Victorian state election

So the Victorian electorate has decided to vote in a Labor government.

This is the same crew that have promised. to either tear up the East-West Link contracts, thus denying Melbourne commuters a hugely needed freeway access route while simultaneously paying who knows how money in contract breach compensation and dumping billions of dollars in federal funding.

Or they'll realise that, um... no we can't actually do that after all, so we'll go ahead with it anyway, in which case why did we vote this set of fuckwits in?

I'll give it 6 months maximum before the moaning starts about "why did we change", when the libtard voter base realise there's no free pot of gold after all.

I suppose that given that the grass-is-always-greener brigade have short memories, it's inevitable that occasionally they need a lesson in why the inmates don't get to run the asylum.  This is it.

On the plus side, it looks like Labor will largely match the Coalition's plan to abolish the public transport fee slug for people who travel from zone 2 to 1, which saves myself and the handbrake around $1150 a year right there.

Someone takes security seriously

Just ran across this little gem of a licence key.  Not mucking about here.

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News flash

Ferguson, Missouri –

 

Grand jury rules to indict police office Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown.  Whites go on race riot, burning and looting their way through the city, at the perceived injustice towards one of their own kind.

 

Oh, hang on.  That’s right – white people don’t do that.

 

Reality – grand jury rules there is no charge worth prosecuting in regards to Officer Darren Wilson who defended himself against an attack by a robbery suspect he attempted to apprehend.  Yes, the suspect was unarmed, in that he didn’t have a gun.  What he was was 6’4” tall and 140kg and he rushed the police offer and assaulted him, photographic evidence of which was provided to the grand jury.  The officer responded with force, and shot the prick, which is fair enough.  Don’t be a thug, don’t get shot.

 

Blacks respond to this by burning and looting their own neighbourhood, which demonstrates the level of intelligence we are dealing with here.  Next week, when the dole cheques run out and everyone’s passions suddenly evaporates, there will be claims of “racism” about lack of amenities and services.  America’s lame duck failed experiment at a president will sympathise.  Two years left for you before the country votes reality back in, moron.  The light has well and truly dawned there.

 

What I love most is the media bite from the family’s attorney (ambulance chasing scumbag), who said of the state prosecutor: “you don’t have any direction, you’re just putting all the evidence out there and you’re going to let them figure it out and they can make up their own minds,” Mr Crump said. “You know, it just boggles the mind why he thinks this is fair.”

 

So, in other words, the prosecutor put all the facts in front of the grand jury (three of whom where black, but apparently the sort of black who is civilised enough to register to vote because they ended up selected for jury duty) and let them make up their own damn minds.  This, of course, wasn’t good enough for a reactionary set of losers who wouldn’t be satisfied with anything other than an outcome that went their way, and who cares how it’s arrived it, because we’re black and we’re owed.

 

Try getting off your useless arses and getting a job, earning a living, not sponging off the rest of society, and not committing 90% of the crime in your 10% of the demographic.  Maybe if you tried behaving like an upstanding member of society you wouldn’t get a cap busted at your arse or gaoled at well over three times the US national rate, yeah?

 

Morons.

Soccer anyone?

I think I may have actually seen the first game of entertaining soccer ever.

E-mail recipients click for link to post with embedded video.

New rig

Decided to stand myself up a new PC over the weekend.

The old rig was becoming a little frustrating, the Win7 install was becoming unstable and constantly running out of memory - not bad for 18 months old though.  The problem is that the rig itself has 2GB of memory plus a 512MB video card, so I'm limited to an x86 build, even though all the hardware is 64-bit capable.

Buying more memory to make an x64 install worthwhile wan't terribly attractive - it's DDR2-800 which is now rareware, an 8GB kit would cost me nearly $300 unless I wanted to do a dodgy eBay purchase out of asia somewhere.  No thanks.  Time for a new rig.

Did some reading and settled on an i5 4690K, it's actually faster than the bottom two tiers of i7 chip and at least $150 cheaper.  Even then the main difference is that the i7 has shades-of-Centrino hyperthreading reintroduced, and there are precisely two pieces of software in the world that can use that at the moment.  The K models are also multiplier unlocked so I can dabble in a little overclocking if I want to.

