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Journo Dotage
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September 30th 2003 16:30 CDT
On being a lady lord man of leisure
OK, so it's official - I am now off the clock. And it looks like I won't do too badly (better than the standard 30 seconds of pay that most Americans get).
I realise, of course, that my having to kick my missus out to work will mean that you will be deprived of her comedic talent for long lengths of time, but I have managed to negotiate counseling for you all at the expense of my ex-employer. You'll be hearing a lot more from me which again probably merits therapy but unfortunately, I could not get my ex-employer to agree to that. In fact, they kindly suggested that I shut the feck up and do the dishes.
The cunning plan is still afoot and sharper than a Daily Star hack. More news later in the week.
As I look into the future I see opportunity. It's sad that the team have split. All of us find this the hardest to swallow and have been fairly vocal about it (yes, British people being sentimental). We'd got to the point where we knew who to go to, what kind of turn around to expect, minimum levels of information that needed to be exchanged and we understood the team dynamics. The most important dynamic is that we are all a bunch of mad bastards who are willing to go the extra mile to make things happen in near impossible timelines. There's no such as thing as impossible in our world.
I know, I know. You think you are reading John Conners. You're not. Just an accurate and sincere summary of where we appear to be.
Anyway, for the moment, I'm going to potter around the garden, maybe do a bit of networking, clean the house and put my feet up. In fact, I think I might crank a cold one. As the night progresses, and I think about my consultancy rates when the true horror is revealed, I have a feeling that $100 an hour might seem rather reasonable. I just asked Natzoid whether that was too cheap and she responded that it should be $200 an hour with a caveat that I must be naked while I do it. Really. It's a shame the medical coverage is not too great as I would have her in for that hormone imbalance.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 29th 2003 18:25 CDT
On returning
I have returned intact with my company credit card temporarily functional.
Posting has been light because I've either been holed up in meetings discussing a plan that would make your mother cry or I've been in English hotels (read backward establishments that have yet to even hear the word 'broadband').
The wedding went fantastically, thanks for asking. I met up with an awful lot of people I haven't seen in years and it was like we'd not seen each other for just a week. The speech went well although my smart-arse younger brother took it upon himself to be hilarious prior to my speech which kind of distilled it a bit.
Ladies and gents, the bride and groom
I, of course, took it very easily at the evening reception, choosing only to cart the contents of the minibar down to the guest lounge once the music had stopped. I did not suffer at all. Ever. Don't even suggest it.
Tomorrow heralds the start of negotiations of a severance package. My stomach is churning just thinking about it. I may take a tearful wife and three kids who have been pre-beaten to tears in with me to see if ethics enter into this game.
In the immortal words of Eric Morecambe, "burp, Eric, Arsenal."
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 26th 2003 08:50 BST
On being left high and dry
So, the saga continues. I had traveled over to the UK to, amongst other things, prepare for the impending doom that was to befall me and to try to plan the team's actions when the axe came down. The management knew this. During the course of the week, I have stayed at a hotel in Harrogate. Come check-out time this morning, my company credit card was declined. The bastards have cancelled it.
Now you would think that since I am being asked to stay on until the end of next week, they are sure of my integrity in such matters, but apparently not. I leave the UK on Monday to return to the US so still have a weekend to finance.
Anyway, watch this space...I may be down but I'm not out. That cunning plan that I refered to a couple of weeks ago is now so cunning that you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel. In fact, to plagiarise even more, you could fecking well brush your teeth with it.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 23rd 2003 10:30 BST
On being unemployed
For hire: one of the best software teams I have ever had the pleasure to work with and one product manager.
Will work for food for 5 human mouths and 3 canine ones.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 20th 2003 08:40 BST
On the wedding day of one's only sibling
September 19th 2003 11:30 BST
On McKay on Cameron Diaz
And you wonder why I work with these people...
Neil McKay, our test engineer and aspiring CEO: "I can't believe a proper woman like 'er is going out with that spotty Oik, Timberlake, who's only had one decent song - she'd be much better off with me, sitting in my Kia, she'd look well smart."
An example of Neil's Kia:
September 14th 2003 12:45 CDT
On pet hates
You know what I hate? Those bloody adverts that start with 'What can <insert random banal object here> teach us about running a business?'
