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@mariner4life said in Straya!:
Huntsman.
We did a house and car swap with my Uncle when I was a kid. He's a Kiwi that lived in Aus, he wanted to show his kids around NZ, my folks wanted to see Straya.
We were all in the car about to leave somewhere near Canberra I think, and my father (the driver) went to wind (yes, wind) the window down, a spider the size of a dinner plate (well to me at the time) was on the door panel. Father screamed, flung open the door and refused to get back in. Mother, who it would be fair to say, wasn't easily flustered, and from a tough upbringing, grabbed a picnic blanket, and the hideous arachnid, and flung it out of the car - directly at my father. It hit him but didn't stick fortunately, as I would have been from a broken home.
3 kids under the age of 12, and 2 adults in a car for 8 hours. Not a fucking word was spoken.
yeah, my uncle was on a motorway doing 110 when one walked out from behind the sunshade...
That happened to me once just as I'd got the motorbike up to 70mph, one walked across my eyeline on the INSIDE of my helmet visor. Admittedly not huntsman-sized, but quite intimate and close up for first thing in the morning. I somehow had the self control to calmly pull over, remove gloves and helmet, and brush the thing to the roadside. Rather than flail like a maniac. Fuck spiders.
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Lots of talk about spiders, snakes and crocs, but no mention of the one thing that makes living in Australia almost unbearable. The fucking shopping trolleys. What cnut would design a shopping trolley with four wheels that swivel? Makes the trolley next to impossible to control, and if it wasn't for Mrs Crazy Horse being in charge of the fucking things when we go shopping, I would have ditched this country long ago.
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@Crazy-Horse said in Straya!:
Lots of talk about spiders, snakes and crocs, but no mention of the one thing that makes living in Australia almost unbearable. The fucking shopping trolleys. What cnut would design a shopping trolley with four wheels that swivel? Makes the trolley next to impossible to control, and if it wasn't for Mrs Crazy Horse being in charge of the fucking things when we go shopping, I would have ditched this country long ago.
And I always get the one fucking trolley that wants to go the opposite direction than I do. Fuckers
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All good observations from the lucky country but the glaring stain on the great republic of Australia is something absolutely hideous that I first noticed in 1988....
Some of them call their daughters "Peta"!
Yes, as in Peta Williams, Peta Snell, Peta plumbly walker etc
Give me a thousand huntsmen and a troop of chlamydia riddled koalas anyday over asking to see "Peter" and having a chick show up!
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Cane toads in Queensland... I might be a socialist* who sees some value in keeping the native fauna around, but fuck them.
*Not really.
I don't think they are native , they were bought over to keep down some sort of bug in the sugar cane but they don't jump high enough to get the bugs at the top of the cane.
Nuke the fluffybunnies from orbit , its the only way to be sure.
A mate told me when you run them over it sounds like a tire blowout, any truth to this?
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All good observations from the lucky country but the glaring stain on the great republic of Australia is something absolutely hideous that I first noticed in 1988....
Some of them call their daughters "Peta"!
Yes, as in Peta Williams, Peta Snell, Peta plumbly walker etc
Give me a thousand huntsmen and a troop of chlamydia riddled koalas anyday over asking to see "Peter" and having a chick show up!
Yeah sure mate, you'd complain if Peta Wilson showed up
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Cane toads in Queensland... I might be a socialist* who sees some value in keeping the native fauna around, but fuck them.
*Not really.
I don't think they are native , they were bought over to keep down some sort of bug in the sugar cane but they don't jump high enough to get the bugs at the top of the cane.
Nuke the fluffybunnies from orbit , its the only way to be sure.
A mate told me when you run them over it sounds like a tire blowout, any truth to this?
Not sure, it's been decades since the last time I saw them in person.
You're correct on their (not) native status - that's another reason not to care about their survival in Australia...
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Yeah they go pop
It's fun to get the 3 wood and smack them in to the neighbors yard
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@mariner4life cricket bat ...
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Speaking of computer simulations...
"Mutant Marsupials Take Up Arms Against Australian Air Force
The reuse of some object-oriented code has caused tactical headaches for Australia’s armed forces. As virtual reality simulators assume larger roles in helicopter combat training , programmers have gone to great lengths to increase the realism of the their scenarios, including detailed landscapes and — in the case of the Northern Territory’s Operation Phoenix — herds of kangaroos (since groups of disturbed animals might well give away a helicopters position).
The head of the Defense Science and Technology Organization’s Land Operations/Simulations division reportedly instructed developers to model the local marsupials’ movements and reaction to helicopters.
Being efficient programmers, they just re-appropriated some code originally used to model infantry detachments reactions under the same stimuli, changed the mapped icon from a soldier to a kangaroo, and increased the figures’ speed of movement.
Eager to demonstrate their flying skills for some visiting American pilots, the hotshot Aussies “buzzed” the virtual kangaroos in low flight during a simulation. The kangaroos scattered, as predicted, and the Americans nodded appreciatively . . . and then did a double-take as the kangaroos reappeared from behind a hill and launched a barrage of stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter. (Apparently the programmers had forgotten the remove “that” part of the infantry coding).
The lesson? Objects are defined with certain attributes, and any new object defined in terms of the old one inherits all the attributes. The embarrassed programmers had learned to be careful when reusing object-oriented code, and the Yanks left with the utmost respect for the Australian wildlife.
Simulator supervisors report that pilots from that point onwards have strictly avoided kangaroos, just as they were meant to.
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mind you I ain't taking on no fucking kangaroo ... deys fuckas is scary ...
I often walk past one on my morning constitutional that lives down the bottom of our hill. Scares the bejeebus out of me. And he's only one of those mid-sized buggers. Scarier than Sammy the coastal taipan (Straya!). Don't go giving them stingers.
Straya!