Insuring the car

Trying to insure the car my brother-in-law has bought on our behalf has been a bit of an issue. Some insurers want almost as much for the insurance as we've paid for the car. Some want to charge us a lot more for a six months' premium than for a year.

Celia tried getting a quote online with one crowd, and got stuck at a certain point each time. Seems that she may have 'answered one of the questions in an unfavorable way.' In the end she emailed them and got a response late last night. Rather than trying the whole thing again, we rang the English number, got through to the guy who written the email (how's that for amazing?), and he was very helpful. What a difference it makes when you get someone who's helpful. (Like yesterday morning I rang the Dept of Justice because they'd sent the police report on my convictions – there aren't any convictions, by the way – in the name of Crown. I find that pretty amazing too, that they should have my name wrong but my details right. But at least when I rang I got straight through to someone who was also helpful, and promised to get onto it straight away.)

This morning we had an email with all the insurance details we needed – price is still on the high side, comparatively, but better than some of the others, so we'll probably go with it. But whatever we do, the cost of insuring a comparatively cheap car is ridiculous.

The photograph is supposed to be of a Peugeot 306 XR hatchback - which is what we're trying to insure.

Mosgiel Coronation Hall

Did the Mosgiel Coronation Hall thing tonight. The Hall certainly is much improved after its refurbishment: the foyer is now a large meeting room and a new entranceway has been built around the side, leading into a smaller area and into the theatre. The stage has been extended (it used to be very shallow) and is now a decent depth for most performances. Backstage has all been improved, upgraded, painted, modernised...whatever, and there's quite a lot of space around there.

Grant sang his one song, mucking up the same line twice, but that was okay...he went across well. But it was exceedingly hot inside the theatre; it's been a very warm day, muggy and overcast, and I'm now sitting in my singlet and shorts, 10.30pm, and it's hardly cooler. We finished painting the flat today (apart from a few touching up bits we have to do) and laid down newspaper under wood chips. So the place is looking a lot better, and, once tomorrow's out of my hair, musically, I should start to be able to get back to some normality. Although Christmas is on the way, and that's always a bit stressful. Hopefully this year it won't be, with fewer presents being given all round. But I'm sure we'll manage to make it stressful anyway!

The concert tonight was a rag-bag of all sorts of Mosgiel-connected groups, and people who'd been involved in their Taieri Musical Society's productions. (Turned out Grant had played Pontius Pilate in the recent production of Jesus Christ Superstar.) There were bodies everywhere, though it was all very well organised. Ladies singing groups, of the older than middle-aged kind, with all the ladies sporting their latest perms - must have kept Mosgiel and its environs busy for the last couple of days. Dancing groups, taps dancers and the sort who appear to be about to do a ballet and suddenly do pop. Solo singers, and ensembles, and country bands, and a group doing a version of Cinderella with a bloke, a heavy, beer-stomach-carrying feller, dressed up as the fairy godmother. Would have been a great concert (I didn't see much of it except on a video monitor and didn't stay after I'd performed) apart from the heat. Can't imagine what it must have been like inside the theatre for those sitting through it all.

I had 85 emails to churn my way through today. I notice there's more junkmail arriving on my home address - I haven't been accustomed to getting it there. It all claims to be stuff I asked to be sent, but I think that's a lie in most cases. I don't even bother trying to 'unsubscribe' because I suspect that trying to do that will only indicate someone at the email address has paid attention to their nonsense. The rest of it was mostly from the writing group. I'm getting good at deleting anything that doesn't immediately interest me in the way of subs (and thus, their crits) and trying to note those that are worth keeping. But of course I seldom get back to those...at the end of of trying to deal with 85 emails you don't have much energy for going back and reviewing the stuff you put aside. So eventually it goes in the bin, too.

More on Writing

Finally Sanchona, the writer from Australia whom I've had a lot of contact with by email, after 'meeting' on the writers' list, has got in touch with me again. I left a note on the writers' list itself in the end, as it seemed to be the only way to contact her (my emails to her address were going nowhere, bouncing back). It worked, because she has a second email address that was accessible, when the main one wasn't. She claims since then that I then wrote to her normal address, but I think she's confused about how the email got to her. Although anything is possible, since my work emails were coming to my home address on Friday morning, I discovered.

On the research side of my writing, I re-discovered the news groups the other day, and spent a good deal of time copying material on memorizing...both play scripts and poems. It's the sort of thing I hadn't been able to find just on ordinary searches before. So it's obviously a place to keep an eye on. I'm in the process of checking out the subject of steganography again, because an article has turned up in the the Wired News by Farhad Manjoo (there's a name to grapple with!). In the Google search of the newsgroups, there's even a steganography list, but there are also several other lists where steganography is the subject under discussion. That's the intriguing things about these lists: they began kind of in a wide format, and then suddenly hone in on a topic - and veer grandly off it too! The rec.photo.digital group has a longish discussion on steganography, but much of what's there is stuff I've already picked up (with comments) from the Net proper. Another group started a discussion earlier than Sept 11th, on three combined (apparently) newsgroups: comp.security.misc, sci.crypt, talk.politics.crypto, and wound up with 74 entries, many of them veering off the track. There's also discussion on a hackers newsgroup.

Like all conversations between a group of disparate people with a moderately common interest, these discussions on the newsgroups are only marginally useful. There are some very knowledgeable people out there, but also the usual bunch of know-it-alls who don't know-it-all. And whether I can be bothered to track my way through all that stuff for a bit of useful material is another question.

Off that subject entirely, I managed to both go to the movies and watch a DVD today: both comedies and both a lot cleverer than they first appear. The DVD was Best in Show, a film I'd had a hankering to see for a while, though Celia wasn't keen. (She sat through the DVD without enthusiasm, although she did give the occasional laugh - but ceased when we got to watching the deleted scenes. some of which were definitely verging on the not funny.) The sense of improvisation came through quite startlingly, and some scenes had the wonderful overlapping of conversation that you only get when the actors are playing with the idea of the conversation rather than working on a received text. Equally, some scenes, particularly the deleted ones, had a touch of the 'we don't know where to go next' feel about them. This afternoon, Ben, Stef and I went to see Ben Stiller's Zoolander, and absolutely crazy piece of nonsense, that works, in spite of itself. Stiller presents a simple-minded character with a voice verging on the unbroken, and a host of equally off-the-wall people who stroll in and out of the film with no comprehension that the rest of the world isn't anything like this. The only sane character, Zoolander's girl-friend, played by Christine Taylor, sees something in this lunatic that appeals. Of course it helps that he becomes an accidental hero in the end. It just goes to show that when you're on the 'in' side of film-making, you can present a crazy idea and get it to come off...and get the dollars to make it work too. Best in Show probably didn't cost a heap of cash, but Zoolander must have. The great thing about both movies is that everyone has got in on the idea, seen the potential for outrageous humour and gone all out for it. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Times has some strong words to say about it, not positive, and he's right. However, he does miss saying the positive things about it: that it's full of wit, in spite of the fact that the main character is a dummox.