G'Day Mate MkII

Pick Another Name

Paging Mr Mrs Pat Cox....
According to Spike in the SMH:

Jesus knits
Patches are one thing, the Last Supper of Christ is another. English woman Pat Cox has published her pattern for a 1.7-metre-long knitted scene from the Last Supper, the Church Times website reports. Influenced by the death of her husband in a cycling accident in 2001, Mrs Cox began knitting Bible figures, a hobby that eventually led to the creation of the whole Last Supper scene, which she gave to St Peter's Church in Worcester.

I think we might have to abandon the shortform and start using the full name instead....

Oops

Saw this quiz when I was looking for the Zil pictures yesterday and so I filled it in hoping to be somthing interesting (like Scotland) but this is what I got:

United States Of America -
The most well-renounced country in modern day times.
The militaristic superpower, the United States of America
is also known as the bossiest nation.

Positives:
Known Worldwide.
A Beacon to Others.
Powerful.
Fast Food.

Negatives:
Bossy.
Despised by Most Others.
Elitest.

Which Country of the World are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

He can speak ...

The Tongue has returned. Jivha is back from his holidays and apparently has suffered no angst or guilt for not posting while he was away :-). However during his absence, strange things happened. His shirts failed to wash themselves, the house got dirty, the cable TV disconnected itself, the plants forgot to water themselves, the little (is the dog little?) dog laughed to see such fun and the maid ran away with the spoon. He also admits to drinking JW (the whiskey, not me even if J and W are my initials). Jihva, Jihva, Jihva, how many times must I tell you .... JW is an EXPORT Scotch. (I can just see my Great Uncle or Grandfather shaking their heads as they say that line - except that they used my name instead of 'Jihva'). Naturally you were supposed to understand that we don't drink export scotch. We give it to other people who are unable to appreciate the finer things in life..... I remember smuggling in a bottle of Royal Salute to Grandfather's hospital bed. The doctor agreed to let him have it but only if he got to try some.....

Anyway, back to Mr. Jihva. He has not stopped to clean the house or wash the shirts but has ripped out a series of really good posts including: fashion shows, male subtitutes for lonely girls, science and health, gay high schools and most recently brain operations for politicians (assuming that they have brains in the first place).

Wallaby Tickets?

From Column 8 (Sydney Morning Herald) via email:

Did you hear about the guy mugged in Brisbane last week? When he recovered, he found nothing stolen, but two tickets for Saturday's Wallaby game had been stuffed into his pocket.

For the non-locals: Last weekend the "All Blacks" (New Zealand) thrashed the "Wallabys" (Australia) and Australia will now play South Africa.

Misrepresentation in the Media

The Daily Telegraph (a local Sydney paper) is running a fantastic front page picture of the premier's new holiday cottage (or the view from the cottage). Personally I wish I could earn as much as he does (close to $AU250,000 including electoral benefits) and if I did, then I too could afford to buy a holiday retreat somewhere like Queenstown New Zealand (hmmm, there was a story yesterday about Queenstown, NZ copying the Sydney gay mardi gras .... ).

BUT the thrust of the story is that Bob (that's the premier) won't have to pay stamp duty in NZ. Equally he wouldn't have to pay it in many other places as well. The paper (or the owner) has decided to push the issue of stamp duty for all it is worth. For those who don't know about this antiquated system, it involves a 'fee' for 'stamping' (or certifying) documents or a legal nature that are transferred between parties. There are small fees for some documents but when it comes to buying land, the amounts are enourmous. Of course, no stamps are actually used. The amount is assessed and passed straight to the state government in the form of revenue. What makes this particularly attractive in NSW is the rapidly rising prices of real estate in Sydney. For example, a small two bedroom unit in reasonable condition in Randwick (where I live) will set you back between $AU400K and $AU500K depending on location.

Back to the story. Given the property market in Sydney, it would be nice to retire somewhere else and buying 5 - 10 acres of nice country estate would be a good idea. You would consider things like climate, environment, access, planning controls and so on. The last thing in your mind would be the cost of teh stamp duty (a whole $10K extra on a $350K price tag is just icing on the cake).

I am not saying that stamp duty is good - it is bad. The state labour government has been living high on the real estate boom and the whole thing will come crashing down. Instead of controlling spending and investing wisely, they are flogging assets and dead horses side by side while waffling about budget surpluses. What I am complaining about is that this story is a load of old codgers. The stamp duty had nothing to do with it. You might as well suggest he bought the house in New Zealand because he knew the All Blacks were going to thrash Australia in the Rugby :-)

Now, when it comes to media - you have to know who to trust. If you want an unbiased opinion, just come and ask me :wink and I will misdirect you happily. In the case of the Daily Telegraph that whole story was both deceitful and silly.

Full article quoted in extended entry but please use the link if available.

Quoted from the Daily Telegraph:

Carr's Kiwi escape
By DAVID PENBERTHY
30jul03
PREMIER Bob Carr and his wife Helena have bought a spectacular $330,000 getaway in New Zealand's world-famous wine and wilderness country – and will not pay a cent in stamp duty.
The 3.3ha parcel of land is in the South Island at the exclusive Mt Rosa Station and Estate Winery, about 30km south of Queenstown in the breathtaking Gibbston Valley.
Because New Zealand has no stamp duty, the Carrs have saved themselves more than $10,000 in state taxes on a comparable property in NSW.
Mr Carr settled on the property in May, paying $NZ375,000 ($331,977), and plans to build a house there.
Had the purchase been made on land in NSW, Mr Carr would have had to pay $10,340 in stamp duty to his own Government.
Mr Carr has done nothing untoward in buying the property and has satisfied the disclosure requirements of State Parliament in declaring the purchase on his pecuniary interests register.
But the purchase, full details of which were confirmed by The Daily Telegraph yesterday, comes as Sydney is gripped by disbelief at upwardly spiralling property prices and the Government's failure to deliver any relief on stamp duty.
Mr Carr is in the US on a study tour and could not be contacted for comment, but sources close to the Premier said the purchase had nothing to do with dodging stamp duty.
Opposition deputy leader Barry O'Farrell said Mr Carr had deliberately looked for "the best investment or retirement option outside of Australia". "This is Bob Carr's Shangri-La," he said. "Stamp duty has been scrapped in New Zealand, and Bob Carr is cashing in."
Mr O'Farrell also used the purchase to rekindle speculation about Mr Carr's plans for life after politics, despite his recent reassurance that he will run again in 2007 and may stay on as Premier until 2011.
He said the buy constituted "an exit strategy" and raised questions about Mr Carr's determination to stay on.
However, sources close to the Premier dismissed all suggestions that the property was a retirement plan, saying he was not planning to retire in New Zealand, but rather on using Mt Rosa as a holiday destination.
Mr and Mrs Carr are keen bushwalkers and on several visits have fallen in love with the Queenstown-Otago region, famous as an outdoors destination and known for its power-boating, canoeing, and the invention of bungee-jumping.
The Carrs were last in New Zealand in June, when the Premier was a keynote speaker at a conference at the University of Otago.
They visited the land with friend and national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Dick Allen.
Locals in Bob Carr's original retirement choices – Orange, Port Macquarie and Albury – were not too upset by his change of mind.
"He's giving up the chance to live in God's country," Orange mayor John Miller said yesterday. "I am sure the people of Orange will still prosper and quickly move on."
In Port Macquarie, the Premier's decision was met with concern. Hastings acting mayor Rob Drew said: "This is the best place in the world, it's heaven on Earth . . . but we are very selective in the people we let in up here."

Picnic Day

Oh the dilemmas we face! Where I work we get a public holiday that is called Picnic Day. Used to involve most people going to a work sponsored picnic with the wife and kids. Essential staff required to keep things running were allowed to take a day off between Christmas and New Year instead.
Well times change. The company no longer puts on the picnic and the wives are just as likely to be working anyway. Effectively it is no different to any other long weekend and this means that most employees put themselves down as essential and then take the Christmas option.
So what is the problem? Well there is no guarantee that we will all have jobs at Christmas and it might be a case of a bird in the hand being worth more than the vague possibility of collecting a bird later in the year if you are still employed! What would you do?

Zil Fetish

There are a number of blogs out there which have cars as the main theme or an important side note. Examples would include Pete who posts photos of rallys and talks about designing websites, and Accidento who races buses and (as far as I can tell) restores strange vehicles.

These however pale into insignificance when compared to the man with the Zil-fetish. For goodness sake, I don't even know what a Zil is. I call up the local dealership and ask him:
Me: "Ahmm. Gday. Gotta Zil for sale?"
Him: "Huh? This is a DELETED car yard, we have all the best cars!"
Me: "Yeah, Gotta Zil?"
Him: "What's a Zil?"
Me: "It's a car, I think."
Him: "Naw. No such thing mate, someone's pulling your leg."
Me: "It's a Russian car."
Him: "Ha Ha. Why do Russian cars have rear window warmers?"
Me: "I dunno."
Him: "To keep your hands warm while you push."

Normal by day (or is that night), every now an then exposure to an unknown substance causes Paul to turn into the Zil man. He then starts posting inexplicable pictures of strange people standing in, on or near Zils. Sometimes the Zils are NAKED and completely unattended.....

The proof can be found here (check the extended article for another picture), here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here (almost a Zil).

I think that the "Buy Paul a Zil fund" has merit. Maybe that would help with his Zil-fetish :-)

Mind you, the Zil-fetish has not stopped his climb up the evolutionary ladder....

Staff Motivation IV

Now that the employees and middle management have been motivated by your SKITA (business speak - see extended entry for translation), it is time to tackle the question of contractors. They already get too much money but you can't change that because of contracts. Instead, fire half of them arbitrarily by sending them letters like this:

Dear Deleted,
Your agency has been advised that we no longer require your services after today. Please ensure before leaving the premises that you return all of our property.
Thank your for your contributions (we need the donations).

If there are loud screams of agony, explain that this was a required cost cutting measure and that you feel it is good to be proactive. If there are more screams, talk about feeling disappointed at the unwillingness to embrace a challenge (you can use the bus/train/car talk again). If that doesn't help, try referring to 'the next round of cuts' (this usually works by either intimidation or resignation). Meet concerted complaints from regular staff with the reassurance that the other 50% will be gone in three months.

Who is the King of Scotland?

Over at All AgitProp, Paul has an article that mentions a claim by (the soon to be late) Idi Amin who claims (among other ridiculous things) to be the "King of Scotland". That is really annoying. After leaving a comment, I went searching though my records (I seem to remember doing this about 18 months ago for someone else who wanted to know). There are two possible solutions, the English answer or the more correct answer :-) Jacobite answer.

According to the English Royal website, the last Jacobite claimant (Stuart family) was Henry IX or more correctly: Prince Henry Benedict, Cardinal York (1725 - 1807). They also claim that he left all jewels, records and everything else to the future George IV.

On the other hand, the English Royals do have a vested interest in the matter as it could effect stability in Scotland. A more disinterested source is the online wikipedia which has both an entry for Henry as well as a more detailed entry on the Jacobite claim. This specifically states that the claim to the throne passed to the house of Savoy. The current (living heir) is Francis II (Duke Francis of Bavaria). Check the linked entry for the full succession.

I feel I have a vested interest as some distant relatives were minor (not royal) Stuarts (Stuart of Bute) and they fought with Charlie and fled to France afterwards.

Staff Motivation III

Now that the senior managers are less more motivated, call in the grunts and tell them that the standby/callout time will be reduced. Instead of getting 2/8 (2 hrs extra per day M-F, 8 hrs on S-S) they will get 1/4. Make sure in the same meeting that you discuss how nice the new million dollar awning will look on the front of the building. Touch on the new interior and working escalator to be errected because the new MD wants an office on the ground floor - in the "heart" of the building (don't mention a fear of lifts). Explain that small sacrifices (like 20% of your take home pay) are required of everyone these days (except for golden parachutes, building facade rennovations and office redecorations for managing directors).

Blog Roundup

Well maybe it was all about the oil after all. That is the theme of an article over at Teacherish. A name like that fits the sign mentioned some time ago :-).

Jaboobie is getting tired of people who use the extended article with nothing in it. I agree. I try to use the extended article only when the content is either (a) not mine (e.g. copy of a vanishing news item) or (b) possibly offensive. In both cases I try to let people know what is there. Actually with a news aggregator, who don;t know becuase it takes you direct to the archived item (which usually contains all parts
of the article).

Brett Simmons mentions that Minsky apparently now agrees that AI is brain-dead. Is he offering to return any of the money he spent? The thing that struck me heavily when I studied AI (part of Cognitive Science at UNSW) was that the AI reseach field seemed to be over promising and under delivering. Apart from one Expert System (RDR) almost all the other end-results were so specialised as to be useless as generic AI tools.

Pete want to restart the multi-class Bathurst race (just like the good old days). He also has a couple of good movie reviews.

AMCGLTD has an interesting point on the cost of reconstruction in Iraq being paid via the confiscated funds of the former government. On a related topic, USS Clueless lays it on the line for the Saudis.

Utterly boring who are expecting also receive more interesting SPAM that I do. There is also a great apology which was not written by Robin Williams.

Tiny Little Lies managed to avoid jury duty by being a lawyer and also has some comments on the posting of the images of the Hussein corpses.

Thanks to Paul and his pointer to Denise who in turn pointed to Wizbang I now have trackbacks on the main page. This is a "Good Thing" (tm) because when you link to one of my articles, you automagically get a blog ecology link. You too can be a marsupial like Paul.

Paul also has some interesting articles on Cuba, Private Jessica and Gypsies in England.

Read and Enjoy!.

[Ed: I already covered Glenn and Jivha earlier on the weekend]

Fire Drills

What is it with fire drills? The first productive meeting in weeks and we get an evacuate the floor practice. There was no clear direction from any wardens but we survived any way. The thing is, the only time the fire alarms went off for real, everyone wandered around asking the security guards what to do. My floor evacuated but the rest of the staff ignored the alarms completely.

High Heeled Shoes

Why bother? Platform shoes I can understand because they make you look (are feel) taller. High heels, unless worn properly make a lass look silly as she lurches around. In fact they can turn a gracefull girl into a tottering terror.
It didn't help that today's bus was already jerky but one passenger (wearing high heels of course) had a terrible time trying to put her ticket in the machine as the bus pulled out from the stop. As she stumbled first one way and then the other you could almost hear the oooh/aaar of the audience. When she survived that ordeal and headed for a seat, someone kindly pointed out that she had dropped something near the ticket machine. The crowd waited in anticipation, would she attempt to pick the object up or just ignore it? She went for the pickup just as the bus lurched around a corner (at the bottom of the hill at considerable speed). Only saved herself by grabbing two poles for support; certainly not the intended picture of elegance.

Besides, aren't they supposed to be bad for your feet?

Staff Motivation II

Get all your staff together and give them a pep-talk. Point out that they need to be self-motivating and adapting to change (i.e. self changing motivators). Challenge them to make sure they are on the bus and not left behind at the station because this car is going to win the race (now was that a bus, train or car?). Suggest that the staff will be responsible for controlling their destinies (i.e. self-educating because there is no longer a training budget).

Then tell all the senior staff (including yours truly) that their bonuses from the last twelve months of work simply don't exist. Don't cancel future bonuses that have not yet been earned (no carrot), just cancel the ones you haven't got around to paying yet. If the staff complain, threaten to take it to the papers. Don't mention that the top echelons stuffed things up and screwed the budget, just hammer that middle management layer who simply are not motivated enough (well not any more!).

Correction

Yesterday I indicated that Fr. Tony Bolt was in Karnataka. That is incorrect. He did talk about Kanataka but he is currently stationed in Kanjoor (State of Kerala). That doesn't change the "thought of the day" though ...

He spoke again at mass this morning and hence I had the chance to hear him again.

Staff Motivation I

This is the first of a new series of articles on how to best motivate your staff. I feel perfectly qualified to comment on this subject because I am staff and I need to be motivated. Yes I have studied management but like all esoteric subjects there is nothing like direct experience to teach the finer points. After all:

those who can, do;
those who can't, teach;
those who can't teach, become managers.

Thought for the day

Just got back from Vigil Mass (at St. Margaret-Mary's Randwick North). There was a guest priest (Fr Tony Bolt MSC) who is currently based in Karnataka, India at a place called Bangalore. Anyway, Fr. Tony had an interesting comment how how if the world was a democracy, 1/3 of the votes would be from India, 1/3 from China, none from Australia. We tend to think ourselves as being "the norm" but in fact all of Europe and the US together still forms a minority of people in the world. He also pointed out that the number of Catholics in the state of Karnataka was greater than the population of Australia!

Anyway, something to think about in all these debates about the US vs Europe.