Went for an 8GB memory kit in 2x4GB - I don't see myself needing more than that anytime soon, it's half the cost of a 2x8GB and I can still go to 16GB in four-channel mode with another 2x4GB kit for $100 in the future if I need to.  Got the nice Vengeance still with the high profile heatsinks, makes them very easy to handle.

After some initial hassles with an older Z87 chipset motherboard that doesn't play nicely with the Haswell Refesh architecture CPUs, I now have a Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H which has heaps of USB2 and 3 ports.  I went for a full ATX board for the easy of working, it puts all the SATA and front panel connectors further away from the memory and video slot, even though I'll never need the expansion slots.  Forget the old days of needing a USB expansion card, a network card, a modem card etc... I honestly have no idea what I'd even put in there unless I wanted wifi, and even then a number of motherboards have that built in now.

Also shouted myself a Coolermaster CM690iii case, because the old one is the PSU-on-top style and the new upside cases are just so much easier to work on, especially with the transverse drive bays.  It's also got a nice low-speed 8" intake fan.

Kept my existing Corsair 620W PSU as it's more than enough, but next time I'll be up for a new one as I need more SATA power sockets - ATX12V is dead, baby.  Also keeping my GT640 as it's more than adequate for what I do.

Drives are my Kingston 240GB SSD and the two Samsung 500GBs that came out of my old NAS when the chassis went flaky on me.

Can't complain about the performance so far.  With everything on stock settings, it installed Win7SP1 x64 in 12 minutes, and boots to a usable desktop in 9 seconds.  Got to love SSDs.

5 sentences

Something I saw today – very true.  Kind of rang a bell when I got home and waste-of-space sorta stepson has spent the whole day sitting on his arse and watching TV.

 

 

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

 

What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

 

The government cannot give anyone anything without first taking it from someone else.

 

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

 

When half of the people get the idea that they don't have to work because the other half will take care of them, we have a problem.  When the other half get the idea that it does no good to work because the first half will get what they work for, we have a disaster.

Muslim TV

Found this little gem in the media this morning, with suggestions for muslim TV shows:

Bacon bad

Dude, where's my camel?

Malcolm in the middle east

How I Arranged to Meet Your Mother

Sects in the City

The Love Goat

Third Iraq From The Sun

Pimp my Riyadh

Hamid and Stacey

Everybody Loves Rayyan

Ramadan-cing with the stars

Sharia Law and Order

Suicide Squad

Married to Children

The Big Bang Reality

How I Beheaded Your Mother

Game of Drones

Parks and Reincarnation

Family Chais

Of course, I can't possibly post that without also invoking the classic Taliban TV programme guide:

6.00   G-Had TV. Morning prayers.

8.30   Talitubbies. Talitubbies say "Ah-ah". Dipsy and Tinky-Winky repair a Stinger missile launcher.

9.00   Incoherent shouts of Praise. More prayers.

11.00  Jihad's Army. The Kandahar-on-Sea battalion repulse another attack by evil, imperialist, Zionist backed infidels.

12.00  Ready, Steady, Jihad! Celebrities make lethal devices out of everyday objects.

12.30  Panoramadan. The programme reports on America's attempts to take over the world.

13.30  Xena: Modestly dressed Housewife. Xena stays at home and does some cooking.

14.00  Only Fools and Camels. Dhal-Boy offloads some Chinese rocket launchers to Hamas.

14.30  Green Peter. The total number of Kalashnikovs bought by the milk bottle top appeal is revealed.

15.00  Madrasah Challenge. Two more Islamic colleges meet. Bambah Kaskhain asks the questions. 'Your starter for ten, no praying.'

15.30  I Love 629. A look back at the events of the year, including the Prophet's entry into Mecca, and the destruction of pagan idols.

