willedoo

What first got me curious is that the noise was a more regular tap,tap,tap type of sound as opposed to a rat chewing sound. I finally tracked them down on the fly screen making the noise while bashing a beetle. Another thing that had me fooled for a while was what I thought to be mouse poo turned out to be gecko poo. The gecko poo is very similar in size and colour to the mouse poo but has a small white tail on the end of it. My geckos don't poo much but when they are on the ceiling they excrete something, maybe gecko pee. Whatever it is, it leaves round whitish blotches on the timber floor. It bonds to the floor quite well and takes a bit of work with the mop to get it off.

Some observation of the dubious dtellas solved another mystery. What I often think is a rat making a noise is actually the dubious critters bashing an insect about. They get a bug in their mouth and bash it against something the same way a kookaburra does to break their food into smaller pieces.

I've had geckos living in the house almost since I built it in 1996. They live around 7 years so this lot would be the fourth generation living here. Someone told me the house geckos are the introduced Asian gecko, but I was always a bit dubious about that. A couple of nights ago I decided to google geckos and it turns out mine are dubious after all - they are natives called dubious dtella. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubious_dtella

I see the increasing power of local government as a problem. I don't know how councils are in other states but Queensland local government authorities have considerably more autonomy than those in other states. As a consequence they've become almost a law under their own. Bylaws and restrictions on local residents are increasing all the time and some councils like those in my region have set ridiculous fee structures for any sort of building or renovation work. The amount of money they are asking now is akin to paying bribes to the mafia. Councils here now have full time staff who's sole job is to surveil residents via satellite images so they can bust them for daring to put up a chook house on a rural block and bleed as much money in compliance and application fees as they can. It's not only the average bloke that's affected, but it's having a big effect on builders with increasing fees and red tape. Just as an example, friends of mine live on a rural block of about 40 acres quite a way out of town. They recently got caught by the council as over some time they'd put up a small shed and built a small deck of a few square metres off an existing shed. Councils here no longer do building inspections; that now all has to be certified by private engineers. All up, without any extra building work needed, just in council fees and engineers fees, it cost them over $20,000. The application fee for the small, roofless deck of a few square metres was over $800. They also had a couple of shipping containers that contain water tanks for some fish breeding they do. Council made them hire an engineer to certify the shipping containers. I can understand it in town, but going after all the rural residents like that is a bit Big Brother for my liking. The friends mentioned above also built a second dwelling last year, all legal and put through council. Their son and family now live in the original house and they are in the second dwelling. Town planning allows for a granny flat with restrictions on size and distance away from the main house. They didn't want to live in a pokey little granny flat close to their son and family, so they approached the council and were told they could apply for a relaxation of town planning rules. So in other words, they paid council a lot of money so they could do what the town plan says you can't do, and now have a three bedroom house to live in. It's just legalised bribery. If you think I'm exaggerating, just talk to any builders in this district. Most builders will tell you straight out that dealing with the council is like dealing with a bunch of crooks. Councils are certainly contributing to the housing shortage. They don't care about housing availability or affordability, just how much money they can skim off people. Technically they come under the control of the state government via the local government act, but the state over time has given them too much autonomy. We've just had a change of state government, so it will be interesting to see if the new government will do anything about the councils. I'm not holding my breath. In other states the state government has more control over councils so there's more consistency between regulations of different councils. Here they just make up their own rules and screw over the residents and ratepayers as well as the building industry as they see fit. Local government is the weak link in our three tiers of government in this country. They're very counter-productive.

I saw Komodo Dragons in the Yogyakarta zoo and was surprised at how big they were. They were like a crocodile with a dinosaur head. When you see them up close it's not surprising they can kill and eat people.

I hope nobody had baked beans for breakfast.

Marty, I've noticed news.com.au has undergone quite a big change lately. Once it was probably one of the more readable Murdoch outlets but lately they seem to have adopted a different business model and are mainly running clickbait headlines with trashy tabloid style articles. I like them for the comedy appeal. I click on the clickbait just for the fun of seeing the real story. As a made up example, the sort of thing they do is run a headline like " Star reveals sad news". Click on the article and it will be some barely known soap opera actor revealing his mother in law has to get a wisdom tooth removed. Stuff like that and trying to invent royal family scandal. Once they were more interested in news but money making clickbait now rules. Perhaps they've had editorial change or following directives of parent companies to make more money.

ome, my apologies for an incorrect apostrophe in 'lots'. Force of habit.

It seems like a lot of presidential pardons are given as the president is preparing to leave office. I'm only speculating here but Biden probably gave those past statements about not pardoning his son because he feared the political fallout if he stated that intention with an election looming. Now that the Democrat ship has hit the rocks, any political fallout from changing his stance will be only temporary and not an election issue as it would have been previously. So it looks like he's gone to Plan B as there's very little to lose politically and lot's to gain for him and his family.

Good advice, I'll do that. And thanks for sticking to the subject and not making a comparison with Trump. That's one Trump free argument; we're doing well.

As predicted. It seems impossible on this forum to debate any critisism of Biden without responses of what about Trump as an argument. ok, I get it, what about Trump? There's other threads about Trump. The issue was about Biden's record, not Trump's. Here's a challenge, let's see if we can get through another page or two on this topic without the cracked record of what about Trump rearing it's head. I have my doubts, but let's see.

I've found since retiring that no job's as urgent as it once was when you had to get it finished on the weekend because you had to be at work on Monday. Now life is just one big weekend.

It should be, but doesn't apply to politicians apparently. Joe's word doesn't seem to mean much otherwise he would have stuck to what he's said on several occasions and not pardoned his son.

