The Science(TM) of Biorythms!

Here’s something to while away a few minutes with…

http://www.celebmatch.com/bestmatch.php

Type in your birthday and it tells you what celebrities you’re most compatable with, based on the science (ack! cough! hack! wheeze! excuse me πŸ™‚ of biorythms. Apparently. As it turns out I’m 100% compatable with recording artist Pink, which is nice to know. However I’m only 54% compatable with Neve Cambell, which is slightly disapointing *g*.

OK, I’m going to work now.

Telephone Surreality

We get some odd calls at work.

Probably the oddest was a few weeks ago, when I answered the phone with the standard “GTP Internet Commerce”, only to be asked (by a rather tough sounding man who I’d guess was in his mid thirties) “Are you running buses to the Avril Lavigne concert?”.

As surreal as this seems there is a sane explanation. The geniuses (genii?) over at the Yellow pages have (for the second year running) screwed up and printed our number under the listing for an eastern states bus company, which may or may not have been running buses to the Avril Lavigne concert. We have also received calls inquiring about buses to Byron Bay, services between Melbourne and Broken Hill, and charters to the Abba inspired stage show “Mamma Mia” – the later from a woman with a voice so nasal that she could only have been from the western suburbs of Sydney.

Some of the real support calls aren’t much better though. I don’t have a problem with guiding people through stuff step by step – even I get confused now and then with some of the more complicated aspects of the system – but if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s stupidity. I don’t mean unfamiliarity with computers, or nervousness with new technology, I mean abject bone-headedness. Like this call, from a few weeks ago just after we altered the interface so the menu was across the top of the screen rather than down the left side…

ME: GTP Internet Commerce.

CLIENT (semi-panicked): Oh, hi, I was just trying to log in to the um…. website, and there’s nothing!

ME: OK, so you’ve got to the login page and out in your username and password, and nothing happens?

CLIENT: No, it lets me in, but there’s nothing there!!

ME: So when you log in, you’re not getting anything?

CLIENT: Yes, there’s nothing!

ME: Nothing at all on the screen?

CLIENT: No, there’s the manual page, but nothing else!

ME: So you can see the manual, but there’s nothing else on the screen?

CLIENT: Yes!! I can’t see the menu down the side!

ME: OK, there’s no blue bar above the manual?

CLIENT: Yes, I can see the blue bar, but there’s nothing else!

ME: Is there anything on the blue bar?

CLIENT: Well there’s ‘GTP iCommerce’ and ‘You are logged in as [username]’ but nothing else!

ME: There’s nothing below that?

CLIENT: There’s some boxes.

ME: Is there anything in them?

CLIENT: Yes, ‘iCommerce’, ‘iContact’, ‘iNews’, ‘Help’…

ME: OK, what happens when you move the mouse over the boxes?

CLIENT: Menus drop down, but that’s all! The menu isn’t on the side!

ME: OK, we’ve moved the menu from the left hand side up onto the blue bar at the top.

CLIENT: But where is it?!

ME: Those menus, they’re the same as the menu down the side.

CLIENT: Are they?

ME: Yes, roll over the first one.

CLIENT (doubtfully): OK….

ME: See, all the options from the iCommerce menu are there.

CLIENT (doubtfully): Oh, OK. Thank you. (hangs up)

ME (banging head against desk): ARRRRRGGGGGGGHGHHHHGGHGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You see what I mean? It seriously makes you wonder how some people manage to get out of bed in the morning without doing themselves some kind of serious injury.

Talking of people too mentally disadvantaged to get out of bed without assistance, Josie has finally come through and got the new cupboards installed in the bathroom. This is close on five months after Rebecca told her too. I took advantage of the fact that a new sink was being installed, and talked the workmen into unblocking the sink at the same time. So I now have a nice, functioning bathroom, and a large ex-bathroom mirror leaning against the loungeroom wall. I’m debating what to do with it. The possibility of fixing it to the bedroom ceiling and turning the place into a bordello exists of course, but it’s probably a bit small, and the Residents’ Council would almost certainly object. So it’ll probably end up getting thrown out. Just hope it’s not me doing the throwing, my luck is dodgy enough without an extra seven years of badness πŸ˜‰

But on to politics.

