Five Useful Moving Tips From Stuttaford Van Lines

This arrived on my Facebook stream as a “suggested post” and having read it, I thought I’d share it with you just in case you were planning on moving any time soon and were looking for professional movers (Stuttaford Van Lines).

Here’s the screenshot:

Screenshot_2013-03-25-20-45-40

and here’s a link to the full post on their Facebook page.

Finally, here are those tips:

Moving your precious belongings need not to be a Hassle.
Five Useful Moving Tips.

1. Count all the furniture to be moved, and let the professional movers (Stuttaford Van Lines) know about the number of valuable goods.

All too often, moving my precious belongings is a Hassle, so you can see why I was looking forward to reading more about how it need not be a Hassle. And, aside from an unnecessary comma, this first tip makes good sense. (Unless you’re using a professional mover other than Stuttaford Van Lines, of course. Then there would be very limited use in letting Stuttaford Van Lines know about the numbers of anything to do with your furniture.)

2. Paper work and all other furniture insurance work should be done consciously, discuss their rate of service and all the additional charges.

100% on this one as well. Attempting paperwork and all other furniture insurance work unconsciously is a recipe for disaster. It just never seems to get done. So yes, conscious work only please!

3. Labeling all the packed cartons organizes your moving. Do all home-related work prior to calling, furniture movers.

I hope you’re listening, furniture movers, because this tip is directed at you. In addition, I hope that before calling, you ensure that you have done all the home-related work. This is a basic requirement of furniture movers (Stuttaford Van Lines).

4. Furniture movers (Stuttaford Van Lines) are experienced people, your relocation area is near by or far, all your furniture should be insured.

I think we can see from this tip that furniture movers (Stuttaford Van Lines) are experienced people. And that’s an important consideration. However, it is also worth bearing in mind that they have then apparently just flung random sentence fragments and punctuation at the rest of this tip, which is hardly the mark of experienced people.
No, experienced people write in full sentences which actually make sense when one reads them.
This dichotomy leaves me hugely confused, but at least I am comforted by the fact that all my furniture should be insured by experienced people.

5. Ask about the safest route and ask if their can take the route which is less accident prone and make sure there are no bushes on the path.

Accident prone routes are the bane of my life. Only the other day, I saw a route which had just had an accident and according to bystanders and witnesses to that route’s accident, it was that route’s third accident this month. Talk about an accident prone route.
That’s why I always ask my furniture movers (Stuttaford Van Lines) if their can take the route which is less accident prone. Thankfully, my furniture movers (Stuttaford Van Lines) are experienced people and their can always make a plan to take a less accident prone route.

And then finally, slipped in at the end like an afterthought, like it’s almost inconsequential, the whole “no bushes on the path” thing. Less experienced people might get a bit hysterical over this. For example, I’m a less experienced person and I’d be all, like:

OMFG! MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO BUSHES ON THE PATH!!!!!1!

But no, my furniture movers (Stuttaford Van Lines) are calm and collected. Yes, it’s hugely important to make sure that there are no bushes on the path, but they just take it in their stride – as one surely would after taking a route which is less accident prone.
This is the sort of benefit that experience can bring, like knowing to do your paperwork and all other furniture insurance work while you’re actually conscious.

I find it amazing that in one short Facebook post, included within just Five Useful Moving Tips, so much useful information can be imparted. Wow!
I know for sure that next time I want to move, Hassle free, I’ll be contacting professional movers (Stuttaford Van Lines).

Disclosure: This was in no way a sponsored post for professional movers (Stuttaford Van Lines).

Slow Physics – SCIENCE!

Amazing video stuff coming up in The Mystery of the Prince Rupert’s Drop (aka Dutch Tears or… er… Rupert’s Balls).
They explode. Ouchies.

The nice thing about this is that you can watch as much or as little as you want. If you just want to see exploding glass at 130,000 frames per second, that’s cool. If you want to see exactly why and how quickly that glass explodes, just watch a little longer.

Hint, it’s about 5½ times the speed of sound. Whoosh!

SCIENCE!

It seems clear that Prince Rupert did not discover the drops, but played a role in their history by being the first to bring them to Britain, in 1660. He gave them to King Charles II, who in turn delivered them in 1661 to the Royal Society (which the King had created the previous year) for scientific study. Several early publications from the Royal Society give accounts of the drops and describe experiments performed. Among these publications was Micrographia of 1665 by Robert Hooke, who later would discover Hooke’s Law. His publication laid out correctly most of what can be said about Prince Rupert’s Drops without a fuller understanding than existed at the time, of elasticity (to which Hooke himself later contributed so greatly) and of the failure of brittle materials from the propagation of cracks. A fuller understanding of crack propagation had to wait until the work of A. A. Griffith in 1920.