16.00  Question Time. Members of the public face questions from political and religious leaders.

17.00  Koranation Street. Deirdrie faces execution by stoning for adultery.

17.30  Middle-East Enders. The entire cast is jailed for unislamic behaviour.

18.00  Holiday. The team go on pilgrimage to Mecca. Again.

18.30  Top of the Prophets. Will the Koran be No.1 for the 63,728th week running?

19.00  Who wants to be a Mujahadin? Mahmoud Tarran asks the questions. Will contestants phone a mullah, go 'inshallah', or ask the Islamic council?

20.00  FILM: Shariah's Angels. The three burkha-clad sleuths go undercover to expose an evil scheme to educate women.

21.30  Big Brother. Who will be taken out of the house and executed this week?

22.30  Shahs in their Eyes. More hopefuls imitate famous destroyers of the infidel.

23.30  They think it's Allah over. Quiz culminating in the 'don't feel the Mullah' round.

00.00  When Islams attack. Amusing footage shot secretly in mosques. The film makers were also secretly shot.

12.30  The West Bank Show. Arts programme looking at anti-Israel graffiti art in the occupied territories.

01.30  Bhuffi the Infidel Slayer.

Dear people from this morning's ride to work [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Dear cretin Mazda driver,
The pedal on the right makes the vehicle go faster. I realise you're an asian female and therefore combine a lack of spatial awareness with a natural timidity and total inability to make a conscious decision in real time without a peer support group, but that's not a good thing when it comes to driving a motor vehicle. How the hell did you ever get a licence? Is VicRoads employing asian testers who are slipping people through as ringers or for a few hundred bucks or something? Unless you're the one demographic who actually gets worse at a task with practice as opposed to better, if that's the level of competence you can demonstrate now then it must have been truly cringingly bad at the time.


Dear moron smokers outside the train station,
Every morning I look at your small knot of diehards clustered resentfully together away from the doors (although still not far enough, I reckon Epping would be good), puffing away at your little addiction. You really do represent the triumph of stupidity over every possible means of education and awareness about the many evils of smoking, and that some people can be counted on to intransigently stick to their beliefs no matter what proof or fact is offered. Luckily, the general demographic of the few remaining diehards (literally) is very much trending towards the mid to late 40s, indicating that you're probably the last generation that will generally somehow think that it's a good idea to progressively poison yourself to death. Personally I really couldn't care if you do by the way, as long as I don't have to pay for it or put up with it, but that does mean you can fuck well off away from the doors to carry on your filthy habit.


Dear lady at the train station,
If you waddle into the station at the speed of congealing treacle, stop spang in front of the ticket validator and block both access to both validators and the door itself, stand your roller bag up, put down your other two bags, find your handbag, open that and fish around for your purse, open that and myopically peer in search of your card, have about six goes at getting it to read, gingerly put the card back into your purse, put your purse back in your bag, pick up your other two bags, then take a moment to compose yourself for the Hurcelean task of getting your roller bag moving again, please do not be taken aback when I and the other people trying to make it to our train too tell you to get the fuck out of the way and shove past you.


Dear cute asian chick sitting opposite to me,
I don't care if you feel uncomfortable and keep wiggling around in your seat. You wore the mini skirt, your legs are going to get looked at - deal with this. I have my tablet in my lap as normal, so they're in my line of sight, and frankly I was going to be having a look anyway. Yes, I sat down next to you for a reason, but no, it wasn't so I could look peripherally at your thighs for fifteen minutes. I did that because I don't want to sit next to Kevin the boofy tradie who is about two and a half times your physical size and has a fucking huge toolbox with him. Or mad bag lady who apparently has something akin to hoarder syndrome going on and couldn't possibly go to work without her five bags, or the dickhead with the outsized headphones who has the whole I-hate-you-all thing going and thinks that listening to incoherent mumbled [c]rap at max volume is his little rebellion against the world.


Dear dude in the suit,
Yeah, it sucks when you don't get a seat, but everyone is blithely ignoring the death stares you are directing at everyone. Your inflated self of self-importance isn't going to make anyone give up their seat for you, suit or no suit. I think there's one about halfway down the carriage, next to Bruce the plumber if you're interested. Feel free to explain to the cute asian chick with the miniskirt why you're opting to stand even though you feel personally offended the little people beat you to all the good seats - it might help her feel better about me ogling her thighs.


