It's raining again today but we have no plans so will probably have a day at home. We're in that hiatus period of the census, having put out all our booklets and are now awaiting the nod to start the process of chasing-up the people who haven't got around to filling them out. I've no idea what percentage of people just ignore the forms when they arrive on their doorstep but, having filled ours out yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised if it's quite a lot. It seemed to me to be quite unnecessarily complex with irrevelent questions, Who cares what religion I profess? My answer is probably a lie anyway.
The way the system works is that all the dwellings I have visited appear on an app on my phone. As people complete their forms, the icon changes colour so that it is easy to tell who needs a hurry-up.
On the last day of my putting-out the forms, I went back to one area to check on a collection of letter-boxes at the end of one bush track. There was an old fellow from a house up the hill checking his box. He recognised me and told me that he had also received a form in the mail. Wasteful, you might say. But more importantly, if he chooses to fill out the form he received in the mail, I won't receive that information on my phone and will have to chase him up, unnecessarily!
I'm having a little trouble with my computer. I use it every day for one thing or another and really can't imagine life without it. Although I say the same thing about my Surface tablet, ebook reader and Android 'phone. Life was much simpler in the days before such technology.
I complain to Jamie that my computer isn't doing its job. "When did you buy it?" he asks, "March 31, 2015," I say, "And it cost me $860." "Well, that's less than $3 per week over that period," he says, "It's cheap entertainment."
What he's implying, of course, is that I should buy a new one. The equivalent model is now only $497 and, at $3 per week, would be 'paid for' in just over 3 years. Tempting, but is that the answer? I'll have to think about it.
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