with apologies to Clement Moore.

twas january 1st
and all through the house
not a creature was stirring
not even a mouse

the kids were still snuggled
asleep in their beds
late nights and much walking
had addled their heads

we olds were enjoying
a morning of peace
the dogs werent yet barking
no-one on the streets

we pondered again
how our plans went awry
for a hot spicy midnight
under fireworked sky

the odds had seemed good
that the kids would be dozy
near midnight, allowing us
time to get cosy

but alas, they’re now teens
with parties to go to
one under the bridge
another the zoo

we couldnt enjoy
the bottle of moet
we had to stay sober
til all were home safely

one came home quickly
1 am’s not too bad
but as expected a call came
could we get a lift home dad?

and they were all starving
mcdonalds was full
new years resolution broken
to eat healthy food

we tucked in to hotdogs
as 2am beckoned
not quite what the plan was
their dad and i reckoned

but january 1
has a night of its own
we claimed it as our night
and partied at home.

My favourite Christmas present this year was from my youngest son.

He likes to make things (especially if it doesn’t cost anything). And also leaves things to the last minute. So on Christmas Eve afternoon he was running around, trying to find a blank CD at home. He didn’t say what for. I didn’t suspect anything.

I couldn’t find one, so he disappeared back into his room, and played with his laptop a bit more. Stayed up late.

On Christmas Day (after finally getting out of bed at 09:30!)  he showed me what he’d made.

A powerpoint presentation set to music, of lots of loving, kissing pictures. Mostly free pictures with watermarks that he’d downloaded from Google, they were soppy pictures like Minnie and Mickey mouse kissing.

At one point the music got out of sync, so he improvised on the spot, republished it without sound, and played the music direct from his iTunes account. Very resourceful.

But I couldn’t get over the fact that he had done for fun, what they had been paying me to do at work last week, synchronising sound (and voiceovers) to powerpoint presentations.

(Yes, his copy is legal. I bought him the student version of Office for his Mac, as thats what they use at school).

We should subcontract to him – its much better than waiting for the local papershop to give him the paper-run, after 2 years of  being on the waiting list and then seeing them advertise the next street  (Cumberland  Newspapers – you are sooo disorganised!).

I went into his room yesterday (you have to be brave), and he was there on his laptop, with two other laptops next to him. “I fix things”  he said. Although the fan problems on the Lenovo were beyond him, and the battery problems on the Thinkpad. But he happily wiped them, to use them as backups.

Scott, you’ve got a great future ahead of you in IT.

Shameless plug alert.

Just wanted to publicise the fact that I have a Christmas Events page, where people can list their public events such as Christmas Tree Lighting, Carols by Candlelight, Christmas Markets, Church services, etc.

You can search by event type and suburb, so if you’re looking for your closest carols by candlelight, feel welcome to drop in.

The ideal website would be one you could create and leave, letting it chug along earning money, not having to go back and update it.

Unfortunately, those sites are pretty mythical.

Even if you take the lazy man’s approach to earning money online,  building websites with affiliate links on them (so that someone else has to fulfil the sales), they still need maintenance.

I have an Online Shopping site that basically lists online shops in Australia.

A lot of the links (apart from shops that I have used and trust), come from two of the main affiliate companies in Australia. I’ll only name my favourite – www.clixgalore.com.au.

This weekend I spent around 4 hours doing spring cleaning, individually going through each link on My Online Shops, double checking that the online shop it linked to, still existed.  I’ve still only done a quarter of the sites, so there are many more hours ahead of me.I was surprised and annoyed at how many shops I had to delete from my directory.

I deleted around 40 shops. About half of those, simply  no longer existed. I assume the global financial crisis hit them badly, and they went out of business. “Factors outside our control” seemed to be the usual excuse. If the URL even still worked.

But around 20 were shops that no longer were listed at the original affiliate company. Many no longer offered an affiliate link, but a surprisingly large number had transferred their affiliate management to good old clixgalore.

Whilst checking the links, I could imagine that the slow speed of the other affiliate company was a factor.  Many times I clicked on a link, and it took ages for the affiliate company to redirect to the online shop. Definitely a deterrent to sales. I had absolutely no sales during November for the slow affiliate company, and a large number for clixgalore.

Apart from maintaining the existing links from the slow affiliate company (simply because they do still have a few good shops there), I will no longer waste my time adding new shops from their lists. On the surface, it seems that their servers aren’t coping, that they sign up shop that can’t last through a downturn, and they send so many emails, that it’s not worth reading them. And so I miss out on the important emails that would have told me which shops or promotions were no longer active.

Long live clixgalore!

My old E-Tag worked around once every two months. I usually only use it once a week. I initially rang up to check that I wasn’t going to get a fine, but the staff reassured me that they would just track down my E-Tag account based on my car license plates, and charge me that way. I adjusted the position twice, following their instructions, but it didn’t work. Years passed.

When we went skiing in July, I checked that my E-Tag account had lots of money, then set off happily. As usual,  the tag didn’t beep, but that was normal.

A week or so later the tag did beep while crossing the Harbour Bridge, but it was an unusual beep.   I rang the RTA to see what was wrong.  They had my card expiry date wrong, so I got them to update that, and asked for a new tag to be requested.   They said to go to the nearest RTA to pick up a new tag. I got the new tag, attached it to the car, and drove across the bridge.

The new tag didn’t work either.

The next week,  the ex-husband got an official Toll Notice for not paying a toll on the M5 (the car is still registered in his name).  It had to be the ski trip. Crazy, as the tag was attached, and I had a statement saying funds were plentiful.  I rang the RTA, and they said it should have automatically detected that the car had an E-Tag, and not to worry.

But the ex had to fill in a statutory declaration saying I was the driver. Shades of Marcus Einfeld.

Today I received the redirected Toll Notice. I guess their automatic detection system doesn’t work.

One of the options for payment of the massive $3.80 toll was BPay. Logged on and tried to pay it. Payment rejected with message “This merchant does not accept payments that small from your account type”. Swapped to credit account. Same message.

So the E-Tag doesn’t work, their software system can no longer match license plates to E-Tag accounts, and their payment system doesn’t accept payments.

Have to put a piece of paper in an envelope to pay $3.80.

Good grief Charlie Brown.