I didn't quite catch that...

Editors note: for the purpose of simplicity in this entry, we shall consider the word “holiday” to be equivalent to the phrase “time spent abroad looking after elderly relatives”.

Number of “holiday”s that I was scheduled to take this month: 1.

Number of “holiday”s that I will be taking this month: 0.

I told ‘em, I probably won’t be able to do it, I think that I’ll be doing training that week that is essential to my job. Would they listen? No.

So I got to do the happy Ed dance in the office when the email came round informing us that there was, in fact, compulsary training that week, and that it would not be possible to accomodate the leave that I had asked for.

Aw. Me sad, honest.

…nothing to see here.

[whistles innocently]

Excuse me officer? What, this moderate contract with E.J.Hillan, inc? Perfect value for money. Best on the market, guvnor, and not a word of a lie*.

–
* – Note: May contain one or more words of a lie.

It’s always good to see that justice can be served, even if the judge was overly lenient in this case. 6 years (probably out in 3 or 4) for causing death by dangerous driving, and 11 other charges. Which I assume would be made up of more dangerous driving, twocing, lack of insurance, blah blah. The thing is, that duration of sentence could as easily have been handed down on someone who had killed on the roads while driving perfectly within the law. More viewing of previous convictions in courts of law, please.

First up: Riddick, Chronicals thereof. It could have been much, much worse. But then, it could have been much better. Good CGI, bad plot. Sums up the lot of it, I think.

Secondly: Tigerland. On tv the other day, and a very good show. More of that, please.

Third: Way of the Gun. Classic. Great dialogue, great gunplay, and torture scenes. Appeals to the psycho in me.

Look, you get as much from this as you do from Jonathon Ross. With the added bonus that this isn’t delivered with a lisp.

No, really. Take the guy round the back of the building, and beat the living fuck out of him. He’s not content with fucking up one major sporting event, he went ahead and fucked up an olympic marathon.

Dumb shit.

Awww, is there nowhere for the skaters to play? I thought that sk8ing was supposed to be some kind of teenage rebellion anyway, so is council funding for it not a little against the point? Or is that just me?

Is SdB hanging up his quill? Is this the end for USS Clueless? Noooooooooo! There must and shall be more quality op-eds, deeply researched pieces and commenatry!

Fair enough, he writes what he wants, when he wants. I just hope that he decides that he want to write more, and soon.

Here’s a tale for you. Basicially, they’re saying that lots of NIrish drivers are far too aggressive, and there’s too much tailgaiting, and yaddah yaddah yaddah.

Here’s a quote:

The Axa insurance survey said 60% of respondents had another annoyed motorist blow their horn at them.

More than 50% of drivers have had lights flashed at them, but 37% said rude or aggressive gestures have been made towards them by fellow motorists.

OK, three figures mentioned there. I’d say that the first suggests that 60% of motorists have done something very stupid. The only times someone honks a horn at me is when I’ve done something wrong, missed someone in a blind spot or something. So what are the horn-honkers being portrayed as the bad guys here? Surely they should be thanked for alerting the honkees to their stupidity.

Same holds for the second fact, except that most of the time that I’ve had lights flashed at me it was to alert me to a fascist traffic cop farther on up the road. Third fact… well, OK, that probably shouldn’t happen.

Tough shit, though.

Here’s an interesting opinion on what direction Google could move in now. A mozilla/google hybrid, with the browser looking at what you’re viewing and suggesting relevant links, etc, etc, etc.

Fucking hell, I can’t think of any more invasive system short of all out dictactorship. Giving anyone the ability to look over your shoulder to that extent would be amazingly stupid. Sure, it can be done now, but actually choosing to let a private company build up an entire profile of all your online activities? Who, really, thinks that that would be a good thing?

Ah well. Randalstown‘s in the news again. Bad behaviour and underage drinking? Wouldn’t have happened in my day.

Oh, and for reference, we don’t really have community leaders in Randalstown. Least of all that mucking fuppet that is mentioned in the article.