Men!

Writing the last entry with a reference to Jivha's blog reminds me of a really old corney riddle/joke.

Q: Why do all old women keep a dog, a cat and a parrot?

A: It's the closest thing to a man that they can get. The dog growls, the cat stays out all night and the parrot swears. And none of them listen to a word she says :-)

That in turn reminds me of something a mentor once told me:

You can never understand women. They will always do the opposite of what you expect, even if you expect them to do the opposite. Take menopause. Different for every woman. Men have it way easier. All men get menopause and do exactly the same thing .... they buy a sports car and pick up chicks!

All points alert!

The mystical thief of fun and enjoyment is stealing things. First we have Jivha who tempted fate by saying rude things about air hostesses just prior to going on holidays. I sure hope he wasn't flying :-)
Next victim seems to be Glenn who seems to be having a mid-life crisis (or is that mid-blog crisis?). Instead of coddling his readers to get more links as he threatened the other day he has decided to frighten them with stories about his weight and then intimidate them by asking why they read his (and I quote) "bullsh*t".
Well that sort of feeds into the post I have been thinking about for a few days about links. Glenn went through some angst about having link categories and putting people in categories and stuff and that is sort of related to the question of why people read this stuff.
Why do I read blogs? mainly because they are more entertaining that the newspaper. Once upon a time I would read one of the "real" newspapers every day. Then I switched to skimming them online. Then it reached the point where it wasn't worth the effort. So I started reading select sites (like AppleTurns, Slashdot, etc). Then I discovered NetNewsWire (best thing since sliced bread). This aggregated all my feeds into one readable collection (except for slashdot who are complete morons when it comes to dealing with RSS feeds - rant to follow some other time). It also introduced blogs.
Blogs are cool. There are literally millions of them and most of them, as Glenn so aptly put it, are full of sh*t. BUT (and it is a big but, bigger even than my butt) there are some out there that ring a bell. Well not literally. Something about them appeals to you. Maybe they use the same wierd computer you do. Maybe they read books by the same author (none of my readers appear to be Pratchett fans but I live in hope). Maybe they have the same life-angst that you face. Maybe they work in jobs that suck for bosses that would make great cannon-fodder and you can feel a spark of sympathy. Maybe you disagree with everything they say but the way they say it inspires you. Maybe they are giving you a glimpse into an alternate reality.
OK with the goofing off. Why do I still read Glenn? When I first came across his blog (can't remember where), it was the title that attracted me. I was thinking along the lines of "what would people think if I intoduced myself with: hi, i'm fat" and then thinking but they know that, they can see me. So why would Glenn use that phrase and then I got thinking about some book I read back in high school (a very long time ago) called 'Black Like Me' and I remember some of the extra reading material had this story about this chick (in the states) who had a job interview over the phone and her credentials were good and the company paid her to move someplace else and then she turned up at the job and they fired her because she was "of coloured extraction". She then spent the next 7 or 8 years being defensive and would always say on the phone, "Hi. My name is blah and I'm Black". Anyway so the title got my attention. Then I started to read. Not all the items appeal to me. I could care less about the porn blog. I could care less about baseball (that is a foreign to me as cricket would be to the average American). But other things did arouse my interest. Glenn's views on racism, work, cross-cultural relationships are all things that I wanted to read more about. If anything, the downside to a blog is that it is a one-way converstaion. Glenn can tell use what he likes but we can't really respond in an interactive way like we do with other friends. Image: A friend calls up on the phone and talks about the workload and lack of pay. You invite him to meet at lunch or after work at the pub. You sink a few cold ones. VB for him, Carlton Light Ice for me. You talk about jobs and bosses and mates. You make a toast to the worst boss or worst job you can remember. You go out and buy a lottery ticket in the hopes that if it wins you can get another job somewhere else....
What am I talking about, Glenn can drink alcohol - he is getting himself fit again :-)
Anyway, I read Glenn's blog because the material is interesting. Some blogs are one-off. You see them in the RSS feed or follow a link. You read an entry post a comment and then that's it. Some blogs are of longer interest. You stumble across them, read a bit, add them to the NNW watch list and keep an eye on them. You make a few comments. Watch for feedback. Add them to the blog-roundup and maybe link them. Is a link permanent? No. Is it reciprocal? No. I link to sites like AppleTurns (above) but they don't link back and I don't expect them to. Yes I appreciate a link that counts in the blog ecology because that is like a fun game to play but that link can be anywhere. The category doesn't matter. The placement doesn't matter. If the blog ecology counts it, that is fine by me.
Now on my page (lets put the theory to the test) I have divided up my links. I have blogs that I read regularly (some have agreed to let me publish an rss feed) - Must Read Blogs. I have blogs that I enjoyed and I check them again about once a week - Other Favourites. I have a special category for Netwon stuff because I read my blog with the Newton (and post items) and it is convienient to keep the links there to sort of promote the Newton platform. Finally I was very flattered to be asked to participate in a multi-national bloging exercise and I list all of the contributors to that blog as a way of helping to support the blog.
Caveat Emptor - Except in this case it should be reader beware! What appeals to me may not appeal to you. All I can do is point out things that interest me. If you enjoy them, then all the better. If not, find something else. There are some well written, even erudite, blogs out there that leave me cold. Lots of sites are heavily political in the US sense which is pointless from my perspective. Some blogs are just hateful rants or swear words. One blog has very recently been dropped from my watch list because the sniping and crudity just got too much (and although the blog had appeared in roundup it was not linked yet).

Resistance is Futile!

Tiny Little Lies has the Iraqi anthem - or at least a really bad parody of it. Check it out, hum along and you won't be able to get it out of your head.

On the main page, I just noticed a really cool ad for a t-shirt with the Iraqi Information Minister on TV with a tank barrel behind him.

Sleeping Parrot

Now Hear This! I have an official announcment concerning the ongoing nature of the possibility of the continuation of the availability of the shared blog - Sleeping Parrot. I mean Slumbering Pierrot ... I mean sort of official ... I mean it was in a comment somewhere ... on a blog ...

OK. I'll come clean. There was some heckling in the comments attached to this article and in reponse, the head honcho (big banana, chief character, top tomato, whatever your favourite acronym might be) said (and I quote):

The topics have remained unchanged because of the discussion last week where we discussed shooting Slumbering Pierrot in its proverbial head. We never decided what to do.
I have decided this. As the founder of Slumbering Pierror I have ultimate responsibility over it. Slumbering Pierrot is not going away.
Slumbering Pierrot needs a format change. Whether its getting rid of the political stuff or getting rid of the "wacky" stuff, I don't know.
I do like the fact that we have a global roster of contributors. I want to incorporate that into SP's new format.

(Hmmm. Hope we don't loose the wacky stuff, coz that is usually what I write.)

So in that light, I have posted an entry (direct link doesn't work because there is some mysterious delay between when I post it and when it may or may not appear) which follows on from last weeks theme of silly things people say. This week I tried to be more balanced in my approach. I bagged a Pom, a Yank and a local boy. If you like it add some comments (suggest alternatives). If you hate it, add some comments (politely).

More news

Paul has an item on the reported death of two of Hussein's sons. Some sources suggest that there is a third son who escaped but Paul actually names four more sons :-) [BTW, Paul also has some get well wishes for a sick celebrity.]

There is a mad pig mentioned here which apparently killed a cow and had to be hunted down using Blue Thunder. Also, apparently, Kanzas is flat. To save the American tax payers, can I point out that New Zealand isn't flat!

On the other side of the world, the UK is going to experiment with a new legal system where the victims get an apology from the criminal. When that was first trialed here there was a report of one criminal's apologies running along the lines of "give it up now, I know where you live and I gunna get youse." The author of the article is also a Pratchett fan.

Note that the previous item is mild and gentle compared to this RANT. Encore. More. More. I too worked in a shop for a while and I can remember the "customer from hell". More than one really, probably about one a week. Except at Christmas time when it was more like one a day or even one an hour. After Christmas you got the indignant parent instead - bringing back a broken toy. They would stand there straight faced and say "it was like this in the box" and you would look at a radio-controlled tank that had been in a cellophane fronted box (i.e. clearly visible before purchase) and there are now scratch marks all over, mud underneath it, tracks all torn, battery cover has gone missing (hence mud in the battery compartment), antannae bent at 45 degrees and for some unknown reason, bird feathers under the edge of the turret. The only correct response was "and what exactly was the problem sir (or madam)?"

Jay Solo admits that his name is not Jay Solo (and he isn't related to Hans). Sort of like my sister in law is a Potter and my son wants to know where Harry fits on the family tree. I need to put up an 'about me' section but it is hard to tell what to include and what to leave out. So, what do you want to see in an 'About Me' section? Or, who has an 'About Me' section that you like....

Posting shortage

Most of you may not have noticed that the posting has been a bit light in the last couple of days. I have been snowed under at work to the extent that a horrible day yesterday has given me some time-in-lieu (or is that time in the loo?). So I intent to catch up on a number of things today.

For the technically minded, the problem yesterday was a Sun Ultra 10 (about the smallest Sparc-based box you could get at the time) which has two internal IDE drives and one failed - the one holding the root partition (for non-UNIX geeks, feel free to click the next button and read about the ice fishing blonde). Well before swapping the drive out, I wanted to recover the rest of the data - after all this is an "inessential" system - no DR facilities, no cold standby, no spare parts - system owner was happy to have a 4 to 5 day outage ;-). Well that was until the system was doen and then they wanted it back yesterday (or rather the day before yesterday now).
No worries, I hear the readers say, wack on an external drive and dd the data. First problem is that the external drive is SCSI and the Ultra 10 doesn't have SCSI - that's right, must be the only sparc box ever created without it but it doesn't have it. Second problem is that the disk will be a different configuration (heads/cylinders/etc) and so dd might not be the best tool to copy. Thirdly (and most importantly) the failure (possibly only one block) is a low number area apparently in the middle of the primary inode table so we have to be really careful here (fsck want to unlink half the filesystem).
Rummage, rummage, rummage. I am sure me mate Mike (who is a Kiwi and thus I cannot post jokes like this) has a box full of old PCI cards - lets see, token ring, qe4, token ring, token ring, some sort of fibre card (probably ATM), more token ring (they liked token ring at this place), ahh here we go a dual network/scsi card - nope that's sbus. Hmmm.... here we go, this one is pci and looks like a network/scsi combo. Find the Swiss army knife (all the way from Switzerland - it is white instead of red) open up the box (which is on a shelf at head level), wack in the card, screw it all up, plug it in and pray. Oh yeah. Need some disks. Got a couple in the cupboard, never know when you might need them. Lets see, 2 x 9Gb should do and there is a six pack out the back (SCSI enclosure that holds 6 disks). Turns out the enclosure has 3 x 4 Gb disks already in it. Cool. Plug em all in, attach the SCSI cable, power it up, got a green light on the back (SCSI termination light), must be OK.
Now the computer is in the server room and it is headless, plugged into a terminal server. The terminal server can be accessed via reverse telnet or ssh and that gives you a console session. Only problem is that it sometimes doesn't respond to a control-break signal (to drop the box to the boot prom). You have to time the power on/off carefull and then run like the blazes to get back to your desk before the system actually boots. Done that, run reconfigure (to detect the new hardware) and it can't see the disks. Panic. Check with prtconf/prtdiag - we can see the second ethernet port (on the new card) and a scsi port with "(no driver loaded)". This could mean that no driver was required because there was no device out there or more often that the driver was not available. More panic.
Now lets be rational. This box has no scsi devices and it is running ROS (Really Old Solaris - 2.6) maybe there is no SD/ST driver in 2.6 when you do a clean install on an Ultra 10 (these days we jumpstart boxes so we know what drivers are installed). Hmmm. I can find more Ultra 10's but they are running Solaris 8. Wonder what module holds the driver, check in /var/sadm/install/contents for sd.conf and find it is in SUNWcar - bugger that is a core module and it is always installed. Mike (always good with the old suggestions which is why I can't tell this joke again) figures we might try a terminator on the SCSI chain. Search, search, search. Not on anyone's desk - of course I am the only one here. One guy is sick, two in Wollongong, one in Homebush and just me here. Not in the compactus. Not in the cupboard. Get some lunch ready..... Wait a minute. Why would I need a terminator with active termination on. Let's go check the six pack. Back in the computer room (through all these card coded doors) and ... hmmm ... why are there no lights on the front of the six pack. Check the back, yep got lights (scsi termination) but nothing at the front (disk power). Ahhhh. Dud power cable. The scsi termination gets power from the SCSI bus but the disks need 240V. Chuck power cable, install new one. Five lights on the front (2 x 9 Gb disks, 3 x 4 Gb disks). Power cycle and run ...
Now we are cooking with gas. Format, partition, newfs.... mount as /new. Copy the other partitions using anything at all (tar will work). Now what about root. Can't use tar because of the devices. Have to use cpio but can't remember the syntax (special level placed on brothels). Find another server, read man pages. Okey doke. Run cpio. Wait. Eat cold lunch. Wait some more. Fend of repeated requests for "are we done yet" (sort of like a two year old in the car - "are we there yet dad?" "No son. We haven't pulled out of the driveway yet."). The people asking are being pressured by the system owner who is (hopefully) regretting not spending the money on DR. This system is scheduled for an upgrade in the next 6 months or so and this might help with the planning process.
Copy done. Install new boot blocks. Run around to the computer room for a power cycle. Get the prom to boot from the new disk. What is the path for the wretched thing. Can't work it out. Boot back onto the old (dodgy) disk. Check /dev/dsk/c1t1d0s0 to see where it points to. Cut and paste the full name. Back in the computer room for another power cycle. Boot correctly off the new disk. Errors all over the shop. Some problem with /tmp (move to /tmp.old, make a new /tmp). Some problems with /proc (doesn't exist so create it). Halt the box (worked without a power cycle). Fix the devalias for default boot device and reboot. Yeehaa! All systems are go. Still need to restore /usr/dt so trot round to the storage/backup group and get them to do that.
Finish cold lunch. And cold coffee. Some problems. Apparently the application won't start. Something is missing. Probably a symbolic link. They can't see the old disk because it didn't mount (I arranged to mount it as /old). Check vfstab and realise I forgot to change the 'no' to 'yes' for 'mount this' on the old root and var filesystems. Fixed. Missing files can be recovered one at a time or we could try just restoring over the root filesystem. Storage guys give it a go and the whole thing blows up when it tries to replace libc.so .... System is now back where it was around 11 am.
Start all over again. Finally about 7 pm it appears to be up and working. It is now back to where it was at the YeeHaa point above PLUS some additional files had been restored including at least one of the missing items (a link from the root directory into the application directory). My migrane which has been getting worse all day has reached the point where I can no longer read the screen (or post blog items) so I am going home.

[PS: Apparently the application is now working - as of Thursday morning and I have a brief "thank you" email from my boss].

Punch Drunk

[Ed: From Theepan. Please read the whole joke before you complain about it.]

A Chinese man went into a bar in Hawaii to have some drinks. At the counter he was amazed to see that he was sitting next to the famous Hollywood director, Steven Spielberg. After a round of beer, the Chinese man sensed that the famous producer was glaring at him. Suddenly, in a flash the Chinese crashed down from his stool, felled by a vicious punch from the director.

Picking himself up, he yelled, "What the was that for?" The Director ranted, "That's for the bombing of the Pearl Harbour you ##@!!*#!. My dad perished in that bombing!"
"I am not Japanese. I am Chinese."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah......... Japanese, Burmese, Chinese, you are all the same," retorted Spielberg.

Regaining his composure the Chinese took his seat and ordered a double from the bartender. A few seconds later, the Chinese turned around and delivered a mighty punch to the director, sending him flat onto the floor.
"What was that for?" exclaimed the director.
"That's for sinking the Titanic! I had ancestors on that ship!" the Chinese replied.
"You ignorant man! The Titanic was sunk by an iceberg!" shouted the director.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah.........Iceberg, Carlsberg, Spielberg......... you are all the same!"

WMD (Again!)

Over at Slumbering Pierrot the question about missing weapons of mass destruction was raised? Would they ever be found? Some contributers laughed, some quibbled about daffy-nitions and others pontificated.
Never fear, loyal readers, I have found the answer via NZ Bears up and coming blog list which was won this last week by The Poison Kitchen for an entry on the missing WMDs. The main page happens to host (at the moment) an entry that will appeal to all the Bush haters (and that is US GW Bush not as in 'Australian Bush').

Audio Post

Well, this has to be a real first. I just found an audio post on Hi, I'm, Black that is advertising this site. Way to go Glenn. Just for you, I have audio encoded this entry...

