Category: Life
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Democracy: Too important to be left to the people
There was a report in the newspaper recently on a bridge in Slovakia being named after Chuck Norris. Apparently local officials had put it to a popular vote, and (at the time of writing) 74% of people had voted to call it the Chuck Norris Bridge, outvoting a local historical figure by a huge margin. On the face of it, this is all highly amusing, but it does emphasize my point that people should not be allowed to vote – on anything – because they’ll just take the piss, or screw it up. Seriously, it happens every time you let… Read more
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Microsoft: The Phisher King
This morning I got an email telling me that my 14-day free trial to Zune Music Pass is ending, and I will automatically be signed up for the monthly service at a cost of $9.99 per month, unless I cancel. It also handily provides a link for me to go online and confirm my account and payment details. I’ve never signed up, so figure that this is just a phishing attack, and am about to delete and ignore, but Zune is a Microsoft product an my eldest has an Xbox which is also Microsoft’s, so making a short mental leap,… Read more
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Who’s got my back?
Recently I’ve been enjoying my new-found status as a single person. It’s truly liberating to not have to think about what your ‘significant other’ wants to do, or thinks, or might react to what you want to do, or think. Sure, there are some elements of a stable relationship (with someone stable) that I miss, but not necessarily enough to jump back into it all again. I have a good friend who has been navigating a new relationship recently, and watching them deal with the misunderstandings, the personal neuroses, and the baggage that a prospective partner comes with, has made… Read more
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Fire Eyed Boy
A couple of weeks ago I took delivery of my latest toy – a Kindle Fire. I’d been eyeing Kindles for a while, and the combination of an ‘expanded functionality’ e-reader (I don’t know that I’d call it a full tablet PC) and a price point of $199.00 (and me having $199.00 worth of Amex Membership Rewards points to spare, for a net cost of zero) made the Kindle Fire an interesting proposition. It’s not really a ‘true’ Kindle in that it doesn’t use e-ink (which was really the main selling point of Kindles) but the screen is of a… Read more
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Evacuation Desperation
At work, we are in the middle of a critical (to me…) stage in the project – training development. It’s now the training team’s time to shine, and because all of the prior activities (build, data loading, testing) have over-run their time, we’re being really squeezed on how much time we have left to deliver everything they made us promise we would have done by now. So it’s long hours, unrealistic deadlines, and frayed tempers. Luckily this is all old hat to a seasoned project resource such as myself, so this is the perfect time to put into play the… Read more