Category: General

Wow, Microsoft can be annoying.

I have been googling for hours trying to find a solution to an issue with a new SBS 2008 box. In their infinite wisdom, the guys and girls at Microsoft decided that the default policy is for all client machines joining the domain to get a shortcut on their desktops to http://companyweb

I managed to isolate the group policy that was causing this to happen – it’s called “Windows SBS User Policy” – I managed to isolate it to the “User Settings” part of this policy – but for the life of me, do you think I could find an option in Group Policy configuration to disable this damn shortcut? As far as I can see, it doesn’t exist, and multiple Google (and even, cough, Bing) searches found little help other than perhaps writing a batch file to delete the thing if it appears. That doesn’t make sense to me – why can’t we just stop it being put there in the first place!

I refused to admit defeat and did some digging, and discovered that the shortcut is being added by the very similar GP.xml file that is referenced in this article. Note that the article refers to an XML file for a machine policy, where this one we’re looking for is a user policy, so the path is slightly different (in their path, replace ‘machine’ with ‘user’).

So, follow the directions in that article to find the GUID of the group policy, browse to C:/Windows/system/sysvol/domain/Policies/{YOUR GUID}/User/SBS/ and open up the GP.xml file with administrative privileges. You should see some lines of XML so you can glean some inkling as to what the file actually does. In my case, it looked like this:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<gpsetting>
  <shortcutlink xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" Name="SBSDesktopLink" Location="Internal Web site.lnk" Target="http://companyweb/" CSIDFolder="16" WMIFilter="select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version&gt;='5.1.2600' and '6.0.6000'&gt;Version" />
<shortcutlink xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" Name="SBSProgramLink" Location="Windows Small Business Server 2008\Internal Web site.lnk" Target="http://companyweb/" CSIDFolder="2" />
</gpsetting>

The first line adds a shortcut to the desktop for versions of Windows between 5.1.2600 and 6.0.6000, the second line adds a shortcut into the user’s Start/All Programs menu.

Initially I renamed this file, with no apparent ill effects. Then I had a rethink and decided I could probably just comment the offending line out, so I changed

<shortcutlink xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" Name="SBSDesktopLink" Location="Internal Web site.lnk" Target="http://companyweb/" CSIDFolder="16" WMIFilter="select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version&gt;='5.1.2600' and '6.0.6000'&gt;Version" />

and just wrapped some comments around it, like so:

<!--
<ShortCutLink xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" Name="SBSDesktopLink" Location="Internal Web site.lnk" Target="http://companyweb/" CSIDFolder="16" WMIFilter="select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version&gt;='5.1.2600' and '6.0.6000'&gt;Version" />
-->

Another possible solution would be to increase the starting version number in that file to something higher so it ignores clients with a lower version number.

Will post back here if I notice any adverse effects; but so far, so good. No links on desktop, everyone happy 🙂

A teacher asked her 6th grade class how many of them were Rudd fans.

Not really knowing what an Rudd fan is, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids raised their hands except for little Johnny in the front row.

The teacher asked Johnny why he has decided to be different.

‘Because I’m not a Rudd fan.’

The teacher asked, ‘Why aren’t you a Rudd fan?’

‘Because I’m a Liberal.’

The teacher asked him why he’s a Liberal.

Johnny proudly answered, ‘Well, my Mum’s a Liberal and my Dad’s a Liberal, so I’m a Liberal.’

Annoyed by this answer, the teacher asked, ‘If your mum was a moron and your dad was an idiot, what would that make you?’

With a big smile, Johnny replied, ‘That would make me a Rudd fan.’

Isn’t it funny how we all think we’re right. Especially when it comes to our politics. And I think, if one sits to one particular side of the political spectrum, that one probably tends to associate with people and read online blogs of people and organisations that have a similar point of view. This tends to reinforce one’s values and sense of ‘rightness’. We’re all crusaders, man! Fighting for what’s right and proper!

For me personally I identify as conservative. I believe in an individual’s right to self determination, small government, capitalism, border protection, less welfare, less bleeding hearts, smacking children if necessary, stiff sentencing, equality for all races and no singling out ethnic or religious groups for special treatment. So in the past few days I’ve had a bit of a culture shock in realising that many of the people whose work I most admire appear to have political views vastly different from my own.

