Til Death rip u apart.... - Kitten (6/04/2003 11:06:23 PM)

i often dream ... [edit] of unicorns, rainbows, ponies, flowers and shopping all day for clothes.

I.T., Cynicism and the Agency System - Princess (25/03/2003 5:12:53 AM)

In the Information Technology industry in Australia, we have three main groups with two main modes of operation. There is the tradition, “Permanent” workforce paradigm, and the more flexible “Contracting” arrangement. I shall assume in this rant that you are all familiar with the traditional idea of get a job, work your hours, accrue sick leave, save you money and buy a house, work to pay off that house, your children and your ex-wife, have a heart attack and use your sick leave, so I shall focus mostly on the later, the more modernistic, flexible, contracting arrangement. The idea here is that one earns an amount of money per unit of time spent working for the client. Sometimes time is not the measurement, but a set of outcomes and milestones are, the net result is the same, rather then pay people for having heart attacks, you pay them for when they are productive for you. This shifts responsibility for paying for one’s time off to the employee, or in some instances to the state. So far I have discussed two groups, the employer, sometimes called the client, and the employee, sometimes referred to as the contractor, or consultant. There is in the contract arrangement, a third party. The recruiter, or agency. The agency is generally a set of people, who act as a liaison between the contractors and the clients. Starting with the process of souring a candidate (a prospective employee), arranging interviews, lunches, discussions, lovely catered Christmas parties, and more importantly, cultural fit. The idea being that we outsource our HR needs through one of these organizations to get the people that can not only do the work, but will also play nicely within our team. Nice theory. Unfortunately, over the past few years it seems that a lot of these agencies have replaced the HR experts with bombastic sales forces, slick marketing and “margin squeezing” - looking at their own financial performance, profit sharing packages, and site/head count. All at the cost of ethics and the cultural fit. And worse still, the Christmas functions have become somewhat limited in their catering. Recently I had an experience with contracting house where my contract was rescinded for some reason, (a straight answer is still be forth coming) - there seems to be three different stories, firstly the one from said house was “We didn’t match you with their team properly, and they have asked for a new candidate”, then the one from the client “Someone exceeded their authority, and now we have to go through the process of raising businesses cases etc.” and lastly (the source that I generally listen to because they tend to be accurate, the other agencies) - “[That contracting house] poached a few contractors from another agency, who’s mate happens to be the clients delegate, and as a come-up-ance, the delegate canceled the contracts from that house.” The net result is simple, after four years of dealing with a certain firm- being one of their “blue ribbon” for two years of that, (which was ended by taking a break from contracting), I didn’t get to see their paradigm shift from “take care of the candidates of today, because they will be clients of tomorrow” position to the bombastic slick sales approach that could easily be likened to the fast food manner of the franchise restaurant system, or perhaps even the cola wars (a lot of noise, extolling differences of virtually identical products). I am ending my relationship with them. I am so very upset, that I am even considering selling my shares in their parent company! (Imagine that, Princess wanting to sell shares in a profitable concern). What ever happened to the civility in IT? Was it ever there, or was I just young, enthusiastic and hopeful? When did IT become solely about money, and not about empowering users? Why did these people decide that IT recruitment was easier then the actual IT work, and then followed their lust for the dot com money? And hasn’t anyone told them that dot com is dead! The unaviodable has happened, the candidates and the clients are starting to realise that a lot of these account managers in these recruitment firms are modern age pimps, with a looser set of ethics then their traditional counterparts. If only the contracting houses would realise that these people who are in the current term bringing in fabulous revenues are actually harming candidate sentament, thusly the ability to find people to place, and mark up, but they are also harming future client sentament. I am sad for my fellow nerds and my friends, the geeks, because I miss the good old days of ethics and honesty in all of the agencies, not just a some of them.

