Why, Autumn, Why

I used to like Autumn. You get the nice mild weather of Spring, but without the hayfever. No longer. For the last few years, I've had serious—SERIOUS—bouts of hayfever in Autumn. I can't describe how bad it's been. Like a really bad bout of the flu, but with constant sneezing, endless streams of mucus, and insufferable, unbearable, unrelenting fucking itching. It's been hell.

In other news, I used bitcoin for the first time the other day. After the shit that happened in America in January, a lot of people got kicked off of payment platforms like PayPal. On top of that, a lot of people who didn't get kicked off, came to the conclusion that their days were numbered, and started moving towards dealing with less fragile payment options—such as crypto coins. Last week, I purchased services from somebody who has transitioned their business dealings entirely to bitcoin.

I have to say, the experience was kind of shit.

In case you didn't know, when you transfer bitcoin between accounts, you have to pay a transaction fee. HOWEVER, unlike conventional payment systems, the fee isn't a set amount or percentage. Instead, you "bid" to get your transaction confirmed. The lower your bid, the longer it takes your transaction to go through. If your bid is too low, your transaction won't process at all. Instead, it'll "time out" after about 24hrs. Yes, that means that unless you want to spend a fortune on fees, you have to sit around for a full day wondering about whether or not your transaction is going to process or not.

So, "How much does it cost to get a transaction through immediately?", you might ask. Well, as it turns out, the exchange I signed up to didn't allow you to set the amount manually; instead, automatically using whatever the going rate was.

FORTY FUCKIN' DOLLARS!

Apparently, there's alternate currencies that've been designed to solve this problem. Monero and Ethereum are two names I hear thrown around a lot, but I haven't used them, so I can't comment. I just hope I don't find myself having to use bitcoin too much in the future. What an annoying and costly pain in the arse.

How have things been with you?

Early Warning Signs?

Remember Dave the tradie from my previous post? This post is about him.

Dave and his missus split up years ago, because she went insane. That's not hyperbole, she was literally mentally ill—like—with paranoid delusions and shit. And I'm not just taking Dave's word for it; I've got rellies who've met her.

He tried to look after her for years, but your options for controlling another adult—even a raving lunatic—are pretty limited. Eventually, he was getting worried for the safety of the kids, so he moved out and took them with him.

I was talking to Dave the other day, and he was telling me he's getting worried about his teenage daughter. Even though she hasn't been around her mother since she was a baby, he's starting to notice all kinds of odd little behavioural quirks that her mother exhibited, back in the days before she went off the deep end.

Maybe he's just being overly fearful, and worrying about little things that aren't that important; but it does make you wonder about how inheritable these things are, doesn't it?

What're The Odds?

Did you know that when they made the Ghostbusters cartoon, the role of the Bill Murray character was given to the voice actor who played Garfield … and then decades later, Bill Murray was cast as the voice of Garfield in the CGI movie?

What are the odds of that happening? Huh?

Okay, here's an even better one; what are the odds that I would hear that same bit of useless trivia brought up in conversation on five different fucking podcasts in the space of a week? How the fuck does such an utterly useless bit of information become so viral that suddenly everybody's fucking talking about it? That's what I actually want to fucking know!

… Yeah, okay, alright, I'll get onto the post propper then …

There's a tradie working on my parents' new house at the moment—Let's call him Dave. Dave is an old friend of my brother. They met by chance when they were both living in the top end. It's a complete coincidence that Dave now happens to live in the town where my parents bought their retirement house. But that's not all. Dave's parents also happen to be friends with my aunt and uncle, whom they met in a completely different part of the country, under completely unrelated circumstances.

Now, the population of Australia isn't that big, and I've got a pretty large, and well spread-out family, but this got me wondering; what are the odds of the scenario I just described actually happening? I mean—like—if you were seriously going to work it out—like—mathematically or whatever?