calebbrown.id.au

So the other day I ran out of Telfast (a particular type of antihistamine drug) and so I went to the chemist to get some more.

Upon finding the box I immediately realised that it was noticeably larger than my previous one.

I was surprised that a company would decide to increase the size of a their packaging without increasing the size or quantity of the product it contains. I suspect this change is to do with some brand repositioning within it's owning company, Sanofi-Aventis, or maybe a change in where it's packaged. But, nevertheless, such a move struck me as counterproductive, which further investigation seems to support...

After getting the new box home I took some measurements and made some calculations:

So the new box is more than 50% larger than the old one - or to put it another way, I could fit one and half of the old boxes inside the new one.

At this point you might be thinking "so what, who cares if it's a little bigger?". Well, let me point out the ramifications this has for shipping.

It means that if before only 12 boxes fit in a shipping box, now only 8 will fit. If a truck was full of these it would be carrying roughly two thirds the original number of boxes. This means that it would require another half full truck to make up the other third to distribute the same quantity. Or for a 1.2m x 1.2m x 1.2m pallet load the difference is between fitting about 10000 of the old size to 6700 of the new size - that's more than 3000 fewer boxes!

This has two negative implications:

1. shipping will cost roughly 50% more than before (assuming the shipping costs didn't change)
2. waste and pollution from shipping will also increase by about 50% (assuming no change to the method of shipping). This is negated a little by the decrease in overall weight due to there being less product

The amusing thing in all this is that all the extra space is taken up by air. The extra money spent in transport and the extra burden this places on the environment is a result of packaging more air.

I don't know why they did this, but it goes to show how costly increasing package sizes by only a small amount can have.

Ever noticed how the white road markings are really slippery when wet?

I remember discovering how slippery they can get when riding my bike to school in the wet. I would always ride along the bike track that had a single white line running down the centre of it.

One day, as I was ascending the one significant hill on the trip to school, my tyres touch the line as I applied power to the wheels through the peddles. I soon found I was struggling to stay on as I contended with the sudden loss of friction, which was quite a surprise.

I don't ride my bike much nowadays, but I still experience the slipperiness as I take off from the traffic lights in my car and feel the wheels start spinning as they try to accelerate over the wet line.

The irony of all this is that zebra crossings are painted out of the same stuff. The same slippery-when-wet concoction that my bike tyres slip on and my car wheels spin on also makes it hard for pedestrians with certain types of shoes (like uggboots) to stay upright on.

So much for being the safe place to cross the road.

In an effort to reduce the noise in my inbox I have closed my long standing email address: amnot@hotpop.com.

As far as free email services go it has served me well. It gave me free POP3 email and wasn't hotmail at a time when it was king and free POP3 services were rare. Since then free webmail has changed dramatically. Google came along and gave enormous storage and a good interface and made everyone else pick up their game.

I'm not sad to see this address go. It was always a temporary stop gap until I bought my own domain and it had become so overrun with spam. It has served me well for the nearly 5 years I've had it.

Somehow I can't think of a less productive way to spend ones time: translating the bible into lolcat.

From John 1:

1. In teh beginz is teh werd, and teh werd iz liek "Oh hai Ceiling Cat" and teh werd eated teh Ceiling Cat.
2. In teh beginz teh werd an teh Ceiling Cat iz teh bests frenz.
3. Him maeks alls teh cookies; no cookies iz maed wifout him.
4. Him haz teh liefs, an becuz ov teh liefs teh doodz sez "Oh hay lite."

While I was having a conversation with Steve our youth minister after church tonight, Sam and one of his friends came by us wrestling over a hat.

Steve said "here's trouble", then asked what they were fighting over. Sam said that his friend wouldn't give his hat back. His friend said that Sam wouldn't give his hat back.

At this point my brain scrolled through the list of things to say. I couldn't take a side, because I didn't know who's hat it was. I didn't want to participate in their boyish tussle either. And then somehow it clicked. I'd seen this problem solved before.

So I said "I know I'll cut the hat in half and give one half to each of you". Sam quickly replied "yeah, do it" - oblivious to what he'd just walked into. Steve picking up on it instantly said "well we know its not your hat Sam" and he promptly let go as Steve and I lost it.

I could barely believe he fell for it. I didn't think a Solomon style comment would ever have worked.

The irony was that Pippett had started the sermon earlier tonight talking about learning lessons from other people's mistakes.

Yesterday was great. A public holiday on a Wednesday nicely splits the working week into two easy to manage halves. It makes Monday feel like Thursday, Thursday feel like Monday, Tuesday feel like Friday and Friday feel like, well, Friday. Taking it easy and hanging with some friends was an excellent plan too. Everyone I've spoken to hasn't had a bad thing to say about the Wednesday holiday.

But I noticed a problem - and its all about petrol.

Well the price of petrol.

If you're an Australian driver then you've probably noticed that the best time to buy petrol is on a Tuesday. For some reason thats probably related to the schedule of petrol tankers, the day of the week, and when people usually get paid, petrol is cheapest on that day. Monday is usually okay. Wednesday and Thursday are pretty bad.

Another time you don't buy petrol is the day school holidays start. Actually buying petrol near holidays is generally a bad idea - including public holidays. And yesterday was no exception.

On Tuesday night driving home from work the price was at about AU$1.25 per litre, which was about the same as it had been over the weekend before it. On Wednesday morning when I drove past it had actually dropped to about AU$1.20 (ooh 5c). Come Wednesday evening it had jumped dramatically to AU$1.34.

So there wasn't the usual Tuesday night dip in prices that one has come to expect. Disappointing.

I eventually remembered ;)