Scene: a computer desk. A figure sits at it, obviously in pain. He appears to have difficulty breathing, and tears are streaming from his face. Minutes pass, and the figure starts to pull himself together. The figure then commences to type…

My opinion of some “art” has been written about before:

Disinclined to be arty? I disagree with the general point, but I will say that we’ll call a steaming pile of shite a steaming pile of shite, no matter what interpretation is put on it by an artist.

Basicially, I think that something doesn’t count as art if you have to be told that it’s art. So, I was mildly amused by this:

Cleaner bins rubbish bag artwork

The bag of rubbish was part of Metzger’s Recreation of the First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art

The bag filled with discarded paper and cardboard was part of a work by Gustav Metzger, said to demonstrate the “finite existence” of art.

It was thrown away by a cleaner at the London gallery, which subsequently retrieved the damaged bag.

And an image of this piece of vitally important art? But of course…

If a bag of rubbish is art, then I really need to get in on the game. I think that a performance piece (“Changing the tyre”, or perhaps “Taking a shit on a piece of Modern Art”) would be the best way forward. Inclusion in the Tate is all but assured, apparantly.

Jihadis, you have a new mission. A person known as ‘Comedy’ Dave (from the Chris Moyles show) has been trying to be ‘funny’ about Norn Irish accents. The evidence will be online for another week (about an hour and a half into this feed).

You know the drill. No rest until we have confirmation of his painful demise; body parts distributed to the corners of the country, financial repariations to the people of Norn Iron, etc, etc. Go forth and wreak havoc, people.

I’ll join in the killing once the coffee is finished.

As some of the loyalish readers of this site may have noticed, I’m a bit of a fan of the Discworld series of books by one Mr T Pratchett. And some of the readers may have noticed that I’m quite partial to a beer.

So I was pleasantly suprised to find that there is actually a range of Discworld beers. Sure, they’re all real ales and therefore will ming like nothing has ever mang before, but still. Beer. Inspired by Discworld. Or, to put it in terms that will be more meaningful to the readership, Discworld (5%ABV). Genius.

Thanks to Dave, we have a link to the best game ever in the history of the whole universe. Yes, gentlemen (and ladies, of course), that is:…

(drum roll)…. Lemmings. On the net! So I can play at work at various interweb connected PCs the world over!

Fantastic.

In other news, Man U kick ass. God, we’re good.

A couple of weeks ago, someone asked if there was a list of blogs that I visited every day. And I told him that there was, and that it was on the right of this page. He said that he didn’t think that I could be visiting that many. Well, I do. And here’s why:

• A Small Victory: where Michele does silly things with photoshops, and has silly topics, and covers politics
• IMAO: Frank. He’s funny. In My World is the best. blog. series. ever. No ifs, not buts. Plus, there’s real life romantic entanglement going on, which is always fun.
• Ollie: well, I know him, so there’s a real life reason to visit here. But he does good posts with lots of car pictures, so that’s nice.
• Acidman: A very well mannered southern gent. Or a freaking nut, depending on your point of view. But he writes very well, about interesting shit.
• The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: His Imperial Majesty Darth Misha I. Going through a rough patch at the minute, but always ready to fisk any article he dislikes and rip the idiotiarians of the world to shreds.
• Davezilla: Or the daily funny. One post per day, with laughter guaranteed two days out of five.
• Across the Atlantic: Mandrake & Shell normally find news and articles that will enlighten you. Then get all luvvie and boring shit.
• Allah: Yes, I know that’s not the real Allah. But his photoshop skills are legendary.
• Belle de Jour: It’s a hooker. Who blogs. It’s actually quite good.
• Uborka: Phase III: weekly themes. Hit and miss, but still worth a visit.
• au Currant: On indefinate haitus, but she was good, and hopefully will be again.
• USS Clueless: One of the smartest fellas about gives his opinions on various things that grab his fancy. These include politics, war and quantum theory. I kid you not.
• Meish: where meg does silly articles and daily photos.
• Eject!Eject!Eject!: Bill and his overly long yet fantastic articles. There should be one soon, hopefully.
• SNAFU: a damn site portal to lots of warwick blogs.
• On General Principle: Another Warwick fella I know. When he posts (note the when, Chez), his rants are great. But he’s far too busy working in his part time job to post these days.
• One of those days: A guy who linked to me early on. It’s quite interesting watching someone else go throught uni through their blog
• Rachel Lucas: An anti-idiotarian of Misha’s quality. With added doggie pictures.
• Stray Toaster: A Portglenone dude whose idea of fun is to pick a fight with the BBC. Brilliant.
• For No Good Reason: OK, you got me, this site has died. I should really get round to removing it.
• Seldo: It’s like a soap opera for geeks, with occasional gadget reviews and opinions.
• Slugger: News, opinion and culture from Norn Iron. A fantastic resource I wish I had when living in England.
• Kim du Toit: A very pro-gun guy from Texas. Via South Africa. Gun pictures, girl pictures, and idiotiarian smashing. What’s not to like.