AIFF Encoded

QT Encoded

Curtains Required

[Ed: Reminder - before you complain about the blonde joke - I used to be one!]

This joke via Pat:

A blonde girl enters a store that sells curtains. She tells the salesman: I would like to buy a pink curtain in the size of my computer screen.

The surprised salesman replies: But, madam, computers do not have curtains ....

And the blonde said: Helloooo.... I've got Windows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bad Drivers

Catching up on the news, I found a number of sites have mentioned this amazing incident of a car crash.

You can imagine the courtroom:
Lawyer: What caused you to collide with the vehicle in front of you?
Driver: It was these underpants blocking my view.
Lawyer: Most people don't wear their underwear on their heads.
Driver: But it wasn't my underwear.
Lawyer: They look like men's underpants.
Driver: They are men's underpants but not mine.
Lawyer: So who's underpants are they?
Driver: Well I don't know his name ....
Lawyer: So you wear a strangers underpants on your head?

Never mind. Just struck me as being ridiculous.

Bored on the Bus

This morning [Ed: actually, yesterday morning], the regular bus to work was replaced by a Sydney Explorer coach which is considerably more comfortable than the regular bus but it doesn't have a sign telling you where it is going. The poor bus driver had to keep telling people that it was a 373 service to Circular Quay via Tailor Square / Oxford Street.
From where I catch the bus almost any service will do. The quickest bus to work is either 373 or 377 (same route to the City). Next choice is 374 or 376 which both go to Circular Quay via Central. Finally there is the 372 which is a Central only service which would mean getting either another bus or a train to get to Town Hall (which is where I work).
Back to this morning. The weather is just cold enough to make your breath visible but there is so much glare you need sunglasses. The wind is chilly and suggests that it could well be snowing down south (it does not snow in Sydney). Lots of people out and about because I am running a little bit late and today is the first day back (term 3) at school for students who have just had their two week winter holiday.

Hacking Squirrel Monkeys

Found a new blog (eclecticism) today, which has a really nice summary of the Homeland Security decision to use Microslash software. He is quoting from another blog but the mental image of hacking squirrel monkeys is one that is almost impossible to forget.

Blog roundup (late again)

Well the special "round the blogs" bus is ready to roll. Management apologize for the delay but the smallest member of the family has pneumonia which has (and still is) sort of disrupting things a bit.

Over at Tiny Little Lies there is an article on hunting women with paint balls. Unfortunately this has now been debunked by Snopes. Hint for the terminally bored: Checkout the other debunked legends on snopes, and then email them to all your friends as if they were real.

Paul claims that he hasn't fallen off the earth but I am not sure if I believe him. I think it has something to do with "trying to get a life" but I gave up on that after reading Terry Pratchett's comment that he was too busy to "get a life". BTW in case you were wondering, I think Paul had a Zil fetish. See also here, here and here (almost need a new category for them). I prefer the photo of Saddam and the dancing goons.

Jivha seems to be settling into his new environmennt and in between the serious items he has this gem about "Blah and sons". Reminds me of the old (but tricky) question about how many consecutive times you can use the word "and" in a sentance (the relevance will become clearer when I give you the answer which is 5). Like Paul he has apparently vanished for the weekend.

Pete has been trying out the racetrack at Bathurst. Note for Americans, that the speed is kilometers per hour not miles. To convert you multiple by 5 and divide by 8 then add 32 less the number you first thought of and then cross out the answer and write "really fast for an old car" or something like that. I also like the photo-of-the-day (cat surrendering) which Theepan send me and I sent Pete (he is my brother and I am allowed to do that!).

The shared blog (Slumbering Pierrot) is suffering from angst. The topics last week including "Stupid things politicians say" and "Popular music and politics". Given that I have no idea about popular music (is that like "Achy Breaky Heart"?) I blathered on about pollys. BTW, if you like that blog, leave some comments or email the coordinator (Glenn from "Hi I'm Black") or it is likely to vanish into thin air. [Why is air thin?]

Glenn (talk about a smooth segue between comments) is spreading himself a bit thin. As well as his regular blog (check out the "suspected" terrorist, apartment hunting and the blogroll debate), he also has another blog and co-ordinates Sleeping Pierrot. He also wants to get into writing more about baseball (which is sort of cricket with more people doing stuff). [BTW on the blog roll debate, it's no big deal - I myself have dropped from Glenn's Daily Read list but it's no sweat. Even if you worry about links, the blog ecology does not check what category your link is filed under! - more on this to follow in a separate item.]

On the educational front, USS Clueless has a cool article about the question of statehood and Hawaii. This is currently relevant because of thesilly suggestions that Australia should be come a state of the US (or actually as I pointed out before, a number of states).

Meanwhile Happy Furry Puppy is apparently outing all the Texans and investigating the relative honesty of political advisors. There is also an interesting spot on Indonesia form an American perspective. Don't forget that Indonesia is the biggest military threat to Australia, has often stated that it would like to expand into "South Irian" (we call it Australia), is really annoyed about East Timor, has forgotten that they owe us for their existence and has a military that was trained and fitted out by us!

Just an ordinary guy is raving on about some Pepsi Contest. He also has recommendations on dealing worth boredom. Personally I have to say I was backing Biff in this encounter. BTW check out his URL - it is a real ".us" address unlike all the fakers (like me) with ".com" addresses. Every wondered why I have a ".com" and not a ".com.au"?

The (serious) Russian has an item on policing iraq and another on the Andrew flag. I did not know that St. Andrew was the patron saint of Russia as well as Scotland. I though the only thing in common was the liquor (whiskey and vodka).

Jeff has some suggestions for a new blog but he is looking for some MT help. I got a lot of help from the forums and following links in the MT-Plugins discussions.

I just discovered that my normal typing stupidity has mucked up one of the links on the right. The link is supposed to go to AMCGLTD but the c and g appeared to be cross dressing or something. Anyway, there is an item on retaining your sanity presumably outside Walmart if you were travelling with Micah. There is also an entry on the renaming of email in France. (See Alex(ei), I didn't say that - someone else did).

This summary is way to long, so lets be quick on the rest for this week. Dean has a story about a blog party (too far for me to go). Jaboobie has a long (but interesting) posting on why he had to reset the some spam and appears to recommend an About Me page (I will try and hang one off the logo). Utterly Boring has a way to make like harder for the RIAA by blocking access. Anivita has relented and is posting again (while on holidays) (here and here). Must be 10 years since I had a good holiday.... Apparently Damien catches a train to work instead of a bus :-)

Finally, Electric Venom claims that I'd be a lousy lover because I have no back hair but I have potential because I have big ears....

Answers to random questions:
The five consecutive "and" sentance is where a fellow paints a sign on a store that reads "Smith and Sons Ltd Greengrocers" but the spacing is irregular. There are four spaces, the first two were narrow and the last two were wider. The owner complains to the painter: "I want more space between "Smith" and "and" and "and" and "Sons".

I do actually own the domain "guru-international.com.au" but it costs more per year than "guru-international.com" does for a decade. I used to use the "com.au" but will probably let it lapse at the end of the current lease. It is currently parked because my ISP wanted more per month to "host" it than I paid the registrar per year to own it.

Quiz of the week(end)

Funny, I picked the 'burn the abortion clinic option' but I still got this resul. Must be those 'non-american' friends (hard to only be friends with Americans when you don't live in America):

Threat rating: Medium. Your total lack of decent
family values makes you dangerous, but we can
count on some right wing nutter blowing you up
if you become too high profile.


What threat to the Bush administration are you?
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Just for the heck of it, I went back and chose the 'camel' options to get a revised result:

Threat reating: Extreme. You see that black sedan
outside your window? Big brother is watching...


What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Quiz of the week(end)

Last quiz result was too depressing so I took another one to be sure:

You are a lazy bum!


What funky kitten are you?
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Good Advice

Looking for some more information about the Australian idiot terrorist held by ths US, I came across this article which contained some really good advice: If you would prefer not to stand trial in military tribunals where the punishment for some crimes can be execution then don’t join terrorist organisations that fly planes at skyscrapers, and don’t dedicate your life to mass murder.

Words to live by.....

More stupid things people say

[Ed: Originally posted on Slumbering Pierrot, Jul 23]

Seeing as the topics have not changed and I still have no idea about music and politicians (I wouldn't want to make beautiful music with any of them) I will have to find some more stupid things that people (especially politicians) say.

Target #1 today is Chamberlain. This was pointed out to me after the last article. His claim of "peace in our time" had to be the silliest thing anyone has said since one drunk student dared another drunk student to take a pot shot at some archduke bloke (which started WW1). Sorry for overlooking this one last time.

Target #2 may upset some Americans so I will tread carefully. A certain US general made certain claims when forced to retreat by the Japanese in WW2. Lets be a little more precise: he said "I will return" with reference to the evacuation of Singapore. Now one of my many great uncles was present when the great man "returned" and regardless of his personal bravery elsewhere, he would not come ashore (or his staff would not allow him to come ashore) because of the risk of Japanese snipers. The Australian soldiers who had cleared the area and swept the hills with regular patrols had to come out to the ship (my great uncle among them) and convince him that it would be safe to come ashore. Maybe he should have said something more like "I'll get someone else to deal with you later" ....

Target #3 (just to be equitable) is an Australian Prime Minister (you know who you are) who cried on national television and said "by the year 1999, no Australian child shall live in poverty". This was later amended to replace the word 'shall' with the word 'need'. The way to this was of course to tax the rich and pay those earning below average more so they could be above average (this was from the worlds greatest treasurer (*1) at the time). Given the size of said prime ministers retirement benefits and free travel bonus, I suggest any poverty striken child should know where to go (hint: he is in the phone book).

*1 Note: In the interests of factual reporting it must be made clear that there was one votor and only one choice because any other combination gave an alternate response.

Service Disruption

Just a quick note to let all you readers know that there has been a service disruption to the regular bus service. The management would like to apologise for any inconvenience suffered by the faithful viewing public and would like to reassure everyone that senio will be restored as soon as possible. The weekend blog excursion special will still run albeit a little later :-(.
For the curious, we have been nursing (or suffering) some form of nasty flu. The only possible source we can identify is Mr Den Beste :-) and if we can catch his flu from reading about it on his blog then you have been infected now as well. So much for all that anti-viral software :-)

Visual Humour

Thanks to Pete for this one:

Ice Fishing

Now, remember that I am allowed to tell blonde jokes because I are one! (well actually I were one!).

This joke via Pat again: A Blonde Ice Fishing

A blonde wanted to go ice fishing, so after getting all of the right tools, she headed toward the nearest frozen lake.

After getting comfy on her stool she started to cut a circular hole in the ice. Then from the heavens a voice boomed, "THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE."

Startled, the blonde moved further down the ice, poured a thermos of hot chocolate and started to cut yet another hole in the ice. The voice boomed, "THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE."

This time quite scared, the blonde moved to the far end of the ice. Then she started another hole and once again the voice said, "THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE."

The very scared blonde raised her head and said, "Is that you, Lord?"

The voice answered, "NO. IT IS THE MANAGER OF THE ICE RINK."

Site Outage

Hi everyone, we are back on the air after a brief "denial of service" - our ISP was denying service :-) The entire cable network in NSW depends on a single box and when that box falls over we all get the shaft. This upsets the DHCP clients which then get some dodgy (imaginary) IP address which can't connect and that in turns stuffs up the Dynamic IP client which manages out connection. I have to do a sequence of reboots (cable modem, router, server, router, server) to get everything back to normal. Sorry for the outage, feel free to explain to Telstra that they couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery (that's what I told them last time) :angry.

The Axe!

Anything but the axe. Where I work there is another restructure in progress. There is a new MD and he is "cleaning things up". There will be a bus and we are all getting on the bus, embracing change and being self motivated. As part of the self motivation all the senior staff (including yours truely) have lost their bonuses (restrospectively). In addition half the agency-hire staff got given their marching orders (about a third were shed before Christmas as well). This will ensure that the remaining workers have even more to do and less time to complain. In the group I work with, we are going to lose Mike (the Kiwi) who has managed to perform miracles with jumpstart and automation. In response I would like to quote the blue heeler from a well known TV advert - Bugger!

Indian Politics

Me mate, Jivha, has this article on a potential future prime minister of India. He outlines a few problems she faces - being non-Indian born (whoopee!), her family connections (can't have dynasties like the Kennedys or the Bushs), can't speak fluent Hindi (oh for a quiet politiican), doesn' have any opinions (best kind of politician around).

Seriously, we have had stranger things standing for parliment here (albeit with less chance of sucess), like red-headed red-necks. We even had a married Prime Minister who fell in love with another man's wife .... 'I did but see her passing by, and I shall love her til I die!' [10 bonus points if you know who said that and who he was talking about. 20 bonus points if you are non-Australian. 30 points if you are American].

The question about citizenship is a strange one, some countries allow dual citizenship and some do not. When my wife became Australian (before we were married) she gave up her British citizenship. It wasn't a very useful British citizenship because her passport had been stamped in the front (over the 'render assistance' bit) to say "Not permitted to enter or reside in Great Britain". What exactly was the point of that? Anyway, when we did travel to Cold-and-wet-and-not-so- Great Britain, we both used our Australian passports. We then went all over Europe and I think only had to show the passports entering France (and for the ladies - on entering Italy).

Jingoism I

As one of my co-bloggers on Slumbering Pierrot has pointed out, the anti-frog rhetoric has been getting a bit heavy lately - even if they deserve it :-) Alex(ei) even has a serious post (or at least somewhat more serious) for Bastille Day (followed immediately by a Ronald Regan joke ;-).

So in that light I would like to quote some very relevant Terry Pratchett from the novel 'Jingo' where the governor of Ankh-Morpork (Lord Vetinari, the Patrician) is discussing things with his advisors (Mr Burleigh represents the French I think). Klatch by the way is a desert country with funny religions ruled by a mad dictator and there is about to be a war between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch:

Lord Vetinari looked attentive, because he'd always found that listening keenly to people tended to put them off.
And at meetings like this, when he was advised by the leaders of the city, he listened with great care because what people said was what they wanted him to hear. He paid a lot of attention to the spaces outside the words, though. That's where the things were that they hoped he didn't know and didn't want him to find out.
...
The Patrician turned to Mr Burleigh.
'We surely have superiority in weapons, Mr Burleigh?'
'Oh yes. Say what you like about the Frenchdwarves, but we've been turning out some superb stuff lately,' said the President of Francethe Guild of Armourers.
'Ah. That at least is some comfort.'
'Yes,' said Burleigh. He looked wretched. 'However, the thing about weapons manufacture ... the important thing ...'
'I believe you are about to say that the important thing about the business of weaponry is that it is a business,' said the Patrician.
Burleigh looked as though he'd been let off the hook onto a bigger hook.
'Er ... yes.'
'That, in fact, the weapons are for selling.'
'Er ... exactly.'
'To anyone who wishes to buy them.'
'Er ... yes.'
'Regardless of the use to which they are going to be put?'
The armaments manufacturer looked affronted.
'Pardon me? Of course. They're weapons.'
'And I suspect that in recent years a very lucrative market has been Klatch?'
'Well, yes ... Saddamthe Seriph needs them to pacify the Kurds outlying regions ...'

Of course the struck out sections were not in the original text, they were supplied to help with context :-)

What is the silliest thing a politician has said?

[Ed: Originally posted on Slumbering Pierrot, Jul 18]

Well ignoring the jokes and some of the current silliest (like suggesting that Australia become the 51st state in the USA) I think the first prize belongs to the former Queensland premier who had a major problem with mixed metaphores. The ultimate confusion was this howler which left everyone confused for years: I smell a rat, I see it floating in the air, I shall nip it in the bud. This was in reference to a question about corruption and brown paper bags being given to some of his ministers (who were later convicted).
The next silliest thing was probably the recent Labor party meeting (about 70 people?) which annouced that the winner of the leadership ballot was Simon Crean. Simon has only 36 supporters in the whole of Australia and they all happen to have a vote in that ballot :-)
Finally in a more serious tone there would have to be the stupidity of the (otherwise erudite) British prime minister Churchill who changed Australia permanently from a UK fixation to a USA fixation. The occasion was during the second world war after the Japanese bombed Darwin. The Australian prime minister (Curtin) asked the British prime minister to release some of the Australia troops currently serving in Europe, Africa and other parts so that they could help to defend Australia. Churchill is reputed to have said "Let Australia fall, if we want it later, we'll take it back again". Curtin responded by trying to get conscription going (failed), changing the army entry age range to 14-75 (was 18-40), and drawing up plans for the evacuation of the north (never activated).

