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| Monday, 6 July 2026 | Dereel | Images for 6 July 2026 |
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Still more spam
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Topic: health, technology, opinion | Link here |
Received an SMS on my mobile phone today:
Hi Gregory we act on behalf of Dorevitch Pathology and are contacting you regarding your overdue account. Please make payment of $75.00 today by clicking here https://p.armagroup.com.au/6KOHW2Q0. If paid, please ignore. Regards, ARMA
That's clearly a follow-up on other SMSs that I received, first on 18 May. It almost looks genuine. But then, so do most good scams.
The real question is: what is the legal status of an SMS? They're very prone to abuse, to the point that the government has introduced identity checks.
be highly suspicious if the message includes:
And that's exactly what they ask for. But that's only one of the alarm bells:
OK, time to enter a report. I wonder if anything will come of it.
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Lamb's foot
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Seen while walking the dogs today:
The only remains of a lamb. Fore or hind feet? We couldn't decide. Yvonne thought that it might have been eaten by a fox, but my recollection was that foxes killed for the fun of it and then only eat small parts of the prey.
Both dogs were interested, particularly Larissa. We let her take them back home with her:
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Was that a good idea? Would she get the taste and go on to chase sheep? No, I don't think so. They clearly didn't when they disappeared on Friday. But what if people saw her and came to the wrong conclusions (“vicious hunting dogs”)?
| Tuesday, 7 July 2026 | Dereel | Images for 7 July 2026 |
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Quail nasi goreng
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
I had leftovers from Saturday's dinner: nearly a whole quail, raisins and rice. What kind of breakfast can I make from that? In principle it sounds like nasi goreng. Do the twins have any other ideas?
No. The recipe they came up with was almost identical to mine. The only interesting suggestion was the addition of cashew nuts. I can do that.
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 72 g | Quail meat, cooked | 1 | ||
| 16 g | Duck fat | 1 | ||
| 10 g | Garlic | 1 | ||
| 5 g | Ginger | 1 | ||
| 170 g | Cooked rice | 1 | ||
| 23 g | Cashew nuts, chopped | 1 | ||
| 20 g | Soya sauce | 1 |
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The duck fat was an experiment: it's now considerably cheaper than lard in this bizarre culinary landscape. But it was too much. It's only really necessary for the ginger and garlic, and 5 g would be enough for that.
It's interesting how firm this quail flesh is. I had cooked it for 90 minutes, but it was still very firm, and while eating it I discovered that I had missed a number of small bones:
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Begone foul scammer
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Topic: technology, health, opinion | Link here |
As planned, raised a scam report about these irritating SMSs with Scamwatch today. Apart from their insistence on specific non-standard date and time formats, all seemed to go well, and they responded quickly with a confirmation. The most interesting things were:
The advice: “Stop all contact with the scammer. Block the scammer from your phone, email, messaging platforms and social media sites”. OK, done. That confirms my suspicion that SMS is not an appropriate medium for sending invoices. If they really are genuine, they will have to find another way to contact me.
“If your identity credentials were compromised (like your Medicare card, Tax File Number, or driver’s licence) report it to the relevant agency”. That wasn't the case here, but it's interesting to note what they consider to be identity credentials.
I got not one, but two email confirmations:
13 N + 06-07-2026 To groggyhims@le Scam Victims Compens ( 36) N + FW: Scam Victims Compensation from Internet Crime Complaint Center NY Department (IC)
15 N 07-07-2026 To scamhelph@lem Do Not Reply Scamwat (2818) N Your report accc-scamwatch:0017561033 to the National Anti-Scam Centre’s Scamwatch service
But the first was a scam! That's clear when I look at the To: address. groggyhimself (not the real address) is my standard email address, and scam-related stuff goes to scamhelp. Another vindication of my choice of different email addresses for each contact.
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Power advisors: new low
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
I followed a link somewhere offering me house electric power upgrades. One of these “you pay us your current bill for 6 years and then the system is yours” schemes. I've seen them before, but I also have the option of paying up front. In view of the upcoming free midday power, it's worth following. So yesterday I spoke with Mark Borja <mark@energyassistanceaustralia.com.au>, who arranged for a phone call from a government expert today at 14:00. To be really sure, he called me again abourt ¾ hour before and warned me that the phone call would not display a number.
Warning bells! He told me that the caller was Nathan of Rebate Assistance Victoria. Another question for Google Gemini, this time with a warning response:
No, this specific website is not an official government site, and you should treat it with a high degree of caution. While it looks professional at a glance and uses regional, official-sounding language (such as a standard Acknowledgement of Country), it is a private, third-party lead-generation site designed to gather your personal and property details and sell them to solar sales companies.
There was much more. So I sent Mark a message asking him to cancel the appointment.
Nathan didn't know about that—in fact, he didn't seem to know very much at all. He called me as planned, and since he was on the phone, I listened to what he had to say.
I first had to point him to what he should have known, and what was in his documentation: we already have a photovoltaic system with 10.8 kW of panels. His suggestion: add 6.6 kW of photovoltaic panels. This would completely eliminate bills in the summer. Part of his explanation was a choice of power suppliers who would offer me up to 12¢ per kWh for feed-in, instead of the 1¢ I'm being paid at the moment. That doesn't add up: in the summer I still consume a lot of power at night, and that starts about 1 hour after sundown. Add the 6.6 kW and it might extend that time by an hour at the most.
And what about the free power in the middle of the day? I suspect that he hadn't even considered that. When I asked him, he said that was “also an option”. And one way or another he would want to install a second inverter. I asked whether it should be in series or parallel, and I strongly suspect he didn't know the terms, and he wasn't able to give an answer.
OK, this had been going on long enough, and I hadn't expected this level of lack of knowledge. Let's finish the discussion. How much would his suggestions cost? For the 6.6 kW of panels and inverter, $13,890. For the 20 kWh battery and inverter, $16,000 odd. That's round $1000 more than Ballarat Solar Panels wanted for a 25 kWh battery. So we could forget the current offer even if they were to sound like they know what they were talking about.
It wasn't until I wrote this that I discovered that this closely resembles the nonsense I had two months ago, down to the the offer of 6.6 kW of PV panels. About the only insight of interest is from the twins: check out Solar Victoria, which is a government-run organization.
Mañana.
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Bratwurst yet again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Bratwurst again for dinner. Two months ago I established that the sausages needed to be cooked at 210° for 20 minutes in the “hair dryer”. But this time things went much faster. Here last time after 20 minutes and today after 14:
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The good news is that the sausages didn't burst.
| This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have a horror of reverse chronological documents, so all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days, but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry a day or two after I write it. | Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so. |
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