Dave Slusher over on Evil Genius Chronicles is calling for a boycott of Sony Music after it came to light that their CDs install a rootkit on Windows PCs. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Here in South Africa car theft is a big problem so every parking lot has car guards. Some are uniformed and employed by malls while others are unemployed people who work daily for an organisation that issues them with a vest carrying the information that they are car guards. They pay a token fee to use this for the day and then get to keep the tips that motorists give them. I have no problem with this and always try to give them a reasonable tip, although I sometimes wonder whether they could actually stop someone from stealing a car.
What really bugs me is that when it comes time to reverse out of the parking bay, they feel that they must direct me. Now, in order to get a driver’s licence one must be able to do this unaided so I don’t need any help. They always seem to stand right behind your car and in effect only add another variable to the problem of reversing out. Instead of only having to worry about hitting the cars on either side and watching out for cars approaching down the lane, you must also watch out that you don’t run over the idiot standing behind you waving his arms.
I just received a spam e-mail from someone calling himself (or herself) Maltreatment U. Homburgs. I thought this a rather grand-sounding name and have decided that in the unlikely event that I write a novel, I shall adopt it as my pen name.
Originally posted by taminator
Over the weekend I came across the idea of camera tossing and gave it a try. It produces pleasing abstract images suitable for use as wallpapers, backgrounds or in some cases even good to frame as modern art prints.
The image below, the very first one I took, was blogged on the camera toss blog.
Some of my colleagues seem incapable of understanding that those already in the kitchen, waiting to use the espresso machine when they arrive, should be allowed to use it first. Or perhaps they’re just rude.
Anyway here is a link to some information on queue areas.
This morning I took the first step in the long road to getting my body into a reasonable state of health. I got up at 5am and went for a ride on my bike, down along the beach front. I did just under 9km and was feeling pretty knackered doing the last 2km back home. Still, considering I haven’t ridden since last summer, and then only once or twice, it wasn’t too bad. Now I just need to keep it up, and cut back on my food intake and my weight should slowly start dropping towards what it should be, but that is a long, long way off.
I have memories of working for a bank where we never saw any cleaning staff because they came in at night. Sadly this can’t be said for the office I work in now. We have a cleaning woman who cleans the offices once a week, while we are trying to work in them. She doesn’t ask if you mind stepping away from your desk for a minute so she can clean it, which would be a time to get some coffee, but simply starts cleaning around you. Perhaps it’s just me but I have trouble trying to concentrate on my work while someone is moving things around on my desk. I think that the worst thing about this is that she sings tunelessly while she cleans. For some reason the sound of this singing drives me nuts and I feel like shaking her and yelling SHUT UP!
This is the sunset I saw from my backyard two evenings ago.
It has just struck me that comparisons are likely to be drawn between disasters caused by the December 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Strangely enough I have not yet seen any cases of anyone else doing so. I have seen somewhere a mention of 10,000 deaths from Katrina, which is far less than the tool from the tsunami, yet I see Katrina as the greater tragedy for humankind. I don’t mean this in a callous way and have nothing but sorrow and sympathy for the victims of both disasters. What strikes me is that many of the media reports and blog entries I have seen about Katrina are telling stories of people turning on one another, while I do not recall even one such report during the aftermath of the tsunami. What conclusions can be drawn from this? What might the causes be? Can this be attributed to differences in culture or religious background? I don’t know, but I will be interested to see if others start thinking along these lines.
craniac's place 