Downloading MP3s = Terrorism - Porcupine (15/03/2003 7:56:12 PM)

There is a big push by the major corporations to clamp down on file sharing of various sorts. Particularly peer to peer software like eDonkey/eMule, Kazaa, Napster, Morpheus, Gnutella, Bearshare, Aimster, OpenNap, Scour, iMesh, etc etc. Some of these corporations make big bucks through marketing and distribution of other people's work. The file sharing scene on the internet scares them senseless because it is obvious that the distribution chain is about to change big time into a form where these corporations will no longer be needed. Imagine an artist creating a piece of music, converts it to MP3 or some format, uploads it to porcupine-music.com where the artist registers his bank account, categorises his music and it is then made available to the public for download at a price, say $1. Or a whole audio CD's worth, say 10 tracks at $7.50. User sees the music on the "latest releases" section for that category of music that they are interested in and listens to a sample (first 10 seconds or really low bit-rate complete music), decided it's good enough, feeds his credit card details in, and gets the whole song. Bank and porcupine-music take their cut, but the artist gets most of it which is something that does not happen now. User then rates the song, maybe puts some comments in about it. Other users also rate the song, and the original users rating. Users may indicate that this song is not really categorised correctly, or could also belong to a different category. Like Amazon, you are shown "users who rate this song highly also rated these other songs highly". Checks are made that user ratings are not being fudged. Other users see the song being rated highly and download accordingly. Perhaps the music format would have to change so that before download, your details are encrypted into the music. Sure you can share the stuff, but your name will travel with it. Not entirely convinced that is the way to go. If music was cheap enough then I'm sure we'd pay if paying was easy. The Napster alternative seems to be to make people pay $x per month and download as much as you want. The proceeds of the subscriptions goes to subscribed recording companies or artists. This has still to be finalised by Roxio (who recently acquired Napster) but the thinking is that there will be a LOT of work to make it work well. Unfortunately, the incumbent corporations are very powerful, have bands in very strong contracts, have extraordinary marketing power, and resources that they can use to step on any development like file sharing. They are also able to bend the ear of the politicians to make some of the most stupid associations that will ever come out of a person's face. Yahoo has an article about a US congressional hearing where we hear amazing rot like: "there seems to be some connection between illegal copying and organized crime" ... "organized crime often supports terrorism" ... "public service commercials should highlight that alleged connection between piracy and organized crime" ... "If you want to see college kids duck and run, you let them read the papers and somebody's got a 33-month sentence in the federal penitentiary for downloading copyrighted materials." Downloading MP3s caused the world trade centre to collapse. Download an MP3 and you go to jail. God bless America. There is some obvious confusion between organised crime rings that sell CDs and the person at home who share MP3s. I would say some deliberate deceptive blurring. This is the power of big corporations. To me and many others who know about file sharing, the congressional statements look really lame and very stupid. In the back of my mind, I know that what is happening in the US congress is extremely dangerous because there are lots of people out there who have no knowledge of what peer to peer sharing is, and will take the word of these monkeys at face value. Unless you are educated in an issue, you cannot see through the subterfuge of the mistruths being spouted by the various interest groups. I see it ALL the time. People are inherently trusting. Politicians and corporations use this. USA, the state of perpetual fear, will ban peer to peer sharing because of fabricated links to terrorism. It isn't too hard to see that anything that companies don't like will be linked to terrorism. Rather reminiscent of Joe McCarthy's hunt for communists. We already have US based companies doing their own policing (in Australia) of file sharing on the net under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). A top team put together by microsoft, said that it is pointless to try and stop file sharing, "file-swapping systems have already won. The only way for music companies to compete is on the same terms by making music easy to get hold of and cheap to buy". Yeah baby! There are plenty of articles pointing out the legal problems of monitoring what people are doing on the internet which the DMCA tries to weasel around by sacrificing people's rights to maintain corporate profits. Policing is obviously not enough. The demonising of file sharing is the latest attempt to wrench control of music distribution back to the corporations. What can we do? Educate people that there is no link to sharing stuff and organised crime. Organised crime does NOT give away stuff, there is nowhere that you pay for these things, unless the crime syndicates are trying to make money through advertising. In which case, spam email has to be linked to terrorism and I, for one, would whole heartedly condone a US military lead action on those armpits, I'm sure UN backing would be forthcoming. Talk about it, write letters, post to boards, speak up against this crap.

