Posted by gus on May 30, 2007 in
humour,
musings,
procrastination Some units of measurement you rarely see:
2000 mockingbirds: 2 kilomockingbirds
Ratio of an igloo’s circumference to its diameter: Eskimo Pi
2000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton
Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement: 1 bananosecond
Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon
1000 aches: 1 megahurtz
Basic unit of laryngitis: 1 hoarsepower
Shortest distance between two jokes: A straight line
1 million-million microphones: 1 megaphone
1 million bicycles: 2 megacycles
10 cards: 1 decacards
Force of 1 kilogram of falling figs: 1 Fig Newton
1000 grams of wet socks: 1 literhosen
1 millionth of a fish: 1 microfiche
1 trillion pins: 1 terrapin
10 rations: 1 decoration
100 rations: 1 C-ration
8 nickels: 2 paradigms
Posted by gus on May 29, 2007 in
cars,
long ones,
musings (I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while, and just never got around to finishing it)
Recently, I attended a driver improvement course in Hatfield. The reason for this was that I had a car accident back at the end of last December where I hit a car from behind on an icy morning after being distracted by a group of cars making illegal U-turns in the middle of a busy single carriageway.
As you might be able to tell, I have an attitude of severe cynicism towards the whole thing. It was apparently no accident that I hit this car, it was a “collision” - there is no such thing as an accident any more, according to the police, because there is always blame involved. It is fairly safe to say that I do not like the police, and especially not their attitude to this whole affair.
Anyway, about a month after the accident, when I had my new car, the police wrote to me to say that they were contemplating taking further action as a result of the accident. This pissed me off - they had already charged me £105 for the “privilege” of having my car towed when it didn’t need to be, and now the bastards were actually giving consideration to taking legal action against me for a simple accident that happened on an icy morning - no thought given to the mitigating circumstances I detailed in my statement or anything.
I forgot about the letter until a few weeks afterwards when I received a letter saying that they were “offering me a driver improvement course as an alternative to prosecution”. Essentially, they were saying “pay for a £160 course or we might take you to court - what you gonna do?”
At first, I thought the whole thing was a big con. I was tempted just not to pay and basically say “bring it on - what sort of case have you got against me?”. As time wore on though, I ended up with a whole load of reasons to actually pay the money and go on the course. If they did take me to court and I lost, I’d not only be saddled with far more than £160 in expenses, but I might also end up with 6 points on my licence. That really isn’t good news at 22.
After much deliberating, I decided to pay the money and go on the course. I deliberately left arranging it and paying for it right until the last minute, because I wanted time to save up the money, and I paid by cheque just to give me the maximum possible interest I could get on the money before handing it over.
The course lasted one and a half days - a Friday, and a Saturday morning. This wasn’t too bad considering that I only live 15-20 minutes drive from the place it was held (a hotel in Hatfield) and I actually found the whole course to be quite interesting. There were some humourous parts to keep you interested in what they were saying, but there was a lot of real content as well that was good to learn, and did change your overall attitude to accidents and driving. I’d been very cynical before I went, and I left with a changed mentality towards the whole situation.
The best part of the course was actually going out on the road with a Gold-standard advanced driver. He knew exactly what he was doing on the road and really made an effort to point out things that I did wrong. He said my driving was very good on the whole and only picked out that I got too close to people in traffic - “tyres on tarmac” was the key point to bear in mind. Obviously, you drive a bit differently when it’s a strange car (this was a diesel, and I don’t have much experience driving them) and when you’re almost being examined but I was fairly relaxed, and the instructor (Roy) was a top bloke who had a great sense of humour and a brilliant method of teaching.
Overall, I think the course was worth my time and the money. It certainly beats getting prosecuted, and I think it’s taught me some things which I will bear in mind in the future. I’m thinking about doing advanced driver training now, but I’m not sure whether I really want someone being that critical about my driving or not!
Posted by gus on May 24, 2007 in
humour,
musings,
procrastination Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.
Now it gets really weird.
Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy’s Secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.
Now hang on to your seat.
Lincoln was shot at the theater named ‘Ford.’
Kennedy was shot in a car called ‘ Lincoln’ made by ‘Ford.’
Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a
warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a
theater.
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
And here’s the kicker…
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.