History

Just noticed when checking that last item that apparently there are 400 entries in the blog! Boy am I long winded. There are also 25 pings (i.e. links from other blogs to articles here) and 259 comments. The blog has been going for almost 24 weeks.

According to Sitemeter there have been 1720 visitors since July 1st (part of that figure is estimated from awstats which collects figures for the entire site as opposed to just this blog). Awstats reports that there have been 6196 unique visitors since May 1st.

Anyway, thanks to all you readers who made this possible....

Security who needs it?

I don't even need to make this stuff up any more. What is the fun of pointing out stupidity when they start doing it to themselves? According to a new SMH author ('Online Staff') there is a Critical flaw in latest Windows versions. Being new to this, Mr O. Staff left the words 'again' and possibly 'this week' off the end of that catchy headline. But the opening paragraph just says it all:

Just a day after the US Department of Homeland Security announced a five-year, $US90 million ($A137.51 million) contract with Microsoft, the company has released details of three more vulnerabilities in its products, with one being a critical vulnerability in some versions of the Windows operating system.
...
The vulnerability ... allows an attacker to gain complete control over a remote computer.

All together now: Here's a nickle son....

51st state

Both Jim and Tim are covering this story (this was a similar item some time ago). The gist is that some American-born academic-wannabe has suggested that Australia would become the 51st American State. In particular he suggests that we have no flag (huh?), no sense of nationhood (obviously he hides on Anzac Day), no prime minister in canberra (yeah, like GWB never visits Texas now that he is president), no national bushfire plan (like the US has), and no knowledge of nation (but at least we know our geography). Benefits are supposed to include: access to the best education system (is that the British or Canadian one), the American military (hmmm), merger with the world's strongest currency (Euro or Yen), being part of the world's biggest economy (and still not being able to sell our lamb), fielding teams in the US national basketball, baseball and gridiron competitions (yeah right!).
He overlooked the benefits for the Americans - we can teach them how to spell correctly, fight better (operation kangaroo!), drink real beer, play real football, and of course raise the average IQ level!

(According to the comments on the other web sites, I should also mention the women here but as I have little knowledge of American women I will leave that point alone.)

Quiz?

Yesterday, I posted the results of a wierd political quiz. So today I figured I'd go see if there were any more....

Checkout the front page. Love the description (links not shown):

You are standing in front of a house. There is a mailbox with a FAQ and Documentation here. To the north is a list of Popular Quizzes and to the south is a list of Recent Quizzes. To the west there is a sign indicating the Login and Registration Page.
Your Command?

And the result of today's quiz:

You are Lamentations.


Which book of the Bible are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Streaker

Another SMH dubious story. Let me guess, the reason he is embarrassed is that someone laughed at the goods on display. I am told that is the quickest way to deal with someone exposing themselves and it would fit. On the other hand maybe the Yeoman who did the tackling or the police later explained that you need to be pretty well endowed to tackle such a challenge :-).

It's funny but when I was young my grandparents would still say things like: "You'll never get to take dinner with the Queen if you don't have better table manners" or "clean hands" or a "tucked-in-shirt" etc. I remember thinking it would be too much trouble getting ready and so I must turn down any invitations to tea with the Queen. Mind you, I don't ever recall being told that I could go to the Queen's garden party and then take off my trousers and run around starkers. It is funny what the grandparents forgot to tell me.

Article:

Embarrassed' teen streaker says sorry to Queen
A teenager who streaked across the lawn at the queen's summer garden party is "extremely embarrassed" by his actions, his father said today.
The 17-year-old, who has not been named, is writing a letter of apology to the queen after his stunt at Buckingham Palace yesterday.
The blond-haired youth, who was attending the event with his family, pulled down his trousers and blue and white striped boxer shorts and charged across the neatly cut grass of the palace grounds in front of 8,000 guests.
The crowds of onlookers cheered as he was rugby tackled and apprehended by a Yeoman of the Guard dressed in red and gold ceremonial costume.
His father - a teacher from the south of England - apologised in a statement issued through Buckingham Palace.
"He regarded it as an honour to attend the royal garden party," the father, who has also not been named, said.
"He is extremely embarrassed by the incident and regrets any discourtesy.
"I would like to apologise for the ill-considered actions of my son."
A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said: "We understand that the father of the young man involved in this streaking incident has apologised.
"We also understand that the young man concerned is writing a letter of apology to the queen.
"We regard the matter as now closed."
The youth was not arrested, but spoken to by the police and later escorted out of the palace grounds.

Koala?

Just in case you didn't know - koalas can travel on the ground (although they prefer trees). This one appears to have had a disagreement with another koala and ended up on the ground. He thinks about heading for another tree but as you cen see in the second picture, changes his mind and goes back to the original tree.

Zoo Views

You think you have a good view? Check out the view from the Zoo. Some of the animals get to look at this every day - wow!

Political Affiliation

Hmm. There is this online quiz about your political affiliation: Quizilla. Sort of cool to do because not being American, I have no idea what the American parties believe. I sort of figure, the one thing that is sure is that I won't be whatever Bush is because I think he is making a big mistake in the way he handles foreign affairs.
First question is about the draft: well we have never had conscription here because the soldiers have always voted against it. Next something about a melting pot? Huh? Oh well, I figure if you live in Australia, you should be Australian first (ethnicity comes second) - you can't live in Australia and be a citizen and honestly call yourself 'Irish' or 'Lebanese' or whatever. So I pick option 3. Next question is wierd (not the question but the answers) and I can't pick more than one. No to marriage, no to civil union. The others are pretty much hit and miss. Illegal drugs = jail (easy question - break the law, take the rap. Don't like the law, change it). Abortion - just say No! (I'm Catholic) but maybe in a rape case.... Now we have to pick a few: Gore should have won (well he did on the recount), national parks, workers, tax cuts, trees and education.

Result (a bit of a shock really):

Repuplican, The middle class is very important to
you.


Want to know what political party you really are?
brought to you by Quizilla

I wonder if the results are skewed by an outside perspective?

Bastille Followup

By and large, the blogs I peruse appeared to have either overlooked or ignored Bastille Day (possible as a result of being American). The only two relevant items appear to be a cool report on WMDs that can be found at Jaboobie and a follow up at 'All Agitprop'.

Jaboobie's article implicates the French in the yellow-cake (uranium) for Iraq scandel and is worth a read. Paul's article uses the phrase "a chance for television cameras to capture M Chirac as he wants to be seen: head of state of a leading military power." Obviously M Chirac doesn't read the internet (or at least the non-French part of it) or he would know what the rest of the world thinks of France as a military power.

French Victory #2

[This item was supposed to appear yesterday in the post-Bastille Day collection but somehow never made it out of the draft ...]

As far as I can tell, this (scroll down the page) is the original 'French Military History' posting (at least I haven't found any earlier ones yet). There is a slightly modified one here which a number of sites point to but it is more recent. I have also seen a number of emails circulating about the same content. Anyway, pick one of the links and have a good laugh.

Mind you to be fair, Australians celebrate Gallipoli as a major military episode and we lost that one to the Turks and the English ;-)

Hoist by Their Own Petain

So, after 58 years, the French have decided that they prefer Vichy after all. It's hardly surprising. When the Vichy regime was in power, one could pretty much do what one wanted when it came to those troublesome Jews. Yes, there were shortages and lots of Germans around, but that's not much different from the present. Plus, just like today, the truly intellectual could take pride in the notion that they were part of something larger than a piddling little nation state. And really, "Libert?, ?galit?, fraternit?!" is just so passe. Vichy knew that too, which is why they were replaced with Travail (work), Famille (family), and Patrie (fatherland).

Not that those are any better. The modern Vichian motto might as well be ignorez, retarde, apaisez. Ignore, delay and appease describe the French character as well as anything else, excepts perhaps "Unions, Vacations and Occasional Showers!".

You can hardly blame the French. France is example number one when comes to natural selection of a nation's character.

Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.
Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."
Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.
Wars of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots
Thirty Years War - France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.
War of Devolution - Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.
The Dutch War - Tied
War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War - Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.
War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.
American Revolution - In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."
French Revolution - Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.
The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.
The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.
World War I? - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.
World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.
War in Indochina?- Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu
Algerian Rebellion - Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.
War on Terrorism - France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.

Let's face it. When it comes to war, France gets rolled more often than a Parisian prostitute with a visible mustache. They've been beaten so many times there's no fight left in them. There's no national anthem in the world as ludicrous as France's

To arms, to arms, ye brave!
Th'avenging sword unsheathe!
March on, march on, all hearts resolved
On liberty or death.

Oh liberty can man resign thee,
Once having felt thy gen'rous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts, and bar confine thee?
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?

Can dungeons, bolts, and bar confine thee? Or whips thy noble spirit tame? Yes, demonstrably. The question for any country silly enough to count on the French should not be "Can we count on the French?", but rather "How long until France collapses?"

You should keep that in mind, Herr Schroeder.

Update: Added the American revolution so as to satisfy the completists. Thanks Boulder Dude.

Also, those of who liked this bit of fluff might also like one of these.

French Victory #2

[This item was supposed to appear yesterday in the post-Bastille Day collection but somehow never made it out of the draft ...]

As far as I can tell, this (scroll down the page) is the original 'French Military History' posting (at least I haven't found any earlier ones yet). There is a slightly modified one here which a number of sites point to but it is more recent. I have also seen a number of emails circulating about the same content. Anyway, pick one of the links and have a good laugh.

Mind you to be fair, Australians celebrate Gallipoli as a major military episode and we lost that one to the Turks and the English ;-)

Hoist by Their Own PetainSo, after 58 years, the French have decided that they prefer Vichy after all. It's hardly surprising. When the Vichy regime was in power, one could pretty much do what one wanted when it came to those troublesome Jews. Yes, there were shortages and lots of Germans around, but that's not much different from the present. Plus, just like today, the truly intellectual could take pride in the notion that they were part of something larger than a piddling little nation state. And really, "Liberté, égalité, fraternité!" is just so passe. Vichy knew that too, which is why they were replaced with Travail (work), Famille (family), and Patrie (fatherland). Not that those are any better. The modern Vichian motto might as well be ignorez, retarde, apaisez. Ignore, delay and appease describe the French character as well as anything else, excepts perhaps "Unions, Vacations and Occasional Showers!".You can hardly blame the French. France is example number one when comes to natural selection of a nation's character.Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.Wars of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the HuguenotsThirty Years War - France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.War of Devolution - Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.The Dutch War - TiedWar of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War - Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.American Revolution - In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."French Revolution - Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer. The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.World War I  - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song. War in Indochina - Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with the Dien Bien FluAlgerian Rebellion - Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.War on Terrorism - France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.Let's face it. When it comes to war, France gets rolled more often than a Parisian prostitute with a visible mustache. They've been beaten so many times there's no fight left in them. There's no national anthem in the world as ludicrous as France'sTo arms, to arms, ye brave!Th'avenging sword unsheathe!March on, march on, all hearts resolvedOn liberty or death.Oh liberty can man resign thee,Once having felt thy gen'rous flame?Can dungeons, bolts, and bar confine thee?Or whips thy noble spirit tame?Can dungeons, bolts, and bar confine thee? Or whips thy noble spirit tame? Yes, demonstrably. The question for any country silly enough to count on the French should not be "Can we count on the French?", but rather "How long until France collapses?"You should keep that in mind, Herr Schroeder.Update: Added the American revolution so as to satisfy the completists. Thanks Boulder Dude.Also, those of who liked this bit of fluff might also like one of these.

Sociopolitical debate

Rereading "Maskerade" (Terry Pratchett) I came across a quote I had not previously noticed. It seemed appropriate given the number of items yesterday linking the muslim conference in France to the socio/communist ideals:

[Granny Weatherwax]: "It's only money."
"Yes, but it's only my money, not only your money," Nanny pointed out.
"We witches have always held everything in common, you know that," said Granny.
"Well, yes," said Nanny, and once again cut to the heart of the sociopolitical debate. "It's easy to hold everything in common when no one's got anything."
"Why, Gytha Ogg," said Granny, "I thought you despised riches!"
"Right, so I'd like to get the chance to despise them up close."

Potatoes

[This joke from Chi via Theepan, thanks both of you!]

An old man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his potato garden but it was very hard work as the ground was hard. His only son Fred, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament.

Dear Fred
I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my potato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here, all my troubles would be over. I know you would dig the plot for me.
Love Dad

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Dad,
For heaven's sake, dad, don't dig up that garden, that's where I buried the BODIES.
Love Fred

At 4.00 am, next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologised to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Dad,
Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love Fred

Sowetan F1 Team

[This South African Joke via Pat in England - it is a well travelled story!]

Viva Ferrari SA!
Ferrari Formula 1 racing team recently fired their whole pit crew to employ a few young guys from Soweto. This sudden reaction was due to a TV documentary showing how young Sowetans could take a car's wheels off within 6 seconds, without any fancy equipment. Ferrari soon regretted their decision, however, as the young men not only changed the wheels within 6 seconds, but 12 seconds later the car had been re-sprayed and sold to the McLaren team. Ferrari was still eager to compete in the race and, since they no longer had a Formula 1 car to race with, decided to to race a Sowetan minibus taxi complete with an experienced (yet unlicensed) driver and fare collector in the Grand Prix. Of course they easily won the championship, since the minibus weaved its way through the start grid, set off before the lights changed and didn't bother to change the tyres when they wore out. It also took all corners at maximum speed, as the brakes were non-existent. On the way to victory, the new Ama-Ferrari-Ferrari team also managed to hijack several competitors' cars, and picked up 35 passengers at some notoriously dangerous spots, including blind rises as well as in the chicane. We can be proud of another SA sporting achievement which will put us at the forefront of sporting history. Well done boys!!!

Balanced Reporting

In the interests of balanced reporting, I feel obliged to mention that Pete and Jivha have an alternate option on the gun control thing.

While we are on the topic, there is a post here about unbalance in the media. Tim also has a more recent item in the same vein.
There is a real distortion of the truth in the way these things are reported. If you rely on the daily media, you would get the impression that all child-abuse occurs in catholic schools as a result of brothers or priests. Reality is that abuse occurs in many places including the home, school, with relatives and any other place where adults and children mix. Abusers are not all priests or brothers and in fact many are not even catholic (shock! horror!).
Imagine three scenarios, one is an archbishop (catholic or anglican, take your pick) accused of child abuse, the other scenario is a senior public servant who happens to be a protestant or some kind (again, you choose your denomination) and the last is a religious commentator who belong to some non-christian religion (choose: muslim, buddhist, whatever). What will the headlines say? "Catholic (or Anglican) Cleric ....", "Public Servant ....", "Advisor/Journalist/Commentator ...". Why is religion important for the first and not the other two? Why is the employer explicit for the first two and not the third? Where do you draw the line between bias and information?
If you think this is a silly exercise, image the local paper running a headline like: "Baptist Company Director accused of abuse" or "Muslim Consultant behind racist threats", "Buddhist secretary lied to parliment". It just wouldn't happen. Catholics (or Anglicans) makes good targets! Baptists (or Buddhists) on the other hand are a protected species.
A similar problem occurred last year when the gang-rape trial was on. Despite widespread media coverage the race/culture issue was suppressed until right near the end of the sentancing. To be fair, the rapists are convicted and serving terms and they are personally responsible for their actions BUT most rational people would agree that the religion and culture of the boys was at least partially responsible for their attitude and the results of that attititude.
Hmmm. I read that last paragraph and notice that I too am being PC in not mentioned what religion or race. Oh well, I guess you can work that out yourselves....

French Followup

What is all this French posting about? Maybe you all missed it. Paul remembered (at the last minute) and his readers have a few suggestions. Important warning (courtesy of Paul) for French people: don't surrender! Those are French soldiers and you won't score a win in the military history list for surrendering to yourselves (unlike the French Civil War).

For those feeling a bit sorry for the French, enjoy listening to the music of the national anthem here. The lyrics are available in French or loosly translated in English. Alternate reference (with RealAudio stream) can be found here.

[Ed: Update - there is a sung version at this site.]

Ties

Just back from the birthday trek - a four day odyssey involving the zoo, great grandparents, grandparents, and God-parents. A good 400 - 500 kms on the car and two exhausted parents. Kids still seem to have energy. No idea how but if scientists could tap it, we would have solved the energy crisis as it appears to be an infinitely renewable resource.