War is bad... MmmmK? - Purple Penguin (9/03/2003 6:12:55 PM)

I'm going to add my 20 cents worth on the topic of war in Iraq. Unless you're some kind of recluse, who doesn't watch TV or read the newspaper, you will be aware of the vocal opposition to the war in Iraq from the anti-war movement. The threat of war and the associated anti-war protesting are, at present, the main topics in the news media. Only pre-pubescent males and the mentally deficient would actually think that war is a good thing that is desirable and that should be relished. If you are in either of these categories, check out the lyrics to Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" for a quick reality check. Maiming, mutilation, disability and ongoing health problems are among the effects of war. Despite modern advances in the conduct of warfare, where it is no longer necessary to level an entire city to destroy enemy force elements (think "surgical strike"), there will always be collateral damage in the form of civilian casualties. This is real problem. However, to focus on this aspect of the current situation with Iraq, is overly simplistic. My problem with what I will call the "War is bad... MmmmmmK?" movement is that they apparently cannot see past this "War kills innocent people" issue. War does kill innocent people. It is true and is a fact that must be confronted. At the same time, however, well over a million innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed by their own government over the last decade. In the current climate of the fashionably peaceful, it appears to be acceptable to vilify our elected representatives claiming that they are warmongers who want to murder innocent civilians in Iraq by waging war. It also appears to be strangely acceptable to stand by and do nothing and allow a belligerent regime to continue to brutally oppress, torture and kill its people. A quick look at history provides some precedents. Adolf Hitler is historically infamous for the murder of millions of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals under the Nazi regime. With the benefit of hindsight, very few people would think that war against the Nazi regime was in anyway unjust; yet despite the actions of the Nazi regime, at the time a policy of appeasement was followed by British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain and the ineffective League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations). The current situation of "more time for inspections" and the calls from the French and Germans for "diplomatic solutions" seems strangely similar to Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. If you do not learn from history, you are bound to repeat it. Hitler was bad, but had nothing on Joseph Stalin, whose 'liquidation of the Kulaks' and associate brutal oppression was directly responsible for the murders of tens of millions of his own countrymen. Another historical precedent - and yet there are no protests in the streets, demanding an end to the oppression of the Iraqi people. I believe that Senator Bob Brown, Lord Mayor Jim Sorley and other leaders within the anti-war movement would be hard-pressed to defend the actions of either Hitler or Stalin, yet they will vocally oppose interventions to remove Saddam Hussein from power, thereby relieving the oppression of the people that they purport to be speaking for. We live in a democracy that allows us the right to protest against our government's actions - a right that the Iraqi people do not have and where the exercising of such a right results in imprisonment, torture or death. The anti-war movement is, I believe, misguided, and takes an overly simplistic view of the situation. War kills innocent people - yes. The idea of having to fight a war in Iraq resulting in the deaths of innocents is horrible; but it is far worse to simply stand back and do nothing and let innocents be brutalised, killed and oppressed under the Hussein regime. "Do gooders" like Bob Brown and Jim Sorley, whose simplistic, inarticulate and vexatious anti-war statements do nothing for a constructive debate on responding to the situation in Iraq. There is a difference between "Do Gooders" and people that do good. If you want to do good and protest against war in Iraq, then do so; but consider both sides of the argument, and do it in a constructive way. Read more (8)

Strange people and their strange e-mails - Purple Penguin (5/02/2003 2:26:09 AM)

