mja blog

Author: Melissa

  • New nephew

    Very early yesterday morning my newest little nephew Emmett was born; it also happened to be his mummy’s birthday – what a memorable day for her! I dropped round my brother’s house yesterday, good timing as he was there planning to head off about an hour hence to visit J and the new bub in hospital again. He’d been up since 1am that morning, was looking pretty tired but seemed happy.

    Emmett’s older brothers and sisters are very excited about his arrival. The four eldest have been staying with our parents since Friday and going back home today. Bubby Aiden (can’t really call him ‘the baby’ now, he has a younger bubby brother!) stayed with his other grandparents while P was at hospital, but P had him again by the time I dropped in.

    Not sure when J is leaving the hospital but there were no complications with the birth and both she and Emmett are doing well so it might even be today!

  • First chamber meeting

    I’ve been a member of the local chamber of commerce for a couple of years now, but beyond advertising in the local business directory have had no involvement. The directory has sent business my way, and now that I’m better motivated I figured it would be a good idea to get more involved, do some networking, and maybe give back to the local community.

    So I went along to tonight’s meeting. There was only a small gathering, but they were all very friendly and welcoming. I’d barely sat down before the chamber secretary was tabling discussion about setting up a web site and the other members were asking me about what was involved. The upshot of this is I’ve been invited to make a presentation at the next meeting about the best way to move forward with a web site. I am quite blown away!

    The rest of the meeting was kind of interesting. I’m not quite sure what drives the group – there seemed to be a lot of talk about Free Trees and Easter egg giveaways. And there seem to be some butting of heads with other groups holding local fundraising events. A lot of discussion about an annual festival held by the local Uniting Church; apparently it has been a bit of a failure in the past. The chamber donated $1,000 to the church committee towards market research, to be shared with the chamber, of which nothing has eventuated!

    The chamber runs the weekly markets in the main street of town, and the fellow who looks after it was interesting. He runs a local nursery and apparently sells his stock at various markets around SE Qld. He had some good ideas about the trends in street markets, and why some markets are declining. Cost of fuel mainly! He reckons (and it sounds pretty reasonable) that people need another reason to get in the car and head out to the markets – such as situating the markets near a shopping centre, or running some sort of attraction (his suggestion was to invite members of the Ulysses MC out on their bikes to do whatever it is they do!)

    After the meeting closed I chatted to a couple of the members. One of the guys must be a bit of a local history buff, he was telling me about the old Lutheran pastor for whom our street was named. Then I was talking to a lady in the local towing business, she was shoving business cards into my hands and hinting that she might want to talk to me about her own web site!

  • Gift to the Nation

    This morning after mass Dad told me about the World War I records of our uncle, which have been digitised and included in the National Archives web site as part of the “Gift to the Nation” project.

    It was fascinating to read about my uncle James Joseph Ferris, who was not quite 23 years old when he enlisted in August 1915, joining the 13th Reinforcements, 1st Battalion at Dubbo.

    In December he embarked from Australia to Egypt, where he joined the 54th Infantry Battalion at Tel-el-Kebir. He was shortly after transferred to the 5th Pioneer Battalion. During this time his pay was docked to replace a lost army issue felt hat.

    In June 1916 he was shipped from Alexandria to Marseilles on the BEF Canada. The following year he is promoted to Lance Corporal but several months later reverts to ranks at own request. During this time he seems to have distinguished his career by taking an officer to hospital (pity the records don’t go into the circumstances).

    After a couple of weeks leave in England in Oct 1918, he rejoins his unit in France. By February 1919 he is very ill and is shipped back to Australia on the Wyreema. He receives a medical discharge in May, and is formally discharged from the AIF in August almost four years to the day he enlisted.

    He was awarded two service medals – The British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

    I read up on some of Hubby’s relatives as well – he has two uncles who fought in WW1. Frank Lenon was 18 when he signed up in 1919 – he was killed in action in France the same year. His older brother Hugh Lenon enlisted in 1914, a Lighthorseman he took part in the action at Gallipoli. Hugh got into a spot of bother back in Egypt and was shipped back to Australia.

  • Beyond the Doubt

    John 20:19-31

    The first Christians were victims of state terrorism. The sudden arrest and death of Jesus provoked a climate of fear and apprehension among the apostles. They assemble inside a locked room – probably that of the Last Supper. The terror is so great that one apostle, Thomas, is reluctant to approach them even in seclusion. The locks are not only on the doors but on their minds and faith. Jesus breaks through with a powerful witness of love. He gives them power to unlock souls as well as portals.

    As one who doubted but then progressed to deep faith, the apostle Thomas stands as a sign of encouragement to all believers. Although we have not “seen” Jesus in the same way as those first disciples, Christians today have personally experienced his presence in their lives, have touched his body through the community of faith, have heard him through God’s Word and received his body through the gift of Eucharist.

    – Fr John Conway

  • Freelife Goji

    Talking to a local about web sites this morning, and he mentions there is a ‘business opportunity’ I might be interested in. The MLM alarm bells started ringing.. sure enough I’m soon hearing ‘unique product’ and ‘miraculous health properties’. He gives me his web address – a freelife.com address.. Goji juice!

    Sure enough, it doesn’t take much digging on Google to uncover the elements of a scam. Wendy Mesley, a reporter from CBC Canada did an indepth story on the Freelife Goji which completely blows it apart. http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2007/01/goji.html

    Goji or ‘wolfberries’ do have health-promoting properties, but the way Freelife markets the product, and the false claims that it cures cancer and so forth is just wrong. I feel sorry for the man in the CBC report who had spent thousands of dollars on the product for his father, sick with cancer – to find out it was all a bunch of over-inflated, unproven marketing hype.

    A couple of months ago my friend Melissa got into glyco-nutritional dietary supplements. She claims the product has made a difference to her health and told me about the remarkable transformation of a girl with Downs Syndrome. She gave me some links to information: http://www.glycostory.com, http://glyco101.com, and http://glycoscience.org. The three sites seem full of a lot of confusing scientific claims, but how well do they stand up to close scrutiny? In the words of Dr Ray Sahelian:

    I start suspecting that there is something not right about the promotion of a product – such as glyconutrients – when the meaning of the word is so ambiguous, and the word glyconutrient is created by a company that sells through multilevel marketing channels.

    Dr Sahelian found there were no legitimate studies to support the claims, it is all marketing hype. Sound familiar? The multi-level marketing element – just screams dodgy. They might be selling a beneficial product but they need to be honest. The hype and the untruths build people’s hopes and turn it into one big scam.

  • Zen Cart shopping cart system

    I’m teaching myself the ins and outs of Zen Cart shopping cart system for web sites. It is based on oscommerce, which I have used a few times already; but has a few extra features which make it more user friendly. Some of these features include an editor to add extra pages to the site, and an easier way to manage templates.

    The templates offer an override system – you can install a custom template but the system reverts to the default template if a particular template file does not exist in the custom folders. I’m reading up more on this here: http://tutorials.zen-cart.com/index.php?article=230

    I’ll add more here as I go.