I’m only turning to politics because there’s a fairly amusing stoush (does anyone except me ever use that word? πŸ™‚ going on in South Australia between the State and Federal Governments over a radioactive waste dump. Canberra wants to put it on a farm in South Australia. The South Australians (understandably) don’t want a bar of this (yet another ancient phrase that no one but me ever uses :), and are trying to stop the development going through. So the Federal Government told them that if they didn’t hand over the land, it would be resumed, which is permitted under the constitution. So, the South Australian Government decided to declare the land a public park, because the legislation doesn’t allow for public parks to be resumed. At this point the Federal Government said that if the land was declared a public park, they’d cut off science funding to the state. At this point a group of South Australian scientists pointed out that the Federal Government doesn’t actually give them any funding at all, and in fact they’d been campaigning for funding from them for several years. It’s like something from Douglas Adams – I can hardly wait to see what happens next πŸ™‚

Anyway, I suppose I’d better blog about what stupid I have been up to now that I’ve covered stupid clients, stupid property managers and stupid governments. As usual, not much. I did go up to Fabian’s place a few Saturdays ago to play my Max Schreck look alike cleric in his AD&D campaign. Playing a character with a charisma of 6 actually turned out to be pretty entertaining, particularly when I decided to make him completely paranoid. The other characters were continually irritated by his insistence on checking every room they stayed in for traps and secret panels *g*. But he’s pretty good at healing spells, which is enough to convince everyone not to do him in during the night. Particularly Michael’s character who, despite being an insanely tough half-orc, has been almost killed in every battle we’ve got ourselves into. I guess he just presents a much bigger target πŸ™‚

I’ve also been playing a lot of Civilization III, particularly after buying the Play the World expansion pack. I finally managed a spaceship victory today, yey! In the year 1900 no less. I was playing on a huge scale map of Earth (playing as the English), and starting from Italy I ended up with an empire stretching from St Petersburg in the north, Spain in the west, Kiev in the east and south to the Congo. Throw in colonies in Australia (for uranium) and the Caribbean (for dyes) and that’s not too shoddy really. I could have taken the British Isles and Scandinavia as well, but I decided to be nice to the poor Persians and let them survive πŸ™‚

One weird thing though is that at one point I swear my Trade Advisor said “I’m not even supposed to be here today!”. A Clerks fan in the Firaxis team perhaps? Or just a hallucination engendered from sitting in front of a computer for six hours? I guess I may never know…

Hmmmm, I’ve got a note here saying “Blog – Yes! 6!”. I know it’s to remind me to blog about something, but I have no idea what. I leave it as an exercise for my readers πŸ™‚

OK, going to go now. Got some pasta on the stove that’s probably just about to dissolve..

Yey!!

Long weekend!! Yey!!!

To be perfectly honest I have no idea what this long weekend is for. Triple J is broadcasting it’s normal weekday programing, which is a good indication that it’s a West Australian public holiday only, but I’m not sure which one. Possibly it’s one of the Queen’s many birthdays, either that or Foundation Day, which celebrates some woman cutting down a tree. Anyway, I don’t care because after all a public holiday is a public holiday πŸ™‚

I haven’t been up to all that much lately, apart from work. We’ve got a few big jobs on at the moment, one of the biggest being replicating a set of three entire websites without FTP access. That means that rather than go in and just download all the files in a sane and ordered manner, we have to do it all via the browser. You know, right click on every single image and save it, then save all the pages manually, then read the code and copy the URLs to get a hold of any linked css or js files. Needless to say this isn’t a lot of fun. I’m not exactly clear on why the client won’t give us the FTP details – my best guess is they don’t want the original company to know they’re changing over to us until it’s all a fait-acompli. This seems of dubious legality at best, but hey, I presume they know what they’re doing.

