Due to the nature of the work I usually do, which is most of the time manual, over the years, it has caused me a condition which I don't think is medically understood. The name of this condition, is urban stiffness and can only be cured with rest.

The older you get, the clearer the picture becomes.

Thinking back a good few years now, with all the talk of saving money etc. Even at school, I can recall that the head people had a good way of saving a few pounds here and there. When they were audited, every now and again, basic nicities like a decent chair and pot plants were actually hired for 1 day to facilitate a pleasant entrance feeling to any inspections that may have occured. Overall, the place was always clean anyways, just a little boring without these additional items.

Around this time of year around the 90's or so, I recall going for a walk across a local river that had frozen over. It seemed hard-frozen, so I chanced it and walked over to the other side. On returning over the river the bottom caved in the ice and very suddenly things turned differently instantly hitting freezing water. The only saving grace, was somehow I had managed to grab onto the ice at the top of the hole, otherwise I'd have been sucked under the ice and downstream, obviously. It was not a good experience. When getting out of the hole, I recall suffering from hypothermia and it just wasn't good at all.

Today I went out for a jolly around town, mostly in the more offtrack areas, you know the neighbourhoods, the big ute, slab house, prolly pool in the back, when I seen this dope little chicken scratching around in the puddle, so it had to go in the book. Other things sometimes I find a good thing to do is just screenshot the screens from google earth etc, esp for some of the landscapes, when you aren't near them. This one of the hill is the type of scenery I like and find hard to stay away from for long periods. After 20 years or so of greenery, it's almost impossible to find anything good about city/towns, but I'm sure there are some things, just not easy.

A few months ago, I found some basic surface mining soft, which was interesting, showing the basic operation of this machine above aka Bagger of which there are several variants, but the original design from 1950 or so, is basically the same. The photo below is the real one which is probably working out in Germany just now, but this Bagger is the new one (I think.)

Back in around '98 or so, I recall working for various different companies that specialised in telecomms. When the search engine called Google came along, it would be fair to reason, pretty much, I was one of the first to use this on an old dialup connection. It has changed a lot since then with the Earth and other additions. Around this time, also, there was a thing called the GPS which again, very likely I was one of the first to even see them for civvy use. Nowadays everyone has them, personally, I don't use 'em. Before all this came along, some smarty made a thing called a mobile phone, which again, probably one of the first to aquire such complicated technology. It was something I never really used, and only kept in the car in case of being in an accident or something. Pretty much now, I don't use them. It puzzles me how people can be fascinated with such trivial things.
There was a car called Subaru Impreza which our organisation acquired for business use, but even after a few weeks of that, I can recall driving it back to the showroom, pretty impressed, but basically quickly bored with it all...