Wyrmlog – Page 102 – Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings

I’ma to stupid too think for maself!

Google is ruining everything!

I haven’t been posting much, or answering emails or anything lately because work has been hellish. It should calm down after today though. I hope.

On the subject of work we got a call this morning from a woman who’d placed an order on one of our affiliated florist websites. She was extremely upset as she’d placed the order for delivery on Sunday, but the confirmation email came back to her saying that it would be delivered on Monday (as the florist involved doesn’t deliver on Sundays).

After calming her down some we got the full story. She typed “perth florists that deliver on Sunday” (or something similar) into Google. Our site came up number one, so she put her order through – apparently missing the numerous large notices all over the bloody site saying that we don’t deliver on Sundays. The very notices that got the site ranked so high on Google for “deliver on Sundays”!

Apparently reading or even basic intelligence isn’t required for living any more – you just type your concerns into Google and throw money at the first site returned. Sheeze!!

I would be quite the fool…

…an April fool in fact.

My April Fools gag this year is “rather subtle”.

See if you can “spot” it…

Skelator Close Horses

Skeletal clothes horses perhaps?

From a comment on WA Today…

His talents are unmatchable against a mojority of the pathetic excuses for actors and skelator close horses labeled as “actresses”.

Skelator Close Horses!? Now there’s a name for a band if I ever heard one!

SPISPOPD

We can’t stop here, this is mondegreen country…

While we’re on the subject of Disarm, I discovered the other day that the song does not go…

…bitterness, the one whose laugh I loathe…

and in fact goes

…bitterness, the one who’s left alone…

Billy Corgan is clearly nowhere near the songwriter that I imagined him to be

Soundalikes

PAY FOR THE BLOODY SONG!

There are two ads that are really annoying me at the moment. Not because of the products they’re advertising (although car ads, as these are, annoy me anyway), and not because of the inane claims they make about said cars (because you really need a racing pedigree engine to run down to the shops), but because of their music.

Both adds use absolutely blatent soundalikes.

A soundalike is what you get when an advertising executive decides they want to use a particular song in their ad but are refused permission by the artist, or simply don’t want to pay for the rights. So they hire some poor schlob to write and record a song that’s close enough to the orignal to sound like it while being just different enough to avoid lawsuits.

Basically it’s a legal way of bastardising a song for commercial purposes.

The songs ripped off in these two ads are Disarm by the Smashing Pumpkins, and Packing Blankets by the Eels. Disarm – being a fine example of the Pumpkins’ bleak milieu – may seem like an odd choice for advertising anything apart from selective seretonin reuptake inhibitors, but they’ve ripped off the power chords and matched them with moody shots of their pestilential vehicle while a serious voice over person makes pretentious statements about how seriously awesome it is. The Packing Blankets add is full of shots of happy families driving to the beach and having picnics and things, with the car front and centre in each shot.

Both ads drive me to distraction. I find myself yelling “PAY FOR THE BLOODY SONG YOU BASTARDS!” at the TV every time they come on.

It’s my problem. I’ll have to deal with it.

Later: OK, the ad that rips off the Eels is actually for a land development up at Alkimos. Shows how well it held my attention doesn’t it?

A Yelp of Protest

Anti-virus programs are really just a conspiracy anyway… ;D

When I bought my new computer about a year ago it came (as is normal) with an anti-virus program installed – specifically BitDefender. Although I wasn’t familiar with this particular AV I decided to go with it, since I’d already paid for it and all and I’m a lazy bastard who couldn’t be bothered changing to something else.

As a BitDefender customer over the last year I have not been overly impressed. I mean, it worked – I haven’t (as far as I know) been infected with anything – but I was not filled with confidence. The program was always really slow to respond (you click to open it and have to wait for twenty seconds) and would crash completely out of the blue on a regular basis. But I stuck with it, for both the reasons above and because I don’t *need* a fantastically effective internet security suite as I run a pretty tight ship – I don’t download random programs, I surf with Javascript and Java switched off, I keep my OS and browser updated, I avoid dodgy sites, I don’t do social networking, I can recognise the difference between http and https and I scan all my email up on the server before downloading. On occasion I even boot into Ubuntu and scan my drives with ClamAV. I mean, I’m not immune to attack by any means, but I am tougher nut to crack than the average pleb.

So this week my BitDefender license expired. After considering switching to another program I decided it was simplest to renew it. I thought the renewal process might even fix some of the issues with speed and stability. So, off to the BitDefender site I went.

I put all my info in, chose PayPal as my payment method and submitted…

The site crashed.

Great. That’s really reassuring guys.

I decided to be charitable and assume there was problem with their PayPal integration (PayPal integration *is* a major pain). I reloaded the site in a fresh window, re-entered my data and chose to pay by credit card. I submitted, and the site crashed with exactly the same cryptic error message.

Two strikes, and out! Frack’em.

