Sideswipe: March 21: Too many cones

Mind your step. Photo / Supplied

A reader writes: “This poor tree root has been around for many years near Shore Road Reserve and I’m sure thousands of people have stepped over it successfully. Regulations now require four cones around it.”

How rude

I went for lunch with some people I know slightly the other day and they were odd. The husband started off by telling me he had googled me before I arrived and started to harangue me about an issue I had worked on years ago. This was not a good start. Anyhoo, we went to the kitchen table to have lunch, and they pulled the parrot’s stand over, lowered it until it was the same level as the table and served the parrot salad onto a plate on the table. The bloody thing stank to high heaven as well, as its stand was covered in parrot poo. I suppose I should be grateful that the dog wasn’t invited to join us too.

Forgotten potatoes

Taken root.

You will be forgotten too

How much do you know about your great-grandparents? Because in 50-100 years, that will be how much the world knows about you. If you think that information storage and accessibility will allow everyone to easily look back into the past, I challenge you to run a game designed for Windows 95. Point being, information storage is not a ubiquitous system and as the architecture of software and hardware changes there is certainly a possibility that some systems will require specialised tools and equipment to access. Plus, social media is the highlight reel of history, not the real story. Very few people show their true selves in their Twitter or Facebook feed.

A mortifying moment

A reader writes: “I was at the dentist, he had his finger in my mouth, shouted ‘suction’ to the assistant. For some reason thought it was aimed at me, and I sucked his finger. There is no coming back from this. I will have to change dentists.”