Anyway, flicking through the must read blogs and email, I happened to spot this item on Cogito Ergo DoleoJivha the tongue about wearing a tie. Now if you are a guy then you know what I am about to say - ties are the silliest item of apparel ever invented (except perhaps for flared trousers, shoulder pads or hats that look like upside down flowerpots). I had a call to attend an "urgent" interview for a consulting position once and I had been working "in the back office" (i.e. away from customers). Naturally I was attired in comfortable clothes (jeans, t-shirt, sneakers). Well if the interview was urgent, I didn't have time to change so I went as I was. No problems with the technical quiz, no problem with the specifications, they asked for a rate, I gave them one. Everything was AOK. Then as I was leaving they asked if I always dressed like "that" because they were used to more formal attire. I assured them that I would wear business shirt and trousers. The boss hesitated and then asked "what about a tie?". Quick as a flash I responded - "that would be $5.00/hour more" (about 6% increase). "Never mind" he said and since then I never have (minded).
So Jivha, keep in mind that enduring the additional discomfort can be offset by an appropriate remuneration adjustment. You just need to set the price and once the economists latch onto the fact that t-shorts are cheaper the call will be to ban ties for the economic good of the corporation.

Sh*t happens

[From Pat in the UK]

It may be old, it may even have been around since the beginnings of civilisation, but it sure has the ring of truth that makes it worth sending on each time it comes around!

The Plan.

In the beginning was The Plan,
And then came the assumptions,
And the assumptions were without form
And The Plan was completely without substance,
And the darkness was upon the faces of the employees;

And they spoke among themselves, saying:
" It's a crock of shit and it stinks."

And the employees went unto their supervisors, saying:
"It's a pile of dung and none can abide by the odour thereof."

And the supervisors went unto their managers, saying:
"It's a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none can abide it."

And the managers went unto their division heads, saying:
"It's a vessel of fertiliser and none can abide its strength."

And the div heads went unto the directors, saying:
"It contains that which aids plant growth and it is very strong."

And the directors went unto the CEO, saying:
"It promotes growth and is very powerful."

And the CEO went unto the Board, saying:
"This new plan will actively promote growth and efficiency of this organisation."

And the Board looked upon The Plan and saw that it was good,
And The Plan became the official company policy.
And that, my friends,
Is how Shit Happens.

Family History

One of the reasons for "helping" do the family history is that you get to make sure only good photos of you are kept (and the dodgy photos of you least liked relatives :-)). Unfortunately I seem to have a problem with this and keep offering people the chance to submit better ones if they don't like the one I am alreay using :-(.

Having been doing some this last week, I spotted this photo so that all the readers who have been asking what I look like can have their curiostity satisified. Here is a real picture of me. Note that my beard is not visible, my hair has darkened somewhat and the scowl is now a permanent fixture.....

Corporate Lessons

Theepan (who was given his notice today) send me a lovely powerpoint slide for the essential corporate lessons. I won't put the whole slide up due to download constraints but I will tell the three stories:

1. The Crow
A crow was sitting in a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow, and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?" The crow answered: "Sure, why not." So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared ... jumped on the rabbit ... and ate it.
Moral: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

2. The Turkey
A turkey was chatting with a bull. "I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy." "Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. They're packed with nutrients." The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree. The next day, after eating more dung, he reached the second. Finally after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was spotted by the farmer ... who promptly shot him.
Moral: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

3. The Little Bird
A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold, the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, the bull came along and dropped some dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realise how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him!
Moral 1: Not everyone who covers you in sh*t is your enemy.
Moral 2: Not everyone who gets you out of sh*t is your friend.
Moral 3: When you find yourself deep in sh*t, keep your mouth shut.

Blog Roundup

Well the roundup is a little late this week but I hope to finish it in one article instead of a whole collection like last week. On the local (in blog terms, not geographical terms) front, please note that Jivha has moved. His new site is based on MT which means he can now get trackback pings! He also has a multi-step how-to for anyone else trying to migrate from blogspot/backblog and another item outlining the reasons for moving. I think this is fairly representative of a change in the blogsphere (or whatever wierd word is being used this week), and from memory Jay Solo was monitoring this (but I can't spot the link on a quick browse - try searching the archives).
Not quite so local, was the results of an item which commented on an article by Higher Being: Steven Den Beste. From memory, I stumbled across the story after reading something on All Agitprop. Steven very kindly visited my blog, and noticed another (tongue in cheek) article about the etymology of a rude word and wrote both a comment and a very educational response. Thanks Steven.
The fact that USS Clueless linked to my article brought a whole swag of new readers (doubled the numbers easily in the period 6-12 hours after the posting). Some added comments to the original article and others browsed and added comments all over the place which is sort of nice. One comment ended up with multiple corrections and eventually became quite a long post on it's own. This was written by Howarde and a longer version of the article can be found on his site.
A number of people also spotted this picture of Anne-Marie (including Steven Den Beste) and left kind comments or suggestions including one from Bob about ball traps, another from Mollbot who was making a rhymes and a third from Orion (no link) who suggested checking out Elephant Art - paintings done by elephants. There was also a trackback from All Agitprop. Thanks everyone. So far, the party weekend is going well - with a trip to the zoo yesterday, a visit to one grandmother today (70 km west) and godparents on Monday (120 km north).
Mollbot also wrote a followup article to my entry on Parry Hotter. He managed to explain some of the issues I raised and had a completely different interpretation of the snake attack. It is a very convincing view but I still have reservations that revolve around the exact linkage between Mouldy and Parry through the scar. I guess future books will resolve the matter.
Finally to round off this collection there was a neat story about introverts (aren't we all?) that I found via Hi, I'm Black!. Please note that this Glenn is not this Glenn (or at least I don't think so)!

Zoo

As mentioned previously, we went to the Zoo as part of celebrating a birthday. Here is the obligatory picture (and no that is not my children - it is a pair of spider monkeys posing for the cameras).

Jivha has moved!

Oy! Everyone out there looking for Jivha, he has shifted and can now be found at jivha - the tongue. I understand what the tongue is about (coz I read the explanation on the old blog) but I liked the latin as well. I think there should at least be a passing reference somewhere (or maybe the blog subtitle) because I thought it was a clever phrase that fits the "theme" that runs through the articles. Anyway, he has moved and now the RSS feed (see right hand column) is working (just under the links section).

Congratulations Jivha - I'm sure you will get value for your money! (And if I get many more outages, I might have to join you!)

Slow I am...

The recent guest editorial by 'howarde' has generated a bit of mail (and more comments). I have finally (after a long day at the zoo and a couple of panadine) had the chance to check out the author and discovered that he has his own site and there is a longer version of the same article here.

I have added the site to the must-read list and will check it out later. I do note in passing that, contrary to this entry, I can truly say I am colourblind! True it is blue-green colourblindness which doesn't really defeat Howard's discussion about "racial" blindness. Without being too arrogant, I would like to claim to (or at least try to live up to the ideal of) judging people as people - not as black / white / green / catholic / protestant / hindu / buddhist / etc.

Thanks again for the feedback and the guest article!

Tiger in Ireland

[Thanks Jivha!]

On a golf tour in Ireland, Tiger Woods drives his BMW into a petrol station in a remote part of the Irish countryside. The attendant at the pump greets him in a typical Irish manner completely unaware of who the golfing pro is.

"Jaysus," says the Irishman, "BMW thinks of everything."

Saddam calling

[Thanks Theepan]

Saddam decided to send George W. Bush a letter to let him know he is still in the game. Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a coded message "370HSSV 0773H".

Eventually they asked Mossad in Israel for help. Cpt. Moishe Pippick took one look at it and replied: "Tell the President he is looking at the message upside down..."

I would have used '4' instead of 'H' (remember those old Casio caculators) but dunno what could have been used for the 'V'.

Guest Editorial

[This was originally posted as comment to Mind Altering Substance. As the comment was very long, I contacted the author of the comment and asked if it could be turned into a guest editorial. He agreed and here it is. Please note that the opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the author not my personal opinions. If you too would like to air an opinion in the form of a guest article, leave a comment and I will email you directly. Thank you for Howard for providing comments and a thoughtful followup. I have not posted Howards contact details, but I am sure he will check the comments section of this article if you would like to thank him.]

WE'RE VICTIMS BECAUSE WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO BECOME VICTIMS - A. Solzhenytsin

Since 1948 I have driven through 46 out of the 48 continental states, the minimum mileage was 30 thousand annually and the maximum close to 60 thousand, until 1982. (Nowadays it runs about 12 to 15 thousand miles per year). In those days I carried a few hundred dollars in cash, and tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise with me, so I was vulnerable. I had locked cages in the car and an alarm as well. One thing I do know is that most of those miles were very lonely ones, and many times I didn't see more than three, four or five Hiway Patrol cars during the whole day while driving several hundred miles on the open road.

When you read the news, you'll find that the police are almost never at the scene of a murder, not in 1 out of 100 cases. They are almost never at the scene of a hold-up or bank-robbery either, again not even in 1% of the cases. They are not at the place of an assault or a burglary, nor are they often present even when riots begin. That also means that crimes are committed and people become victims before the law is on the scene! To me it proves that essentially we are responsible for our own well being almost all of the time, so we should always be alert and ready to protect ourselves and our belongings.

One evening in the mid-1950s a car with two burly guys in it suddenly came up alongside mine and tried to force me off the road in a lonely section of the redwood highway (California), but I out-maneuvered them, and then for almost 30 miles they played tag with me, trying to stop or wreck me, but I decided that if that's their game there will be two wrecked cars in the trees, not one. It was an area in which other lone salesmen had been reported beaten up and robbed. As I raced into Ukiah, they dropped behind and I saw them turn around and head the other way. I called the police, but because no crime had been committed (I had not been robbed or killed) they told me they had no reason to radio for a pursuit!

After that I carried a loaded gun in the car, and if I had to stop and rest, it was always under my pillow. My safety, I realized, was up to me, and I was not going to become another statistic, at least not without a fight. Once I apprehended a thief who had just robbed my car of a $500 camera and a $200 typewriter, recovering both, but without using the gun.

In the book, Gulag Archipelego, Alexandre Solzhenytsin says: "We're victims because we allow ourselves to become victims."

History of Being Victims
My grandmother was beaten up (in Philadelphia) so badly by a mugger that she spent several days in the hospital. My mother had her purse snatched twice. My wife was beaten up by a purse-snatcher. My son was punched in the face by a thug who played for a college football team, and the guy grabbed his pizza and walked away with his buddies while casually eating it. He was also held up at knife-point by two guys and robbed of $20 in a fashionable section of L.A. A good friend's son had his throat slashed ear to ear for $40 while driving a taxi, but survived. Then there were two burglaries, one a car burglary of twelve thousand dollars worth of imported sporting goods (uninsured) and a house burglary of certain very personal items, including souvenir guns from WWII. The area around the home was controlled by a Latino gang, and neighbors reported seeing some of them in the area at the time.

After they broke into my son's 82' Buick Grand National twice and did $800 damage to the dash and ignition each time while trying to steal it, he brought a shotgun to his office. Then one night he heard the car parked behind the building start and he went racing outside with the gun. When the two thieves saw that gun, both doors opened and they fled down the alley. You see, he had by that time decided not to be a victim. Was it dangerous? Of course. Yet there are times when you have to accept danger as a part of living, right?

In these incidents, for whatever it is worth, seven of the thieves were black, six Latino, and two white. Does this mean we dislike anyone because of their race or that I am a racist. No, not at all. On the other hand, if you rob me or stick a gun in my face, I am damn well going to take cognizance of who in the hell you are, and that does not make me a racist. It makes me simply someone who ses their common sense and whatever brains God gave them, to recognize things as they stand.

Anti-gun Nuts
Anti-gun people give me a pain in the ASS.

The 2nd Amendment recognized the citizen's right to gun ownership for two reasons;
a) We were a nation in which violence on our frontiers was a way of life, because it was a continuing battle as we spread from coast to coast.
b) We were all part of a loose-knit militia meant to keep this land of ours free, and as an armed citizenry we were not going to be subject to tyrannical rulers such as those in Germany and Russia in the 1930s, who simply imprisoned and executed people at will.

We were therefore given some control over our own destiny. Many countries do not offer us this chance, but as long as there is a 2nd Amendment I am going to exercise my right to protect myself and my family.

Another bit of History
Back in 1933, my father took cash for tickets to the Electric Ferries crossing from New Jersey to New York (before the Holland Tunnel), on a lonely stretch of road. He was held up by three Wise-guys, robbed, and made to lie on the floor in the back with a pistol to his head while they drove right past his co-workers and onto the boat. For more than two hours they joked about his fate, with one guy holding a gun to his head. At four a.m. they dropped him all a mile out into the boondocks in lower Brooklyn.

Well, his Boss told him to bring a gun to work, so he did. Two nights later as he was turned around, a car drove up and a voice said, "This is a stick-up." He snatched up his gun, whirled,and fired, mortally wounding the driver. The guy was the relief ticket-seller's best friend, but before he died he exonerated my father. Dad always carried a gun to work after that, but it was now a Starter's Pistol, firing blanks. He still carried it when he was in his 80's.

When he died in 1983, in his wallet was a small article from the New York Daily News from 1933 with the story. He had carried that reminder for more than 50 years. He had decided never, never to allow himself to become a victim again. The reason for that 2nd Amendment was to allow Americans the choice of not becoming Victims.

There are downsides to everything, but consider, for all the guns we have in this country, far more people are slaughtered by cars than by guns. Of those who wish to see us disarmed, many have other motives in mind, make no mistake about that and do all you can to fight off any attempt to repeal that amendment.

Remember, in the USSR more than 28 million people spent time in the Gulag, and millions died there. In Cuba, more than 10 thousand have been executed, and thousands more imprisoned. You can get twenty-five years simply for criticizing Fidel Castro. Neither of those countries have a 2nd Amendment to guarantee the citizens the right to keep and bear arms.

You simply don't need to allow yourself to be a victim. That's why the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution set it all out so clearly for you.

One more story, about a friend, Paul, who bought Indian jewelry on the remote reservations in Arizona and traveled to Los Angeles to sell them. He read stories in the papers of several jewelry salesmen being robbed and then killed in Nevada and Arizona, so he began carrying two guns for protection. Well, as he was walking down the street in Los Angeles a big guy ran up behind him and grabbed both jewelry cases and ran off with them. Paul shouted, "Stop, thief, or I'll shoot," and pulled out a gun, firing it into the air. The guy dropped both cases and kept running.

Well, by the time Paul got back to his car, he had three or four squad cars speeding up, and he was made to bend over the car while being kicked so hard his legs were black and blue for weeks. He got a year's probation for discharging a firearm in the city, but he also still had his hundred thousand dollar cases of jewelry.

Golfing Term

Email from Steve (sounds like an urban legend but it's funny enough to use anyway):

Exciting historical information you need to know so you can go about your day better informed. It's about shipping manure, that's right manure!
In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything which was too big to be carried by horse-drawn vehicle had to be transported by ship. It was also before chemical fertilizers were invented (der!), so large shipments of manure were common. It was shipped dry, because it weighed a lot less than when wet. But ........... and this is a big but, if it got wet (like from sea water), it not only became heavier, but more importantly, the process of fermentation began, of which a by-product is methane gas.
As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen. Methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern, KABOOOOM! Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was determined just what was happening. After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term "Ship High In Transit" which meant the sailors had to stow it high enough so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane. Thus evolved the term "S.H.I.T," which has come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day.
You probably did not know the true history of this word. Neither did I. I always thought it was a golfing term.

While we are working on the origin of words, I hope you know that auditorium caomes from 'audio' (to hear) and tarus (bull).

Renewal of .Mac

I have to admit it - I am a .mac subscriber. I have been since day 3 (or 4) and it is getting near to renewal time. There has been lots of discussions about incentives offered to get users to renew but apparently these offers are geographically limited. Here is a copy of my letter to .Mac (sent via feedback). I doubt it will help but maybe someone will be listening:

I have seen lots of discussion on the net (e.g. www.appleturns.com) about the renewal bonus that includes The Sims. I have been in two minds about renewing - .Mac is great but VERY expensive in $AU given that I have my own domain anyway - BUT the option to get the Sims bundled plus a discount on the expansion packs was enough to make me decide to renew. So far, so good. I log on and cannot find the offer anywhere.
Is this going to be like that mythical store voucher that was promised and never delivered? or the free prints offer that was never available to the geographically challenged? or the ITMS which is also not available outside one small country in the northern part of the american continent?
Please! I am a "faithful" mac user (and shareholder) and I would love to see some parity here for non-usa users. Please make the offer available to all .mac users. If you can't do that, maybe you should be making local .macs in different countries.
Thanks,
Ozguru

Mind Altering Substance

Never let it be said that I cannot change my mind. Ask me about gun-control. I am all in favour (and I live in a country which practices fairly strict controls). Before you ask (or make loud hints), I can shoot with both a gun and a bow. I qualified as an archer instructor and then as a shooting instructor for a boys society in my youth. My father was a marksman in the Army Reserve (and could shoot a lot straighter than I).
However, I must admit that I may have changed my stance a little. You see I made the very serious mistake of reading one of the big blogs which is discussing the UN study on gun ownership. The study claims that the US, which is approaching parity (i.e. one gun per person), is breaching UN proposals for gun controls. The report authors claim: "we have attempted to document how small arms availability and misuse can undermine the prospects for human development". The key counter argument from Stephen Den Beste is amazingly simple: "... you have to try to explain why it is that the most heavily armed nation in the world is also the richest, most powerful and the one where 'human development' is greatest and civil liberties of the citizens are least in peril."
I had never considered it in that way before. Go have a read, it may change your mind too.