The act of pardoning his son shouldn't have to be comparable. It can be viewed on it's own from the point of view of Biden's own integrity. His son was charged with firearm offences and tax evasion. He pleaded guilty and was convicted. Biden repeatedly said he wouldn't pardon him. Biden has now pardoned him. That's the issue. He's put his son above the law after saying he wouldn't. Forget about what Trump's done or someone did to Clinton for a minute. This is what Biden's done. We have to remember they are politicians. Biden might have been genuine at the time he said he wouldn't pardon his son for ethical reasons. Or he might have held that position as he intended running for another term and thought it would be politically damaging to pardon him. Only he and his advisors would know the answer to that. Now that he's retiring he's got nothing to lose, so it looks like he's swapping reputation for his son's benefit. That's understandable but still doesn't make it right.

With the roundabouts with traffic lights, the lights are only in use at peak traffic times. The rest of the time the roundabout functions as normal.

Where I live the traffic is getting to the stage where they're putting traffic lights at roundabouts or getting rid of them and installing normal traffic light intersections. It's only happening on the really bad roundabouts, there's thousands of small ones that still work ok.

What's Clinton got to do with Hunter Biden's guilt or innocence. I'm presuming guilt as he pleaded guilty. If he was innocent and pleaded guilty, that would be a bit unusual.

If that's case it's the U.S. Department of Justice that are the crooks. If it was all BS to get at Biden, why did Hunter plead guilty? https://www.justice.gov/sco-weiss/pr/robert-hunter-biden-convicted-three-felony-tax-offenses-and-six-misdemeanor-tax-offenses

I don't know whether it's just me but those things seem to take a lot longer the older I get. And not just the physical part, but the planning and figuring as well.

There will probably be a bit of whataboutism involved, but the coping mechanism of 'but Trump's worse' doesn't excuse Biden for ethically appalling behavior. I agree it puts him on a par with Trump on credibility. His legacy will be of a weak president who trashed what's left of his reputation in the last weeks of office. In years to come, this will be what people remember about him, not any good he might have done.

What a scumb*g. Trump's Crooked Joe Biden tag was right after all. After previous promises not to pardon his son Hunter who is awaiting sentencing on tax evasion, he's gone and done it. To make matters worse, he's taken a leaf out of Trump's book and has called the charges against his son politically motivated. Good riddance Joe Biden, your time is up.

Depending on the viewpoint, I've been acquiring either more junk or more material for projects from my new house flipper acquaintances. I brought home a load yesterday and today and in money value at least $1,000 or more so it was worth getting soaked through to the skin on both days. This is today's load, around 40 metres of 100x35 LVL RedEdge concrete boxing timber and about the same amount of 90x35 H2 pine studs and some 70mm pieces. Plus an almost full roll of vapour barrier and some fibro offcuts. The RedEdge formwork timber is very similar to the Red Alert LVL structural beams which come in a 100x45mm size for use as joists. The structural LVL is almost twice the price of the concrete edging timber but would no doubt have a much higher engineered strength. The old ute was a bit top heavy so it was steady as she goes coming home in the rain on a wet road with 45 psi in the rear tyres. I was only gone two hours and the rain gauge had 57mm in it when I got back. It must have rained fairly hard going by the debris around the place. The house the flippers are renovating is almost finished so there'll only be one more load of odds and ends when the job is finished. They live in the houses they renovate and don't own a property, so it's cheaper to dump the renovation recycled materials and the new, unused over-ordered gear and offcuts rather than to own and maintain a place to store for later jobs.

It might have been that or he might have deleted himself after hoovering up enough deposits from people.

I think I've mentioned this in the past on the forum. My dad did his initial recruit training at Cowra and one time he had leave to go by train into Sydney and on the return trip was in the same carriage as a whole bunch of Italian prisoners on their way back to the prison camp. They were trustees with no guards and he said they were a happy bunch. One of them had a guitar and they were all singing along. Best guess is they had been out somewhere fruit picking or some other labour job. The 2/9th. was our local S.E. Queensland AIF battalion along with the 9th. militia battalion; the current 9th. Battalion is based at Enoggera in Brisbane. My father due to his age didn't join the army until 1944 so by the time he was posted to the 2/9th. as a reinforcement, he was only with them for a bit under a year. They were at Balikpapan when the war finished and were still there at the end of the year when the battalion was disbanded. The older blokes who had served the most time were repatriated home and my dad and the younger blokes were absorbed into the 2/14th., a Victorian battalion, along with their younger blokes. Some of the older 2/9th. blokes who went home had been with the battalion since the start of the war when they went to England. I can remember reading in the book of the history of the 2/9th. that they spent more time outside the salient than any other battalion at Tobruk. The 18th. Brigade gained a bit of a reputation during those early African and Middle east campaigns which dobbed them in for a few hard jobs later on. They were at Mine Bay, Buna and Shaggy Ridge as well as Balikpapan later in the war. Buna was particularly hard on them where they sustained about 2/3 killed and wounded.

Here's an article with some speculation about how social media companies will identify users. There's a section in the bill that social media companies can't insist on ID as the only means of age assurance. The article discusses the possibility of using facial recognition. One point I'm not sure about is whether existing users will have their accounts suspended if they are under 16. Initial reports said they would be exempt but I've read since that they'll be banned as well. If so, that means the social media companies might make all of us hand over either ID or facial recognition data to them to verify and keep our accounts. If facial recognition, would it be a one off verification process. I can't see it being practical to have our cameras on for facial recognition every time we log on if that was to be used as a means of stopping under 16's using an older persons account . https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-30/social-media-ban-australia-id-facial-data/104567566