phik

I am historically a very big fan of our US Postal Service. It’s easy to take for granted how excellent it is until you live someplace else.

Joe sent a 10-pound box of Important Goods from Boston to Perth, using this fancy Global Express Guaranteed service that I’d never heard of. My guaranteed delivery date was March 19, but this was itself perplexing — surely the US Postal Service does not operate in Australia, so how can they possibly feel so confident as to extend a guarantee?

I checked the PO Box on March 19 and of course there was no slip telling me that a package had arrived. Typical. The online tracker says that there was an attempted delivery that morning. How the fuck do you attempt delivery to a PO Box? You either deliver it or you don’t.

A little bit of digging reveals that this service is actually provided by FedEx! That explains the guarantee, at least.

Wait for it. Think it through.

Just like in the US, FedEx can’t deliver to Australian PO boxes. So now my package is in postal limbo somewhere in Perth.

If you’re wondering how someone is supposed to know that a package — dropped off at a US post office, for a USPS service — can’t be delivered to a PO box, then you’re in good company. It turns out that it’s buried in this 2,400-page document (take my word for it):

I wanted to pose that very question to the helpful blokes at the US Postal Service, and indeed I learned a great deal from a short conversation with a woman and her supervisor:

1. They don’t know that you can’t send Global Express Guaranteed packages to Australian PO boxes
2. They don’t know that USPS partners with FedEx to provide this service
3. They don’t know who I should contact to resolve this issue
4. They may not have been 100% certain that Australia is, in fact, a real country

Next.

Last month, FedEx Australia provided me with the best customer service experience of my entire life: I called them, waited on hold for five minutes, and hung up. Ten minutes later, they called me back to find out what I wanted. And when they couldn’t answer my question, they said they’d ring the US, find out, and call me back again. This shouldn’t be exceptional, but try to imagine service like that! It made my head spin. That’s where I next pinned my hopes.

Once again they were very helpful, and provided a further intriguing piece of data: while FedEx does, indeed, take the package from the United States, across the ocean, into Australia, through customs, and to (near) its final destination, it doesn’t actually deliver the package. Australia Post does.

Why, then, can they not deliver to PO boxes? And where the fuck is my package? They suggest I contact Australia Post.

Australia Post, not being not the streamlined and efficient 24-hour global company that is FedEx, was of course not reachable until the next morning.

At that point, they informed me that it had been waiting for me in the post office this entire time, but someone forgot / mis-filed / deliberately destroyed the slip that tells me to come claim it.

I have some suggestions for the USPS / FedEx / Australia Post global package juggernaut:

1. “Attempted Delivery Abroad” communicates virtually zero accurate information about the actual state of the package. I argue, in fact, that it communicates negative information, because there wasn’t anything attempted about it. How about “Delivered to PO Box” or if it requires a signature, “At destination post office / Awaiting pickup“
2. You obviously can deliver to Australian PO boxes, so fix your goddamn service guide.
3. If you really can’t deliver to a PO box — for which there would be no good reason — train your staff and fix your computers not to accept packages addressed to them.
4. Australia Post, please hire staff who can successfully navigate the ten meters from the counter to the PO box without losing a slip of paper or forgetting which hole it belongs in.

Sometimes it seems like I have to do fucking everything, you goddamn retards.

John’s post about data struck a chord. Part of my Australian lecture series has been about engineering process — certainly about the PSP/TSP, in part, but more importantly about the fact that you need a defined process of some kind, because our industry is a disaster of epic proportions.

The SEI is fond of the assertion that you can’t improve what you don’t measure, about which I could not more readily agree.

When it comes to so many things, if you don’t have data, you’re just flapping your lips.

Easter in Australia is a tour de force. In Canada or the US, I’m used to getting Friday or Monday as a public holiday — if it’s a really employee-friendly workplace, maybe you can choose which day.

Here in Australia, I was instrucuted to take Friday and Monday off. And Thursday. You know, Easter Thursday, Palm Thursday, whatever it’s called in the scriptures. And as public employees, Tuesday — Ash Tuesday, I believe? With this kind of work ethic and no nuclear power, it’s no wonder this country can barely keep itself hydrated.

Anyway, because almost everyone has an eleven-day weekend, it’s a major travel holiday. We’re cooperating by renting a house in Lancelin.

Directly behind (indeed, beneath) the camera is the beach. The top deck was for cheese and champagne while we watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean every evening. The middle deck was the Hammock Deck, used primarily for hammocking, and the bottom deck was the Breakfast Deck / Barbecue Area Alpha. That is a complete inventory of the decks, except for the deck in the back.

The interior of the house is the area designated for drinking, with the exception of any drinking that takes place outside.

When we were not drinking or eating — which, to be honest, comprised most of the four days we spent there — we took in the local sights, such as Impressive Piles of Sand National Park.

it appeared to be gloriously lawless out on the dunes

A very intrepid and entrepreneurial man acquired a school bus, jacked it up on a huge suspension and monster truck tires, weighed it down to prevent it tipping over, added bucket seats with individual suspension — oh here, just look.