Newsflash

[Ed: Originally posted on Slumbering Pierrot, Thu Ju1 10]

News flash
[Music: Dit di - da dit dit, dit di - da dit dit.]
[Voiceover: This is a 2-AUS-FM NewsFlash with a special current affairs reporter .... Bob Buckly]
Umm. Gday. Actually this is Harry here. I'm like standing in for whats-his-name. You know the regular news reader fellow. Yeah Bob. That's right. He's not available on account of being in hospital. Had a run in with a bull and got thirty stitches. I mean the Bob got the stitches not the bull. The bull's fine. I think.
Anyway, got this phone number here. Bob reckons its a satellite phone and it belongs to some bloke in the army. This blokes supposed to be looking for WMDs or something. Wonder if that is like 4WDs. Plenty of them around here. All them city slickers coming up here and pretending to be all macho with big honking 4WD, hogging the road, no manners....
Oh yeah, this phone number. Just dialing now.
[Dialtone ... phone beeping ... busy tone ... muttered swearing ... redial sounds ... ringing]
Phone: Secret Australian Task Force. Private Simpson here.
Radio: Umm. Gday. Whaddya say your name was?
Phone: Private Simpson. This is an unlisted number.
Radio: Yeah I know. This is 2-AUS-FM and you are on the air.
Phone: Nah mate. Couldn't be me. This is the middle of Iraq. You're pulling me leg.
Radio: Seriously, this is Harry and I'm standing in for Bob Buckly and we are live on air as we speak.
Phone: Well, stone the crows! Can I say hello to Mum? Hi Mum! I know she listens to Bob everyday. Where's Bob.
Radio: Had a disagreement with something that tried to eat him. Now can you tell me how you are going in the search?
Phone: You know about the SEARCH?
Radio: Yeah mate, public knowledge over here.
Phone: Well we have covered nearly 60% of the possible places here and we have not found a single protractor. Not one set square. No calculators. Nothing.
Radio: Huh? What are you talking about?
Phone: Well that is our mission, we are here to find (imitates Texan drawl) "all them instruments of maths instruction".
Radio: No, no. That is supposed to be "Instruments of Mass Destruction".
Phone: Your kidding me again.
Radio: Nope that's what the paper says.
Phone: Which paper.
Radio: The Tele.
Phone: Oh. OK. Look I'd better go and tell the boss. Umm. You'd better lose this phone number.
Radio: Yeah. Righto mate.
[Hangs up]
Well there you have it, the reason we can't find Weapons of Mass Destruction is because a Texan accent sent the boys on a wild goose chase....

Parry Hotter

Grumble, grumble, I have some nit-picks here. These are either loose ends of plot holes that annoy me. If you haven't read the book but are thinking of doing so, then DON'T read the extension to this article. I will probably give away some plot points in the process of discussing them.

If you have arrived at this via the RSS/XML feed or the archives then I must warn you that spoilers follow! So, if you keep reading, no complaints will be tolerated......

Last chance ....

The inquisitor attempts to eject a teacher from the school and fails because Bumblebee (that is apparently the closest word that the newton can find because it consistently tries to replace the word "Dumbledore") intervenes and makes a distinction between the role of a teacher and the right to live at Hogwash (newtonspeak for Hogwarts). When the Lord High Executioner becomes Queen Muck she apparently forgets to throw the person in question out of the grounds despite being a low down cunning vindictive witch (or something that rhymes with that last word but isn't in the newton vocabulary).

The flying horses apparently appear after "seeing death of a loved one". For Loony that would be her mother. For Harry it would also be his mother. Nope because otherwise he would have seen the horses before. Can't be Sirius because he is still alive so it must be Cedric (or Cecil or whatever). I didn't think Harry was that close to him and he had his eyes closed during the Abracadabra!

Where has Looney been? Was she a late starter in the school? Someone with that much reputation could not have avoided the radar prior to this point.

Why would Bumblebee keep a Hogwash teacher who is incompetent AS A TEACHER. Note he can keep them as a guest (see point above) but why inflict her on students at the possible risk to their grades. That doesn't seem like very good management.

Why couldn't Hagrid hide with his brother? Or in the Screaming Shack? There was no real reason for him to take off (he stood up for himself previously).

What exactly was the deal with the Dursleys - mentioned in the howler and referred to by Bumblebee. Note that we know what Harry gets out of it (protection) but what do they get?

Why didn't Harry use the magic mirror and save all that mucking around with the fireplace in the inquisitors room.

Why is the book called 'Order of Phoenix' instead of say 'Prophecy of Doom'? Really the order was not that significant to the storyline.

Now for the biggy - think about this! The prophecy is in a ball in a room and there are heaps of Breath Eaters in there. So entry is no big deal. Why doesn't old Volde (rhymes with Mouldy) pop in there and get it. It is clearly labeled and either of the subjects can retrieve it. Mind you the story would be a lot shorter! It can't be that Big V is frightened of the ministry because he turned up there at least twice (to bite someone and later to fight Harry)?

Blog Linking

You never know your luck ....
I was checking the Blog Ecosystem to see how "me mates" (that's Strine - not a grammatical error) Paul, Glenn and Jivha were doing, when I spotted some (previously) unvisited site as a referrer. Well, you all know me, got to do the right thing, so I clicked on the link and checked out the site.
Hmmm. No idea what the title means (yet), a few neat stories: Freedom of Speech, PayPal, blog ecosystem mammal? and how he found BotB. Yeah, looks good. Offers to reverse link. Cool. Content OK. Check out the top (hadn't loaded when I started) of the page and find this: "An occasional blog by a gay gum-nut in Vermont. Opinions about all sorts of stuff I know nothing about". I couple of blinks and it turns out that was "gun-nut" not "gum-nut" but I am afraid the picture of a gum-nut is going to stick in the memory.
Hmmm. Here's where I have to see if I can practice what I preach. What was I talking about the other day ... about discrimination ... I don't care about Vermont (where is that anyway? - I think USA and I think maple syrup but I need to check it out), I can even accept the gum-nut (I grew up on a farm where we used to shoot the rats, snakes and other pests) but I hestitate about the gay bit. For historical reasons I find I am somewhat prejudiced but I find that I have to overrule myself here - I should not judge Jeff on his preferences, nor preach to him as long as he extends the same courtesy to me. His blog is interesting and he is almost certainly someone that would be fun to meet an chat with and so I will link to his site.
Why tell you this - because I think it shows that sometimes it is easy to pontificate on a blog but it can be harder to actually deal with things. Good luck Jeff, thanks for the links, I will add an entry to the blogroll next time I am near the server (as opposed to posting remotely).

BTW: My grandpa always used to finish that saying as: "You never know your luck till a dead horse kicks you". My kids prefer: "You never know your luck till a dead fish bites you". Anyone else got some varients?

Australia #4

Lots of sites are covering the story about the United Nations report about the best place to live. Over at All Agitprop, Paul notes that Canada has dropped without mentioned who is higher up the scale. Over at Tim Blair there is a mention that Australia is #4 (behind Norway, Iceland and Sweden). The comments are more entertaining (most claiming that we need more snow and ice to climb higher up the ladder).
The key point is that Canada has been top of the table for seven years and maybe the rest of the world is tired of hearing the Canadian prime minister talk about it :-)

Failed Darwin Attempt

Jaboobie (and two hard boiled eggs) is running brief item on some idiots including an Australian running into some bulls. I grew up in the country and I can't imagine doing anything more stupid than this. I support the bulls. You stand there, you get run over. The SMH is running the same story (looks like it was copied verbatim) but they include a photo (see below). As the guy is apparently recovering (with 30 stitches), he failed to qualify for the Darwin Award.

Cathedral in Mecca

What do you reckon the odds would be on opening a Roman Catholic Cathederal next to the biggest Mosque in Mecca? Pretty impossible! Well that is the very smart comparison that Paul Jané has used in response to comments on his article about the mosque opened in the shadow of the Alhamabra. Other comments can be found here.

Elephants

What is it with these idiots? Is this a competition for silliest suggestions? Why pick that as a logo to start with? Whats with the objections? Is the revised logo any better?
While we are being silly, I wonder if anyone checked to see if the elephants were a monogamous (married?) pair? For that matter, I wasn't even aware that AIDS/HIV was able to infect elephants. I had heard os a simian version but a pachyderm edition?
Ahh, the penny dropped - it's that old joke: What do mating elephants have to do with organising an AIDS conference? Answer: It's done at a high level and involves a lot of trumpeting and bellowing!

Due to the vanishing nature of articles in the SMH, here is a copy of the item. Feel free to use the correct link provided above as this is only a backup precaution:
No condom, so elephant sex logo criticised
Thai community groups wanted to use a logo featuring two elephants having sex for next year's World AIDS conference in Bangkok but the plan was criticised by health authorities because the bull was not using a condom.
"The logo fails to convey any meaning," Dr Sombat Tanprasertsuk of the Thai government's disease control department was quoted as saying in the Nation newspaper.
"There is only one message which people will get: that community workers are obsessed with sex. And it doesn't show the male elephant wearing a condom."
The official logo for the meeting depicts three elephants standing in line. Elephants are Thailand's national symbol.

More S.H.I.T.

[Ed: This one is from Pat - thanks!]

Memo to all employees:

In order to assure the highest levels of quality work and productivity from employees, it will be our policy to keep all employees well trained through our program of SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING (S.H.I.T.).

We are trying to give our employees more S.H.I.T. than anyone else. If you feel that you do not receive your share of S.H.I.T. in the course, please see your supervisor. You will be immediately placed at the top of the S.H.I.T. list, and our supervisors are especially skilled at seeing you get all the S.H.I.T. you can handle.

Employees who don't take their S. H. I. T. will be placed in DEPARTMENTAL EMPLOYEE EVALUATION PROGRAMS (D.E.E.P.S.H.I.T.). Those who fail to take D.E.E.P. S.H.I.T. seriously will have to go to EMPLOYEE ATTITUDE TRAINING (E.A.T.S.H.I.T.). Since our supervisors took S.H.I.T. before they were promoted, they don't have to do S.H.I.T. anymore, and are all full of S.H.I.T. already.

If you are full of S.H.I.T., you may be interested in a job teaching others. We can add your name to our BASIC UNDERSTANDING LIST of LEADERS (B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.). For employees who are intending to pursue a career in management and consulting, we will refer you to the department of MANAGERIAL OPERATIONAL RESEARCH EDUCATION (M.O.R.E. S.H.I.T.).

This course emphasizes how to manage M.O.R.E. S.H.I.T. If you have further questions, please direct them to our HEAD OF TEACHING, SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING (H.O.T. S.H.I.T.).

Thank you,

The Director Under the Main Bureau of Super High Intensity Training. (D.U.M.B. S.H.I.T.).

Football

I have joked in the past about the different flavours of Real Football (tm) played in Australia: Union, Thugby and AFL. Living in NSW, there is a lot (too much) coverage of Thugby and it has (more so in the past) been promoted as a state game. Kids at school are under intense pressure to play despite the high injury rate. I was fortunate enough to have a kinked spine (which straightened as I grew taller) which precluded me from playing Thugby but my own son does not have such an excuse. The pressure is already coming from older students and some teachers to 'follow' a Thugby team and there have been school visits and posters etc.

My resistence to the game as a whole received a boost in the recent "State of Origin" series between Queensland and NSW. On that weekend there were two head injuries in two different codes of football. In an AFL match, the Sydney skipper received a blow to the head - he was escorted off the field bandaged and treated and returned to keep playing. In the Origin match, one of the players was also injured and the papers the next day carried a picture of this idiot having his head stapled. In the process the stapler jamed and this turkey was standing there with a stapler attached to the side of his head telling the doctors to hurry so he could get back out and play - No Sense - No Feeling! (or maybe lots of drugs, no brains).

I nearly ran the item but decided that everyone would agree that it bought the game into disrepute and had turned them off Thugby all together until I found this item in Spike (SMH) today:
Our campaign to assemble an exhibit of extraneous memorabilia received a boost yesterday with the news that the staple gun used to staple a winger's head back together in the first State of Origin rugby league game last month will be sold at a fundraising auction on Friday. NSW doctor John Orchard reportedly required six staples to piece Michael De Vere's head together.

Why would anyone want to collect this other than as an object lesson - you play Thugby, I'll staple your head on with this!

References to the story can be found: here, here and here. And no, I don't have any disgusting pictures of the event....

Political Football

Thanks Aussie Courier for this entry:

Football Rules from Various Political Structures
SOCIALIST FOOTBALL: After you score, the state takes half your points and redistributes them to the opposing team.
COMMUNIST FOOTBALL: After you score, the state takes away all your points and gives you back what the Central Bureau of Points designates as appropriate (according to your needs).
FASCIST FOOTBALL: After you score, the state takes away all your points and sells them back to you.
NAZI FOOTBALL: After you score, the state takes away all your points and shoots your team.
BUREAUCRATIC FOOTBALL: After you score, a tax of 80% will be imposed on the points. 10% of your points will be given to the scoring disadvantaged, 10% of the points will be given to the opposing team as an incentive "not to score," while 60% of the points will be used by the state for administration.
CAPITALIST FOOTBALL: The Super Bowl -- Winner Take All

Of course if I was being really cynical I would change the COMMUNIST entry to read something like: After you score, the state takes away all your points and gives most of them to the children of the elite members of the part and then gives you back what the Central Bureau of Points designates as appropriate.

We could also add some:
AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL: Each player would be deemed to owe the government a certain number of points (indexed by inflation) to be repaid along with their annual tax bill provided they score over a certain number of points in the year. Also there would be a 10% surcharge for Medicare, a 10% surcharge for East Timor, a 10% development fund surcharge (to further develop the game), a 10% surcharge for the munitions used in Iraq (we have to refund the cost of these to the Americans as a reward for helping), a 25% surcharge for the federal politicians retirement fund, a 15% surcharge for the state politians retirement fund and a 30% "income" tax. All percentages to be applied against the total points scored, any deficit to be carried forward.
ENGLISH FOOTBALL: No plan to win any points so allocation of points irrelevant.
FRENCH FOOTBALL: If they score, ten points will automatically be deducted for being arrogant and unsufferable. If the other side scores, ten points will automatically be deducted for being arrogant and losing.

Any more suggestions?

Waiting for a seat

Over at Cogito, ergo doleo, Jivha is getting his knickers in a twist about restaurant seating. For the second time today, he has triggered a distant memory. Many long years ago (early 1989) I was in Hong Kong and some very good friends took us to the "in" restaurant for dinner. If you are not familiar with Chinese culture - they take eating very seriously and follow their favourite chefs from job to job. Some Chinese can quote the pedigree (in employment terms) the way Americans talk about their favourite basketballer (or baseballer) teams and career. This restaurant was (at that point in time) the number one restaurant in all of Hong Kong. We arrived "early" and it was picked but one of the party was personally known to the manager so we were invited in to stand around this table and watch the people eat (when they left, we got the table). Other less fortunates had to wait in the street for a couple of hours or more. The locals who were with us took this as normal but I was incredibly embarrassed at the pressure we were putting on this table full of people to eat and run. The explanation was that it encouraged through-put and it also avoided waiting in the cold but I couldn't enjoy the meal and sure enough about half way through it happened to us ....
Normally when I raise this people look at me strangely (well they tend to do that anyway) but when I read Jivha's comments I realised that I was not alone. Mind you he has more intestinal fortitude because my attitude is to hurry up and get out whereas his plan is organized defiance - good luck Jivha!

Safari

Over Surfin' Safari, Dave Hyatt is asking for trackback links to articles that outline issues with Safari. Please note that he does not want UI issues raised.

Thanks for the opportunity Dave, I want to raise two usability issues. Both of these have been logged as bugs for each (and every) version of Safari that I have had the pleasure of using. Before I proceed, I want to say that Safari is a great browser and in general I am really happy about it.