Posted by gus on May 22, 2007 in
humour The following questions and answers were collected from last year’s GCSE Exam results in Swindon, Wiltshire. They are genuine responses (from 16 year olds!)
Geography
Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutant like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.
Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.
Q: What causes the tides in the oceans?
A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and Nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.
Sociology
Q: What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on?
A: If you are buying a house, they will insist you are well endowed.
Q: In a democratic society, how important are elections?
A: Very important. Sex can only happen when a male gets an election.
Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.
Biology
Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.
Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says goodbye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.
Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.
A: Premature death.
Q: What is artificial insemination?
A: When the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull.
Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow. [He got an A]
Q: How are the main parts of the body categorised? (e.g. Abdomen)
A: The body is consisted into three parts - the brainium, the borax, the abdominal cavity. The branium contains the brain, the borax contains the Heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels, A, E, I, O and U.
Q: What is the Fibula?
A: A small lie.
Q: What does “varicose” mean?
A: Nearby.
Q: What is the most common form of birth control?
A: Most people prevent contraception by wearing a condominium.
Q: Give the meaning of the term “Caesarean Section.”
A: The caesarean section is a district in Rome.
Q: What is a seizure?
A: A Roman emperor.
Q: What is a terminal illness?
A: When you are sick at the airport.
Q: Give an example of a fungus. What is a characteristic feature?
A: Mushrooms. They always grow in damp places and they look like umbrellas.
English
Q: Use the word “judicious” in a sentence to show you understand its meaning.
A: Hands that judicious can be soft as your face.
Q: What does the word “benign” mean?
A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight.
Posted by gus on May 21, 2007 in
geekery,
humour I do like lolcats.
If you’re new to this interweb lark, and you want to know why that’s funny… give this a try.
My personal favourite at the moment -> this one
I am now running Wordpress 2.2. This makes no difference to most people who read this as they do it via RSS, but there’s a few nice cosmetic changes in it. I need to find a template that’ll work with the sidebar widgets though, as they look like they could be quite nice.
I’ve been meaning to write about the Driver Improvement Course that I did recently, but I haven’t had the time inclination to do so just yet. I’ve got the draft saved in here and it just needs to be added to, but I am on an “IBE* week” at work this week and need to dedicate my time to that instead.
* The IBE is our new work project which needs finishing. Hopefully when it’s done, it’ll be gooooood.
Posted by gus on May 17, 2007 in
humour,
musings Here are the winners of the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational, which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
The 2006 winners are:
1. Cashtration: The act of buying (or building) a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize that it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
12. Karmageddon: It’s when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes and it’s a serious bummer.
13. Decafalon: The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
14. Glibido: All talk and no action.
15. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
16. Arachnoleptic Fit: The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
17. Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
18. Caterpallor: The colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
The winners are:
1. Coffee (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.) appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-Nilly (adj.) impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.) absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.) to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.) olive-flavoured mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.) a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n.) a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.) the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
Posted by gus on May 15, 2007 in
computers,
geekery,
linux,
musings I’ve had a combination of good and bad experiences with Linux over the past two weeks that I’ve been using it as my main operating system, and I thought I’d share those thoughts with you in the forms of pros and cons.
Pros:
- Amarok is brilliant as a music organiser/player. Much better and more responsive than iTunes, and the cover manager is just *awesome*. It can auto-get the covers from Amazon and update your files for you.
- Kate is a very good text editor.
- Konqueror doesn’t impress me much as a web browser, but as a file manager it’s very good, and “remote places” is a great idea. I have Firefox for Internet anyway so I can’t complain. It also has proper Bluetooth support, which is something that I had on Windows with the WIDCOMM stack on XP SP1, but couldn’t get on SP2. Sending/receiving files one at a time is useless.
- The KDE “wallet” (which stores all your passwords and usernames under one master password) is brilliant. It’s just the right amount of security for me.
- I ran out of space on my / partition yesterday (as it was only 11gb, it was bound to happen sooner or later), but all I had to do to fix the problem was repartition a drive, format the partitions, mount them up, copy the data, then dismount and remount them at the correct mount points. I did all this while the system carried on running and didn’t have to restart once. Try doing THAT on Windows!
