Monday, May 14, 2012

Knots in the family tree

Have a read of this little gem.

As far as I can figure out, if the kids got married:

  • the baby’s grandmother will also be his mother
  • his stepfather will also be his father, and
  • his stepmother will also be his half-sister.
I say go for it, if only just to have something to talk about at barbies.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

TGIF

Shitful day at work, dealt with a variety of bullshit that is NOT my problem, but got stuck with it anyway.

Equally shitful drive home through totally unnecessary roadworks and a cluster of morons who are either cruising at 85 on the freeway weaving back and forth between two lanes, or think the place is their private cannonball run.

Two exits from home someone's precious little snowflake and leader of tomorrow thinks it's fucking hilarious to be egging cars from the pedestrian bridge over the freeway.  I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't a brick.  15 minute diversion to the carwash to get the crap off because I can't leave it until morning - the paint is ageing disgracefully but I'd prefer it as is thanks.  Briefly toyed with the idea of calling the cops but couldn't be bothered, because the cops wouldn't catch them and precisely nothing would happen if they did.  Satisfied myself with calling the radio station and telling them that anyone listening had my full and complete permission to beat seven colour of shit out of them if they happened to be in the area.  I can dream.

Get home and the handbrake is freaking because the cat isn't home, but can be heard making distressed cries from a few yards over.  It's 00:15hrs, brilliant time to be prowling around in people's yard with a torch, good way to get yourself shot, and there's going to be no way to carry the bastard home if I can find him, because when a nervy 6kg cat decides he's leaving it's like holding onto a running chainsaw by the business end.

After sneaking around in 3 yards I give up because anything further means ringing doorbells and it's now 00:35hrs, which is a bit much really.  Go back to the yard for a recce because he at least replies when he hears my voice, and I still reckon he's in one of the two yards I have already been through fairly thoroughly.

Finally discovered the furry little sod on the second storey roof of the house diagonally behind us, not distressed in the slightest, just talking back and enjoying his death-from-above view of things.  Couldn't pinpoint him from sound because of the fences and brickwork, but cat eyes will reflect damn near anything.  Once he learned I could see him, he happily got down and zipped along the fence back into his own yard, stuffed his face, and is currently asleep on the bed.

Fucking cat.

Where's the shiraz, I'm getting blasted.

Friday, May 11, 2012

News of the morning

I see Moany Tony want all preschoolers to learn a second language.  An excellent idea, might I suggest English as the language of choice?

Also in breaking news, I see Tony also doesn't like the federal budget.



Slightly more back to the real world, the poor beleagured smokers of the world are now whining that they are being excluded from applying for some jobs, presumably on the basis that the potential employers would rather not have someone taking numerous smoke breaks to kill themselves with cancer while on company time.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, smokers have a problem with that, but that's OK because nobody else gives a flying fuck about their wish to slowly rot themselves to death with poisonous chemicals.

Acting Victorian Equal Opportunity Commissioner Karen Toohey said job advertisements must not discriminate.  "Stipulating smokers need not apply for a job may be against the law."

Sorry, Kazza - you might want to recheck the definition of illegal discrimination, which is discrimination on the grounds of "age, colour, creed, disability, family status, gender, nationality, marital status, parental status, political opinion/affiliation, pregnancy or potential pregnancy, race or social origin, religious beliefs/activity, responsibilities, sex, responsibilities, or sexual orientation".

I think most people would agree it's OK to discriminate against hiring a heroin addict, for instance.  I don't see anything in the definition above that says you're required to hire someone that voluntarily carries on an addictive practice that requires them to absent themselves from work to poison themselves, affects their performance when they are jonesing for their next hit, affects their performance after it, creates objectionable smells and odours for co-workers, leaves toxic waste behind that other people need to avoid and someone else needs to clean up, and slowly rots the addict to death from the inside out.

Oh sorry, I forgot about heroin.  I was talking about tobacco addicts.  Yeah, that's OK, because it's socially acceptable and legal!  Yeah, that's totally discrimination if you don't hire a smoker.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Your Wednesday bullshit of the morning

News of the morning is this little gem, a real charmer who attempted to murder his wife's younger sister because she dared take the wife to the beach.

