It's not about race. SIT YOUR ARSE DOWN.

One of the "news" items of the weekend is this libtard puff piece, where some self-important probably half-blood relation (assuming the sperm donor could be identified without there being a buck in it) was outraged, OUTRAGED I TELL YOU that someone told them to sit their arse down at a concert so that everyone else could see.

A few points here:

(a) Why the hell was the welfare recipient in question taking an 11 YEAR OLD to a concert anyway?  That's not appropriate.

(b) It has nothing to do with race.  SIT YOUR OVERENTITLED ARSE DOWN.  If you stand up you force every single fucking row behind you to stand so THEY can enjoy the concert too.  You know, like they PAID FOR.  If you want to wiggle your arse around, buy a ticket in the moshpit.  The rest of us paid for SEATS so we could SIT IN THE FUCKING THINGS.

(c)  Trying to spin the reaction like it's racial is bullshit.  You're dead fucking wrong, and you're desperately looking for a reason to try to dig your way out of the hole YOU chose to publicly dig for yourself.

This is why I have no time for coons.  They act like they've been told to go pick cotton, when all they've been asked to do is comport themselves to the same goddamn standards as the rest of civilisation.  Then when they're told to get the fuck back in their box, it's "racism", when in reality they'd have to be stood over and sheepdogged to pick the damn cotton even when being paid to, because fundamentally they are useless whiners.

You'd get precisely the same reaction regardless of your skin colour, because you're still blocking the view of everyone else regardless.  SIT YOUR ARSE DOWN, and preferably take it somewhere else.  We will accept you remaining if you have like a NORMAL PERSON.  We'll even tolerate you simmering like a cauldron of misplaced resentment and refusal to accept accountability for your own actions, because we're all pretty used to that when dealing with coons.  It's just the inevitable consequence of dealing with a race which is fundamentally lazy, underachieving and perpetually plays the victim card as an attempted excuse for lack of accomplishment.

Either way, all we ask is that you just get on with it, be responsible for your own actions, and don't negatively impact anyone else - if so, we'll be fine.

As a takeaway, you might want to apply that one after you walk out of the Kraftwerk concert, too - but I doubt it.  What a pity that I'm actually more entitled as a normal member of society to have your bullshit attitude thrown out a concert by security over a $150 concert ticket than I am to have to deal with it in real life.

Morons.

Muzak

I was having breakfast in the cafe at my local shopping centre today.  I have long since trained all of the staff as to my standard order (double shot long black in a mug, eggs benedict with bacon and a hash brown) so it's pretty much a matter of rock up, collapse into a chair, deploy the paper, and wait for beverages and sustenance to arrive.

You know you're a regular when the waitress says "what'll it be, the usual?".

You know you're a local when you just sit down and a few minutes your usual is placed before you.

So I'm about 6 pages into The Age and making inroads into my coffee, and vaguely listening to the muzak drifting in from the centre, when whatever subconscious part of my brain is responsible for processing vague, non-specific auditory stimuli (e.g. wife telling me to do something) begins a pattern recognition sequence.  I know this song.

Now I have a theory then when it comes to cheap muzak played in theatre reception rooms, shopping centres, cruise ships and the elevators of the world, there is a vast unspoken conspiracy among the public amenity administrators of these sorts of places that only cheap, crappy reggae covers of anything may be played.  I realise the reggae is to distort the original work sufficiently that there is no fees payable for the use of the content, but serious, does it have to be reggae?  I mean, why??  There's already been more than enough crappy reinterpreted reggae perpetuated into the consciousness of the world by UB40 without needing to encourage the production of more of the bloody stuff.

I suppose it could be worse, if it was England the bastards would be playing Greensleeves.

So the brain daemon has engaged the reggae filter and is now trying to figure out what the hell is playing behind all the steel drums and ska beat, while the forebrain is getting on with the serious business to hand of poached eggs with a damn nice hollandaise and crispy fried applewood bacon, when it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks.

To my horror, I've just realised the tune playing is Unchained Melody, done with the pan pipes (or more realistically the shitty pan pipes filter on someone's bloody Yamaha home organ), to a reggae theme.

There ought to be some sort of a law, seriously.  There's no need for that.