Problem #1.
I use Safari on my powerbook at work. There are a couple of alternate proxy servers. I can configure these as proxy servers in my network preferences (in 10.2) and Camino, Internet Exploder and OmniWeb can then use the web. In particular, all three browsers will allow me to log into (for example) the developer section of Apple's website. Safari insists that I am not connected to the internet. Note that everything works until the first https URL and then stops. Firstly the message is just plain wrong. I am obviously connected and the other browsers have managed to connect (there used to be some errors about self signed certificates in OmniWeb but at least you can click OK or import the certificate). Secondly it is really annoying to have to then cut and paste the URL into another browser, discover that there is now a session cookie missing, back navigate to the starting point, etc, etc.

Problem #2.
I live in Australia. Country code is '.au'. If I type the url for my credit union in the entry bar (www.teacherscreditunion.com.au) I get this amazing error message about a corrupt sound file (I guess because .au looks like a file extension rather than a domain name). No idea how to fix this but I paste the same entry in OmniWeb, navigate to the online banking page, grab that URL and bookmark in Safari (so I bypass the front page) and Bob's-Your-Uncle.

Sorry I can't give you a longer list :-) but really, these are the only two non-UI features that drive me nuts. I still use Safari as my main browser but it would be nice to drop all the others altogether....

A slice of history

We all put effort into our work. We all put even more effort into our hobbies. Sometimes those hobbies become a monumental tribute to the effort that is put into them.

I have a brother (actually I have four brothers) who has poured out his heart and soul into developing a web site around his non-computing passion - Holden Cars.

If you are not from Australia, this passion may seem a little strange (it may seem strange even if you are Australian) but when we were growing up, out neighbourhood has a two car world. You had a FixOrRepairDaily or a Holden. We had a Holden and Pete became a Holden fanatic. He wasn't the only one, there was even a TV show dedicated to the most popular model of the day (Kingswood Country starring Ted Bullpit).

Back to the topic, Pete's fascination led to a web site that documented everything he could find about Holdens. It was well received and very popular. Then he met the official Holden historian who offered to share all his resources (photo, specs, inside information) to further extend the web site. It was a marriage of convenience for both parties, the historian had the data, Pete had the skills.

Then reality struck. To do this properly would need more space online and the current site was being paid for (and maintained) by Pete. Then there was the time component, all this extra material needed to be collated, sorted, catalogued, you name it. Finally there was a new interest in Pete's life (with the knot to be tied in November) which will require some of his available time. Pete made what has probably been the second hardest decision of his life (I mean after getting engaged) and has put the site and all its information (and the arrangements with the historian) up on eBay.

I dunno. The starting price of $AU500 (less than that in $US!) seems awfully small compared to all the effort that has gone into that site over a number of years. If you are into Holdens or have a vision of building a profitable web site, check out the auction. Otherwise, pass the information onto someone else who might be interested.

Thanks.

Missing Plane

Regular readers will remember the "Case of the Missing Plane" (covered on Slumbering Pierrot). For those who are new to the story, the original post appears below.

One faithful reader (thanks Ben) sent an email with the following information (presumably from an on-line paper) as a followup. It was a bit long to add as a comment so I have included it here as an article:

Mystery Boeing briefly resurfaces after disappearance
A Boeing 727, whose sudden disappearance in Angola in May unnerved US intelligence agencies, reappeared last week in the Guinean capital Conakry before vanishing once again, British newspaper The Guardian reports.
Washington has been working with African governments in the past month in a frantic bid to hunt down the cargo plane, amid fears the aircraft could be used by terrorists in a repeat of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
...
The plane, which was converted into a fuel tanker, is owned by a member of West Africa's Lebanese business community and was being used to carry goods between Beirut and Conakry, said Mr Strother [Ed: the pilot who spotted the plane] The 28-year-old jetliner was stolen from under the noses of the control tower at the airport in the Angolan capital Luanda on May 25 and until now had not been sighted. It had been parked at the airport for 14 months.
While US officials are concerned the plane could have been stolen by terrorists, the most likely scenario is that the aircraft was stolen as part of a business dispute or financial scam, said a western diplomat in Sierra Leone, quoted by The Guardian.

And here was me thinking that the scams were all in Nigeria :-)
[Original Story: Dateline = Thursday, June 26, 2003]
Asset Audit
Boss: Hey Mike, come in here.
Mike: Yes boss.
Boss: Mike this is Stan from Audit. He's checking asset numbers and can't find s
ome stuff.
Stan: Yeah. Looking for .... (checks clipboard) .... two boxes of pencils.
Mike: Dunno, didya look in the stationary cupboard?
Stan: Yeah.
Boss: Maybe they've been used.
Stan: That would put you over the company average for pencil consumption. Have to take it out of your budget.
Boss: OK. What else.
Stan: Ummmm .... one PC-XT with full height floppy and green screen. Book value $12,452.
Mike: You're kidding. That machine was bought back in the 80s and is now a boat anchor.
Stan: Destroying company property is an offence!
Mike: Actually it is propping open the computer room door because the air-con doesn't work.
Boss: Don't we write stuff like that off.
Stan: You might be right, maybe they forgot to depreciate it. I'll get onto that.
Boss: Anything else.
Stan: Nope. Everythings fine .... (starts to leave)
Mike: (To Boss) Phew. That went well.
Stan: (Turning around) Just one other thing, either of you know where the aeroplane went?
Mike: Huh? Like a model or something?
Stan: No the real thing. 747. Bigger than a football field. Uses a runway and thousands of litres of fuel. We seem to have lost it somewhere.
Boss: Not around here. Where would we keep it.
Stan: Oh well, just a thought. (leaves room)

(Dramatic pause)

Mike: I told you they'd notice it eventually.
Boss: Yeah but it took them nine months and the cheques have cleared already.
Mike: Nice of that fellow to add a bonus for prompt delivery.
Boss: What was his name again?
Mike: Mr Ben Handle or was it Mr Ben Chopper, some sort of kitchen implement.
Boss: I remember, Mr Ben Ladle.

(Seriously, how could anyone lose an aeroplane?)

PayPal

Thanks to MommaBear who pointed me to On The Third Hand, where I spotted a tip off about YAPPS (Yet Another PayPal Scam) which is documented here . I had a bad time with PayPal once before (winge winge moan moan) but they are really the only game in town (Yes! I have tried BidPay BUT BidPay is really strict about the definition on an auction - 'BuyNow' is not allowed, combining auctions is not allowed, correcting postage shortages are not allowed). So if you have to use them, be smart and be careful. Never click on emailed links without confirming them.
Also while you are checking On The Third Hand, don't forget to take a squiz at the secrets of blogging. On the more serious hand, there is an entry with links to Iranian blogs.

Breaking News....

I knew the EU was slow, but this slow? Over at All AgitProp there is an item about freezing the assets of the Khan family in retaliation for the destruction of Europe.

There is also a comment about Willie Nelson - is he still around? Maybe it was just Paul Hogan prentending to be Willie Nelson (you need to be a Paul Hogan fan to pick that reference ....)

Finally there is a story about the demise of French as a language (which is in the 'Bl**dy French' category). It mentions some (obviously fake) French (yeah sure) academics who admit that English is the "lingua franca". Sounds like those lawyers abandoning latin "pro bono publico" to me!

Audio?

Glenn has a couple of audio-blog entries. Now maybe I'm just a hick from the country but I aint seen nothin like that before. The first one is about getting locked out of the building (been there done that) and the other one is about picking out some glasses. Now I gotta say that his 'handsome' picture does not appear to be wearing glasses - either that ain't his mugshot on the webpage or maybe he took the glasses off for the photo :-) Also I was surprised by the voice - somehow when I was listening, I was thinking, is that really Glenn?

I will have to look into doing something similar (AIFF or MP3) - just for the fun of it. Note however, that it is a bit wierd when people drop by your pod at work when they hear some strange voice advertising an unsafe-for-work website :-)

Action Movies

Over at Cogito, ergo doleo, Jivha describes his relaxing weekend. He mentions going to see a bunch of movies and then comments that most of the martial arts movies are all gimmicks rather than real action [Ed: my wording, his idea].
In the comments I suggested checking out Jackie Chan but due to limited space, I thought I had better put something up to explain things. The first few Jackie Chan movies that I saw were in Cantonese (with terrible sub-titles). They were good with some semblance of a plot and lots of action which was real -not camera trickery. At the end of the movies, during the closing credits, they play back some of the bad takes and you get to see the sort of things that went wrong. In particular Jackie did all his own stunts event to the extent (in a later movie) of breaking his ankle jumping into a moving boat.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago, my wife bought me a collection of Jackie Chan movies in English including a movie that stars an American martial arts dude (of African descent - is that the political correct euphemism?). No problem with the actors but the movie sucked. There was all this pointless dialogue and the action sequences were all short. This did not look like a Jackie Chan movie and we were disgusted (we want our money back!). Then we watched the 'special extra feature - interview with director' who was explaining how he had IMPROVED the normal Jackie Chan style movie to make it work for American audiences. The main thing was that Americans (according to the director) could not cope with long action sequences and needed more dialogue to appreciate the action when it happened - hence the problems we found were inserted to keep American audiences happy.
Ar dunno, but I think this bloke was eating hash cookies. I find it hard to imagine that your average target American audience can watch long action sequences in say James Bond and not watch them in Jackie Chan. I know that Americans can't watch football without ads (;-))but surely an action movie is different?
If you get a chance to see some of the earlier Jackie movies (especially with directors who are obviously Chinese) try them out, you may be extremely surprised about the quality relative to those directed by Americans.

French Victory

Some kind person sent me this Babblefish translation:

Green Birthday

Just realised that my little green friends have a sort of birthday around now! The Newton is ten. Check out the link (picked up from Newtontalk) and indulge in a bit of history. The Newton in 1993 was similiar to a PC Tablet today given the greater constraints of that time for memory.

You can see one of my Newtons online: here.

NZ vs US

Someone please tell me this is a joke.... According to this article in the SMH (see extended entry) about a complaint lodged by the US embassy in NZ about a brothel that calls itself "The White House". All we need now is for a counter suite against the former president for using the White House as a brothel :-) (quickly ducks to avoid rotten fruit being thrown this way).

Seriously, I suspect that under NZ law (as under Australian) you can get away with it as long as the industries are not seen as related. Assuming that a brothel and the government of the USA provide different services, it would be hard to make a claim about either one infringing on the others 'trade'.

Quote from US complains about brothel called The White House.
The US Embassy in New Zealand had lodged a complaint with a brothel that calls itself The White House.
After brothels were legalised in New Zealand this month, The White House in Auckland ... advertised for prostitutes in a newspaper advertisement last week.
The ad ... appeared with a logo almost identical to the US presidential seal, showing an American bald eagle with a ribbon in its mouth, holding the arrows of war and an olive branch.
...
The White House general manager Scott McGregor told the paper the establishment had used the logo for almost two years, adding, "It's a universally recognised symbol. I don't think they've got exclusive rights to it."

Late Entries

Sorry for the late entries, I hope the links are not too disrupted. I had intended to post some early entries on Monday (before the Requim post) but there was an ISP outage (probably due to the immature graffitti artists scribling on web pages). There were two good things to come out of the attacks - firstly, I wasn't done (thank goodness) and secondly, it is quicker to remove the grafitti on a web page than to repaint my front fence AGAIN!
While I am communicating regrets, I should note that MommaBear picked up a typo like stuffup with the header of a recent article. It should have read 'English As She Are Spoke!' rather than 'English as She is Spoke'. I did not correct the heading because then someone else would comment that MommaBear got it wrong (and she didn't). That phrase was heavily used when I was a kid along with two others - one was a sign that used to hang near the front door: "Thiss iss a skol tea chairs howze" (or something very similar) and the other was on a cartoon of a fellow holding a diploma: "Two weaks ago I couldn't spel tea-chair and now I are one". Oh the fun of growing up with parents who are educated :-)
Vaguely wandering off the topic, I remember some of the spectacular failures of learning to read by gestault (whole word rather than sounds). Like my son, I learned to read very yound and when I didn't know a word, I'd wing it. The two biggest errors I remember making were the type of care we had then (pew-got should be per-jo/peugeot) and a train station (sir-queue-la kway should be circ-u-lar key/circular quay). Mind you my son had no trouble with the second one which confirms that he is probably a lot smarter than me (quite apart from his belief that he knows everything at five years of age). Should be interesting tonight because he has been at the university (it is school holidays) learning about ancient egypt and mumifying a cucumber! Hope he can remember everything to tell me about it :-)

BTW. Thanks MommaBear for the pointer and the comments. I had seen some of your feedback at All Agitprop, All the Time

Sad news

Aussie Courier, sent me an email pointer to an article about the death of N!xau.

OK. How many of you shrugged and said: Huh? N!xau was "the diminutive bushman catapulted from the remote sandswept reaches of the Kalahari Desert to international stardom in the film 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'." What I didn't realise is that he was also the bushman in the Hong Kong knock-off called "The Gods Must be Funny".

Thanks for the laughs N!xau, hope it wasn't a coke bottle to the head that did you in ...

WMD

Come on, everyone's talking about them - where are the WMD's? You can't turn around without more discussion of it. I mean, it was even the topic on Slumbering Pierrot last week. Well one author has gone all the way and published a popular new book on the topic:

Requiescat In Pace

Apologies in advance, but I want to be serious today. Three years ago today, my father passed away as a result of cancer. He died two days before his third granddaughter (my daughter) was born. As I have mentioned before, I only wish I could be as good a father to my children as he was to us.

In his memory, I would like to quote (with permission) from a sermon given by my brother-in-law at Tewkesbury Abbey last Epiphany. The theme of the sermon was Christian Unity:

A man dies and goes to heaven. All his life he has been a churchgoer and has observed all the rituals, all the commandments (although he's broken a few along the way) and has tried, in the main to lead a Christian Life. Finding himself in a vast foyer through which a stream of people is passing he reports to reception and is directed to an interview room by the Receiving Angel. After a brief interview with another angel who has checked all the records and pointed out all the man's sins, he is directed out of the room and told to find a door with a particular number. "Welcome to heaven," says the angel, but please be very quiet as you pass door Number 1 on your way.”
"Why?" asks the man, curious.
"Because that's where all the Fundamentalists are, and they think they have the place to themselves!"
...
As I prepared these notes, I was reminded of my late father-in-law ... He was raised a Baptist, steeped in their tradition and even helped to found new Churches ... Yet, having embraced Evangelical Anglicanism, he felt perfectly at ease here in the Abbey at a Good Friday Solemn Liturgy, joining in the veneration the Cross with worshippers from the opposite end of the Anglican spectrum. He believed in meeting God wherever God wanted to meet him and refused to be constrained by dogma. Gil, on being told by the angel to be quiet going past the door for the exclusive set, would have hammered hard on it and enjoyed the consternation of the inmates.

Yes. That would be something Dad would have done. He was fond of a joke, good at managing people and yet still maintained deeply held convictions. Even during the pain and complications of surgury, chemotheraphy, radiation theraphy, drugs and exercises, he continued to study and widen his knowledge. He was granted his most recent certificate from Moore College in the week before he died, natually with distinction.

The full text of the sermon appears in the extended entry (for the curious).


Tewkesbury Abbey
Epiphany 2
Sung Mass

Nobody home

I sat down to do a "favourite blog roundup" for the week and nobody is home. Glenn (Hi, I'm Black) claims to have gone fishing (must be that 4th of July thing where all American celebrates my wife's birthday a day early).
Jivha (Cogito Ergo Doleo) reckons he has been working too hard and is taking the weekend off (probably not related to 4th of July but to the long hours).
Fortunately Paul (All Agitprop, all the Time) is still posting (Canadians know that you don't make tea with cold salt water). In fact that link you haven't clicked on yet is about the connection between Mugabe and the French (yet another reason to complain about the French). He also has a story on the Candian Hercules (which are used extensively here as well) and another item on the decline in Canada's rank in the UN list of best countries to live in. (Oh and by the way, it looks like Paul's airconditioner is now working....)
Closer to home, Pete (Random Riddled Ramblings) has a story about the price markup on beer. Sort of fits with the Pratchett theory that beer is only rented not purchased :-)
I can't tell you if Slumbering Pierrot is doing anything because I can't get the site at all (not found error). Might be fixed by the time you get around to clicking the link :-( Last time I checked my affirmative action item did make it up and there were some comments.
Anyway. have a good weekend all - I have some shots from a coastal walk to put up later...

Archive

As more entries appear on the site, I am trying to organize categories and category indexes. I am changing some older entries to the category 'Archive Only' they will still appear in searches and 'next'/'previous' walks through the archives but they will not be listed as a separate category. I will also be closing off comments and pings on older entries.

