I’m sure I’ve read worse but one that stands out as making me question the time I put into reading it is Out of the Dark by David Weber. I go into it expecting a military sci fi, and for the vast majority of the book that’s what you get - aliens invade Earth and plucky humans resist etc etc. The aliens however have more reserves and air superiority so are slowly winning as the end of the book approaches, at which point you expect the main characters to pull a rabbit out of the hat and do something different. Except that’s not what happens.

I was definitely not satisfied with this ending, even if there was some foreshadowing earlier in the book that made sense after knowing this was a possibility in this universe.

Far from the only one, I think there’s plenty which could plausibly be a duck. It’s just that most people seem to be going for one of these ducks:

Or one of these ducks:

instead of one of these ducks:

Self checkouts that just let you scan items without issue and accept payment are a nice enough idea for a bag or less of shopping, my problem with them is how they are implemented in reality (in Australia anyway). The first implementations I encountered I considered an useful addition but both the machines and the staffing changes due to them have steadily gone downhill in terms of user experience.

Instead of a quick painless experience you get a horribly touchy weight sensor which can’t reliably handle particularly small items, particularly large items, or non-standard bags (and there are no longer standard bags due to plastic bag bans), a machine which demands assistant intervention at the slightest issue (and the assistants are understaffed so never arrive quickly), and when you finally get to payment it makes you click through an annoyingly slow interface to tell it you don’t have a rewards card and don’t care to donate to some charity before it will activate the card reader. To make things worse the manned checkouts are never staffed at a level - if any are even open - to cater for people with full trolleys so these end up clogging up the self checkouts (which have tiny bagging areas and are not intended to handle a trolley load) and making everything slower.

The icing on the cake is the self checkout treating you like a thief and throwing errors if the camera system thinks you didn’t scan something in the trolley or letting off an alarm like you’re trying to make off with something when you just want to buy a can of paint.

As in plasterboard sheets? I don’t see why not if hand loading, plenty of vans will fit a 2400x1200 sheet (my Transporter fitted a bunch of plywood with room to spare). Loading one with a forklift is harder due to no side access long enough to fit 2400mm but that’s a problem shared with tub back utes. If however your plasterboard pallet is side accessible a van with barn doors (like you’d buy if pallets were a priority) will allow you load it in fine.

Reading the news while having breakfast, though it’s now on my laptop instead of the newspapers I started this habit with.

Apart from family and my own number about the only one I can think of is the Reading Writing Hotline (1300 655506) due to the sheer amount of their radio ads I’ve heard over the years while driving around.

Even within family I’ve only got one left that actually works though - Dad hasn’t changed his mobile number since circa 2000 but Mum did at one point and I never remembered her new one.

You pour a bit of boiling water down the side of the cylinder then run your hand down where you poured the water - you will feel a clear delineation in the temperature of the cylinder at the level of the liquid gas inside.

Boiling the jug and pouring a bit of hot water on the cylinder seems like it’d be less work than digging out the Wii fit gear, unless of course they use it more regularly rather than just for weighing gas bottles.

Nutbush City Limits might have a chance then, we’ll see whether Australian public schools are still teaching the dance in a couple of hundred years…