It has a licence plate. That thing is street legal. Anyway, imagine screaming over the dunes in that thing. It looks kinda like this, which I’m afraid is the best I can offer.

After we recovered from our complimentary back surgery, we drove quite a long way to visit the pinnacles:

lookit the emus

There was apparently a small sign at the entrance to the park, I was informed several weeks later, asking us please not to climb on the pinnacles. Knowing that would have been unfortunate, because it would have precluded this entry in the growing archive of me posing for my long-overdue Heisman Trophy:

Last but most certainly not least, I don’t know how I can possibly conclude without showing you the poster I found in the basement:

Ray Charles. You will never be forgotten.

Seriously, it’s retarded.

Today I went to Gloucester National Park and climbed the famous Gloucester Tree. More on that later, perhaps, when I am rested.

For now, birdses.

Western Rosella (Platycercus icterotis)

Australian Ringneck (Barnardius zonarius)

Now that I have my ASIC — about which more, much more, will be said later — I thought it prudent to get a little more experience with Australian airspace and cross-country desert navigation before I begin my great east-coast adventure.

Perth is isolated. It’s closer to Indonesia than another major Australian city, and the distance in between is not precisely brimming with compelling tourist destinations unless you are excited by dehydration. This complicates matters of site-selection for a quick day trip, even in a 200 km/h aircraft.

Because I’m living with people who know a thing or two about Western Australia, however, I learned that only 350 km from Perth is an interesting tree. If you’re wondering whether I flew for an hour and a half, drove in a taxi for 25 minutes, climbed a tall tree, turned around, and came home — wonder no longer:

VH-MVD parked at the bustling Shire of Manjimup airport; just look at that dirt!

It would not be a lie to say that I started to question the soundness of this plan after the first twenty or thirty meters of climbing. I remember thinking that this would be a colossally stupid and utterly pointless way to die, which I still believe to be true. I didn’t have my iPod with me — a gross oversight — but I did sing the opening lines from Avalanche to myself over and over again as a sort of mantra.

After thirty or forty meters, when I was looking down on the tops of other trees, I was really quite keen to be finished. But as soon as I got to the top, all was well.

I could have stayed up there all day if it hadn’t started to rain; climbing down was no problem.

if you zoom in and look closely, you can see more pegs way, way below

It is a really great tree; totally worth it.

(Complete photoset)

This tree was growing in the garden behind the house I lived at in Perth, and was due for a burn. It gets a burn every ten to twenty years, I’m told, about as often as it would normally get burned by a bush fire.

In these trees, the fire actually promotes growth.

Also the fire-scorched trunk looks like a total badass. Who’s going to mess with that tree? Nobody, that’s who.

I was in Canberra three or four years ago, and enjoyed my brief stay thoroughly (although as a sales trip it did not conclude with any actual revenue per se). I recall forming a life-long fondness for Cooper’s sparkling ale. Suffice it to say that I was very pleased to conclude my present little lecture series here at the Australian National University.

After I dispensed with my academic (ahem) duties, I was free to explore the many attractions to be found in the capital city. I made it to exactly three before I ran out of time:

the Australian National Botanic Gardens

The botanic gardens were worth the visit, although autumn is not strictly-speaking ideal, as relatively few of the plants were in flower.

the Australian War Memorial

I expect I could spend an entire week in the war memorial by itself. It’s comprehensive, fascinating, and very moving. I made it through World War I and into World War II’s Northern Africa campaign before they threw me out at closing time.

…at which time I discovered that my bike tire was flat, so I enjoyed a nice walk home.

the old Australian Parliament; I did not visit this building

In contrast to the rest of Canberra, which impressed me as a cyclist to no end, getting to the parliament building on two wheels was not entirely straightforward. I eventually figured it out, though, in time for the last guided tour of the day. Unfortunately parliament was not in session; much like our Congress, they almost never do any actual work.

I have an hojillion things to write about, but the days are just packed around here, so there’s no telling when I’ll get to them.

In the meantime, I turn your attention to William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel at Google. He literally wrote the book on copyright. In the last few weeks, he’s done much to expand my layman’s understanding of odd corner cases, and how other cases are actually confronted in front of judges.

If you need some help traipsing through the archives, consider The Cablevision Decision, C-Span and Originality, Claim Preclusion and State Courts and WKRP in Cincinnati and Section 114(b).

I should have spent today planning my upcoming trip, but instead I went to the zoo.

the ferry is awesome; the weather was not

Rain or shine, Taronga Zoo is excellent, and a good time was had by many.

godless killing machine

for my Novell friends

giraffes have awesome tongues

(Complete photoset)

A few weeks ago I talked Stuart into joining me on a sort of once-until-I-retire adventure. All of my other friends, I wish to make clear for the record, would rather stay at home and work instead of be chauffeured around Australia in a private airplane. It is astonishing.

We planned to begin our air tour of eastern Australia today, covering some 6,000 km in three weeks if all goes to plan. Of course it will not, indeed already has not.