The court heard, because of his religious beliefs and because he thought he had absolute authority over her, Belghar felt it "abhorrent" that his wife, Hanife Kokden, had been to the beach where she "displayed her body".

Gee, sport - the last time I looked this was Australia, and by living here you agreed to abide by Australian law.  If you want to treat your wife like a repressed lower form of life behind closed doors then unfortunately there isn't much that can be done about it, but you bloody well should be accountable to local law, under local law, if you breach the values and beliefs of the country you are living in.

The Crown appealed against Judge Solomon's ruling arguing that, if the judge was correct, every Muslim would be entitled to a judge-only trial.

My oath.  I am so glad this one was dismissed, because this sort of crap would be the thin edge of the wedge of muslims getting their own treatment outside of Australian law.

If you want to live and be judged under sharia law then feel entirely free to fuck off and live somewhere else where it's practiced.  Australia won't miss you.

Monday, May 7, 2012

News of the day

Good news (freaking EXCELLENT news) -

A New Your judge has ruled that an IP address is not sufficient evidence to identify copyright infringers via the Bittorrent protocol or similar, due to the fact that an IP identifies only a connection, not an individual.  On top of the final defeat of the AFACT vs iiNet trial, this is very good news for file sharing, because it seems we are moving closer to a position of being more or less untouchable.  ISPs cannot be forced to cut off connections, now we can't be identified  individually remotely (so no need to worry about VPNs for obscurity), and with index sites like TPB going exclusively to magnet links, there is effectively nothing less to shut down.

The next step will probably be a pure peering client where even indexing sites are no longer required, and the client searches the swarm for content directly - in effect the swarm will generate its own indexing system.

In less good news, Micro$oft are being their normal corporate prick selves, and Windows 8 won't have DVD playback capability unless you purchase the additional "media centre" module.  How fucking petty is that?  Luckily, using VLC or something like it neatly sidesteps their little attempt at extortion, and I'm just going to pirate their ultimate version anyway, like I have every single version of their OS to date.

Uninformed radio DJ of the morning

I was listening to Ross Stevenson bang on about this article about how apparently we're all apparently going to be killed in the ever crowded skies this morning, when the segment producer apparently decided it was a good idea to tee up a brief interview with the vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots Association for his take on the matter.

(As an aside, the bloke in question was on a mobile in the back seat of a cab in London at the time, and the time delay on the call was damn near zero - I wouldn't have even noticed it if the announcer had not mentioned it.  Bloody impressive.)

Rossco made the point that one "near miss" had been 7.4 miles - which he compared to parking his car in Collins St and nearly getting hit by a car in Balwyn, and was generally taking the piss.

The AIPA bloke made the reply of the morning -

"What you've got to understand is those limits are set by time, not distance.  Those aircraft are traveling at 8 miles a minute.  That breach means they were less than 28 seconds from a collision at a little under a combined 1,000 miles an hour.  You still feeling safe?"

Saturday, May 5, 2012

New work roster

Starting a new work roster (again) in about 4 weeks.  We had a chance to vote on a 6 week or 8 week rotation, and the former overwhelmingly won.

 

Pros and cons –

 

6 week – more penalties, about 22% as opposed to 18%.

 

8 week – still only work 1 week of nights and one of evenings per rotation, and three full weekends, so less ‘nasty’ shifts.

 

 

The new roster is effectively identical to my current one, I also get to keep the same shift partner and even slot in the rotation, but they are now synchronising the tier 1 teams with us so we get some permanent tier 1 shift partners too.  I consider myself lucky as I really did get the cream of the crop.

 

What surprised me was that I thought the tier 1 crew would have voted for the 6 week rotation mostly for the extra penalties (they’re coming from a 12 week horror), but I was informed last night that that wasn’t the primary motivation.  It was that the higher proportion of afternoon/night/weekend shifts meant less time working when their moron management were there to ‘help’.  Nice.