Probably the biggest surprise – Ben Elton. I’ve been admiring his work since The Young Ones in the 80s, have read all of his books and always thought of him as being a fairly pragmatic kind of bloke. In hindsight, looking at books like Stark I wonder why I didn’t pick up his leftist tendencies earlier. In any case I just read Meltdown and the message seemed to me that while he was taking the piss out of greedy traders (and fair enough too) that he also believed in a people’s right to make money and be rich so long as it’s all above board. Imagine my surprise when I read on his Wikipedia page (if that can be considered a credible source) that he is/was a Socialist and is a self confessed ‘Welfare State Labour Voter’.

Then there’s Graham Linehan, who is also fantastically hilarious writer. The IT Crowd and Black Books remain 2 of my all time favourite British comedies, so imagine my disappointment to seeing him retweet links to anti-Israeli propaganda stories. Sorry, but while it is tragic that Palestinians are dying, there are two sides to this argument. In my view they are both as bad as each other, and any article that attempts to garner sympathy for one side while ignoring the other’s misdeeds is to be ignored. And generally, as far as I can see most of the apologists for Palestine (indeed, apologists for any form of Islamic terrorism) appear to be from the left. I could perhaps have written it off as an aberration if it wasn’t closely followed by a retweet of this tweet (sorry, can’t seem to link to the actual retweet) about a right wing blogger who was ‘forced to relocate’ after splitting from the right due to violent threats. As if the right are the only ones who have nasty people in their midst.

There are plenty of others too from . People like Robert Llewellyn, John Birmingham, Will Anderson (ok, I’m not that much of a fan), Stephen Fry (him I’m not surprised), Tim Minchin, Alan Davies, heck there are heaps of others I haven’t thought of. All of these people have at some point in the time I’ve been observing their tweets or reading their blogs or whatever… have made some comment that’s made me think ‘Ohhh… he’s one of those bleeding heart lefties’.

In fact, I just googled ‘list of leftist celebrities’ and came up with this page – there are MANY people on this list whose work I enjoy or admire.

So I’m left with a few thoughts on the matter. And here is a disclaimer: I apologise if I have misrepresented the views of anyone on this list. If I have misinterpreted something, please comment or tweet me because this is one case where being proven wrong would be quite nice 🙂

Where are all the prominent conservatives in the celebrity ranks? Are there any? Someone please point me out a few to restore my faith in the movement. Exclude people who don’t make a living out of it, this means no Andrew Bolts, Rush Limbaughs, or leaders of the BNP.

If there are any, they mostly seem to be keeping their views to themselves. To be honest, I think this is probably good advice for ALL celebrities, lest they shatter the illusions of your fans.

Why are there so many leftists out there in the ranks of our public figures? I’ve been musing on it for a day or two and so far this is what I’ve come up with:

Firstly, it is again ‘cool’ to be a bleeding heart. If you’re in a position of authority (like say, Tony Abbott) and you express any kind of slightly right wing view, three hundred different minority groups and left leaning journalists jump out of the woodwork and fire poison pen letters at you from all directions. Additionally, I guess most of the above list are in the arts in some form. That probably makes it a better than even bet that they’ve been exposed to some kind of socialist indoctrination at a university somewhere along the way 🙂

Secondly, those celebrities who have done pretty well for themselves can afford to be lefties. Some of the people on this list (but not all) have enough money and enough distance from us common people that they don’t have to deal with the consequences of opening our borders to all and sundry (I thought Wilson Tuckey was vindicated today by the way). They won’t have to worry too much about the increased cost of living if an ETS is brought in, they can afford it (and it doesn’t seem to bother them that we’re supposed be handing billions of dollars over to the UN to be redistributed to ‘developing countries’, to be spent as they see fit, more than likely on bigger limos and more guns for the socialist dictators in those countries).

