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| Tuesday, 4 March 2025 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 4 March 2025 |
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Power outage
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Topic: general | Link here |
Another planned grid power outage today, from 9:04 to 14:38. The warning made it almost a non-event: I had prepared by charging the battery, and the sun was shining. The computers all managed to survive the power transition, and the battery state of charge didn't drop below 92%.
Only two devices failed: the bedside clocks in our bedrooms. Why? I've seen this again and again.
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Yvonne returns
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Topic: health | Link here |
Yvonne was discharged from hospital this morning and returned
at midday. The taxi to Spencer Street
Southern Cross Station cost $50! And that after Google Gemini had estimated $25, going to some detail.
Bad Gemini!
She was dismissed by Professor Peter Kistler, who didn't have time to talk to me on the phone, but promised a summary by email. It seems that he had found two further trigger sources for atrial fibrillation, but had only ablated one. Under those circumstances I would have asked why, but Yvonne didn't. He is relatively confident that it won't flare up, but she is to take 25 mg of flecainide twice a day at least until her next appointment in June. Somehow I have a lot of questions that need answering.
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Bank Australia pain
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
It's hay time again, and Yvonne wants to collect a large sum (far too large!) of cash to pay for it. We're in the process of moving all our local banking to Bank Australia, so I called up to ask if they would have that much money available at the branch. So, once I finally found the number, I called up the phone enquiries at +61-3-9854-4666 and asked.
Simple question, right? And nothing that would raise any security concerns (it wasn't that much money, so there's no concern that I might be planning a bank robbery). It took me 30 minutes! They wanted my account number (why?) and password (how? It's designed to be pasted into a web form).
That was bad enough, but there was no way past it. Read it out, and on the third attempt Daniel (a woman, I think) got it almost right. But it contains special characters, and she wasn't able to enter them (why not?). No way past it, perform a full identity check. Full name, date of birth, address, the usual things. And then driver license number. But not just the number, the tiny, illegible number on the back that I didn't even know about. And it was really illegible. Instead I had to give her the Medicare card number, the one that ends in a 6 or maybe a b. And after I gave all that, she called me back on my mobile phone, refusing to tell me the number of the one they had recorded (which proved to be correct).
Then she did a thing that she called Equifax to establish my identity by asking me multiple choice questions:
So: four questions, two of each had the same answer. One of them was ambiguous. All could be answered from my web site.
So, finally I was able to get my phone password, which reflected my feeling after going through this ordeal. They also stored a voice imprint, which might make more sense. And yes, the Ballarat branch could arrange the money.
“Arrange”? What does that mean? I go into the branch, and they tell me to come back in a week? No, after pointed asking, she confirmed that I could pick up the cash when I went there. I just needed to tell her what I needed the money for (why?).
What a pain! Did I make a mistake by choosing Bank Australia? At the very least we have these problems:
On the positive side, I gave them a password to use with phone calls, and she registered it without surprise.
So: do I stay with Bank Australia? I have had pain with the other two banks I have had. How could they could improve things?
| Wednesday, 5 March 2025 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 5 March 2025 |
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Thai Basil!
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Topic: gardening, food and drink | Link here |
The Thai basil that I planted in mid-December didn't exactly flourish:
So last week I planted some more. The results are already visible:
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That's more like what I had expected, but clearly I had planted too many seeds. I'll have to see if I can separate them. But it's interesting to look more carefully: there are seedlings on the left and the top right, but not bottom right. Why? Three different kinds of seeds. The ones on the left are a new packet that I received a couple of weeks ago, and on the right there are the remains of the packet that I received in December, and also of some which are about 5 years old. Only one of these batches has germinated. But which?
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Shopping
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Topic: general | Link here |
Yvonne is recovering well from her latest ablation, but she's not allowed to drive a car for a few days, so I had to do the shopping today. Surprisingly, everything seemed to work, and I was done relatively quickly.
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Bank Australia: the other shoe
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Topic: general, technology, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
Into Bank Australia branch to pick up my cash, as painfully prepared yesterday. The preparation had one good thing: I was asked for my password! If I hadn't done it yesterday, I would have had to go through the whole rigmarole in the branch. And if it's necessary, why didn't they set one up when I signed up? Interestingly, the person at the other teller was being subjected to the same silly Equifax questions. I wonder if this is some new measure that they have imposed on their customers.
Amanda, the teller, also asked me—again!—about the purpose of the withdrawal. When asked, she explained that it was to help prevent scams. I suppose that's a good intention, though I don't know how successful it would be. Just by chance last night we watched “A little faith”, an episode of “Blue Heelers”, about a scam. While it was fiction, it gave cause for thought. People being scammed seldom admit it even to friends.
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In a BIND
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
For a couple of days I've been trying to get rid of these broken DNS requests on www.lemis.com:
Mar 2 01:16:32 lax named[58441]: DNS format error from 189.36.144.18#53 resolving ORION.UNITELECOM.COM.BR/AAAA: empty question section
Mar 2 01:16:34 lax named[58441]: DNS format error from 189.36.144.18#53 resolving corvus.unitelecom.com.br/AAAA: empty question section
Asking Google Gemini came up with an overly complicated update to named.conf, and it also didn't work: it blocked all requests. Later John Marshall on IRC came up with what seems to be correct:
--- named.conf 2021/12/14 04:01:45 1.8
+++ named.conf 2025/03/05 00:56:06
@@ -7,15 +7,22 @@
unix "/var/run/ndc" perm 0600 owner 0 group 0; // the default
};
+acl blocked_ips {
+ 189.36.144.18;
+ 189.36.144.19;
+};
+
options {
directory "/usr/local/etc/namedb";
resolver-query-timeout 30;
+ allow-query { !blocked_ips; any; };
};
The difference was the keyword any. But somehow it didn't work, at least not at first. Set logging? By that time it had stopped, though I suspect it had just gone into hiding. Mañana.
| This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have a horror of reverse chronological documents, so all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days, but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry a day or two after I write it. | Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so. |
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