- You can run many Windows applications on Linux. So far I have tried mIRC, DC++, World of Warcraft, Steam and Counter-Strike Source. I’ve been trying to get Age of Empires going as well, but I need to convert the CD Image from .mds format to .iso.
- You can restart the GUI (the X server/KDM) without having to restart the PC. That is very useful for so many reasons. Also, when you log out of KDE, it saves your session so that most of your applications start again and go back to where they were when you sign back in.
Cons:
- Some things still feel like they’re “in development” and don’t work quite as it seems they should. I mean things like when you click “Administrator Mode” in the system settings, and it increases the size of all my fonts. Although having just written this… I think I may know why this is (having never logged in as root, I have never modified the font size for the root user whereas I have for “gus”)
- My main bugbear is that there seems to be no proper Remote Desktop (RDP) server available for Linux. One of the few things I really liked about Windows was the fact that RDP would dynamically size your desktop to be the same as the monitor you were on, it passed most key combinations (like the Start button on the keyboard) through to the remote session, connected disk drives, printers and ports to the local and remote computers if you requested it to, and most of all, passed any sound played on the remote computer over the Internet connection and to your local PC. That was insanely useful for listening to music at work as I could just start iTunes/Winamp at home and listen.
I really can’t think of much else to say which is that bad. There are so many nice things about the OS. I’ve only restarted three times, and I think that will decrease as I learn more. They say you should never have to restart Linux entirely.
Posted by gus on May 10, 2007 in
cars,
long ones,
musings,
rants This is quite a long story, but I’m in the mood for exercising my writing fingers.
My best friend Matt lives in Baldock, which is a small town about 6 miles away from Hitchin, where I live. He moved into a one-bedroom flat at the end of last year with his long-term girlfriend Jo. Parking is fairly tight in Baldock as it’s a fairly old town which has had to expand to cope with the amount of cars there are on modern roads, and as such it is quite difficult to find a space, much less one where you can leave your car for an extended period of time. For this reason, the landlord of the flats Matt lives employs a private wheel clamping company, who come and check the car park every so often for cars without passes and clamp them as a deterrent.
About two months ago, I went to visit Matt on a Saturday to drop some games off to him and have a quick chat. I parked my car in the loading bay outside the front door, and went into his flat to speak to him. When I came back out twenty minutes later, there was a big yellow clamp on the driver’s side front wheel of my car. It’s worth pointing out that this was March, and when he moved in last November, the landlord who owns the flats was “between clamping companies”, which meant that parking in the area went unchecked, and therefore to see a clamper actually around was something of a shock. I looked at the clamp in astonishment, and then walked past my car and out into the courtyard. I saw an unfamiliar-looking old white van, and a guy in tracksuit bottoms lying on the floor next to a Mazda MX-5, applying another clamp.
Me: “Hey, mate - why have you clamped my car?”
Him: “You don’t have a pass, mate”
Me: “I don’t need one - I was in the loading bay. I’ve only been here 20 minutes”
Him: “Well I’ve been here 10, and you were there when I came”
Me: “…so that would imply that I have actually been here more than 10 minutes then, possibly the 20 minutes I just said I had, then?”
Him: “Errrrrrr”
Suffice it to say, he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Me: “So are you going to unclamp my car then?”
Him: “I can’t do that.”
Me: “Why not?”
Him: “I don’t have the key.”
Me: “Right. So how do people get unclamped, then?”
Him: “They pay the release fee. £105.75″
I laughed at him, and walked off. After a quick conversation with Matt, we decided that the best thing to do would be to ring the landlord, who had obviously not notified the clamping company that loading bays were present in the car park - they just assumed all spaces were the same, and “no pass equals clamp”. The landlord wasn’t answering the phone however, so I called the 0845 number on the large sticker that had been clumsily stuck on my car window. A guy who was quite clearly on his mobile phone answered, and even after I explained the situation, he informed me that the only way to get released was to pay the release fee, and then appeal against it if I thought that it was unjust. I laughed at him as well, and hung up the phone.
About an hour passed, and the clamper showed back up in his van. I grabbed the notice board from the foyer of the flats, which contains a parking plan and clearly marks the loading bays, and took it out to show him.
Me: *patronising tone* “Would you agree that this is a plan of this car park?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Would you agree that that blob there *points at paper* is clearly that building there *points at Matt’s block*?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Would you agree that this bay here, marked “LB” is the bay where my car, that silver Seat Ibiza with the clamp on, is parked?”