Apart from that the only thing of note I’ve accomplished in the last few months is an ambient/chill out remix of the Waifs’ London Still. You see Triple J were running a competition where they provided the various broken down components of three songs (London Still, El Questro by Downsyde and some stupid Silverchair thing) in MP3 format and challenged people to remix them, so I figured I’d have a go. I’m fairly pleased with my effort, but unfortunately it shall never see the light of day. Copyright was only waived by the artists for the purpose of the competition, the mp3 files were only allowed to be downloaded for use in the competition, the resultant remixes were only allowed to be posted to the competition website, and the competition was only open to people aged 25 years or under. So if I even play my remix to an empty room I’m probably in violation of international law and in extreme danger of having my door beaten down by the copyright police and being hauled off into imprisionment at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Or something πŸ™‚

On the subject of music though I was extremely distressed to discover that those scary Russian lesbians Tatu (or whatever) have done a “cover” of the Smiths’ How Soon is Now. BLASPHEMY!! SACRILAGE!! HERESY!! DEVILTRY!! ISOLATIONISM!! FREE SILVER!! I mean good Lord, why not let them re-score Beethoven’s fifth for those singing cats while they’re at it? Doesn’t anyone have respect for the classics these days? Sheeze!!

I say “cover” because their version only barely resembles the original. They’ve got some semi-competant session musicians in to do a halfway decent version of the tune, but then totally disfigure it with their – well you can’t actually call it singing, they sound like a pair of trapped marmosets. Thin, reedy, whining and shrieking is closer to the mark. I move here and now, that we set up a fund to procure a rocket propelled grenade launcher and plane ticket to Moscow for Morrisey, and send him over to set them straight. We could even throw in a marmoset tracking dog. That’ll learn them!!

Hrumph!

Anyway, about the only other thing I’ve got to say is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, namely the fun and games that went on over at F*ntastico a few weeks back. For those who came in late this is a long, narrow Subiaco eatery that Rebecca, Dom and myself visited a while ago (and at which the prawns gave me mild food poisoning). Anyway it was in the news recently when it was the scene of a vicious street brawl between a group of “high profile” C*ffin Ch**ters, and some “associates” of “N*rthbridge ident*ty” John K*zzon.

(Edit – August 9 2004 – I’ve altered several of the names and terms in the above paragaraph because this weblog entry kept coming up number one on K*zzon/F*zio related web searches – which probably isn’t the best thing for my long term health prospects. Allegedly πŸ™‚

Apparently the two groups were eating at F*ntastico when an argument between them got out of hand. So they proceeded to step outside to sort it out. This “sorting out” resulted in one of K*zzon’s “associates” by the name of F*zio being knocked to the ground and having his head and face repeatedly kicked and stomped on, to the point where he required 40 stitches. The management of F*ntastico quite sensibly pulled down the roller shutters and locked everyone inside as soon as they realised what was going on, and eventually the police arrived and broke it up. Not long afterwards a “mysterious fire” hit F*zio’s gym in Northbridge, but the police swear black and blue that there’s no connection. Of course.

A few Perth-specific phrases there probably need some explanation. The C*ffin Ch**ters are what the press and police like to refer to as an “Outlaw Motorcycle Club” and the rest of the population as “bikies”. Northbridge is the nightclub and entertainment district of the city, hence a “N*rthbridge Ident*ty” is a person of importance in that area and the kinds of fields and endeavors associated with that sort of area (although K*zzon seems to be the only person to whom the term is ever applied). I might be more specific except it could well result in a visit from some “large men”. Allegedly.

(On the subject of bikies, it should be noted that in Australian English it’s quite common for words to be truncated and have an “ie” or “y” stuck on the end. For instance truckie, footy, Chrissy, barbie, prezzie (respectively truck driver, football, Christmas, barbeque and present – yes “Chrissy prezzie” is disturbingly common *g*) and a whole host of others I can’t be bothered thinking about. To someone unfamilar with this tendancy a “bikie” might sound like a quite cheerful and even jolly sort of person riding around on his Harley laughing deeply and waving at small children and pensioners. Remove this image from your mind at once. Bikies are not cheerful or jolly. Replace the “ie” with “er” to translate the phrase into into US or UK English. Yes, them.)

So yes, F*ntastico. The place to go for risky prawns and street violence. Extreme dining! πŸ™‚

OK, I’m going to go now.

PS: My bathroom sink is unblocked! Yey!! πŸ™‚

I don’t wanna be a Pirate!!