I've come to the conclusion that some people should not be allowed access to e-mail. The below example is a good example why. Now, I am used to receiving a heap of junk e-mail. At work, I have to sift through the dodgy business garbage e-mails; the e-mails advertising penis enlarging techniques; the porn site e-mail. Until this morning, I thought the strangest e-mails received were the midget porn ones; but this one takes the cake. And we thought that Michael Jackson had issues... And anyway, what the hell is "the fishing game", and how can one be related? (see below) If you like to relax at home wearing a helmet made out of aluminium foil and are looking for a new and highly interesting penpal, you can contact our crazy e-mailer at cliffwkchan@netscape.net Text of e-mail reproduced below: -----Original Message----- From: angel2elvish@netscape.net [mailto:angel2elvish@netscape.net] Sent: Wednesday, 5 February 2003 12:00 AM Subject: Why did I become IBn & M$ "experiment"? Did they perceive they destroy more than justice ? IT IS A (REAL LIFE ) SHOW SHOWING HOW HIGH (DENIABLE) TECHNOLOGY CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE SHOWING WHAT IS A GLOBAL VILLAGE ( SURVEILLANCE IN YOUR COUNTRY) SHOWING WHAT IS (DOUBLE) STANDARD HUMAN RIGHT SHOWING HOW YOU CAN MASTER YOUR LIFE (AS THEIR SLAVE) SHOWING HOW TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL (REVERSELY ) :-[ SHOWING HOW MANY PERSPECTIVE WE CAN HAVE (BEND TO FIT) I was the first one who promoted virtual enterprise here. They didn't want me have a real life. They bring me their subliminal torture game. Monitor my speech pattern, twist to fight against me. Annoy me with their midnight anchor calls. Making me live as a paranoia, of course I have no evidence. They are using "environmental signal" - very skillful and systematic - to alter my fate. How can I tell I have been chosen as an experiment to testify the fortune teller ? How can I tell I am being projected ? How can I tell they are killing me ? How can I tell it is "in and out" or "rapport and project" or "MKULTRA" ? No. I am already too lucky not to perceive as a God. I really want to know who initiate the "Chaos experiment", what covert business did IBn, M$, MOTOROLb and ORANGf betting on me ( very important clue ). I really want to know what would happen without my tape and mail. I NEED YOUR WITNESSES. Cliff angel2elvish@netscape.net Where do you want to go to date me ? Serial killer manufacturer ? Serial Monica manufacturer ? Why are you related to the fishing game ? Can you draw a complete outdated map of all "experiments" ? When will we stop replay tragedy for the nobles, Elvis ? Read more (7)

Farking Farking... - Elsta (3/02/2003 7:28:45 PM)

· When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours. · Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from our video recording. · When an IT person says s/he's coming right over, go for coffee. That Way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to Remember 300 screen saver passwords. · When IT Support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing. · When an IT person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your problems right out. We don't even like eating food, we exist only to serve. · Send urgent e-mail all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery. · When we do something as a favour in our own time at our own expense, feel free to criticise us. · That's OK, we don't expect you to lift anything or get under your desk. · Manual labour was part of our IT degree. · When the photocopier doesn't work, call Computer Support. there's electronics in it. · When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home,call Computer Support. We can fix your telephone line from here. · When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an IT person's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle. · When an IT person tells you that computer screens don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument. · When an IT person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?" That motivates us. · When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work. · Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what is meant by "my thingy blew up". · When you call someone in to fix a problem - but don't tell them about the other 10 problems until they physically arrive. That's OK - we can clear our schedule for the rest of the day. · Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps. · When your application can't do what you want... blame us, we write all the software that runs on your PC and can customise it on the fly. Bill Gates lets us do this. · Remember the IT guy doesn't need to think - he has seen every problem before. · If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 20 kg of computer sitting on top of them. · If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail/NT/network upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them. · When you find an IT person on the phone, sit uninvited on the corner of their desk and stare at them until they hang up. · Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap." We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap. · When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call IT Support. · Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a Master's degree in nuclear physics. · When you think the network/e-mail/office application is going slow, call us as we have a button to press that makes it go back to it's normal speed. · When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know about the problem. · The instant you call us (on our mobile) - we can see what's happening on your screen and can solve it instantaneously. · Be aware that IT people don't need to use the toilet. So you have a right to be upset if we don't answer the phone. · When you receive a 30MB movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We've got lots of disk space on that mail server. · When an IT person gets in the lift pushing 100,000 worth of computer equipment on a trolley, ask in a very loud voice, "Good grief, you take the lift to go DOWN one floor?" · And finally, always remember.... we were sitting there waiting for Your call.. The whole day!!!

