Category: annoying people

The smell of paint

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We’ve done up the guest loo. Replaced the basin and the pan, stuck some tiles down on the floor.

Oh, and we painted the walls as well. That was done yesterday and thus, the house smells of paint. You know about the smell of paint. It’s not a pleasant smell. Chemically. Painty.

Fortunately, Mrs 6000 has a “secret” “proven” way of getting rid of the smell of paint, which is backed up by many links on the internet.
You’ll therefore note that it’s not actually “secret” at all. Nor is it “proven” in any way, shape or form.

It involves chopping up several raw onions and leaving them in the room which has just been painted. The scientific theory behind this method goes (and here I quote):

I don’t know how it works, but it just does.

Well, fortunately I’m here and I’ve brought along Science to help with the nitty-gritty of the chemical processes involved.

Firstly, we need to look at the differences between a neutralising agent and a masking agent. It’s pretty straightforward, because these sensibly named agents either neutralise an odour or hide (mask) it behind another odour. Simples, ne?

Ideally, we need a neutralising agent here – some chemical that binds to the VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) which cause the paint odour and thus render them less volatile and less odorous.

Onion fumes are not that. Onion fumes actually contain different VOCs – specifically including one called propanethiol S-oxide. Propanethiol S-oxide is the chemical in onions that make our eyes water. Propanethiol S-oxide will not bind to the VOCs from the paint fumes. Oh no. Propanethiol S-oxide will merely mask the paint odour by competing with it for the attention of our scent receptors in our noses.

Congratulations. Your house now smells of paint and onion. You’ve effectively doubled the number of unpleasant chemicals in your breathing environment.

Winning.

If you’re going to use a masking agent, rather use something which at least smells nice. It’s not like you’re going to come home, notice that your house smells of paint and think:

I know, I’ll defaecate in the corner of the living room; there’s an idea which is sure to make the paint smell less obvious.

is it?

I can’t decide if the tears in my eyes this morning were from the sheer lack of science involved in the whole chopped raw onion thing or the propanethiol S-oxide widely circulating around my home.

This whole issue has been compounded by the fact that the said bathroom window faces south, so opening the window to ventilate the room merely allowed yesterday’s howling southeaster to come through said bathroom, pick up the combined paint and onion smell and distribute it liberally around the rest of the house.

My wife and I have been married for nearly 8 years now and we’ve done a lot of painting, so we’ve also “discussed” this onion idea on several occasions previously and I’ve had very little success (absolutely none, in fact) in getting her to stop it. Thus, yesterday evening, as she headed for the vegetable drawer, I sensibly kept my mouth closed and left her to it.

And then for the rest of the evening, I wished that I could do the same with my nose.

Looking back: The Daily Mail Weather Outlook for 2012

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This goes out to @StephanieBe who is heading out to the UK shortly and read this morning that… er… the UK is about to face its coldest winter for 100 years. Stephanie is Saffa born and bred.
Her genes aren’t cut out to cope with cold Decembers.

Stephanie is afraid.

Fortunately for Stephanie, that “coldest winter in 100 years” thing comes from the Daily Mail.
Regular readers will know that 6000 miles… loves the Daily Mail.

Britain will shiver tonight as temperatures plummet in the first taste of what promises to be one of our coldest winters for a century.
The cold snap is expected to last until the end of the week, creating dangerous conditions on the roads and adding to the misery of those already battling floods.
Temperatures could fall to as low as minus 3C in some places, with snow already falling in the Pennines.

Cold temperatures? In the UK? At the end of November? Whatever next?
Let’s have a look at how November ended when I was over in the UK in 2010, shall we?

 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 29th November 2010. Is that… snow?!?

But hey, maybe the Daily Mail has upped its weather prediction game since 2010. Let’s have a look at what they thought about 2012, shall we? This Daily Mail headline is from 15th April this year.

Britain faces worst drought since 1976 (and the Severn could dry up by summer)

Officials are concerned that a third dry winter this year could be a tipping point and trigger restrictions for businesses or even further restrictions in homes for the first time in 36 years.
The restrictions are embarrassing for the Government which is showcasing Britain during this year’s Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee. Parks are included in the hosepipe ban and London’s iconic fountains will be turned off.

Sounds bad. So what actually happened?

