It helped a lot to stick it in the same pile with Stephen King instead of with Asimov.

Any two drivers with a desire to stop on the side of the road to yell at each other will be automatically shackled together, forced to live life connected at the wrist. Drivers will be forced to work out their differences and learn to drive together in peace, or die in a horrible battle to the death.

While walking at lunch yesterday we walked past a road rager having a go at someone. If we were throwing around generalisations and labels, one looked a bit white trash outer suburban fluro tracksuity, while the couple in the other car were dark skinned and traditionally dressed.

Key words in the yelling match I picked up were: "go home", "racist", "at least I was born here, where were you born?".

I've no idea why they originally stopped but the argument didn't seem to have anything to do with driving.

To be honest I'd have happily turned around walked up to fluro and told her to stick her tryhard arse back in her car and piss back to whatever stinkhole SHE came from.

But of course I didn't. Last one of us to yell at someone in a car while walking ended up getting their teeth all messed up.

All that sick time meant I only got to write a tiny amount of hours worked last week on the census. I'm pretty sure last time I was between jobs and either wasn't working or worked a short week.

I wanna write 38 or more hours. Just once.

Next census I'll probably end up working 80 hours or something just to get me back for saying that.

And after thinking a little about my beliefs last year and early this year, I was happy to tick the No Religion box.

Where is the pet question darn it!?

The thick white line which indicates where cars are supposed to stop BEFORE (not after or on) at traffic lights is converted to a device much like the popup protection screens at banks.

When the light turns red, the white line instantly turns into a massive clear plastic wall. Cars sitting on the line are shot into the air and explode in a cool fireworks display. The lucky cars just lose their front.

Device 2:

Speed detecting roads. The road you are driving on constantly monitors your speed. If you are speeding for more than five seconds, spikes shoot out of the road and shred your tires.

Device 3:

All public transport and public safety vehicles (fire, ambulance) have their breaks removed.

Melbourne is built on the assumption we all have cheap personal transport. Without it, most of those outer suburbs just wouldn't exist, or they wouldn't have been built without first building some public transport to them.

What happens when that assumption is squashed?

At what point does where you live and your ability to get to work become a factor in the hiring process? Someone who didn't have to drive to work might be willing to be paid a lot less...

And don't get me started on water...

I suggested recently that I'd have rathered my tax cut gone into a national train service. They suggested I donate my tax cut to Connex. I suggested they missed the word "national" in my rant. Although I liked the way they were thinking.

I had a bit of a problem with track sorting on my new MP3 player and figured out the cause last night.

The Sansa with the latest firmware will happily use the ID3 track number from either ID3 v1 or ID3 v2.

If it can't use the track number for some reason it will sort by Track name (alphabetically). If there is no ID3 track name, it'll sort by filename.

All fine. However randomly it would sort by track name and ignore the track number and sort by the track name.

If you use ID3TagIt and you choose the "Track X of X" option and enter an "of" value (eg. Track 1 of 12), what is actually entered into the "Track" field of the MP3 is "1/12".

That slash bungs everything up and the Sansa can't sort by that field anymore so it defaults to the track name (even if a valid value is in the ID3 v1 track tag).

So make sure your track number only has numeric values in it and everything will sort correctly.