Well, now I’m done with embarrasing personal revelations for a while, I thought I’d relax with some stupid online tests…

You are Neo
You are Neo, from “The Matrix.” You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Perfect fusion of heroism and compassion? OK, if they say so. Mind you, I did it again, changed a few answers where I could have gone either way and came up as Cypher, so I think I’ll stick with Neo πŸ™‚

professor x
You are Professor X!

You are a very effective teacher, and you are very
committed to those who learn from you. You put
your all into everything you do, to some extent
because you fear failure more than anything
else. You are always seeking self-improvement,
even in areas where there is nothing you can do
to improve.

Which X-Men character are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

Cool, I’m Patrick Stewart! πŸ™‚

I came out the same as Helen and Ali on the shipper test, so if you’re that interested, visit their blogs.

I did the Talk Like A Pirate Personality test too, but I came up as a Pirate 2nd Class. In the process it alleged some rather uncomplimentary things (Long walks on ta beach and cuddlin’? Arrrr!!! What ye be alledgin’ thar matey?!) so I’m not going to post it *g*.

Oh, and my pirate name is apparently “Dirty James Flint” which means I’m hard and sharp like the rock flint, but I’m also easily chipped and sparky. The other pirates also want to throw me into the ocean, not to get rid of me, just my smell.

Hmmm, somehow I don’t think I’m cut out to be a pirate πŸ˜‰

SHOCKING Admission!

I have an admission to make. An admission of a kind that I’d never make under normal circumstances. In fact virtually every instinct in my Geek brain is screaming at me to stop, but I’m sufficiently fed up to ignore them and press on. So, what is this shocking and potentially scarring confession that will horrify and alienate my small yet loyal band of readers? Well, nothing much really.

It is simply this. I have a crush on a friend of my brother’s, and in fact have had a crush on her pretty much for the last eight years. Specifically, Lyndah.

So, why this admission? I’ll cover that a bit later.

Now Lyndah. Lyndah is without a doubt the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. I formed that opinion the moment I met her and am yet to encounter circumstances that would cause me to alter it. She is simply stunning. I’ve never known her to look less than fantastic. I was totally blown away the first time Andrew brought her back from uni and continue to be every time we happen to meet (which these days is maybe twice a year or so at some function of his or other).

So, fairly predictably I developed a mad crush on her, and now – eight years on – despite the fact that I hardly ever see her anymore, I still have a mad crush on her. And, well, frankly, I’m sick of it.

You see the particularly dumb thing about this is that really I hardly know Lyndah. We’ve had a few brief conversations over the years at various get togethers and openings, but that’s about it. My attraction to her is pretty much just physical (although I prefer the term “aesthetic” – “physical” makes me sound like I turn into a slavering neandertal every time she walks into the room*I actually turn into a stuttering idiot. In fact it’s annoying. As a Geek I pride myself on my “substance over style” ethic. To have a crush on a girl for eight years based on little more than the fact that she’s astonishingly beautiful is frankly embarrasing.

And what’s worse it’s a cliche. I mean c’mon, the dorky older brother having a secret crush on one of the cool brother’s female friends? It’s the stuff of countless unimaginative teen dramas. I have way too many cliches in my life – some days it seems like there’s little else – so I’m doing away with this one. No more secrecy.

Of course I’m under no illusions of anything coming of this admission. I can’t imagine Lyndah seeing anything much in an overweight, socially inept geek with bad hair such as myself. But that’s not what this is about. This isn’t an attempt to spark some kind of interest from her, or some kind of round-about geeky way of asking her out on a date. It’s simply a case of being sick to death with the status quo, and doing something to change it. Call it empowerment if you’re so inclined (I’m not).

Naturally coming out with all this publicly will make things insanely awkward the next time we happen to run into each other. But hey, talking to her is already pretty awkward for me, this is just a way of sharing the awkwardness around *g*.

So, yes. I find Lyndah insanely attractive and have done for the last eight years. Like woo-hoo, big deal. Now, if no one minds, I’ll get on with my life.

Over and out.

I wasn’t confused! Honestly!