There might have been a chance I'd be put off my breakfast, except that I'd just finished a ritual bloodletting at the local GP clinic for which procedure you're required to starve yourself, you can't even have a bloody coffee beforehand.  Surely some roasted, dried and ground beans in hot water aren't going to affect a cholesterol test much?  Can they not allow for the normal levels of water in a man's caffeine stream?

There ought to be a law about doctors, too.

And I only won $11 in the Tatts the other night, so I shall have to buy myself a nice new set of arrows to console myself, I think.  Who knows, in a couple of days my arms might stop hurting from the dubious attentions of Vampirella and Selene from the local recreational bleeding establishment so I can put the things together.

Fuck you, Piers Morgan.

As if you ever needed proof that Piers Morgan is a complete lefty cunt, this is it.

Get fucked, Piers.

See ya, Masters.

I've had this love/hate relationship with Masters hardware ever since they opened.

I like the idea of someone keeping Bunnings honest and offering some alternatives to their stock lines.  I like the idea of being able to reward someone else other than goddamn Wesfarmers with my business.  I like the idea of more stores, which can only mean more convenience.

Unfortunately, Woolworths has shown they don't know crap about running a hardware store.

The interior layout is precisely what makes K-Mart crap compared to Big W (ironic given the ownership of the two businesses).  You can't find anything, it's product grouping is just weird.

Bunnings having locked up Ryobi exclusively is a kick in the teeth, but Masters stock a bunch of weird brands.  I realise they're 1/3rd owned by Lowes, but the Australian market clearly wasn't ready for that.  They want to see the brands they know and trust before deploying the credit card.

My local Masters has a much better range of stuff like LED bulbs, but then they piss me off by only stocking the warm coloured ones in the sizes I want.  I want the cool ones.  Telling someone who's just asked for something that "there's no demand for it" is a contender for the single silliest response ever provided to a customer.

Their pricing isn't sufficiently differential to entice me away from Bunnings.  It might be a little better.  It's never a lot better.  Assuming they have what I want, and that I can find it.  I realise there's not a lot of discretionary profit margin left, but Masters management also need to realise that it's just as easy for me to continue to shop at Bunnings when they aren't differentiating themselves in a positive way.

Their sausages suck.  Hard.  Are you listening, Masters management?  This is a social institution you are dealing with here.  Get the sausages right or die.

So with Lowes having pulled the pin on a cash drain, my local Masters is having a 10% off sale.  Wow, that just about brings your pricing in line with the big green shop literally across the street, and your stock still sucks.

I attempted to purchase a workshop vacuum this weekend.

I failed to do so at Bunnings, as their range either sucked, or was too expensive, or was an overachiever and managed both at the same time.

The Masters choice was either plastic crap, or very expensive commercial grade versions.  10% off something twice what I want to pay isn't doing it for me.  Even 40% off is only just ringing my bells, considering there won't be a retailer to take any warranty claim back to if needed.

So I went to Total Tools, who failed to have my desired model in stock.  Righto, let's find a solution - has Sir considered this alternative?  Pretty much identical, stainless body, detachable heavy duty hoses, steel piping instead of bloody plastic, reverse blow function, much better castors and onboard power takeoff.  Sir inspects and will take one as a fit for purpose substitute, please.  Momentary consternation locating the one in stock.  No worries, we'll fix this.  Would Sir agree to accept the next model up for the same price?  Sir would.

So I wound up with a stainless bodied, ball bearing castored, HEPA filtered, 2000W wet and dry barrel shop vac with 10 litre larger body for $100 **less** than Masters wanted for the smaller rough equivalent in plastic everything, with bushed castors, no filter, and no takeoff.

See ya, Masters.  Don't let the doorknob get you in the arse on the way out.

Mobile fun

Interesting conversation with an induhvidual at my sports club this afternoon.  The topic of the conversation was crap mobile reception.

Induhvidual:  I fixed my problem, I have a mobile repeater.

Me:  Really?  So do I.  Where did you get yours?

Induhvidual:  eBay.

Me:  Ah, so an illegal one then.

Induhvidual:  No!

Me:  Really.  What did you pay for it?

Induhvidual:  About $100.