Let's explore this? What can dog shite teach us about investing? Absolutely feck-all squared. That didn't take long.
Another thing that I hate is that I can't figure out what part of my glasses has been moved such that they slide down my nose if my head looks even vaguely in a downwards direction.
In fact, you might want to avoid me today. I'm in of those moods. And I have a fecking plane to catch tomorrow. Grumble, grumble.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 14th 2003 12:00 CDT
On that speech
So, seeing none of you buggers have helped me out, I decided to enlist the help of one of the wittiest people I know and sent the following email...
Now then X,
I need someone who is literate, witty and willing to help me out. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of anyone so I thought I'd email you. Attached is my best man's speech thus far...as you can see, I'm struggling. Would appreciate some suggestions!
The response?
X - there is no one here by that name. You have reached the address of Army, Son of Zeus, third nephew of Mars and sometime drinking partner of Vishnu the destroyer of worlds!
No need for my help here mate - a gosh darn showstopper of a speech, old boy.
This speech is your blank canvas - spill your fluids and let thy muse guide thee to the comedic valhalla that is Thirsk (or a couple of knob gags should do).
See you next week for a cheeky schooner of sherry.
Lingering caresses,
Rev Glint Ransomer
Bloody smart-arse law graduates.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 13th 2003 16:00 CDT
On gross
You know what I love? When you remove the toddler trainer seat from the toilet and sit down. And it's wet. I really just can't explain the feeling. You should try it sometime.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 13th 2003 09:50 CDT
On being a purist
I hate being dependent on other people's sites for anything. For example, I like the concept of blogrolling but every time I load Natzoid's page, I see the "connecting to rpc.blogrolling.com" and it takes forever. It used to be even worse as it timed out trying to contact yaccs. And then the s10.sitemeter.com. Yikes.
What brought that little tyrade on is the fact that my hit counter failed a few weeks ago. That was actually on my site but I didn't have access to fix it. So I nixed it. This morning I got up at around 5:00am and decided that I couldn't really use the stats tracking software I had written so knocked up a very simple hit counter (which you can see to the right). If you hit a hard refresh, you should see it increment. All it is is a table with two fields, an index for a user and a counter field that is incremented by one every time someone hits the page.
I had thought about writing a parser that would generate an RSS feed too but I don't think I can be bothered. Nothing is more boring than string manipulation. I have written something that pulls info from MySQL and makes an RSS feed out of it but it won't do flat files. And if I did it, it would probably be a hack job because all my blog and its archives are hand-crafted in God's own editor, vi.
So there you go Natzoid, your RSS feed does indeed kick mine's arse. Maybe if I get bored later today, I'll take another look.
Just a little random technical bollocks to kick off your Saturday.
PS - Only one usable comment on the best man speech, from Buddha, and unfortunately, I already had a Tijuana reference in there.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 11th 2003 18:00 CDT
On a best man's role
In a few weeks time, I am to be best man at a wedding. I have never been best man before so I'll need to do some reading up on it. Just about the only part I am familiar with is the speech.
I started writing it last night. I share with you, a couple of excerpts...
"For those of you who have visited the former house of sin, now the happy couple's home, you will have noticed the strict surgical cleanliness of every inch and the masks by the door. I'm sure the domicile will remain in such a condition and am very comfortable that any offspring that they have will be bereft of crayons and markers and a Godlike understanding of where the ammonia and bleach are kept. And may said offspring also be blessed with the wisdom not to mix the two."
"About Y. Y was born Month date and a search for memorable events on that date yields no real entertainment other than my wife's birthday which in itself is probably notable. Alice Cooper was born on this date and Karen Carpenter died. I might have been tempted to make some nauseating comment about the transfer of the voice of an angel but I know there are years difference and I probably need to save my projectile vomiting for later."
So come on guys, this is poor. Help a brutha out. Some of you are witty. Prove it...in my comments. I want quality humor.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 8th 2003 20:20 CDT
On some good news and some bad
The good news is that Peter Kenyon has resigned as Chief Executive of Manchester United. About bloody time sleazebag. He has left to run Chelsea; a match made in heaven.