I’ve uninstalled BitDefender and am currently downloading a different AV program – one I’ve used in the past and had no problems with. Stick with what you know people!

PS: No Alice on Coast the other night. Boo!

Listen and Learn

I’m talkin’ to you baby! I’m talkin’ to you sugar!

All you people listenin’ tonight! Yes I’m that preacher everybody’s talking about! I’m Doctor Williams givin’ out them red hot lessons, ten dollars, New York and New Jersey every week, all the way down the east coast! From Boston clean down to Atlanta Georgia last week! I told down the east coast!

Do somethin’ to help you, do somethin’ to help yourself!

Come get your mojo hey! Go down Atlantic City and be a winner! Go down to Atlantic City come back fat as a rat! Why should you be a loser when you can be a winner? Yes ma’am, yes sir!

Brooklyn New York! Brooklyn New York! Get ready! Doctor Williams will be in Brooklyn New York, tomorrow evening, Monday evening, 6 pm until 8 pm. I’m talkin’ to the hot red hot big money blessing straight! And you be there 6 o’clock tomorrow evening!

Bronx New York! Get on the telephone and call 50 of your friends! Tell all your friends who need some help! Doctor Williams is comin’ to the Bronx New York! Doctor Williams is comin’ to the Bronx New York!

Doctor Williams will be in the Bronx New York with a straight, straight hot! Hot hot hot hot! Red hot! Big money blessing! Can’t nobody can stop me! Not even the dead in hell can’t stop me!

I’ll get ready to leave tonight! I want you to know, I love you! I’m talkin’ to you baby! I’m talkin’ to you sugar! Listen, Doctor William’s car comin’ down man! I love you! I love you!

I have a special phone number, where you can call me, so that I can send you a special gift…

(Listen)

A Musical Cornucopia

Doing what every sane person did years ago

Caught up with Fabes and Juan over the weekend. We got the last of the boards flocked and had a quick scratch-up game of 40k. Fabes totally kicked my arse again – this time in two rounds – but that’s cool because I wasn’t actually trying to win. I was actually using the game to test some different strategies and gathered some very interesting data for further consideration…

(Fabes may think I’m just saying that after the fact to excuse my execrable performance, but I said as much to Juan before the game began, so there! :))

I’ve also started work on another project. While hanging around at Fabes’ place it occurred to me that I haven’t actually sat down and listened to a CD in ages. In years in fact. I listen to plenty of music, but it’s all via iTunes on my computer. I’ve got a couple of two metre tall IKEA racks full of CDs that I never touch, and I desperately need somewhere to store all the 40k models I’ve been buying. The solution is obvious – pack all the CDs up in a cupboard somewhere, and use the racks to hold my army. Brilliant!

So how is that a project you ask? It’s simple, I’ve got to go through and rip all the CDs before I put them away.

You see, I’ve never properly ripped most of them. When I first started listening to music on my computer I was cursed with a small hard drive, and a highly tempermental CD drive, which meant I could only afford to rip the songs I really liked at comparatively low quality to save space – and I usually had to rip them multiple times to get versions without annoying drop outs. In the end about 10% of my music collection actually ended up on my computer.

But now I have a huge hard drive and a CD/DVD drive that reliably rips tracks at close to the speed of light (or so it seems compared to my old machine). So I’m going to go through every single CD I own and get it ripped, imported and organised at high quality. It’ll be a marvellous cornucopia of music! And I’ll have somewhere to keep my Valhallans. Everybody wins!

Yeah, that’s really all I’ve got to say

(Watch this)

Drug of a Nation

Teaching myself to Cyclops Rock

I watch way too much TV.

I’ve been saying this for years but it finally came home to me the other day how much time I waste staring at the idiot’s lantern. Nothing in particular prompted this – apart from realising that despite the huge number of channels now available (hey, I grew up with only 9, 7, 10 and the ABC) there’s even less actually worth watching – but I’ve nonetheless decided to do something about it.

Observe, if you will, this…

There we have it – an entire week’s worth of potential viewing marked (in red) with the only things I am really not prepared to miss. Four and a half (five if you include QI which is a special case…) hours of watchable TV over the space of five days. Wow. And look at Wednesday! There’s nothing! Incredible!

So, I’m going to do my best to resist turning on the box in between those times. Sure, I’ll probably watch Catalyst on Thursdays because it’s interesting and fills in a gap between two red zones, and I may treat myself to some Hitler oriented documentaries on SBS on Friday nights, but other than that I’ll be cutting my diet way down. Of course, I’ll probably waste the saved time looking at amusing cat videos on YouTube, but that’s gotta be better than repeats of According to Jim, right?

Right?

Next step – charting out the weekends. Off the top of my head the only thing I can think of that’s vital is the new series of The Amazing Race. Other than that I can’t think of a single show…

Later: Oh wait! There’s that History of Scotland show on Sunday night. Hoots mon!