Me:  Wow, nice buy.  And definitely totally illegal.  My repeater is legal.  They go for about $800 the last time I looked.

Induhvidual:  Who cares?

Me:  Mobile carriers care.  A lot.  By operating a transmitter in their frequency spectrum that’s not synced with their network, you’re creating a high powered source of interference that knocks out reception for everyone else in the area around you.  In effect, you’re a one-man black spot.  Legal repeaters work by acting as a mobile handset themselves so they sync with the network base station which deconflicts their signal with every other handset in the coverage footprint.  They then rebroadcast on a different frequency again, which they agree with the base station not to use, so they boost your signal without killing anyone else's.

Induhvidual:  So?

Me:  So mobile carriers get pissed about that sort of thing, because their customers complain, and that’s poking the carrier right in their most sensitive area – their revenue stream.

Induhvidual:  They can’t catch me.

Me:  Really?  They can triangulate the source of the interfering signal from their towers quite well, probably plot it down to something about the size of the room you have the thing installed in without too much trouble.  After all, it’s not moving, so all they have to do is take a bunch of measurements and take the average, that’s going to give them your house.  Think how good the GPS signal is in your mobile phone, that’s AGPS that uses mobile tower triangulation to boost the satellite signal.  Does your mobile phone GPS still work indoors?  So does the reverse.

Induhvidual:  Oh.  But they won’t care.

Me:  Let’s think that one through, shall we?  As I said, it’s a revenue stream for the carrier.  Complaints from your neighbours about their services being crap are going to get investigated.  The carrier can measure the interference levels off the base station from a computer terminal on the other side of the world just fine, and pull up reporting of stuff like the noise levels coming and going, dropped call rates off the cell et cetera.  If they see a problem, what they see is complaints or customers leaving for another carrier that uses a frequency spectrum that some dumbarse *isn’t* operating an unlicensed illegal transmitter in, so either way it costs them.  Those customers then go and tell ten of their friends and neighbours not to use that crappy carrier X, they switched to carrier Y and it’s sooo much better.

So what’s going to happen is that one day you’re going to get a knock on the door.  When you answer it, the caller will announce themselves as being a field technical investigator for the carrier, and he’s here to conduct a check for any unlicensed transmitter equipment operating in his carrier’s spectrum, and that he’ll be seizing it under the Telecommunications Act 1997 if he finds it.  Don’t worry, he’ll find it.  The radio analysis gear he has in his van costs more than your house does.

The bloke standing behind him will be a nice police officer.  He’ll be accompanying the carrier technician to make sure your attitude falls within the range deemed acceptable and compliant with the aforementioned Act, and he’ll have been well briefed beforehand so he knows exactly what they can do.  That covers stuff like entry to the premises regardless of your assent, seizing anything they deem suspicious for further analysis, and generally doing pretty much what they want to.

The next character behind him is an investigating engineer from the ACMA.  He’s the one going to be actually prosecuting you for violating the Telecommunications Act.  He cares because the ACMA sells spectrum to the carriers, and it’s pretty scarce, so they charge heaps for it, and in return the carriers expect their licence rights to be fiercely protected.  The fine for individuals for this stuff is currently up to 2 years gaol and fines of up to $175,000.

The bloke behind him in the nice suit is the legal counsel for the ACMA assigned to the investigation.  He’s not going to say much, his job is just to observe and ensure the two engineers document everything well enough that the magistrate doesn’t need to waste too much time on agreeing that you’re well fucked, and that everyone else can move on to lunch.

But hey, use the thing if you like, no skin off my nose.

Tax dodge of the day

Just bought a couple of engineering reference booksfrom a bloke I met online.  Optical transmission stuff for work, thought they would be an interesting read, and he works right next door so why not?

$5 each, pristine condition.  Excellent.

And I just found they have the purchase receipts in them from when they were bought last year… $122 and $132 respectively. So I can claim them on my tax as a work related self education expense at full price.

Win!

Well that doesn't happen every day

I don't think I have ever agreed with anything much Andrew Wilkie has ever had to say, but apparently never say never.

Andrew Wilkie drops a c-bomb on air. #auspol pic.twitter.com/R2W4PSKWRE

— Cameron Atfield (@CameronAtfield) 3 August 2016