The bad news is that when I went to pick Sammy up from the airport today, the Northwest attendant didn't even have access to a computer so could in no way verify that Sam was even on a flight. She just wrote me a pass based on my word and within 2 minutes of entering the airport, I had cleared security. I wasn't inconvenienced in the slightest. Not that being inconvenienced is a pre-requiusite for security but come on, I had no boarding pass or ticket and what could have been a fake story about picking up a UM. Utterly unbelievable. I will be writing to Northwest quoting my Platinum Worldperks card number.
In the meantime, you'll all forgive me if I bury myself in Excel for the rest of the evening. Do you honestly think that cunning plans just write themselves?
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 7th 2003 16:10 CDT
On beer
Thinking back, I have not really ever devoted a post to the subject of beer, which is a subject very dear to my heart. I'm sure everyone knows of my hatred of American domestic beers; the reason they are served so cold is so that you cannot taste the fact that they taste of absolutely nothing.
I'm torn between who holds the top slot internationally for beers. It grieves me to say that it might be Belgium (cough, weasels, cough) if only for Stella Artois, the Trappist ales and their fruit beers. On the other hand it might be the UK (cough, swelling pride, cough) for Boddingtons, Theakstons, Black Sheep, Banks's and a whole raft of others. Third place must go to Germany for Becks, Warsteiner and a multitude of other shocking sins against sobriety.
My Australian friends assert that Australia should be on the beer map, but I'm afraid I have never tasted a good Australian beer. Fosters? Water. Castlemaine 4X? The four X's expand to be XXXX which really is a synonym for SH1T (its chemical formula). Australia definitely should be on the wine map, but I'm sorry, the beer is lousy.
Mexican beers are just fizz. While not too objectionable, they are a tad lacking in the taste department.
There are some good French (cough, weasels, cough) beers but they are not good enough for me to remember their names. The only two I can think of are Kronenbourg and 33.
All other beers to me, are thrown into the generic Asian style beer and can be taken or left. They are not so vile as to be as repugnant as American beers but they are not worth worth writing home about.
Having insulted every nation on the planet, I will now disappear.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 7th 2003 14:05 CDT
On perceptions
Having recently been to both Taiwan and China, I found this fairly interesting. The two countries have been in dispute over Taiwan's independence for years.
The feel of the two places is vastly different. While I was very reluctant to visit both countries, I came away from Taiwan really quite enamored by the place. I stayed in Hsinchu which is probably about a half hour from Taipei and found it incredibly friendly. The natives attempted to teach us Mandarin over dinner and we actually ate for free one night, just because we deigned to patronize the restaurant. China, on the other hand appears to be a much less friendly society. It's a lot more threatening. And if Taiwan is poor, China is absolutely poverty-stricken.
The press in China are obviously state-sponsored and are extremely derogatory toward the Taiwanese government. While supping a Tiger beer one afternoon, I read of 26 Chinese women who had set out in a boat for Taiwan to escape China and were scuppered by the Chinese authorities. They all died. The newpaper intimated that the deaths were the fault of the Taiwanese government. It's a huge propaganda war. I had the presence of mind to record the web addresses for the newspapers. Check out The Shenzhen Daily and the The Shenzhen News for examples of journalistic integrity that even Fox would be proud of (oops, the Shenzhen News appears to be only Mandarin - sorry about your luck!).
Given only a basic understanding of how the two parted ways, I would have to support the Taiwanese independence movement. Why you would take a fairly functional country with a friendly populace and subject it to PRC rule is a mystery to me. So why do only 30 countries recognize their sovereignty?
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 6th 2003 19:00 CDT
On pop-culture
I don't know why, but we've started watching films again all of a sudden. A few weeks ago, I reluctantly sat down to watch 'Gangs of New York', wondering what kind of puerile shite it would be. It was a fecking excellent film. Twenty minutes after that had finished, we watched 'Phone Booth' which, while being nowehere near the class of the previous film, was acceptable and mildly entertaining. The third one was something with Adam Sandler so I fell asleep within nanoseconds.
The thing that struck me is that there are actually some good films being made at the moment...I have assumed that all Hollywood output was shite for the last twenty years. I don't know who half the actors are but I can live with that, as long as the plot and performances are competent.
I'm either getting older, younger or more engrained in the culture of today. Any of the alternatives is unacceptable. We all know that Hollywood sucks, don't we?