Advance Australia Fair - and to hell with terrorists - Purple Penguin (28/10/2002 6:54:40 AM)

We all know that poetry sucks and is generally only good for trying to get into the pants of some lovely young lass. That being said, I liked this. I doubt it will appeal to Porcupine's Shakespearean sensibilities, but it did appeal to my patriotism (no quoting Oscar Wilde, Porcupine!) Anyway, despite the fact that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, I have no love and no sympathy for nasty terrorists that attack my country. Anyway, the poem: You hurt us bombing Bali, but we can take the pain, But if you think you'll beat us, you can think a-bloody-gain We battled at Gallipoli and we fought the bloody hun Of all the arseholes we've had to face, your just another one You won't get your hands dirty, you won't fire a gun Whenever danger threatens you just pack your gear and run You brainwash innocent children to do your evil deeds Carefull not to let them know just where it really leads You get them to believe all your bigotry and lying Until they cannot see that there's no glory in their dying Now we'de like to pose a question, answer if you can Where does your holy book tell you to kill your fellow man? Now listen hard and listen well, we're giving you the word You're never gonna beat us, you spineless bloody turd You'd never face us personally, you haven't got the guts You know that if you ever did we'd have your bloody nuts Our spirit is unbroken, and our heads are still unbowed We sure as hell aren't scared of you and your gutless crowd So get your act together-you'll never win because What your really up against is the spirit that is OZ. - Anon. Read more (1)

Jedi not a religion - Porcupine (6/09/2002 12:51:09 AM)

There are articles everywhere about the Australian Bureau of Statistics recording over 70,000 Australians marking Jedi as a religion in the last census. The anti-Jedi ABS is not happy and is looking to fine every worshipper $1000. Look, Jedi aint rich, they are too busy buying plastic crap, and standing in line for movies to have a job. I can't believe they are oppressing my religion. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is gonna have some throat gripping pain if they're not careful. Australia is truly a place of religous intolerance and the sooner the USA declares a war on that shit, the better. Actually it would take just a murmur of Jedi aproval from the allegedly democratically elected US president and our arse-licking prime minister would jump any direction even hinted at. Our prime minister, John Felcher Howard, is an embarrassment to our country, and I send a plea for help in deposing him from the leadership. Surely the US can help! You've got a rather long record of removing encumbent governments, why not now!?

Everything - Porcupine (3/09/2002 1:45:22 AM)

Nothing works. Everything is unnecessarily complicated. My football team lost on the weekend. Microsoft exchange is a pig to use, and restore. Servers are filling up with user junk. Some ass-wipe is stealing shit from offices. We're sacking most of my staff coz of money but the work is still there, and the guys are slacking off coz they don't care, so I'm doing three people's jobs. People don't respond to my phone calls. I find out hideous stuff about people I (used to) respect. I can't eat chocolate. The network has been going down way too often causing system failures in lots of computer crap. There's been a fire in building. I've got project work at home that I keep putting off. Someone has been asking about me at work (including my singleness) but the bastard at work won't tell me who. The code for this site has needed updating for months. I haven't had a good ... "book" in ages. You all suck. I hate everyone. Head butts all 'round. Read more (2)

a rant for david :D - a_greatchic (21/07/2002 6:14:40 AM)

i'd like to appologise for my lack of ranting this week, i have a workload that has sent me into shock... i still rule the end YEAH! I will go into dribble mode soon, just need to finish a page of my website - C.H.I.C

is there something on my forehead?? - Kitten (7/06/2002 1:28:04 AM)

this goes out to the disgusting men on the corner of Elizabeth and George St's last night at about 11pm - wake up and realise that you threw up on yourself mid step.... it wasn't a pretty sight..... and i hope you're grandchildren aren't reading this.... i don't understand the need to stare at people - unless you have a valid reason. it seems everywhere i go in public, people stare at me like i have something written on my forehead.... and its really starting to piss me off. what causes a person to stare at another? why do people find it acceptable to stand and leer at someone? what is the point? don't people have better things to do? and another pet hate...... old drunken seedy bastards in nightclubs or walking through the streets of our clean city - thinking in their inebriated state, that they are attractive, sociable and intelligent - and not to mention funny.. FACT #1: staggering from post to post with vomit spilt all over yourself is not at all attractive, FACT#2: wolf whistling is NOT a form of socialising, FACT#3: slurred speech does not denote intelligence FACT#4: laughing at things that you haven't bother to slur out aloud is not considered humourous...