Thirdly, I guess many people in the public eye genuinely want to use their position for what they feel is the common good. That ‘common good’ usually happens to be an extreme green cause or help for refugees or fixing world poverty or some other issue which is associated with the left. I do wonder if some conservatives are scared to represent these causes for fear of being misrepresented as being of that political persuasion – some of them are genuinely worthy causes, but it is a bit of a minefield in so far as making sure that money is spent on what it’s supposed to be. So many charity groups these days are so overrun by bureaucracy that sucks up funds like a sponge; indeed I know of people who’ve chosen to head overseas themselves and bring money and gifts to orphanages themselves rather than entrust someone else to do it. Now that’s helping people folks, and the people in question didn’t make a big deal out of it either, I only found out because I asked.

To finish though, I am not such a one eyed extremist that I can’t like a person or their work if we have strongly differing opinions. None of the people above have exhibited the kind of smug self righteousness, nastiness or pettiness that so annoys me about many in leftist circles, as far as I can see. And I’ll continue to enjoy their work and be a fan despite our differing politics.

If anyone wants to enlighten me as to who the prominent conservative celebrities are (particularly British and Australian ones) then please do comment or tweet me. I did find a few lists like this and this but new information is always good, especially Australian oriented. The general consensus does seem to be that when it comes to people in the public eye, us right wingers are outnumbered. Likewise if you just want to agree, disagree or argue with me, civil debate is always welcome so feel free to tweet or comment 🙂

Okay, so yesterday, I get a friend request on Facebook from an old friend – someone who I haven’t spoken to in probably 12 or 13 years. It came with a nice note reminding me how we knew each other (not that it was necessary – I was pretty close friends with her whole family at the time) and asking me to approve it… so of course I did.

So now I have this strange sense of apprehension about what happens next.

You see I have some skeletons in my closet. Back in my late teens and early twenties, I was, to be quite frank, an arse. Never popular at school, feeling abandoned by my parents divorce, and craving acceptance, I did some really, really dumb things. I didn’t kill anybody or anything but without getting into specifics, I did get a bit rebellious and do many things that I’m ashamed of.

And even now, getting towards my mid thirties, I still haven’t reconciled the person I am today, who is somewhat less of an arse (if not half decent) with the person I was back then.

This is not the first time it’s happened – I am friends with numerous people on Facebook who I went to high school with and even at least one girl who I was (very briefly) in love with back then. But in some kind of bizarre, ironic anti-social-networking kind of way, all these people made friend requests, which I approved, and then proceeded to sit back and wait for me to say something. And because I fear rejection, and to distance myself from the person I was back then, it was just easier to not say anything at all.

So today, I spent a few minutes exploring Facebook and discovered a few more old friends and acquaintances – who’s got married, who hasn’t, who’s had kids, who’s got fat (me), who’s got slim, you know the sort of thing. But would I put in a friend request to any of those people? Probably not – not unless they initiated it.

It’s as if there are two sections in my life, post-arse and pre-arse, and never the twain shall meet – except on Facebook.

So, I will patiently wait and see whether my old friend chooses to initiate a conversation. Deep down, I kinda hope so. Maybe it will help me realise that the past is gone and finished with and everyone has made mistakes.

Tony,

Thankyou for changing the Liberal’s position on the ETS. I feel strongly (as I’m sure you do) that there are a huge number of your constituents (including myself) who feel that this was the wrong direction for our country to take – in short, a massive waste of money for little to no tangible benefit.

The purpose of this iq option legit note is to ask that while formulating policy over the coming months, you consider another burning issue – the issue of the Labor government’s proposed mandatory internet filter.

This filter is another classic case of a well meaning but ineffectual and ultimately symbolic gesture from the Rudd government.

It will not achieve any of it’s stated aims of protecting children but at the same time will cause major cost to ISPs (who are already struggling to compete with a dominant, anti competitive incumbent monopoly telco) and will disadvantage millions of internet users in this country who are already paying higher costs for lower quality connections than many other parts of the world.

I strongly urge you to consider other, more effective means of fighting for the protection of children both on the internet and in real life, which do not impinge on the civil liberties of law abiding adults, or provide future governments with the potential ability to censor detractors.

Please, listen to the internet users of Australia. There are millions of us and we need your help to keep our internet fast and unrestricted.

Thankyou for your support.

Regards,

Me

Well well well, today has been an interesting day.

I have been following this story since early this morning, which has been plastered all over ‘skeptic’ websites (and I don’t mean that word in a derogatory way, I consider myself one also.