Dear lady with the freaking huge bag,
Everyone is pretty tolerant within reason about baggage on the train, but please try to make some sort of basic, minimum effort about reciprocally caring less about the amenity of other people around you too. It's not mandatory, but when you quite obviously don't give a shit then that's why nobody else did this morning either. That's why it got kicked, trodden on, tipped over and generally knocked about for the last four stops into the loop, and no, I don't think anyone cared less that you were getting really pissed about it either. Personally I thought it was very funny, and I took the opportunity to give it a good swift punt on the way past.


Dear lady who hasn't yet figured out how a train pass works,
Myki cards have been mandatory for coming up on two years now. If you still haven't figured out how to use the system you must have spent one hell of a lot of time stuck inside train stations in the interim. Since you have apparently managed to miss every piece of consumer education ever delivered on the subject, and haven't managed to correlate the operation of the system to other similar examples like tap-and-pay credit cards, I will briefly explain. Myki is a contactless smart card. The card needs to be placed in close proximity to the card reader for the reader to detect the card. Holding it back about six inches is not going to work, or doing a fly-by with it that a Harrier pilot would be proud of. Nor will frantically semaphoring it repeatedly past the reader like a Parkinson's disease sufferer on crack improve operation. If you have worn all the finish off your normally green card and actually sanded the fucking thing back to the white substrate by rubbing against the reader pads, you are doing it wrong. Remove the card from your purse. I don't care that that it's supposed to work inside a purse, it won't when it's crammed in with half a dozen other smartcards that I can only presume you don't know how to make work either. Place the card against the pad. Do NOT FUCKING MOVE IT. The gates will open. Savvy?


Dear handbill waver and useless crap pushers in general,
I realise you have strategically positioned yourself at the top of the escalators so you can attempt to shove handbills/advertising/assorted crap into people's faces while they are effectively captive. What you need to realise is that people resent this and regard you as a nuisance at best, and someone to be told to fuck off and die/punched in the face at worst. Why the hell would you think I have any interest whatsoever in a chinese language newspaper? I am uncertain whether this represents a complete abdication of thought on your part or active idiocy, but either way I chose to exercise the TTFO option this morning. I will do this whenever you try to foist your crap on me. If you choose to make a living by annoying people, do not be surprised when people indicate that this annoys them.


Tram driver
It's nice to see that Yarra trams are now running some Z class trams on La Trobe St, the W class ones are getting a wee bit asthmatic really. You might need to recalibrate yourself a bit to the new traction though. I realise that getting a W class going is a balancing act between wheel slip, old traction motors, a dodgy manual resistor control system and actually getting somewhere today, but when you get into a Z1 with perhaps four passengers and use your normal drop-the-hammer launch method, the ride does become a wee bit harsh. The bloke a few seats away who was about to take a sip of coffee when you performed a blastoff that would have impressed NASA would no doubt agree with me.


Dear wacko tram commuters,
The tram stop on the corner of La Trobe and King streets got taken out about six months ago. It was widely advertised on the line for some time, and even if you only intermittently use trams, the complete and utter removal of all facets of the stop itself (you know, like fences, bollards, signs etc) should perhaps be a hint that THE FUCKING THING IS NO LONGER THERE. It doesn't matter how much you hiss and spit and jump up and down, the tram driver is not going to open the doors there, because funnily enough he has rules about letting people climb down into traffic and getting their dumb arses run over. You only options are to get off a block early or a block later and walk, deal with it.

Also, if you've just seen someone get up and pull the cord for the next stop, why the bleeding hell would you feel the need to do it again yourself? To make sure it's really well pulled? You just watched someone else do the same thing, you heard the buzzer go, and I presume your visual abilities are sufficient to see the light lit, even if your mental faculties to process the information are in some doubt. Do you also feel the need to push the button again for the pedestrian crossing, or the button for the lift despite it already being lit? Is this some sort of mild obsessive compulsive disorder, a lack of observational skill, or a complete lack of understanding of how the world works?


Ah, here is work. Where a new variety of strange people again will no doubt present themselves.