Hmmm, Helen seems to be under the impression that I was confused by The Matrix Reloaded. I suppose that’s one way of interpreting what I wrote, but it’s not actually what I meant *g*. I understood it all fine, in fact I think I was one of the few people in the cinema to actually get most of what the Architect said (uses lots of big words does that particular program :). What I meant was that I was totally blown away by… OK, I suppose I’d better do the traditional “hide the text against the background” trick here so as not to spoil people (if you’re reading this on my homepage it probably won’t be hidden, so be warned)…

OK, I was totally blown away by the concept that everything we learned in the first movie is a lie. The prophecy, the truth about Zion, the purpose of the One – even the Oracle turns out to be a program! And what’s more it’s all a lie created by the machines! It totally blew my mind (probbaly due in fact to my incipient bout of the flu), and that’s what I meant by my comments.

Another thing that amazed me was the fact that this is the sixth Matrix. The whole cycle of creating Zion and the emergence of the One has happened four times before (remember, the first Matrix failed). Given that Zion starts with 27 people each time and that the population in this version of Zion is 250,000 then the Matrix must be ancient. I did some quick maths the other day, and assuming a 50% population increase in each generation (from both breeding and releasing people from the system) and 25 years per generation that comes to a little under 600 years. So if that’s an average timespan for the One to emerge, then the Matrix must have existed for over 3,000 years. As Keanu (and Helen πŸ˜‰ says, Woah!

So that’s what I meant. I could talk some more about the film, but Helen’s pretty much said all I would have, so go read her blog πŸ™‚

I’m going now. Have to cook dinner.

Arrrghghghghuoghh……

Ack. Not well. I don’t know if it’s the flu, or overwork or lack of sleep or trying to comprehend The Matrix Reloaded which I saw last night (what the…?!) but I’m just really really out of it. I’ve taken today off work thinking I’d get over it, but I don’t feel a whole lot better, even though I’ve slept most of the day. Arrgh.

My sink is still clogged. I made a mistake last week, it had only been three weeks, but now it’s a full month. Thanks to Rebecca’s many irate phone calls *g* we now know the reason why – Josie couldn’t remember if I said it was the kitchen sink or the bathroom sink. So obviously she couldn’t do anything more about the problem could she? Once again, I honestly wonder how that woman can even feed herself unassisted.

Hmmmm I had some other stuff to blog about I’m sure. Oh yeah I happened to catch some of an episode of Gilmore Girls last week. This is not the kind of show I would normally touch with a ten foot clown pole (even if Lauren Grahame is almost as cute as Alisen Down *g*) but I was impressed that within the single half hour I saw while waiting for CSI there were references to no less that three of my favourite bands. Namely the Pixies, the KLF (well, the JAMs actually, but they’re the same people) and They Might be Giants. There was also a somewhat amusing scene involving a giant horse, but I don’t think I’ll make a habit of watching it nonetheless πŸ™‚

OK, going to go now. I’ll try and email people soon, but I want to be a bit more together first.

Ooh! M*A*S*H!! πŸ™‚

The War between the Floors

I’m listening to the JJJ Hottest Box, and my bathroom sink is still clogged.

If my calculations are correct it’s been clogged for a month come this Sunday morning. The following Tuesday morning it’ll be a month since I phoned the property manager (a certain Josie) to get someone to come and look at it. As far as I can tell no-one has so far, unless they literally did just come, look at it, then leave – which given Josie’s performance to date wouldn’t surprise me at all. I considered calling her up to do some screaming this week, but decided to leave it. “I haven’t been able to use my bathroom sink for a month!!” sounds so much more impressive that “I haven’t been able to use my bathroom sink for three weeks!!”.