Him: “Yes, I would.”
Me: “OK. Would you agree that, according to the legend on this parking plan, LB means ‘loading bay’?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Right. So would you agree that my car is actually parked in a loading bay and not a regular parking space, and you have clamped it wrongly?”
Him: “Yes, I would.”
Me: “Would you care to explain why you won’t remove it then?”
Him: “Oh, I don’t have the authority to do that.”
This was unbelievable. Here I was, showing him concrete evidence that I was in the right and he was in the wrong, and yet he still wouldn’t take the clamp off. I explained that we’d tried to call the landlord but he wasn’t answering the phone, and his response was basically that I’d have to pay the £105 release fee if I wanted my car back.
At about 4pm (my car was originally clamped at around 12:30pm) I needed to go home to do things, and so I called the company and grumpily asked them to send round the guy who takes payment. Imagine my [sarcasm]total surprise[/sarcasm] when the same guy who clamped my car in the first place showed back up in his van. He produced a chip and PIN machine and took payment from me, gave me a receipt and a complaint form, and then pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the clamp. When I saw him pull out the keys, I laughed, and watched like a hawk while he removed the clamp to make sure he didn’t scuff my alloys.
That was pretty bad luck on my part, and I was rather annoyed at the situation. The story doesn’t stop there, though.
The landlord called Matt back on Monday. He said that he was sorry but he finished at 1 on Saturdays, and therefore he’d returned his call as soon as he got back to work. Matt explained the whole story to him, and said that as a resident, he was very displeased with the way the clampers went about their business. The landlord promised he would speak to the clampers and look into it. A couple of weeks later, he called Matt back to say that I was due a refund, and that I should speak to the clampers to sort it out. I called the company and they said that they’d agreed to pay half the money, while the landlord paid the other half. I said I didn’t care who paid provided I got every penny of my money back, because I shouldn’t have been charged it in the first place. I gave them my name and address and they said they’d send out a cheque once the director who signs the cheques got back from holiday.
I’ll cut the story down here because it’s getting a bit boring, but I called the clamping company nine times before I eventually got the cheque out of them. Every time I was told “oh it’s in the post”, “it’s been sent to you”, “oh for fuck’s sake it must have been lost in the post, I’ll get another one out to you”, “my director’s still on holiday”, “my director’s not been in yet” etc etc. Considering the usual attitude I have to being fed a load of bullshit, I was very restrained and only lost my temper with the guy on the other end of the phone once. The rest of the time I just made sure I was a persistent thorn in their side who wouldn’t go away.
Every time I called, I got the same guy, and he told me the same lies. The last time I called, I got someone different, who was apparently one of the directors, and the guy who signs the cheques. He told me that the cheque had been signed and “sent out to you yesterday”, and when I said that I didn’t believe him because I’d been told that before, he said that he’d signed the cheque personally and it had been sent, and there was nothing more to it. At that point, the guy I usually spoke to walked back into the office, and I heard the director say “I’ve got Mr. Luxton on the phone about his refund”. The usual guy replied “Oh yeah, that cheque you signed is on my desk”. At this point, I erupted into laughter at the fact that they had been so obviously caught out lying to me. In the end, they didn’t post the cheque at all - I suggested that if they had a guy going out to Matt’s area that day then they should drop it in his letterbox for me, and conveniently enough they had. Matt rang me that evening (last Friday, in fact) to confirm that there was a cheque payable to me sitting in his mailbox, for £105.75. Hallelujah.
I have written this post because I am simply overjoyed that they have finally paid me. I am still waiting for the cheque to clear, but I have cleared the majority of the hurdles. I can’t be the only one who thinks that it is total and utter bollocks that I’ve had to wait this long for a refund on money I should never have had to pay in the first place. They have claimed interest on my money for nearly two months as a result of this, and while that probably isn’t a massive amount of money, it’s the principle.
The name of the original clamper was Matthew Betts. The guy I spoke to in the office on all these occasions was called Danny. The company are called SIA Security Services, they are based in Bedford, and they are a complete and utter bunch of fucking wankers - you can quote me on that. It’s not libel because it’s true. I never want to see or hear from them again. Ever.
