Rain boosts Sydney dam levels
Sydney Morning Herald - October 21, 2004 - 3:12PM





NSW Premier Bob Carr today said overnight rain had provided a 0.3 per cent increase in Sydney's dam levels, but warned NSW was not out of the woods.

Mr Carr today told parliament combined dam levels were now at 42.2 per cent.

He said in the last 24 hours a week's worth of water, equivalent to 1,800 Olympic swimming pools, had flowed into the catchment.

"It is great to report that rain has arrived - and importantly arrived in the right places," Mr Carr told parliament.

"Mother Nature has smiled on us this week with a very welcome drenching."

But Mr Carr cautioned the community's efforts so far to curtail water use must not stop because of the rain.

"This is just a small respite from the grip of the worst drought in more than 100 years," he said.

"We are still not out of the woods by any means. For our dams to get back to 70 per cent capacity, we need 40mm a day for seven consecutive days."

How you'll lose $790,000
Sydney Morning Herald October 21, 2004 - 1:38PM

The average Australian stands to lose up to 22 times their median annual income over the course of their life through bad financial management, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission said today.

Speaking at the launch of ASIC's financial management guide Your Money in Sydney, Commonwealth Financial Literacy taskforce chairman Paul Clitheroe said average income earners were wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars through bad decisions.

"Taskforce research modelled the effects of bad financial decision making," Mr Clitheroe said.

"(It) discovered that a person on a salary of $36,000 per annum stands to lose $790,000 in lost wealth over the course of their lifetime."

These included ill-informed investment, superannuation and mortgage choices, misuse of credit cards and bad management of debt, ASIC chairman Jeffrey Lucy said.

"Average income earners can potentially save thousands of dollars by the time they retire," Mr Lucy said.

"To avoid lost opportunities it's crucial for everyone, especially those not on high incomes to get the most out of their money and to plan for the future."

Australian Consumers Association chief executive Peter Kell said financial awareness was important for any income bracket.

"Anyone can start now, no matter how little money they have...to make a real difference to their finances," he said.

Your Money details a range of financial strategies and issues, including investment, insurance, superannuation and managing mortgages and debt.

It can be found online at http://www.fido.asic.gov.au.

The interesting thing I find about things like blogs & flickr is how it enables you, over a period of time to almost get a top-down view on your own life... The essences of what you feel and what you deem important and aesthetic enough to write about and take photos of can essentially explain the essence of you.

For example... I've always been a bit of a gardener.. It's a nice antithesis of my technology-based work life.. but over the last year I've noticed that I've started growing flowers... nothing too major in that, but I know I never used to. Within time, this tidbit of information about me will fade.. I have no photographic evidence that I didn't used to grow flowers, as without a facility like flickr I never took so many photo's, now I have the ability to share this visual documentation of my life easily, I'm more keen to document it. It's quite cathartic.

Assuming I'm still using flickr and also blogging over the next few years it will be interesting to note the flow of changes that takes place that normally wouldn't even be noticed, even by me, let alone published for others, including myself to view and review in the future.

Heya, how's it going? I've been busy
...as you can see...
I've got just over 500 photos up on my flickr site now, so why not shoot on over and have a look, maybe even leave some comments. That'd be grande.
I've recently discovered these two sites and i thought I'd share them with you:

• near near future
• StrangeCo

It's currently raining here in Sydney, it has been for the last couple of days. Such a dramatic change from last week where we had 38degrees C. Balmy in every sense, I was glad to be in the office airconditioning.
Hmmm... what's been happening lately...
My friend Link has recently moved up to Townsville.
Lisa has finished and submitted her script (you go girl).
Our friend Kristin has had to leave the country back to Sweden, hopefully she will get her visa sorted out and get back here asap, we all miss her.
I've taken up painting again... and, as frustrating as it is, I'm really enjoying it.
I'll post a photo of the final product.
If you want to see some of my other art, please go here.

I've been to two bucks parties in a month.. the first one was for Pete, one of the guys I met through Mick. Pete lives up in Newcastle. We went 14 nautical miles out in a boat for a little sea fishing... terrific. Here's Pete and the catch of the day:

... The second was last Saturday night, for Phil, one of my work colleagues. I have no photos of that... and even if I did, I couldnt post them on here.
(=^D)

Also Lisa celebrated her 26th birthday on the 29th of September, I hope she had a great time (I think she did).. It really threw out my plans as I had to work in the city that week (and therefore staying at her place), so I suddenly only had half the time to prepare that I thought I did. Ahh, all's well though.

This afternoon it hailed for almost an hour... the ground looked as though it had been snowing. In some parts of sydney people were trying to snowboard. I happened to be one of those many folks caught out driving in it. The chunks of ice were about as big as the top segment of my finger, they were shattering against my windscreen with vengeful gusto. ;) You could see it falling from the sky, the chunks were that large. It made me glad, once more, that I have a cheap car. As long as any damage isn't significant and the car still runs, my life goes on quite happily.

Work at 7:30 in the morn. I like the early shifts.
I've been reading the blog of one of my favourite Australian bands today.. Regurgitator. You can find it here. Enjoy. They're currently doing the band in the bubble thing in the middle of melbourne. Check it out... there's a webcam so you can see what's going on too. It would be cool to go down to melbourne and check it out in person. But I'm waay too disorganised for THAT sort of shennanigans.
Sydney is grumbling with thunder tonight.. it has been pretty surly for the latter part of the day, I think more thunderstorms are forecast for 2moro, which is cool. I like thunderstorms. I can remember my mum hiding in the house when then thunder shook, and I wanting to go out walking in it.
Lisa's birthday is coming up in a few week... the pressure's on to come up with something great. She did a pretty awesome job with mine, it certainly set the precedent. I've almost finished designing a website that's a long time overdue... a day or so to wrap that up then I'll start project: Lisa's birthday.
Wish me luck.

Goodnight.