Rebecca suggested that under the terms of my lease a completely clogged bathroom sink should be a hygine issue and count as an urgent repair requiring action within 24 hours. I had a look for my copy of the lease but seem to have misplaced it (oh yeah, I’m organised me) so I can unfortunately neither confirm nor deny on that point. But it’s not so bad really. I can use the kitchen sink for washing my hands and brushing my teeth, and as for shaving I just use a jug of hot water in front of the bathroom mirror. So I’ve adapted OK. And the longer it sits un-dealt with the more ammunition we have to take Josie down on the eventual day-of-reckoning (which is so coming, she’s the most useless property manager in the history of Western civilisation)

Of course it’s entirely possible that my pipe problem is some kind of ploy in the on-going war between the floors, as I like to call the dispute between the various residents groups here at the Gables. There’s some kind of long-running fued going on you see, something to do with drains and pipes and rates and things, and the entire building (or at least those residents with lives sufficiently devoid of meaning to take any notice) is split between two factions, the individual ideologies of which completely escape me. This dispute has lead to a number of ridiculous incidents, including sending two plumbers and two lawyers around to each apartment to inspect the pipes, and a remarkably fast turnover in caretakers.

My theory is the entire conflict has been engineered by the residents of Floor 10 – wealthy, bored pensioners manipulating the rest of the residents like pawns in a complicated power play aimed at giving their fading lives some kind of meaning. There’s probably a common room up there holding a large, 3D model of the building complete with little counters and flags that they move around to represent the units and floors they control while gloating at each other like deranged monopoly players. The plumbers and lawyers incident was obviously a major coup by one of them, presumably inconveniencing their faction slightly less than the rest of us. Or at least that’s what I like to think. Blaming inconviniences on sinister conspiracies as opposed to ordinary human incompetance makes life far more exciting πŸ™‚

(They were flashing signal lights from floor to floor last night. Or at least one of the Floor 10s changed their balcony light to a red bulb, while a Floor 8 changed theirs to yellow. You can’t tell me that doesn’t signify something! πŸ˜‰

Anyway, yes I’m listening to the JJJ Hottest Box at the moment, which I blew $175 odd on yesterday. A nine CD box set of some of the best music from the last ten years of the Triple J Hottest 100. Round about 130 songs all up almost all of which I like, so I’m pretty happy. It’s actually a limited edition individually numbered collectors item too, which sounds great except my one is numbered 03821, suggesting there are 10,000 of them which is hardly limited edition in my opinion. Oh well, it means I have less stuff to download of Kaazaa anyway πŸ˜‰

So, of course, what have I been up to. Not a terrible lot. I’ve been up at Fabian’s a bit preparing for a new AD&D campaign he’s setting up with the third edition rules. We rolled up characters the other week, I went a cleric (‘even though I don’t know what that is!’ sorry, private joke πŸ™‚ as I usually do – since no-one else ever wants to play them – but was unfortunate enough to roll a 6 for one of my stats. After a lot of heming and hawing I did the traditional thing and stuck it into charisma. There’s room for a character portrait on the third edition character sheets, so I then amused myself by sketching up a suitiably unpleasant picture – my cleric (‘Mithras the Pallid’ as I decided to call him πŸ™‚ apparently bears a remarkable similarity to Max Schreck in Nosferatu πŸ™‚

Apart from that I haven’t been up to much. Apart from checking my referer logs. The lastest amusing searches include…

sexually ambiguous terminology football – Because I seldom write about anything else!

Inbred Myths about West Virginia – Well I did hear about a bat winged, horse faced child being born just outside of Charleston in 1823, but I don’t beleive it personally.

spray painting robotics video clip – I cannot imagine why I would come up for this!

“cliffords tower” opening hours price – 11:35 PM to 12:00 PM every Candlemass. Admission: Any silver coin from the reign of James II of Scotland.

“frank sanatra” – Ah! The Japanese Karaoke singer!

particle board wanted – But real wood sadly remains alone.

antihistime for running nose – Easy fixed! Just place your nose against the screen here and sniff!

“Sodom and gomorrah” artwork – Because a tasteful painting of God wrathfully smiting the evil Sodomites with fire and brimstone is just the thing to complete the den!

effects inbreeding “pitcairn island” – I seem to be getting a reputation for this kind of thing…

the importance of mardi gra masks – The what!?!

It just gets stranger and stranger doesn’t it? πŸ™‚

Well I’m going now. Expect updates a bit more regularly for, oh say the next week or so. Then I’ll go back to intermittant rants like the lazy recidivist I am πŸ™‚

Woo! Cows with Guns! #We will fight for Bovine freedom! And hold our large heads high!..

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