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 6th 2003 06:55 CDT
On amnesia
So last night, I got completely trollied and ended up on Yahoo with Natzoid, MJ and Mopsie. I had no idea what we were talking about until I looked on Natzoid's PC. Thankfully I talked very little since my motor-skills were severely inhibited, but Natzoid, MJ and Mopsie had quite the conversation. Transcripts are available at $20 a piece. ;)
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 5th 2003 19:05 CDT
On fame and the associated cliches
Not only was I the 7000th commenter/commentator/communist dictator since January 1st (that's an awful lot of dictators -- you want to look into that) over here, but if you do a google for "bacon fried in lard", I'm on the first page. And I'm in good company. Rita also features on the first page. Which brings me to a small theory I've been toying around with for quite a while now. It's one of those empirically derived bizarre light-bulb kind of things. To wit: For every cliche, there is an equal and opposite cliche. And I know Rita's a lawyer and all edumucated and literate and stuff, so I've probably erroneously used the phrase 'to wit' (mea culpa - ha! see I have some edumucation too).
The examples to back up my hypothesis are as follows:
Great minds think alike and Fools seldom differ.
He who hesitates is lost and Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
So what's with the fool thing? Fools appear to have a bad rap in the cliche world.
And before MJ starts with her fancy schmancy accented letters again, I admit it, I have no idea how to get those characters in God's own editor, vi, which is the development tool of every tech-savvy HTMLer in the known universe.
Being a mathematician by trade (although some would say the operation that put me into marketing would negate that claim), I would be interested in a proof by contradiction. Let the rebuttals flow.
Your witness...
Update: Objection. Natzoid tells me exhibit A is part of the same proverb, but I'm not the kind of guy who likes my reality to be complicated by the truth. So let's ignore that and just run with it anyway. And for it to be part of the same proverb shows an abnormal comprehension of contra-positives and subtlety, proving beyond reasonable doubt that whomever came up with it was hungover and got lucky.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 3rd 2003 18:50 CDT
On the bloody inevitable
Natzoid was right. We left the windows to the house open last night and sure enough the unpleasant sensation of cold was there to greet me at six this morning. My most loathed of all the conditions is just around the corner. I had to take a jacket to work and I'll probably take a sweater tomorrow. Thus it begins...the leaves falling, the chill and then the tundra where nothing is fun enough to get me outside for about six months. I missed the best part of the summer in Asia. Figures. If I were Scandinavian, I think I would probably go for outright suicide rather than the prolonged vodka option. Interestingly, Sean is at the opposite end of the spectrum waiting for Spring. Maybe that's not so interesting and more logical given his locale.
I did my expenses for my first Asia trip today. It took over two hours. The poor girl in accounting will be sure of a job for at least a week. The credit card company had not only multiply billed some of the transactions but used conversion rates that made the multiple entries differ in their dollar amount by oh, I don't know, a piddly $400. There's also a rogue entry in pounds sterling that occured in the middle of my Asia trip that is only reported as a dollar amount for a transaction with a stream of random letters and digits. So unless I was drinking Sujo for a twenty-four hour period and suddenly decided to send my grandmother a very expensive floral arrangement (yeah, right), something is awry. Something that I will happily hand over to accounting to figure out.
JC, it's great to be back in the office in feckin' Minnesota. I needs to get me a job in Raleigh or Charlotte. Working for Redhat. Now wouldn't that be sweet?
Update: Mothers don't drop babies on their heads, babies drop babies on their own heads. That's how come the adult populace has an average IQ of about 110 (and yes I did make that up but then again, 72% of statistics are made up on the spot and the rest are mathematically calculated based on gut feeling responses).
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 2nd 2003 20:05 CDT
On geek central
As Natzoid alluded last week, she managed to move her desk upstairs so now the control room is buzzing...
Natzoid's little Dell (Lucille) running XP Pro:
Sam's little HP (Dumbledore) running Windows 98:
Kenny's monster HP (Teapot) running Redhat Linux 7.2:
Another shot of where teapot works and plays on his Roland Juno 106:
Update: Natzoid and Samantha are sat literally two feet away from one another IM'ing each other. What have I done?
BTW, between the two of them is a very good shot of my old mate Sidney, the Shop Vac. He's a star.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 2nd 2003 14:30 CDT
On network outages
andy: The network has suddenly ground to a halt.
natalie: So it has. It's even disconnected me from Yahoo!