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/real-files-or-fake/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hadley_hacked/

For those too lazy to read the links – it would appear someone has gained access to systems at the Climate Research Unit in the UK (one of the most influential organisations in the climate change movement, and contributors to the IPCC’s reports on climate change). They released into the wild a 60 odd megabyte .zip file containing hundreds of internal documents, data and email correspondence.

What’s most interesting is the email correspondence, as there are a number of emails which seem to imply deliberate manipulation of data in order for it to show a predetermined outcome. They also appear show a clear unwillingness to comply with FOI requests for their data (indeed, they show contempt for the process, as well as for those who disagree with their results) – which to me suggests they have something to hide. Moreover it shows how interested in ‘peer review’ these scientists really are.

Tonight CRU’s director confirmed that the data does indeed appear to be real. No response yet to the allegations being made about the data (although they are promised).

Will any mainstream journalists have the balls to make a story out of this? Or will they all continue to report their alarmist claptrap and greet us with deafening silence on these allegations. Only time will tell.

Haven’t blogged for a while. So much for Scribefire helping it happen. Oh well. Discovered something interesting this morning so thought I’d stick it here. It’s probably well known among PHP gurus but hey, worth sharing anyway, right?

So I am writing an upgrade to my web app, and as part of the upgrade many of the config variables have changed. For the record, I put them all into an array… so before they were things like $db_host, $db_pass, now they have become $config[‘db_host’], $config[‘db_pass’] – this way in my classes and functions I only need to declare one global variable at the start and they have access to the whole gamut they need. But I’m writing a script to try and do the upgrade seamlessly in one step and it becomes problematic – I need to access all the old variables in the old config file, then rewrite a new config file with the new variables (and remove the old ones).

Never fear – it is possible in PHP to write to a file even if you have already included it. I did a quick google to find out whether it was possible but didn’t find much, so decided to knock up a quick test.

Here’s a file containing a couple of random variables (I called it test2.php):

<?php
$var2 = "Something else";
$var = "Something";

And here’s a script that includes that file, outputs the variables from it, then opens the file, writes to it (replacing the variables) then includes the file and outputs the new variables (I called this test.php):

<p>Test writing to included file.</p>
<p>Including file: </p>
<?php include('test2.php'); ?>
<p>Writing vars:</p>
<?php echo '$var: ' . $var . '<br />$var2: ' . $var2; ?>
<p>Opening and writing to file:</p>
<?php $file = fopen('test2.php', 'w') or die('Couldn\'t open file.');
fwrite($file, '<?php
$var = "Abradacadabra!";' . "\n" . '$var2 = "Fooey!";');
fclose($file);
include('test2.php');
?>
<p>Echoing new vars: </p>
<?php echo '$var: ' . $var . '<br />$var2: ' . $var2;

And the output of all this is:

Test writing to included file.

Including file:

Writing vars:

$var: Something
$var2: Something else

Opening and writing to file:

Echoing new vars:

$var: Poohead!
$var2: Shitbum!

Perfect! My included file has been updated with the new info. Note that you do need to include it again otherwise PHP will not know those variables have been changed.
I’m off to write my upgrade script now… 🙂

Okay, so this morning I was playing with something on a web app I’ve written. Previously it had been very clumsily written (and not modular at all) and over past weeks I’ve been busily rewriting it in a sort of semi MVC pattern. I looked at using one of the prewritten frameworks out there (and played with Kohana quite a bit a few months ago) but decided it would be too much work to learn all the conventions, rewrite my database structure to meet Kohana’s ORM standards, and it was just way overkill for what I needed. But anyway I digress.

In writing new classes for a lot of my functions I found that I would need to get the base path of where the app is installed (and it will vary depending on whether it’s being hosted on a Windows or Linux box). So with a little of this function that I found on some mailing list somewhere:

//Are we on Windows or *NIX ??
function platform() {
if (strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)) == 'WIN') {
return 'windows'; } else return 'linux';
}

I was then able to write this little function which gets the base path of the installation (bearing in mind that it is always called from a directory which is one folder lower than the base path). For example this function resides in C:\xampp\htdocs\myapp\functions\functions.php – and returns a value of C:/xampp/htdocs/myapp .