Well, here’s a photo I took at Howden Reservoir in Derbyshire in July, slap bang in the middle of the “worst drought since 1976”:

Yes yes, I know that the big wall is supposed to keep the water in, but the fact is that because the incessant rain throughout the summer, the dam was overflowing.

What happened? Let’s turn to… er… the Daily Mail for the answer. Here’s a story from August 29th:

After weeks of wet weather and seemingly never-ending cloud, many have dismissed the last few months as a miserable summer they would rather forget.
Today was no exception as heavy rains fell across many parts of the country as weather forecasters predict that September will bring some sun and reprieve from the wet weather but only for those in the south.
The north of Britain however should brace for more grim weather which is predicted to last until mid-September.

But… but you said that… Oh never mind. At least it wasn’t the wettest summ… oh wait. Yes, it was. Well, that is according to the Daily Mail (31st August) anyway:

The temperatures, which reflect the country’s cold and soggy weather over recent months, have proved this summer has been a complete write-off.
It came as it was revealed yesterday the summer has also been the wettest in England and Wales for a century.

The thing is, I know that forecasting the weather is not an exact science. And long range forecasting is even less exact. So yes, you’re going to get it wrong from time to time. But there’s no disclaimer in Stephanie’s “coldest winter for 100 years” Daily Mail story. There’s no:

However, while we’re telling you about how cold it’s going to be this winter, you might want to remember that we also said that this was going to be the driest summer in almost 40 years and we couldn’t actually have been more wrong about that.

So people like Stephanie who have previously lived a Daily Mail free life (lucky fish) thus far, read it – and believe it. Oops.

Stephanie, I’m no meteorological expert. I can’t tell you if it’s going to be the coldest winter foreverever when you visit the Republic of South Yorkshire this December. I feel that I’m standing on fairly solid ground when I suggest that you probably won’t need to pack your bikini for a day out on the beachfront at Filey, but that aside, it’s winter and I would expect it to be decidedly chilly. Especially when compared with your usual South African December day.

What I can tell you is that you really shouldn’t believe everything anything you read in the Daily Mail.

Happy Holidays!

“Almost 100%”

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Those of you who regularly read this blog will probably know that I recently switched hosting providers from Site5 “across the pond” to Afrihost, who are much closer to home. People from as far as the UK and the Isle of Man (as well as many in SA) have asked me to let them know how I get on, because they’re looking for good value and good service hosting packages. Well, this post serves as the first report back.

Sadly, since I made the move, I’ve had no end of problems, mainly around the issue of catchy sounding “508 Resource Limit Is Reached” errors. 6000.co.za had 9101 of them yesterday alone.
Even more sadly, Afrihost, a company who I have my home internet and ADSL line, our business internet and ADSL line and a couple of other domains with – based in no small part on their incredible customer service record – have seriously let me down on the customer service front.

Yesterday, I spoke to a guy who told me that he didn’t call me back a couple of weeks ago as he promised because (and I promise you that this is word for word):

The office gets so busy and things get mixed up

Which is hugely reassuring.

But then this morning, an email from their support desk which suddenly cleared everything up:

Hello,

I could see from the cPanel that your CPU usage is almost 100%. Please see the screenshot attached.

Here’s the screenshot in question:

and for CPU Usage, you’ll probably want to look at that top graph titled “CPU Usage”.

Look, maybe I’m missing something HUGE here, but there are three lines on that graph. The red one labelled “limit” runs at 100% and I’m presuming that that’s the limit of the CPU Usage I can do. The blue line (that’s “max”) shows the maximum CPU Usage that I did at any one given time during the 24 hour period. The green line – helpfully labelled “average” – presumably shows the “average” amount of CPU Usage over the given period. In that fourth block, it almost gets up to 15%.

Yikes.

So how does that clear anything up?

Well, what I realised is that Afrihost are obviously very committed to customer care and technical support. They believe that they’re giving it “almost 100%”.
Unfortunately, what constitutes “almost 100%” to them could be viewed very differently by anyone capable of reading a graph.
One could extrapolate and suggest that perhaps the maximum levels they ever reach in any given 24 hour period is 75%, and even then only occasionally. Maybe, on average, their levels are right down on that green line, but remember, they still believe that that represents “almost 100%”.