HISTORY!

Now, don’t you feel educated?!?

Speed Kills

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have returned to the Southern Suburbs Tatler.
And therein to the Letters Page.
That’s where I found this beautiful piece of writing. Although, having described it thus, I should point out that I do have a few issues with it, which I will share below:

Speed Kills
On Monday March 11, a teenager lost her pet cat, killed by a speeding car in Oak Avenue in Kenilworth.
The cat had provided comfort and affection, crawling under her sheets to feel the teen’s body heat. She was writing exams that week, but her pet did not crawl into her bed that night. Her pet was found the next morning on the side of the road.

Drivers do not consider the grief they cause to the owners of pets. Speeding in suburbs causes hazards like this and also unnecessary noise which wakes residents.
This is totally ignored for the sake of the feel of power under the bonnet and the throaty noise of the exhaust. Instead, they must realise that speed kills and will have consequences. In this case the driver did not feel a thing, but the teenager and her family have been grieving.
We all know the speed limits. Why can’t people with powerful cars accept their responsibility to the community?

Henk Egberink, Kenilworth.

Henk, first of all, I am so sorry for your loss. Assuming it is your loss, that is. You never actually mention whether the warm teen in question is in any way related to you.
To lose a pet in these circumstances is difficult. To lose one that was writing exams must be doubly difficult.
And, because of these difficulties, I hate to question you regarding this incident. But I am confused, and that is a situation I hate to find myself in.

You should know that I am familiar with Oak Avenue. It’s just around the corner from us and I regularly used its steep hill to warm my calf muscles before my dreadful accident, which, incidentally, didn’t involve power under anyone’s bonnet, nor the throaty noise of an exhaust.

But I digress. Often.

My initial question is this: How do you know that the car that killed this remarkable feline was speeding?

I thought at first that you witnessed the incident, perhaps while holding a SABS-approved radar gun, calibrated to SANAS standards, which you were fully trained in using by an officially recognised regulatory body, but then you mention that the animal was found the following morning. Surely only a sick, sick man could stand to leave an exam writing, probably dead cat to lie by the side of the road overnight.
Although that having been said, I doubt that it would have bothered the cat very much.

Thus, this is where my confusion arising. Were you there or were you not? You seem to be a caring man, Henk. Not one that would leave an injured or dying animal at the side of Oak Avenue. So I’m assuming that you weren’t actually there when the cat met the front bumper of speeding car (and vice versa).

And that assumption brings up another question.
Do you honestly expect a feline-positive outcome to a collision twixt cat and car?

The speed limit on Oak Avenue is 60kph. You could argue that a 60kph speed limit is too high for Oak Avenue (and indeed I may be inclined to agree with you), but that’s another argument completely and anyway, as you so rightly point out, “we all know the speed limits”.

Your assertion that “Speed Kills”, the title and indeed the gist of your beautifully emotive letter to the Tatler, does tend to suggest to me that you believe that whereas an average car travelling at less than 60kph would not have killed this cat, one exceeding the speed limit of Oak Avenue by travelling at – let’s say for argument’s sake – 61kph, would automatically result in its certain demise.

I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and I think you’re incorrect.

I think that the car would still have won this brief battle, even if it was travelling at 30kph. And that’s because it’s so much bigger and more solid than its squidgy, exam writing, organic opponent.

And I don’t want to have to wheel out the big guns to support my hypothesis, but suffice to say, Sir Isaac Newton told me so.

Yeah. Exactly.

Henk, I’m sorry your cat is no longer with us and I trust that you have made alternative arrangements for someone or something to continue with the exam writing, shitting on your neighbours’ lawns and yowling late into the night.

But making mistaken assumptions about our local speed demons isn’t going to bring your unnamed pet back. And while the driver may not have felt a thing at the time of the accident (I’m assuming you mean both physically and emotionally here), having to remove teeth, blood and fur from the front of one’s vehicle is never a pleasant task, especially if he, like you, only found about it the following day. I’d recommend Wash ‘n Wax, which as well as removing all traces of dead cat, will also give a long lasting shine to the bodywork. You can get it from Builders Warehouse, or some of the larger Pick n Pay outlets.

But look at me, forgetting that it wasn’t you that hit the cat, it was a car driven by an inconsiderate and irresponsible driver.
A speeding driver.

Possibly, anyway.