//Get the base path
function basepath() {
$os = platform();
$dir_separator = ($os == 'windows') ? '\\' : '/';
$path = explode($dir_separator, __FILE__);
$path = array_slice($path, 0, -2);
return ($os == 'windows') ? implode('/', $path) : '/' . implode($dir_separator, $path);
}

Basically… get the absolute path to the file it’s being called from… split it into an array of segments using explode()… slice the last 2 elements off the end of the array, and then put it all back together again.

There are probably more elegant ways of doing this, which I’m open to looking at.. but this is certainly doing the job.

Just noticed Internode have released their (much anticipated) new plans.

Unfortunately, as I am on a TwoPlus plan (ie ADSL2+ on a Telstra Wholesale DSLAM) with 25gb data included, my plan has seen no change.

Even more disappointingly, after churning my home phone to Internode a month or so back (on the promise that some bundling discounts would be introduced in future) the bundling still hasn’t surfaced. I was kinda hoping it would come out with this round of plan changes (though I didn’t have any real evidence this would happen) and talk on the Whirlpool forums is that the bundling is not a high priority right now. So no extra value there either.

I really like Internode as an ISP, they’ve done the right thing by me, but when you see the cheaper prices offered by all the other ISPs out there you do wonder whether the extra cost is worth it.

Thankfully, there is some light at the end of the tunnel – my exchange is slated to have Internode equipment installed – and it’s currently in ‘Build Preparation’ – according to the FAQ it’s typically in this phase for 2-4 weeks, then goes in to ‘In Build’ which takes 18-24 weeks typically. So possibly, only a few months more to wait, and I will be able to migrate to a plan on Internode’s own equipment and save myself $30 a month (and gain an extra 5gb per month quota). Can’t wait 🙂

In other news, played basketball last night, at about 50% intensity, and while it was a little stiff last night, the calf strain is barely noticeable this morning. Much better than it was yesterday after the run. Definitely only a grade 1 strain, and fairly mild. Still in two minds whether to attempt a 2.5km jog on it in the morning, my head says no, but also says that maybe I’m trying to find excuses not to do it as it’s still hard work. Maybe a compromise (shorter run) is in order, just until I’m sure it’s right. Having had a chronic calf problem last year (the original strain was much worse, and I kept trying to come back to early and aggravating it) it’s probably the safest thing.

Congrats to Australia on winning the Champion’s Trophy (and heck, maybe I’ll have to rethink my opinion on Shane Watson, not only has be played bloody well but he hasn’t got injured in what, 7 or 8 games in a row now? Touch wood, of course… :))

See, here’s proof! 3 times in one day I have blogged! Just watched Zombieland trailer (and it looks great) – love Woody Harrelson as a redneck.

Since I had to watch it with the sound down (at work) I missed the dialogue… but I DID see some comments on this video about For Whom The Bell Tolls by Metallica being in it… which is one of my all time fave ‘tallica songs…. so errr, awesome +2

Do not like my chances of convincing she indoors to come see this at the cinemas with me, but see it I shall… one way or the other…

‘Zombieland’ Trailer 2 HD

Woo! Just installed Scribefire.

To explain – one of the reasons I don’t blog much is because the internet is such a distracting place. You know what it’s like – you’re surfing around, you read an interesting article, you think ‘gee that’s interesting, I should share’ and then next thing you know an email or IM arrives, or you click a link and see something else, or a new Twitter post grabs your attention (or in my case, the dog starts barking, or I’m reminded of neglected chores – software can’t help with those) and BAM – the thought is gone.

For me it’s a constant struggle to stay focussed on one thing long enough to actually do something meaningful with it, my brain just soaks up all the information it can and heaps it in huge, dust soaked piles of knowledge at the back of my head (where it will probably remain forever – the filing system back there is woeful and recalling most of it is getting harder and harder).

Anyway… the simple action of clicking a couple of links (or in my case typing a URL, since I haven’t even bookmarked this blog) is sometimes the barrier between spewing forth a torrent of words onto screen, or.. not.

Enter Scribefire, the blogging extension for Firefox. I now have a lovely little icon in Firefox’s status bar (incidentally, right next to the Firebug icon, which is another FANTASTIC plugin). When I want to blog, I click the icon, and BAM, I have a WYSIWYG editor in my browser, so I can get it all off my chest without even changing tabs.

