Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

Thank goodness for our happy Olympians!

For many years myself, and a lot of other parents, watched the likes of the Burlings and Saunders sail past our yachting kids. The family joke: they were hard to recognise at the yacht club because on the water we only saw them from behind.

Those top young centreboarders sailed in a class of their own and good on them. I didn't lose a lot of sleep over that. It was clear that these guys were champions in the making and they were going on to greater things.

However, our champs have been costing me a lot of sleep this week, as we've got up at ungodly hours to watch their continuing rise to the top on the water off Weymouth. It's been riveting viewing, even at an inconvenient time.

Congratulations to our local sailors and all those who've helped them along the way at the Tauranga Yacht and Power Boat Club, the high performance sailing programmes and their peers and teammates.

A special mention must go to their parents and families who, as we've seen over the years, have made enormous commitment to back their champion aspirations.

It takes more than good parenting and support to produce such a medal winning result. It requires sheer drive, determination and ability of the young person, no matter how much a parent wants the child to achieve.

Meanwhile, the Olympics have shown some bizarre contrasts.

On one channel are competitors togged up to the nines, even in top hats for the dressage.

At the other extreme is the sport we'll call undressage – female competitors wearing almost nothing.

The most bizarre part of the games however, is this: that in this technological age, with rovers on Mars and cameras that automatically detect faces – competitors in the games still have their numbers attached by safety pins.

The safety pin was invented by Walter Hunt in the early 1800s. Walter was twisting a piece of wire, (probably locked himself out of his horse) and was trying to think of something that would help him pay off a $15 debt. He later sold his patent rights to the safety pin for $400 to the man he owed the money.

Incidentally, Walter also invented the forerunner of the Winchester repeating rifle, a successful flax spinner, knife sharpener, streetcar bell, hard-coal-burning stove, artificial stone, road sweeping machinery, velocipedes, ice ploughs and mail making machinery. He is also well known for inventing the first, but commercially unsuccessful, sewing machine. But he abandoned the idea, fearful it would put sewers out of work.

There's no way that Walter, bless him, would have stood by in 2012 and accepted that safety pins were still the best way, 200 years later, to hold a number on a shirt!

The Burling silver has brightened an otherwise grumpy week at RR headquarters this week, not helped by broken sleep.

There have been some miserable moments, even worse than getting silver; the dishwasher is giving an F4 error. We have no idea what that means and as usual, can't be bothered reading the manual to find out. I'd have to put down the Sky remote to read it.

It beats me why, in this day and age, when we have rovers on Mars, yachts that sail faster than the wind, and have played golf on the moon, that we can't have a dishwasher that instead of saying cryptic 'F4” code, actually tells us what F4 means. My first guess was: The F word, four times.

Turns out, it's not that simple. Why not? Even the robot in Lost in Space managed to tell Will Robinson more useful information. Pretty clever considering it was the sixties.

Why can't the dishwasher flash up a sign that says 'my filter is blocked” or 'my temperature sensor has malfunctioned” or 'pending ash cloud eruption” or 'your demented mother in law has put the cat in the dishwasher and the washing in the dog kennel and the dishes are currently spinning in a zillion pieces of broken crockery in the spin dryer.”

You'd think, with all the technology at our fingertips, that the dishwasher would self-diagnose, or better, automatically email the service repair person, who could whip out and fix it.

Imagine if the Mars rover decided to stop working, and phoned home: 'F4”.

Come on, F&P, you can do better.

Still, it's not really a reason to be unhappy. There are a lot of people in the world worse off than us, with an F4 fault error. My heart goes out to those with an F5.

Some of our Olympians suffered F5 or worse this week. Some even managed an F-Up.

Spare a thought for poor Valerie Adams, who is so miserable at having achieved ONLY a silver medal at the Olympics. She'd probably be quite content at home with a F4 faulty dishwasher. Same for Ben Fouhy, who has the weight of the world upon his well-toned shoulders after bombing out of the Olympics - and it's all someone else's fault. Mind you, there wasn't much wrong with Fouhy's waste disposal unit. It was running at full tit during his ignominious exit.

Or, picture this: we could be sitting under an ash cloud somewhere in the central plateau, while a certain volcano is having its own little F4 tantrum.

The point here is, if I have to see one more blubbering sportsperson, upset that they ‘only got a silver', I will throw myself into the friggin volcano.

Meanwhile, one appliance hasn't yet suffered an F4 error. The world watched in trepidation as the Mars lander, Curiosity, touched down on the red planet.

There were immediate signs of life but it is likely NASA has photoshopped it all out. The digital era has saved the space agency millions of dollars, because they no longer need to act out bogus planet landing scenes, like they did in the sixties. Now it can all be done on computer.

Everyone is asking whether life has been found on Mars. Well there was, till the spaceship landed.

RR unreliable sources report the landing craft on its descent squashed a small furry feline-like creature. Officials will not confirm reports that Curiosity killed the cat.

Nor would the officials give any hint as to whether the origins of Man have been discovered on Mars, although they did concede that it's still highly probable that Women came from Venus.

Meanwhile, here at RR Space Craft Tracking Headquarters, we are concerned that the rover is mucking around on the surface, playing with rock samples and searching for possible life forms. We all know that is not the role of an intelligent life form sent to another planet.

The Mars lander should have aimed for the nearest maize paddock, flattened some crops into mysterious circles, then snuck off. Isn't that what we expect alien spacecraft to do?

Finally, there's been a strong response to the iPad deal with Harvey Norman and SunLive.

Alert readers will have seen the advert which offers a deal for an iPad, bringing you daily news for free from any of the nation's news websites, for less than the cost of buying the paper version of daily newspapers. Plus, you can read the news from as many news sites as you like, from anywhere in the world.

Check out the ad this week and find out how to get more news, free, faster and constantly updated. Also very environmentally sensible!

Parting shot:

Speaking of iPads, here's a parting shot at technology, thanks again to Wally:

I was visiting my son and daughter-in-law last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper.

'This is the 21st century, old man,” he said.

'We don't waste money on newspapers any more. Here, you can borrow my iPad.”

I can tell you, that bloody fly never knew what hit it.