...several second pause...
natalie: So should I reboot?
andy: That won't help.
natalie: What if we both reboot at the same time?
andy: Nope.
natalie: We could power-cycle the modem?
andy: Rebooting things will not help o'child of the Microsoft era.
...several second pause...
natalie: So when are you going to fix it?
Sigh.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 1st 2003 19:40 CDT
On traveling
It struck me while re-reading my comments about the number of airmiles I've racked up over the past few years, that it might be worth writing a list of countries I'd been to over the years. So here goes:
And I'm sure I missed a few. I think an early night may be in order. Introspection is never a good thing.
I have to say though, if I could live anywhere, it would be on the shores of Lake Garda in Northern Italy or, were the government more rational, on the French Riviera.
OK, I'll shut up for the day now.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 1st 2003 17:15 CDT
On the blatantly sickening
I have been loathe to comment on this topic in the past, but this has absolutely infuriated me. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are the original terrorists. They were terrorists before George W stuck a TM behind the word. They are scumbags. They are murdering sons of bitches who should be incarcerated for the rest of their miserable existences.
The thing that really irked me was the comment '"I hope this brings closure to her family." he [Adams] said.' when refering to the hope that the body of a woman found in County Louth was a missing mother of ten murdered by his scumbag organization.
I had been avoiding reading that all day because I knew what my reaction would be, but the temptation to renew my passionate hatred of the scumbag was just too much. I can't wait for the day that the British government tips the SAS the nod to take out these pimples on the arse of society.
Comments (), PermalinkSeptember 1st 2003 15:15 CDT
On sweet satisfaction
To do:
Don't you just hate reality?
In other news, while dealing with immigration yesterday, I discovered that I have entered the US 48 times in the last 10 years. That makes my arse tired as it equates to a transatlantic or transpacific at least once a quarter for 10 years. And I know for a fact that there was a period of about 2 years where I didn't come to the US. As I say, don't you just hate reality?
Actually, I have justed noticed that over the last four years, I have accumulated over 630,000 airmiles, just on NWA alone. That's not counting other airline trips and flights where I was not eligible for miles. My arse is really tired now.
Speaking of flying (sickening segue there), for some quality parrot abuse, I highly recommend visiting Steve if you haven't already today.
Comments (), PermalinkAugust 31st 2003 15:00 CDT
On a speedy return
The plane home from Narita was a record-breaking 10 hours long. I had cleared immigration, collected my luggage and was heading home in a taxi before I was even due to get in to Minneapolis. Every once in a while, you have to get lucky.
Northwest Airlines have a bad rap for coach travel and it may be justified however their World Business Class is excellent. Today's flight attendant from Beijing to Narita was a class act; as we were descending into Narita, we hit some turbulence and the lady in question who was walking past my seat commented "He [the pilot] isn't very good at this. Just thought I'd mention that." with a mischevious grin on her face.
It's nice to get back to some sanity and roads that don't threaten to kill you at millisecond intervals, to be able to pull out a dollar bill without fearing being mugged and to not have to push people away from you who are so desperate for anything that they literally latch on to you. The poverty in Shenzhen is omnipresent. I didn't see a single house in all the time I was there. Accomodation for the natives appears to be ramshackle apartments or tin shacks.
I decided while traveling that I'm a very passionate observer. I'm not big on interaction, but I do enjoy just watching and absorbing.
Comedy food for the day: from the menu at Shenzhen airport, "Hot Dog of Intestines". Mmmm. I like a bit of truth in advertizing.
Sad moment of the day: it is 18 years to the day since my grandfather shuffled off his mortal coil.
Geekcentral out.
Comments (), PermalinkAugust 31st 2003 05:55 GMT+8
On hard knocks
The girl who I thought I had cleverly outwitted in a bartering exercise for a taxi to the hotel ended up in handcuffs. All because she overinflated the price by $9. At first I was impervious but then felt sorry for her. She was just trying to be and earn a living, albeit in a fairly unethical way. But then again, I am sure she would have probably knifed me in the back in a heartbeat if she knew I had dollars in my pockets. It's easy to lose your humanity in these situations.
I'm on international dial-up at 9.6K so I'm out of here. The phone does not work with my AT&T card and there is no broadband. I am heading for the airport.
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