I have no problem when things go wrong. That’s because things do go wrong. It happens. It’s how you put them right that matters. And not returning calls or emails, overlooking obvious problems and misinterpreting graphs isn’t a good way of putting anything right. It’s now been almost 3 hours since I replied to the email mentioned above – described by Afrihost as “High Priority”. I’ve heard nothing.

Meanwhile, there have been another 6698 “508 Resource Limit Is Reached” errors on 6000 miles… in the last 24 hours.

So would I recommend Afrihost to people as a decent hosting option for their websites or blogs?

What do you think?

Two Government Documents – 2

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I wasn’t going to comment on the local issue of the farmworkers and their violent strike action up in De Doorns (but spreading elsewhere) until a government minister – in my opinion – did a silly thing.

The minister in question was Tina Joemat-Peterson –  Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries – and the silly thing was taking sides in a dispute which she needs to mediate, rather than politicise.

The fact is that these farmworkers earn a tiny, tiny wage of R70 per day for their work, which at the moment is picking table grapes. I’m not going to get into the discussion over whether this wage is morally right or wrong – I have no idea how financially stable local fruit farming is at the present time – but the fact is that the wage is legally ok. And that’s illustrated by this statement from the Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant earlier this year:

In terms of Sectoral Determination for farm workers the minimum wages will with effect from 1 March 2012 to 28 February 2013 be adjusted upwards from an hourly rate of R7,04 to R7,71; a weekly rate of R317,51 to R347,10 and monthly minimum wages of R1375,94 to R1503,90, calculated on a 45 ordinary hour week.

Of course, local opportunist and Western Cape Cosatu representative Tony Ehrenreich is blaming the farmers for paying their workers poorly, but there is no evidence that I have heard which suggests any of them are paying workers below the minimum wage. That being the case, one wonders why his gripe isn’t with Ms Oliphant and the ANC rather than the employers. And if the minimum wage is such a big problem, one also wonders why he didn’t bother to kick up a fuss back in early February when the announcement about the minimum wage was made.

Why is the soapbox only coming out now, Tony?

Now Joemat-Peterson  is allegedly set, among other things, to review the farmworkers’ national minimum wage – something that had already been agreed upon by all parties for the foreseeable future (it was set to rise by CPI +1.5% in March 2013 and by the same amount each year thereafter). This ‘caving in’ to the strikers demands smacks of the Lonmin decision a couple of months ago and sends a clear message to workers that illegal and violent strike action gets results. As a private company, Lonmin could get away with making that decision, although it has set a very dangerous precedent. Government cannot afford to do the same, merely to pander to their prospective voters.

I don’t want to take sides in this. I’d like to see farmworkers better paid, obviously, but I’m mindful that the money might not be there to do that – especially not for the 100% pay rise they are demanding. Job security must also be considered by those making the decisions and the heavy-handed and one-sided approach immediately taken by Joemat-Peterson makes me wonder whether she is more more concerned about the future of the agricultural sector or over trying to garner extra votes for the ANC in 2014.

Ajax Face Liquidation Threat

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Soccer Laduma is reporting that Ajax Cape Town, my choice of local football club could be on the brink of liquidation, despite “being in good financial state”. The reason then? Infighting between the two families who own a 49% stake in the club:

We had an Ajax Cape Town board meeting yesterday which once again proved to be unfruitful. We have failed in all attempts to come to an agreement or settlement with regards to the family’s assets, including the club. We have now called a board meeting of Cape Town Stars (the company that holds the 49% of Ajax Cape Town that the Efstathiou and Comitis families own) on Thursday at 10am. At that meeting we will discuss the future of Ajax Cape Town.”
The crew asked what was meant by ‘the future of Ajax Cape Town’, questioning whether liquidation was an option, to which he replied, “Yes, it is. One of the points of discussion will be the winding up or liquidating of the club.”

While I note that the liquidation is only one possible option, it’s obviously the worst case scenario and therefore the one which Soccer Laduma have seized upon.

I always find it hugely disappointing when grown adults cannot see beyond their differences (petty or otherwise) and actually act in a mature, rational manner, especially when the livelihoods and passions of so many others are involved.
It would be massively disappointing for the fans, the PSL and for Cape Town if this doesn’t get – favourably – sorted out soon.