The unexpected and inescapable rain — it’s been bucketing down in Sydney for days now, close to 200mm in total, in a part of the country ravaged by a two-year drought — has put us a day behind before we’ve even departed.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the forecast for tomorrow is similarly awful — but television says that the rain will be gone. From what I’ve seen of the BoM so far, to be honest, my money is on television.

Lousy Smarch weather.

Television comes through again — it was a beautiful morning, with scattered clouds above 12,000 feet.

I went to Bankstown bright and early and got checked out with minimal fuss in VH-HQR. After a quick jaunt back to “downtown” Bankstown for lunch and to pick up Stuart, we were on our way.

Kempsey being just a short 2.2-hour trip up the coast, it was a good, low-stress start to the journey. There will be several six- and seven-hour marathon days in the weeks ahead, racing against the sun, as my Australian licence validation doesn’t include the night-VFR privileges that are standard in the US.

Today’s trip did include, however, a beautiful stretch at 500 feet over the ocean beneath the Newcastle military airspace, zipping along miles of uninhabited beach, catching the occasional glimpse of today’s military manoeuvers in the clouds above. Apart from that, lingering clouds kept us down around 1500 feet at times, and gave us a quick rinse in a couple isolated showers.

Unfortunately, Kempsey is only mildly close to our actual destination — South West Rocks — but the South West Rocks airstrip, while on the map, is not mentioned anywhere in the airstrip guide (understandably) or the internet (surprisingly). There are also no hire car facilities (because the “airport” is a fuel pump and single empty room with, perhaps, a telephone). We took a 35-minute taxi to the coast.

It’s going to be an early night for me; I was up before dawn today, and I’m out at 07:30 the next two days for the boat ride to Fish Rock.

In other news, I am nearly vibrating with excitement for the World Cup final on Saturday. I went to bed early last night — by which I mean before the 23:30 match start time — and so missed the righteous thrashing administered by Australia to South Africa to claim their finals berth.

Let’s just hope they don’t screw it up like they did this summer. Twice.

When I asked the dive shop in Perth where I should dive on the east coast, at the top of their list was South West Rocks.

Fish Rock is about 30 minutes from shore, and once you’ve moored you’re basically two minutes from wide-eyed amazement. Rottnest Island was pretty; Fish Rock is almost unbelievable. It is extreme.

There’s a gully next to the cave where the nurse sharks hang out during the day; if you hover there in the water, they’ll come check you out with one of their beady, side-mounted eyes. Their big teeth are for crunching bony fish and crustaceans, I am told.

If you get bored with the sharks, you can swim with the giant schools of little yellow fish. They’ll part to allow you through, but don’t expect them to go very far. They’re lazy little fish.

I have no idea what these are called

Traversing the cave itself was an experience, to say nothing of what actually lives within. Its deep end is about 24 meters, the shallow end about 14. In between is a bubble cave, a local maximum that traps all of the bubbles from the divers. Since we consume so little of the oxygen in each breath, it’s quite habitable; you can surface in there and have a little chat.

the shallow end

I haven’t yet learned to photograph in the dark very well. I don’t have proper lights, and a strobe has its own issues. This resting wobbegong shark turned out ok:

do not mess with this shark, it will fuck you up

Fish Rock exceeded my already high expectations. I could spend weeks here, I suspect, and find something new on every dive.

I highly recommend Fish Rock Dive Centre — they were good-natured, professional, easy-going guys, with reasonable accommodation and decent Indian food on-site. South West Rocks Dive Centre didn’t return my call or email, so screw them.

(Complete photoset)

Southport (YSPT) didn’t return my calls or email either. It’s listed in the airport guide as “private” — not to mention that I don’t like to land where I’m not 100% sure they’ll have fuel — so I elected to fly into the somewhat busier and further-away Gold Coast airport.

It was another beautiful flight, although with somewhat more altitude than our trip from Sydney. A quick chat with Brisbane Center for our airways clearance into Gold Coast class C airspace, and we were soon on the ground.

Interesting fact about Gold Coast (Coolangatta) Airport: the New South Wales / Queensland border neatly bisects the main runway, so I touched down in NSW and took the first taxiway into QLD. Its true loyalties apparently lie with Queensland, however, as it elects not to observe DST during the summer.

It was recommended that we stay in beautiful Jupiter’s casino, which was sage advice indeed. Very comfortable, excellent service. It’s even one of the few Australian hotels to have discovered the revenue possibilities of internet access.

Today was a slow day; a late breakfast, a trip to the beach, and some flight planning.

For supper, though, we found an excellent Japanese restaurant not far from the hotel, with a deceptively inelegant web site. The restaurant was filled to the brim with authentic Japanese delights, an unexpected triumph and a fitting end to my three-month (!) sushi fast.

I don’t know why I didn’t eat sushi in Western Australia. I tried one day, for lunch, but the place at which we were going to eat was closed for renovations. I’d never have thought it possible to go three months with my sushi thirst unslaked, but here we are.