So there you have it. The blogosphere according to me.

Two of my favourite blogs seem to be on hiatus. Michele from ASV says that she’s basicially suspending the site until after the USian election, and will only be writing a single daily post on another site. I don’t believe her, because she keeps saying that she’s stopping, but we all know that she’s addicted. Back within the week, say I.

The other case is Steven den Beste over at USS Clueless, who hasn’t written anything in the last three weeks. Except for little notices saying “i dunno when i’ll be back”. Which isn’t very informative.

Back soon, guys. Intellectual stimuli is being missed here.

So, the weather ain’t much better than it was last week. Which isn’t very good. Torrential rain, huge puddles everywhere you go, and a small matter of the window next to me gushing water.

Yes, as I sit, at a computer, with several cables around me, I’m being rained on. Inside. So, electrocution is a distinct possibility.

Ah well, if fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttt

Just a couple of things that have arrived in the old inbox… First off, I requested, Joe delivered, yes, we have clay kitten shooting. A game for all of us sensible people who realise that the only good cat is a dead cat. With a severed head spinning away from it’s exploding body.*

Another one… Ballistic. A simple game that is addictive as hell. My highscore is 39,390. Your mission is to try and beat it. If you can be bothered.

Also, from the master of disturbing behaviour that is Beave, who spotted this in the want ads:

* – no kittens were hurt in the making of this post. However, thirteen elephants and a white rhino were. And you were worried about the damn cats!?! What is wrong with you people?!? Get your priorities right!!!

Well, we’re still not actually doing our primary job here, but the secondary tasks are really building up. For example, I now have a pile of things to be checking on the system. So, it’s time for the old calculator to come into effect again…

Depth of paper currently on desk: 82 mm

Average thickness of paper: ~0.1 mm

QED, no. of sheets on desk: ~820

Number of data items per sheet: 10.

Therefore, number of data items to check: 8,200.

(By the way, that’s only this week’s load, there’ll be more every Monday).

Now, here’s where we get into theoreticials. The theory is that I’ll be able to get into the system, and that the system will be set up to allow the changes I need to do to be done, and that the link to the reference database will be working. The actual facts are that I can’t get into the system, and that it’s not set up to allow the changes I need to make to be made, and that the reference database won’t let me connect to it.

So, as I say, here’s the theoreticials:

Amount of time to find record: 1 minute
Time to confirm that the record is correct: 2 minutes
Time to cross reference with other dbase: 2 minutes
Time to copy data over: 1 minute
Time to confirm changes and exit record: 1 minute
Total per data item: 7 minutes

So, 8,200 x 7 = 57,400 minutes, or 957 hours.

Hours per working week: 37
QED, the pages represent 26 weeks work.

So, I have to fit a whole years work into approximately two weeks if I’m to keep up and prevent the amount of paper flowing through the door from drowning me. Which is nice.

On a happier note, there are something like 600,000 data items on the books of the organisation I’m working with. Some 5% of which meet the spec of what we need.

On a totally unrelated, absolutely coincidential note, today is Jobfinder day. But that’s not important right now, is it…

El Reg has decided that I am:

You’re borderline meglomanic and the sort of person ideally suited to a sole charge IT authority position. We respect that. Though if that falls through, carpet companies are always looking for commission sales people….

Which I think deserves the posting of my hero’s image:

Ah, the post to which I aspire; someday, I too will be BOFH.