mike carey

Is that @VictorPowers?

Young people having café breakfasts of avocado on toast is a popular thing to criticise them for when they complain about not having enough money to buy a house. I'm sure it's not just here. This picture just popped up on my twitter feed. Avoca is a town in western Victoria, the road sign and the modifications (whether real world or photo-shopped) is brilliant.

I've seen that checking flights for a trip I'm thinking about later in the year. It seems that whether it's a direct flight or one with a connection (no matter how far out of the way the connection is) means less for the price than what they have available. And it's not just AA. When checking fares Qantas will often show me fares from Canberra to LA via Perth and Sydney rather than just via Sydney (that's across the continent and back to travel 250km). If airline elite status matters to you, and the extra few qualifying miles or sectors would make a difference at the end of the year, I can see the point of taking the nutty route you cited if the fare were comparable.

Click on @mkenneth99's handle, either here or just under his avatar, and then click on 'Start a Conversation' in the pop-up box. Or you could go to 'Inbox' at the top right of the screen, click on it then start a conversation. Going that way you then have to type in his handle (a pick list will come up as you type).

I'm sure you don't need any encouragement to do so, but have a great birthday @alexhawk! I'm sure there are plenty of other guys around the pool that will give you a helping hand, or something else.

Valid and important counterpoint. Nonetheless, I think his moment of (sort of) epiphany was important for him to share.

Joke of the week (from the SMH) Nine-year-old Joey was asked by his mother what he had learned in Sunday School. "Well, Mum, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When he got to the Red Sea, he had his army build a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely. Then he radioed headquarters for reinforcements. They sent bombers to blow up the bridge and all the Israelites were saved.” “Now, Joey, is that really what your teacher taught you?” his Mother asks, dumbfounded. “Well, no, Mum, but, if I told it the way the teacher did, you'd never believe it!”

Never organised an event of the scale you're talking about but I have organised work lunches and the same guidelines apply. By all means get a rough idea of preferences, but once that's done book the restaurant, set the menu options and advise everyone where and when. If people don't like it they don't have to attend. On the original question of why PS and not Orlando, simple. The organisers had ties there and wanted to set something up. It's the Palm Springs weekend, it's not the annual forum weekend. Similarly, the DC lunch (when it happens) isn't an event looking for a location it's an event at a location (and timed to coincide with another separate event [MAL]).

Don't jump to conclusions about people you meet. This guy was annoyed by the guy next to him in his management class until he found out what he was actually doing.

I do barrack for them. When they play Collingwood! (I remember when I was first interested in any way in Aussie Rules it was said that there were three teams that started with F, Footscray, Fitzroy and f**king Collingwood.)

For the hell of it I did a search on a flight aggregator for flights on a random date about three months out from now. PHL-PHX-PSP $315, PHL-LAX $226 (that was a direct flight, there were cheaper one stop flights to LAX) both fares one way. Both happened to be on American. Those might not be the best deals, and maybe RT would be lower, and the site returned the fares in AUD so I converted to USD at today's exchange rate. I agree that if you were set on a direct flight, driving from Phoenix might be preferable to driving from LAX (as might Las Vegas).

Happy birthday.

@WilliamM, understood. Changing planes is something I can't avoid (I could catch a bus to Sydney to avoid one change but check-in is much easier in Canberra). Travelling to the US on QF I can fly direct from Sydney to SF, LA or DFW, anywhere else involves a change, even flying QF to NYC where it's the same flight number but a different aircraft (A380 to LA, B747 on to NY). I suspect changing to an international sector would carry more potential risk than a domestic change.

I agree LAX can be a challenge, but flying into Palm Springs is a breeze and although a car is useful you can easily manage without one for this event. That saves a bit of the extra money that it costs to fly there rather than to LAX. I'm not sure that flying 3000 miles is much more of an imposition than flying say 750, you'll often have a connection in either case. Others have commented on the lack of late notice accommodation, and that was discussed prominently here when the event was first scheduled with people urged to book then if they thought they might attend. PK made it known that he had an extra booking at the CC up till a week or so back, so there was an opportunity there, and I have seen at least one other post here about a reservation about to be given up.

There may well be better places than Palm Springs to be this weekend, both for escorts and clients. But that is not the point. People attend the event because they know there will be a level of camaraderie and they know that certain escorts and clients will be there. That is far more of an attraction than any other city where you may happen to have some number of escorts present. This is an event, it's not a random weekend in Palm Springs. No one is forcing either escorts or clients to attend but they know that they will meet each other in social settings that will not be available elsewhere. They know that the social environment may result in appointments. That's why people are there rather than in some other city where they may be able to meet an escort.

Well, that would make things interesting! And here was I thinking of meeting you for a coffee!

That's how it works, and fairly quickly. For those of us unable to attend, the mystery remains. At least I have last year to remember. Has anyone brought ginger beer?

Perhaps T3's characterisation of why a potential client would not pre-meet or send a pic was ill-advised (as he acknowledged), and perhaps any attempt to explain why they would not do so is similarly ill-advised. But that is his business model and it seems to work for him. Your conclusion that you would not hire him is your prerogative. I would hire him, whether he would accept that hire is a separate question. At the moment it's all hypothetical anyway.

It will no doubt have escaped the attention of most participants in the forum but for the past week the Commonwealth Games have been underway on the Gold Coast in Australia. It's sort of a low rent Olympics for athletes from the Commonwealth. There are 53 countries, but a total of 70 something teams (the countries that form the UK compete separately and various territories (say the British Virgin Islands or the Cook Islands) compete separately. There have been world records and the media highlight today was the attendance of Usain Bolt. There is also competition in sports that don't figure in the wider world of competitive sport. Think lawn bowls and netball (the latter a 7-a-side sport vaguely similar to basketball, played almost exclusively as a women's sport). (Canada and Australia split the women's and men's beach volleyball golds.) One feature of the games is the incorporation of para sports in the main program, so we are seeing disabled events being reported in the same breath as able-bodied athlete events.

Who?

Antidote perhaps?

One disparaging name for Aussie Rules is 'cross-country basketball' and there is some validity in that description. Players mark each other across the field, there is no 'front line' the way there is in American football or the two rugby codes, there is a limit how far you can run with the ball without bouncing it (like the travel rule in basketball). It is also a game that works better at the ground than it does on television because you need to see the sweep of the game across the field unlike rugby/NFL where you can see what's happening by focussing on the players around the ball. (Disclosure: I'm a member of the Sydney Swans (effectively that's a season ticket) and have been since 1996. But the game is alien in Sydney, the football of choice there is rugby league and to a lesser extent rugby union: perversely the Swans' crowds are bigger than most rugby code crowds.)

Do you think so?

This summarises the tragedy of the ice hockey team that had so many of its members killed in Saskatchewan.

*Sad face* Yes, I know I left out the next bit: (if it happens, great but not a priority anymore).