Posts by James Green
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On quiet nights in the library, one of my workmates used to read aloud to us from romance novels. She was also very well learned in the formula (there is actually pretty much a specific page in the book where the characters first get it on, and actually the first kiss and various other things are surprisingly predictable, page number-wise as well).
She was also fond of shelving them to try and get a continuous hue-shift from pink through purple (the cover hue cues the how racy, or not, any given M&B book is). Amusingly, there are some greeny-coloured ones which are medical romances. Curious that that is a whole sub-genre.
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I was doing some tidying in my 'cellar' and discovered a 'lost' 1987 Sauvignon Blanc! I am sort of afraid to open it!
My recommended solution is wait for a dinner party or some event where you have a number of friends interested in wine around. That way, that way, by the time you've poured a few small glasses, if it's crap, it seems like less of a waste to pour the whole bottle out. And if it's great or interesting, then it's something cool that you've shared.
Speaking of which, we won at a quiz a bottle of 1998 barrel aged Sauvignon blanc that I've been similarly wary of opening. No idea where they got the prize from... -
And on an entirely different point, your use of "sav" is another example in addition to "tute" of abbreviations spelt to fit English language conventions, not the word they were abbreviated from.
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which is what you get when sav blanc goes off
Strictly speaking, it's not "off". Sauv is the Britney of the wine world, not aging gracefully.
I'm all for bin ends, but I'd be very wary of 2006 Sauvignon (there's a fair bit of 2007 being pushed out cheaply at the moment as well). There's also some suggestion from within the industry that there will be quite a lot of bad Sauv coming on from 2008, where a lot of people without their own dedicated staff couldn't pick at the ideal time, had a lot of rain, and ended up with large juicy, but not very flavourful berries (think australian tomatoes).
And of course, a good shop should actually check the quality of their bin ends before stocking them!
Actually, I'm pretty much off buying cheap Sauv at the moment. I keep buying nasty green things (some even be-stickered), so I'm happier to pay a little more for things I actually know I'll like.
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Oh, on wine nerditry, there's a neat article out in the last week or so on the reliability of wine show judges
"Each panel of four expert judges received a flight of 30 wines imbedded with triplicate samples poured from the same bottle. Between 65 and 70 judges were tested each year. About 10 percent of the judges were able to replicate their score within a single medal group…. ” That is, 90% of the judges were not able to replicate their wine assessment within one medal group. In fact, 80% of the judges scored the same wine ranging from Gold to no medal"
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Screw caps can't be "corked" in the TCA sense, but that can have oxidative faults (oxygen leaks), or some weird reductive things, if the wine is unstable at bottling.
However, "canned asparagus" is the hallmark of older New Zealand sauvs, so it may well be that the wine was fine, but that it didn't age gracefully (in which case all the bottles will taste like that, and they probably shouldn't be selling it).
Useful Screwcap Tip: When buying screwcap wine, check the top surface and edges for any hint of a dint. It's surprisingly easy to break the seal on the top surface, in which case your wine may already have oxidised to vinegar.
On this point, it is possible that there may have been a small air amount of additional air get into Russell's bottle, in which case it could appear a further couple of year's older, in which case it would definitely be nasty and asparagusy.
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Back to the ODHB thing briefly, more interesting stuff in the ODT this weekend:
"In August 2003, the ministry [of health] ... [a]fter an extensive review, found nothing of concern in the information technology (IT) department.
...**using the ministry's review data, it could be seen the board's [IT] investment was average and could possibly be increased.**"
And also on the timing of the fraud:
"At that time, Healthcare Otago and the Health Funding Authority were being amalgamated into the district health board structure and Swann was asked to amalgamate the IT for the two organisations."This is actually interesting. Who was responsible for the oversight of this change process?
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Actually, I just this minute got the email from the bank with their new lower interest rates. Curiously, the break fee almost perfectly matches the interest saving between the new fixed rates and my existing one. So they obviously had an idea in advance about what the new fixed rate would be. Now with hindsight I wish I'd broken yesterday, moved to floating, and waited a month to fix for 6 months. However, I'm not dealing with a very big win or lose either way, so I don't overly care.
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We're all holding out for the bottom.
The same is probably true of the sharemarket, which is why I think there is a lot of hurting going on.
Following on from Slarty's break fees point. I checked mine out recently, and I haven't been bothered to check the actual formula (partly because I don't have one of the required numbers, which I guess is made up by the bank), but the break fee seems to take into account the likely fall in interest rates over the period of the loan. So now that it is really freaking obvious to everyone that rates are going down, that's largely priced into the break fee.
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Glenn -- I was arguing that it occurring over 6 years makes it less obvious.
Oh, I just saw this.
"The guilty verdict on the fraud charges isn’t the end of Swann’s legal woes — he faces a charge under the Secret Commissions Act of accepting a kickback of $757,685 from Innovative Systems, a firm run by Dunedin businessman and longtime friend Robin Sew Hoy. Innovative provided contract IT helpdesk services to the DHB between 2000 and 2006.The DHB ran an in-house helpdesk until 1998, with Innovative providing a small amount of services. After 1998, according to an NZPA report, the crown alleges there was a “significant increase” in the work carried out for the board by Innovative.
The work done by Innovative between 2000 and 2006 was charged out at $95 per hour, “which the crown contended was excessive and above industry standards”, according to NZPA.
During the six year period, the DHB paid $4,743,167 to Innovative. Of that amount, $757,685 went to Swann-controlled Computer South, despite no invoices being generated by Computer South."