Mrs Dowell - Elsta (16/05/2002 8:49:14 AM)

I recently joined the ranks of motorcycle rider after about a year brake after hitting a large stationary mini bus. Well, I have a rant now. Today, while riding to work, I was nearly run over by Mrs Dowell in her big safe luxury petrol guzzling 4 x4, who was dropping her boys off at a local private school. Mrs Dowell, of apparently sound mind and body, pulled out into the middle of the road that I was happily riding down and stopped after seeing me ... right in the fucking middle. This stupid crack whore decided, after seeing me, that if she didn’t stop she would be scraping me off the bonnet of her shiny 4 x 4, so she stops, looks at me and then for some unknown reason decided that she was much too committed to killing me to stay put so she tried to make it more difficult to avoid impacting her ca; she starts off again into the middle of the road leaving me about a foot of room to slice through blindly and pray. Maybe she figured she payed more tax then me and by rights the road was hers. I’d like to say now that if Mrs Dowell boys grow up healthy then I do hope one day to mow them down with a semitrailer as they peddle their way across a nature strip. All car drivers, especially women in big four wheel drives who cannot control or see over the steering wheel should be forced to watch gruesome bike/car accidents so that maybe they think before they push their big shiny steel projectile bike rider killing death traps into oncoming traffic. I feel better now. Until we meet again, Mrs Dowell. Read more (3)

The Bucks - Elsta (10/05/2002 11:50:31 PM)

I remember when I was only a little younger then I am now I would go out every weekend with out fail, rain, hail or shine and drink, womanise and booze and wake up clear and ready to do it all over again. So, what happened? I sit here and write this hung over, sick and making that seemingly all to familiar declaration "I will never drink again!" Last night was the celebration of Adam’s Bucks Night. He is getting married on Sunday to his long time girlfriend Zita. The night started at Adam’s house with a small bottle of scotch that somehow housed 22 standard drinks in its 700ml! We altered the quantity of this bottle by quickly consuming as much as possible before a maxi taxi pulled up to take us away. We knew things may get destructive, so we sought someplace other than Adam's house where we could run amuck and not even waste time thinking about cleaning or the consequences of ones actions, so off to the city we went. It was pretty obvious from the onset that the night would be an extreme display of what not to do when drunk and in public; a WWF wrestling match started in the back of the cab that showed no respect for the driver. We all put on our worst Indian accent and started to abuse the cabby. This can be a dangerous thing, especially when you are only half way to the city. The city was the usual blur of drinking in different pubs and clubs, ogling at different woman and avoiding fights with the locals of the pubs. You seem to take over venues when your group numbers about small football team, with only half the intelligence. Then of course came the strip club. I can only give faint sketchy details from here on as by this point I was well beyond comprehending all but the most simple of events. I think the name of the club was the Hot Dog, but don’t quote me on that. The girls, who knows, they were the usual would be singer-songwriter-actress types, if only they could cut a break and be noticed. Well until they do we might as well treat them like objects right? I was drunk, so that was my alleged thinking process. The club itself was ok. As my friends wake up this morning, I hear that some of them were apparently appalled at the hygienic state of the toilets in the club. They had proceeded to piss in all the wrong places. And this morning they are looking back on their efforts laughing. Aparently pulling the fly down is a good idea that seems quite difficult or even unecessary when drunk. Well, I will post more as my memory comes back but till then have a good morning and thank god you’re not hung over ... if you are then you have my condolences.

Resignation with style - Elsta (9/05/2002 11:57:09 PM)

