scary how many think a Prime Minister is elected. The member for (insert electorate) is elected by the voters in that electorate only as their electorate's representative, and can only become PM by party appointment.

To quote Repco re the Narva tail light: 'Virtually unbreakable polycarbonate lens'. Plus a 5 year L.E.D. warranty.

I've just bought a second hand steel tray for my dual cab to replace the tub. It needs a few modifications and a good paint job before fitting. It came from the wreckers and is complete except for missing tail lights. I want to go to LEDs, so here's the question: does anybody have any experience with the cheap Chinese sets you can buy on eBay. You can get a pair for $50 or less compared to $170 each for good quality Narva lights. I know quality is usually worth paying for, but the cheap ones mean a saving of almost $300. Not having dealt with them, the only problems I could see is flimsy construction and not so bright lights. I don't know any physical stores that have the el cheapo lights. Most likely if I could compare the two in person, the choice would be more obvious. I thought the Narva lights were expensive until I saw some others online at around $300 each. If the cheap ones are in any way flimsy, they wouldn't last long with my rough driveway. Top photo is the Narva light from Repco, bottom is the cheapies from evilbay.

48 hours without a slow down or crash. The laptop is going like a Bondi Tram. Must have been the dust. There was crud spanning across the solder connections on the printed circuit.

My guess is the latter. Trump has been in the news lately confusing Biden for Obama at rallies more than once. And also Hillary on occasion. Trump seems to have this Obama thing stuck in his head. Definite madness there, and getting worse.

Peter, the way I read that was spacey having a go at the way Trump has been confusing Biden with Obama lately.

If we ever do become a republic, I think one of the most important things is to make sure executive members of the government are publicly elected. In America, the president can appoint non elected family members. In the UK, David Cameron is back as foreign secretary. They gave him a peerage so he can sit in the house of lords to enable him to take the job without being elected. I can't see how that's democratic. There's not many better systems in the world than the one we have now in Australia. Surely a minimalist model is the only one that would get approved here for a republic. Howard's so called minimalist model saw him having a bob each way. In his government's proposed constitution mailed out before the referendum, I noticed a handful of present Governor General powers that he had transferred to the PM. It also had the PM being able to sack the president at any time without having to give reason. After a certain time, the Parliament could vote whether to reinstate the President or make the sacking permanent. The only problem was that the PM had the power of veto over the Parliament's decision. Howard's government didn't want a republic, but was after a power grab for the PM in the event it did happen. I don't think many people read through the entire proposed constitution word for word and compared it with the current constitution. I did and it wasn't good. I was a republican back in those days and the bad proposed model was why I voted no. I still think every government member should be elected by the public as a lower or upper house representative and the President elected by a 2/3 majority of both houses of Parliament. A publicly elected President can claim a mandate to wield power if allowed. The only way a publicly elected President would be acceptable would be if there were strong constitutional rules to determine the level of power. Otherwise we could end up like the U.S..

The laptop has been playing up for a while now. Two or three times a week at least, it would slow right down before freezing then crashing to the dreaded blue screen of death then rebooting. Sometimes it would crash three or four times in one session. My best bet was that it was a hardware problem, maybe the RAM or the graphics. I unplugged everything and opened it up to see what sort of RAM it had, and discovered it was very dusty. I uses a soft brush and a lung powered mouth compressor to clear all the dust out and now 24 hours later it's working fine. Hopefully it was just dust and fluff shorting things out. Only problem is that since I did all that, the cable to the NBN modem isn't working. Luckily the wireless connection is working ok and even seems to be a bit faster than the cable.

Here's some if his plans for a second term. I agree with Nev about his declining mental state, so I doubt he's got the brains to come up with all this stuff. For sure he'd have some other loony backers putting ideas forward. https://www.9news.com.au/world/donald-trump-plan-for-next-usa-presidency-if-elected-in-2024/bcac69a8-6289-4b9e-bf56-235624bc85dd

A lot of that old fashioned stuff is going out of style in today's busy world. I can remember when I was a young bloke, I used to do a bit of tractor work for my Uncle and Auntie. None of this take a lunchbox with you caper. My Auntie would drive down to the paddock where we were working at smoko and lunchtime and lay out a big picnic style meal with a big thermos of tea and proper cups. A much nicer pace of life back then.

That's a pretty good summary of it. Social media is full of video and other evidence showing the Russians copping a flogging, but it's all feel good stuff selected out of context to the overall situation. The reality is that Ukraine is bleeding to death. At the moment it's manageable, but putin has more on his side for the long game. If the Nervous Nellies backing Ukraine don't pull their finger out, Ukraine's manpower shortage will hit a critical point where it's possible the Russians will roll right over them. At the moment I can only see two future scenarios. The best one is Biden dithering = stalemate. The worst one is Biden dithering = putin wins. Voting him out and putting Trump back in would be a death sentence for Ukraine, so there's no better option than the status quo at the moment. Enough time has passed now that it's obvious the US will only supply Ukraine with enough weaponry to prevent Russia taking significantly more territory, and not enough to win the war and return to the internationally accepted post Soviet boundaries. The Ukrainians have been asking for the right equipment to finish the job for over a year now, so if the Americans haven't figured it out in that time, they possibly never will. I wonder whether it's just the politicians holding back. It would be interesting to know the Pentagon's stance on it. The retired US generals who publicly comment have been calling the government out and urging it to get on with the job. I'd assume the serving brass in the pentagon would have a similar position in private, but are bound to serve their political bosses.

That's right. Further along the ridge is a mountain which is a big exposed volcanic plug (photo below) The ridge my place is on is an old lava flow branching off the mountain. It's the ridge on the right side of the photo. It goes for 4klm to the east terminating in my place, then all flood plain beyond that.

I know where the water table is via a dry 170' bore hole near my driveway. About six feet below ground level in the wet season and twenty feet below in the dry at that spot. Heading in from the front gate, there's nothing flat. It rises steeply up about another 400' to where I live and a bit higher after that. It's all trees, boulders, stone and big cliffs. Very porous hills, all the underground water makes it's way down to the floodplain next door. During the wet, it gets full of water and you can see it flowing out of the ground in places on the lower slopes. There's a small spring fed dam that rarely goes dry, only in the driest years. It's only had to be topped up by a water truck twice in 35 years. Cow drinking water. It's this type of country, lots of rhyolite that smells like gunpowder when you whack it with a sledge hammer:

I worked it out that I've had about 17mm of useful rain for September, October and the first half of November. Back in September there was also a couple of inches in a thunderstorm, but that came down hard and all ran off to the neighbours down below, so none soaked in. Even though it's a record dry year (so far 10" below the previous record dry), the shallow rooted trees near the rock escarpments on my place haven't started dying yet. In other dry years, quite a few have died back. It just goes to show, it's not the yearly total that counts as much as how the rain falls. Some places can have a reasonable yearly total but it's an accumulation of very small, frequent spaced out falls that provide little soil moisture. Other times can see a low yearly total but have spaced out decent sized falls of good soaking rain. I think my country is holding up because we had a big patch of good soaking rain a couple of times during the year.