As part of this process, I find that there are some unanswered questions. Way back when, I raised a question about WWDC in May. As those of you who are vaguely familiar with the Apple world, WWDC was not held in San Jose during May. It was held in San Francisco during June. I still didn't go this year - maybe next year.

Rabbi vs Priest

From Aussie Courier. Please take this as humour - I am not making a political or religious statement, I just thought this was funny:

A Rabbi and a Priest were sitting together on a train, and the Rabbi leans over and asks, "So how high can you advance in your organization?"
The Priest says, "If I am lucky, I guess I could become a Bishop."
"Well, could you get any higher than that?" asks the Rabbi.
"I suppose that if my works are seen in a very good light that I might be made an Arch Bishop," said the Priest a bit cautiously.
"Is there any way that you might go higher than that?"
"If all the Saints should smile, I guess I could be made a Cardinal," said the priest.
"Could you be anything higher than a Cardinal?" probed the Rabbi.
Hesitating a little bit, the Priest said, "I suppose that I could be elected Pope, but..."
Then the Rabbi says "And could you be anything higher than that?  Is there any way to go up from being the Pope?"
"What!?! Do you want me to become the Messiah Himself!?!"
The Rabbi leaned back and said, "One of our boys made it."

The Limo

Another joke from Ben:

After getting all Pope John-Paul II's luggage loaded in the limo (and His Holiness doesn't travel light), the driver notices that the Pope is still standing on the curb.
"Excuse me, Your Eminence," says the driver, "Would you please take your seat so we can leave?"
"Well, to tell you the truth," says the Pope, "They never let me drive at the Vatican, and I'd really like to drive today."
"I'm sorry but I cannot let you do that. I'd lose my job! And what if something should happen?" protests the driver, wishing he'd never gone to work that morning.
"There might be something extra in it for you," says the Pope.
Reluctantly, the driver gets in the back as the Pope climbs in behind the wheel. The driver quickly regrets his decision when, after exiting the airport, the Supreme Pontiff floors it, accelerating the limo to 105mph.
"Please slow down, Your Holiness!" pleads the worried driver, but the Pope keeps the pedal to the metal until they hear sirens.
"Oh,wonderful. Now I'm really gonna lose my license," moans the driver.
The Pope pulls over and rolls down the window as the patrolman approaches,but the cop takes one look at him, goes back to his motorcycle, and gets on the radio. "I need to talk to the Chief," he says to the dispatcher.
The Chief gets on the radio and the cop tells him that he's stopped a limo going a hundred and five. "So bust him," said the Chief.
"I don't think we want to do that - he's really important," said the cop.
"All the more reason."
"No, I mean really important," said the cop.
"What'd ya got there, the Mayor?"
"Bigger."
"The Governor?"
"Bigger."
"Well," said the Chief, "Who is it?"
"I think it's God!"
"What makes you think it's God?"
"Well, He's got the Pope driving for Him!"

AU vs US

Remember this? The backbencher in question is now the deputy leader of the opposition. Obviously Viagra Crean (no chance of getting an election) wants to annoy the Americans as much as possible. Maybe he is planning (like Keating before him) to form closer alliances with the Indonesians. At least the Indonesians won't try to block Australian trade - after all they intended to claim most of Australian as "South Irian" anyway...

Are you being served?

Theepan sent me a scanned newspaper article supposed to be from the New York Times (unlikely given the poor grammar, poor wording, poor capitalization). I have typed it in (speling errors are all mine). Please note that the airline in question is now defunct and can no longer defend itself.....

Don't fly me
It has been reported that an employee for Ansett Australia (Airlines), who happened to have the last name of Gay, got on a plane recently using the company's 'Free Flight' offer for staff. However, when Mr Gay tried to take his seat, he found it being occupied by a fare paying passenger.
So, not to make a fuss, he simply chose another seat. Unknown to Mr Gay, another Ansett flight at the airport experienced mechanical problems. The passengers of this flight were being re-routed to various other airplanes. A few were put on My Gar's flight and anyone who was holding a "free" ticket was being "bumped". Ansett officials, armed with a list of these "freebee" ticket holders boarded the plane, as is the practice, to remove them in favor of fare paying passengers. Of course, our Mr Gay was not sitting in his assigned seat as you may remember. So when the Ticket Agent approached the seat where Mr Gay was supposed to be sitting, she asked a startled customer: "Are you gay?". The man, shyly nodded that he was, at which point she demanded: "Then you have to get off the plane." Mr Gay, overhearing what the Agent had said, tried to clear up the situation" You've got the wrong man. I'm Gay!" This caused an angry third passenger t yell "Hell! I'm gay too! They can't kick us all off!" Confusion reined as more and more passengers began yelling that Ansett had no right to remove gays from their flights.
It is reported that Ansett have refused to comment on the incident.

Affirmative Action

This is a copy of an article written by me and posted at Slumbering Pierrot. A copy is posted here because I still cannot see (or link to) the entry appearing on blogspot. Check that site for comments and discussion.

Let me save some of you from having to think: I'm agin it. So if you are in favour of affirmative action don't read this post, skip down and read about cobras and rabbits which is much more interesting and then I'll only have to speak to the converted ....
OK. Now they're gone, lets get stuck into affirmative action in higher education. It's been all the news with various legal beagles fluffing on with various opinions but I want to go back in time to the early 80's in Australia. At that time, Australia had a fairly open university entrance policy. For local students, education at university was (by and large) free apart from various (relatively) small charges for student unions and clubs and things. There was a fairly generous system of scholarships (which started with the Colombo Plan) for talented students in neighbouring countries (particularly Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and India). There was also the "overseas student scheme" which meant anyone with lots of money could send their kids to Australia for the last two years of high school and then (hopefully) on to University where (being non-local) they paid fees which enabled the universities to offer more courses and options. Entrance to university itself was based on merit, you get the marks in high school, apply for courses and off you go. Universities would set the entrance marks based on demand. For example, the year I started it took 419 (out of 500) to do computer science or 340 to do general science (with an option to convert to computer science).
So far, so good! Lots of competition, reasonable chance to go to uni if you worked hard and plenty of choice. Everyone was happy, right? Wrong. There was a segment in the community who were unhappy with "overseas students stealing our places at university". Personal observation: if you didn't work hard, you didn't get in BUT there were ways around that. In particular there were 2nd chance draws, TAFE (repeat higher school certificate) or take a "college" course (diploma) and then apply for advanced standing.
Solution: quotas (affirmative action). An upper bound on the number of overseas students permitted in any course was established (to protect the interests of local students). This led to two entry marks, for example a local student wanting to study medicine might require 450, an overseas student would require 495. Naturally the entry marks for local students fell slightly and they went through the roof for overseas students.
Only one university held out and refused to implement quotas (they were eventually forced to have quotas in medicine and law but no other courses). This naturally meant that a very high proportion of overseas students chose this university (UNSW). In turn this provided additional funding to UNSW that other universities could not access, it established stronger community and international relationships that resulted in UNSW being probably the best known university outside Australia. It also led to some racial-related violence from hate groups like National Action.
What was the point of this story? As one of those who would have benefited from the quota system, I am very proud to say that I got into university by my own merits. Not by the colour of my skin, my religion, my ethnic heritage, or my place of birth. In a reasonably open competition, I won a place at university. I can look back and say: "I earned that!"
Maybe there are places where affirmative action is appropriate but it is working at a symptom (laziness in the case of the students who didn't get into university) not a cause. That means people will always be thinking: "they couldn't have done it on their own". As regards university, you need to encourage the learning early, work on the skills, develop the desire. Then you need to ensure that the university entrance procedure is blind to colour, money, ethnicity, sex or any other discriminative factor - make it purely a matter of ability.

Bus Racing

A long time ago (measured in blog seconds), I made some off-the-cuff comment about racing buses that had turned up in a Google search. Well I do check the archived articles (especially when the comment alert appears in my mailbox) and there are people out there who really do race buses. A gentleman named Dan left a brief note:

... saw the bit about not winning drag races in a bus. i drag race my 1965 VW split screen van (complete with curtains and bed in) in the UK VW championship and i do win races!. (sometimes...)

He also noted that he has a blog (with more about cars and racing) that can be found here (and it looks like an MT blog so you get all that good XML/RSS stuff as well but trackback appears to be turned off). Apparently his latest project is a fugly 412.

Bus Stops

Utterly Boring had a pointer to this story about bus stops being built in the wrong place. Here, they build the bus shelters in the right place and then the transit authority changes where the buses stop. Outside our front door (almost) is a bus stop, 20 feet past the bus stop is the bus shelter. Excellent. Just far enough away in rainy weather that the bus drivers decide you are not waiting for the bus and therefore they don't need to stop (you have to signal the bus from the bus stop for it to stop).

Books for Sysadmins 3/3

Final in the series of books for Real Sysadmins (as before, clicking the image will take you offsite!)

Practical Joke

Every had a practical joke backfire? Who me? No, never. Well I remember the one about the CD's. We had this young, impressionable student on work experience and he wanted to know what a computer CD sounded like (this was eons ago when computer CDs were only on big iron - in this case a Sun 690 Enterprise server). We told him that it depended on the operating system - CDs for a mainframe would be classical, for a PC it would be really lousy rock and of course for Sun servers it would be Jazz. What he didn't know was that one of the early Sun demo CD's had less than the relevant amount of data. So as to not waste space, the Sun Jazz quartet (or something similar) has recorded a few audio tracks on the disk. We "randomly" selected a CD from the media cupboard and popped it in an audio player, sure enough we got Jazz.

Student returns to school and writes up his experience. Teacher contacts us to get more sample CDs so they can add this to the curiculum. Whoops.

If you liked that (true) story, try another one by patrix about a prank pizza call that goes wrong....

Mystery Solved

Everyone (apart from the French) want to know where the Weapons of Mass Destruction have gone. You know the ones that we went to war over. Well Jivha has the answer.

If Google doesn't perform as expected, you can try this link.

Blog Roundup #5

Whew. Nearly caught up with the backlog from getting distracted and reading all those archive files. Problem is that more stuff is appearing faster than I can read. Oh well, you know I must be getting fussier then....
Over at Little Tiny Lies (love that name, appropriate for a lawyer....) there was a great story about not washing your car which apparently has been a really popular article. There was also an earlier article that demands to be read. (BTW the photo on the main page looks like my twin brother, except that I didn't know I had a twin brother.)
Mr Barrett has some useful information including a port reference for MacOS X. I was thinking of putting one together but this is way better. He also has an item bagging out MacNN. I have been getting a bit annoyed with them - as you know I use NNW to read news and MacNN articles come up with headers but no summary. When you check out the article it seems to have little to do with the header and I feel that I have wasted my time.
Jaboobie seems to get the same spam that I do. Don't these idiots (the spammers, not Jaboobie) ever give up? He also has a quick entry about feeling manly (not the beach on the North side of Sydney Harbour). It's funny how often I put off doing jobs around the house because I feel that I can't do them. Eventually the missus puts her foot down, the job gets done and then you sort of feel good about the fact that it worked (without loosing an arm or leg or making things worse).
Over at Dean's World, there is an observation about men and women even more profound than the earlier comments here about long hair. Dean also has the ultimate truth so if you are a seeker of truth, check it out :-).
Finally (for this item) we have The Declaration of Independence from OS 9 which I found via links on both MacSlash and inessential.

Woman vs Man #4

Why women live longer than men (from Theepan):

Blog Roundup #4

Jay Solo appears to have had a site redesign (which I missed). He now has some quite large elephants at the top of the page (what exactly are the elephants for?). He has a story about sunburn. Dude, if you come downunder, you get used to the sunburn cream (or long sleeves) thanks to the ozone hole... There is also a story about his brother which I can't really discuss (because my brothers may be reading this). I do remember having very long arguments about probability and lotto numbers (just because it hasn't come up as often does not make it more likely to happen in the future). Finally this post refers to another site's entry on colloquialisms.

Blog Roundup #3

Glenn is looking to rework his archives (which is something I have so far ignored). He also had a cool reference to this story about women trying to buy real estate. We had the same problem as a couple when all the real estate guys wanted to talk to me instead of my wife. Then one of the mortgage brokers wanted to talk to her and not me (even though it was my income being used for the mortgage). I think my wife had her hair long that day (see this story for an explanation). Glenn also had a story about bull riding being an extreme sport and I was trying to think of the nearest equivalent - maybe kangaroo fighting. I have seen a kangaroo cornered by a pit-bull terrier ...

(Gruesome details in extended section) ...

The kangaroo backed into shallow water (for support?) and waited until the dog jumped up. He (definitely a he) held the dog off with the front paws and balanced on his tail. Both rear legs swung up and tore the stomach (and intestines) out of the dog. Kangaroo dropped the still living dog which appeared to have lost interest in annoying roos and hoped away.

Blog Roundup #2

Pete has started a discussion about design. Of course he was talking about Holden History but the comments could equally apply to an MT site (as noted in the comments by Jivha).

Also (via Jivha) came a link to Anvita's blog where she mentions the social pressure placed on unmarried women. I left a comment about Jivha's "friend". Maybe Anvita could sort him out - he needs help! Then again, maybe she should stay as far away as possible. It is interesting that both stories show an absence of 'equality' which far exceeds that of the complaints raised by local lunatic feminazis. I can see value in promoting equal rights in the environment of these stories but it can be carried too far (hmm sounds like a theme for Slumbering Pierrot). Despite a strong dislike of feminists, I am afraid I would side with Anvita in this situation and not with Mr Not-Yet-Ready.

[Ed's note: between commenting on Anvita's site and spell checking this item, she had already responded - see the comment on this entry. I am not used to such a quick response because most of my posting is done when the US is asleep and I forget that India is way ahead of the US in so many ways :-) especially timezones.]

Blog Roundup #1

Been so distracted with reading Canadian blogs and links, I have been neglecting my other friends. Jivha (who is currently migrating to MT) has one item on sleazy marketing and another one on affirmative action as applied to the marriage question and auto-rickshaw drivers. The first article strikes a chord because of the numbers of idiots standing around Sydney trying to force bits of paper on you (instant advertising) and they seem to get highly offended if you won't take them. The second article is one of those classic cases where the concept reflects a worldview that is so distant from your own that it is almost beyond comprehension. Wonder if the fellow's chances have been spoiled by Jivha's posting :-)

God Created...

Over at Utterly Boring there is a joke about God creating Oregon. When I first heard this joke, it was from a Kiwi and the story line was pretty much the same (go and read it before I spoil it for you) except for New Zealand where the joke has Oregon. The other change was the punchline which becomes ...

... God replied wisely, "Wait until you see the idiots I gave them for neighbours."

[Note for the geographically challenged: the neighbours would be Australia because nobody else is within spitting distance of New Zealand :-)]

[Note for the humour impaired: Yes, I am Australian. Yes I know it is a joke against Australians.]

Geek Test

While browsing Paul's archive (thank goodness he converted them from blogspot) I found a reference to a Geek Test but I think the test is flawed because I only scored 47.73176% and I don't know anyone Geekier (and I have had plenty of time to find them) :-)

Why not try the test yourself, the link is on Paul's site.

[Ed: I tried to put Paul's last name in but somewhere it the internal workings of MT it was getting corrupted. It should be J - A - N - E (with a ' on top) but it comes out looking like something else. It is fine on my screen (in draft) but stuffed by the time the article is published. Sorry about that Paul.]

Graffiti

There was new graffiti near the bus stop this morning (actually yesterday morning now). I have been told that it is the result of artistic frustration and boredom. Yeah, right. If that is true then the moon is made of green cheese! Even better, I can sell you shares in a bridge :wink.
If it really was due to artistic constipation, it could be vented at home, not on my fence. Besides what artistic merit can be found in illegible scrawls hurriedly sprayed on someone elses' property? I think it is more like some form of territorial marking (and it's my territory, I paid for it) like dogs and other wild animals. I wonder if a hunting licence would take care of it?
Not much point in addressing these criminals directly as it is unlikely that they can read let alone use the internet! Regardless, I want to make it clear that next time (if I catch them) then I will be taking affirmative action (ie I will apply a lump of 4x2 actively in an affirmative and positive manner - sort of like using a baseball bat but with splinters).
For those scratching their heads, this is a lead in for this works serious topic on Slumbering Pierrot - Affirmative Action!

Kids History

Email special (from Theepan). My favourite is the classification of Karl Marx:

The following were answers provided by 6th graders during history test. Watch the spelling! Some of the best humour is in the misspelling.

Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that all the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.

Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.

The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and threw Java.

Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus."

Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonized by Bernard Shaw.

Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah."

It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking.

Sir Francis Drake circumsized the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couple. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet.

Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backward and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin, which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor.This ruined Booth's career.

Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbits. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered the radio. Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.