Zantex Computers, US ... to his boss, who resigned very soon afterwards. Mr. Baker, As an employee of an institution of higher education, I have a few very basic expectations. Chief among these is that my direct superiors have an intellect that ranges above the common ground squirrel. After your consistent and annoying harassment of my co-workers and myself during the ommission of our duties, I can only surmise that you are one of the few true genetic wastes of our time. Asking me, a network administrator, to explain every little nuance of everything I do each time you happen to stroll into my office is not only a waste of time, but also a waste of precious oxygen. I was hired because I know about Unix, and you were apparently hired to provide amusement to myself and other employees, who watch you vainly attempt tounderstand the concept of "cut and paste" for the hundredth time. You will never underst and computers. Something as incredibly simple as binary still gives you too many options. You will also never understand why people hate you, but I am going to try and explain it to you, even though I am sure this will be just as effective as telling you what an IP is. Your shiny new iMac has more personality than you ever will. You walk around the building all day, shiftlessly looking for fault in others. You have a sharp dressed useless look about you that may have worked for your interview, but now that you actually have responsibility, you pawn it off on overworked staff, hoping their talent will cover for your glaring ineptitude. In a world of managerial evolution, you are the blue-green algae that everyone else eats and laughs at. Managers like you are a sad proof of the Dilbert principle. Seeing as this situation is unlikely to change without you getting a full frontal lobotomy reversal, I am forced to tender my resignation, however I have a few parting thoughts. 1. When someone calls you in reference to employment, it is illegal to give me a bad recommendation. The most you can say to hurt me is "I prefer not to comment." I will have friends randomly call you over the next couple of years to keep you honest, because I know you would be unable to do it on your own. 2. I have all the passwords to every account on the system, and I know every password you have used for the last five years. If you decide to get cute, I am going to publish your "favourites list", which I conveniently saved when you made me "back up" your useless files. I do believe that terms like "Lolita" are not usually viewed favourably by the administration. 3. When you borrowed the digital camera to "take pictures of your mothers b-day", you neglected to mention that you were going to take pictures of yourself in the mirror nude. Then you forgot to erase them like the techno-moron you really are. Suffice it to say I have never seen such odd acts with a ketchup bottle, but I assure you that those have been copied and kept in safe places pending the authoring of a glowing letter of recommendation. (Try to use a spell check please; I hate having to correct your mistakes.) Thank you for your time, and I expect the letter of recommendation on my desk by 8:00 am tomorrow. One word of this to anybody, and all of your little twisted repugnant obsessions will be open to the public. Never fuck with your systems administrators, because they know what you do with all your free time. Sincerely Darryl Brewer. Read more (2)

My war on spam begins with all spammers - Elsta (29/04/2002 7:41:49 AM)

My war on spam begins with all spammers, but it does not end there. It will not end until every spamming group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. These spammers spam not merely to waste bandwidth, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every piece of unsolicited mail, they hope that genuine e-mailers grow fearful, retreating from cyber space and forsaking news groups. They stand against me, because I stand in their way. I am not deceived by their pretenses to piety. I have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the spamist ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing bandwidth to serve their advertising visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded trash cans. My response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated replies. I should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic e-mails to ISP’s, visible to news groups, and covert operations, secret even in success. I will starve spammers of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from ISP to ISP, until there is no refuge or no rest. And I will pursue ISP’s that provide aid or safe haven to spammers. Every ISP, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with me, or you are with the spammers. From this day forward, any ISP that continues to harbor or support spammers will be regarded by me as a hostile regime.

Mutant Parking Nazi - Elsta (15/04/2002 7:46:07 AM)

I had some mutant parking nazi fuck put a ticket on my car today as it was parked at uni where I work. Mutant Parking Nazi’s reasoning was that my car was not displaying the correct label to be parking in the zone I had parked… What baffles me, what I find incredibly hard to fathom is the fact that Mutant Parking Nazi placed the ticket he thought I must be in need of right on top of my blue parking zone permit which by its very nature authorises me to park in the fucking blue zone in the fucking first place, where I fuckin parked! Now, if this wasn’t bad enough… the Mutant Parking Nazi had the hide to set my car alarm off in the process!. I don’t know how, maybe he was rough with it whilst giving the ticket. Maybe my car gave him some lip during the process and he thought it ok to slap my car around a bit! For whatever fucking reason it still shits me! For the last three fucked out years that I’ve worked for UNI I’ve gotten three fucking tickets, all I might add have been given to me by mistake for various reasons. All, I should also add have been refunded to me or cancelled. I have now developed two theories. 1) UNI hand out dodgy tickets in the hope that at least some of them get paid 2) They employ colour blind monkey’s to hand out tickets So that is today’s Rant! Now if I had a poll, instead of yelling and screaming about this I could make it a poll topic and get some statistics on how many people think: A) UNI hand out dodgy tickets in the hope that at least some of them get paid B) UNI employ colour blind monkey’s to hand out tickets Any fucking way, Till next time PARK SAFE Read more (2)