Episode 34 Scary Technology

Episode 35
Joys of human invention
Hello, and thank you for joining me on another super special episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast.
For episode 35 I'll talk about some , such as Alex, the artificial voice that comes with Apple's OSX. My intro was Underwear Goes Inside The Pants, a song by Lazyboy
I like alot of things, both living and not alive. I like birds, bees and blueberries, but also expensive technology, cars, computers and laser death rays. To reference a prior episode about the scary old hospital here, as I walked through the old ruins, its not quite like roman era marble blocks, all weathered away over the centuries, but it sure is awfully dated inside, I started to think about how cheap a lot of man made things are. Things are made to be disposable, things get outdated from how they look. Take buildings, in just 10 years a building will be seriously out of fashion really. I remember thinking Splash Palace, the fancy swimming pool here in Invercargill, it was amazingly modern, it had an expensive, and modern design, kind of swooping lines, like a split open shellfish really. Its in pastel colours too, very light red, green, maybe pink? Made in the late 90's I think, it looks kinda crappy now. The council cheaped out on a lot of the materials, to save money, I seem to remember it costing half what it initially was going to. Within the first year I think, tiles inside started to break off, coming off the walls altogether or chipping, the steam room caused storage areas behind it to rot, the wave pool was designed for kids, it has, well, wave generator machines that make artifical waves that go through the pool, that was useless to teach children how to swim in, because of its odd shape, I know, I was a swimming instructor for a couple years. During a bad storm, part of the roof over the wave pool ripped right off, it was held down with sand bags during repair. The problems dont stop there, the main pool was meant to not really need chemicals to keep the water clean, or they were to be very slight, so you wouldnt get red eyes, that filtering system never worked, so chlorine had to be dumped in, I need googles when I swim otherwise my eyes get all red and sore. Parts of the floor around the pools would get very slippery, made from tiles, and gritty cement, that felt like sandpaper really, you can grate your feet on it. The hydroslide never worked properly, it was completely made wrong, the tubing was from an old Invercargill pool, I loved that hydroslide, it was in North Invercargill, I didnt get to go often, when I did I loved the hydroslide. It was a big deal. The south Invercargill pool before Splash palace, on Connon Street by Pak n Save, it never had anything fancy like hydroslides. When the kinda dingy south invercargill, and ritzy north invercargill pools shut down, the hydroslide was to go at the new, single Invercargill pool. For some reason, they tubing never was right, and so the fancy recycled hydroslide was slow, very short and boring as hell. At first it was rough inside too, you could get deep marks from joins between tubes. I've seen some hydroslides where you need to have foam mats, like the awesome Nelson hydroslide. If you come off, you get scoured by the rough fiberglass.
So, the hydroslide didnt work. The pool needed extra seating, that had to be bolted on to one side of the building years later, it cost a huge amount of money, and the main building had to be extended out over the pavement. A learners pool was eventually made, since the wave pool sucked big time for swimming lessons.
Ok, well, my point is, this huge fancy man made building was so amazing when it opened, the opening ceremony was at night, it was on national tv, that lotto break between the big family movie on a Saturday night, about 7:30PM, where the lotto ticket numbers are announced live. I had to be in Dunedin , and watched on TV. It was a big deal, probably the best swimming pool in New Zealand! But, it was rushed through, money was saved wherever possible, and the thing started to fall apart quickly. Now, its dated looking, and I have bad memories about it. While Im picking on Splash Palace, I should probably mention when I first got to go, there were huge lines since it was new, I think we waited literally hours outside in the queue, you dont normally need to wait for ANYTHING in little old Invers. The sun was so hot, it had melted the new bitumen, fun word to say, the black tar kind of car park flooring, what roads are made from. So we got sticky tar all over our feet. Oh, and then theres that time I did the longest distance for school swimming, 1500 metres, the pool is 50 metres, split into two 25 metres lengths, so thats 30 laps there and back. I started off doing it with Chelsea in front of me, she decided not to do the full distance this time, and got out, I stopped too, to see what the problem was, I was told to carry on, so I did alone. It was weird not following someone anymore...