This is only my first post using it, so don’t expect an in-depth review or anything, but… wow. Why did I not use this before?

Well I’m still running and my weight has stayed static (if anything has gone up 1kg or so). I guess expecting results in 2 weeks was a little optimistic.

To make matters worse I’ve strained my calf this morning, must be getting old! And basketball tonight, so will have to go easy.

Impressed with my discipline so far. Was raining yesterday morning so I skipped the jog but went this morning (a Saturday!) instead. Can’t believe I managed to get up so early on a weekend… it’s amazing how much you can get done in a morning if you don’t sleep in too long!

I worked out (thanks Google maps) that the route I’ve been runnning is about 2.5 kilometres… which doesn’t sound like much but it’s a good starting point for a fat bugger like myself! Should be able to increase the distance in a few weeks time once my fitness has come up a bit.

As of this morning… 94.5kgs. Not sure if that’s due to random weight fluctuations or the running…. surely it couldn’t be the running after such a short time?

In other news, Kevin Rudd is full of his own self importance (what’s new there) and Geelong have managed to win another AFL flag in an arm wrestle against the Saints… who probably should’ve won it – they missed too many sitters early on. But hey, them’s the breaks!

Argh. Am I the only one who struggles with the dreaded spare tyre?

There’s lots on this blog about it – but last year I managed (with the help of Kate Morgan) to trim down from a rather portly 106kg back to 87kg. It took maybe 8 months to do but was relatively painless aside from the necessary avoidance of any lunchtime social occasion pertaining to food! I stopped it just before Christmas last year, figuring with good eating and healthy habits I would be able to keep the weight off.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I was 94kg and realised that some of my hard work had been done. I really don’t eat that badly (or that much!) but having a fairly sedentary job seems tobe taking its toll. As of this morning, I discovered I’ve bumped back up to.. 96kg. ARGH!

Anyway – the work is being done, I’ve decided to start getting up early a few times a week and going running. Already done so Monday and this morning. It is very painful but I am managing to run maybe 2 or 3 clicks without a break and hopefully it will get easier and I will run longer distances as time goes past. It’s just a matter of staying motivated to do it – leaving a warm bed at 6:30am just to inflict pain on oneself is difficult!

Must keep blog updated with progress… worst case scenario, I go back to Kate Morgan for a few months. Probably not until after Christmas though, that’d be too difficult 🙂

Bored at work (nothing new there) – so decided it was time for a change. A new theme and a new title, to reflect hopefully a new outlook and a bunch of more positive (and perhaps interesting) rants and writings.

For anyone who read this blog before (hardly anyone) the old title “The Blue Corner” was partly a reference to a battle with depression that I’ve had over a long period. If I look back now some of the posts are very introspective, negative and self obsessed. Perhaps also a little whiney. But also intensely personal – because I never really advertised this blog to anyone (though I know a couple of people including family members, found out about it and kept tabs on it) so I felt I could blather about my love life and other stuff like that without really caring.

Sorry in advance if anyone goes back, reads the posts and decides I’m incredibly self obsessed and boring. I’ve mentally wrestled with the idea of removing them but decided not to – I’m quite happy to lay it all out there. I’m like that in real life too, my emotions are usually visible on my sleeve, so what’s the difference. No games, no bullshit.

I know someone else right now who is dealing with similar inner demons – and though we’re not close, I’m trying to reach out to him a bit and show him he’s not alone. I would encourage anyone who is in the same boat to do the same – life’s too short to see people going through (and possibly leaving) their lives that way.

Okay, so John Birmingham (Australian author) puts out a challenge today to write a poem inspired by his last book Without Warning.

The brief was:

Imagine you’re the new (Post Wave) Poet Laureate of the US.

It’s your first gig at the (western) White House.

You’re reading from your first epic bit, entitled, ‘The Disappearance’.*

Gimme what you got, poets, it may be your only shot at mass market publication.

So, umm, while I should’ve been working, I knocked up this quick ditty:

Men and women, children all
Millions of us vanished
Buildings burned and choked the earth
Our innocence was banished
With one fell swoop the wave destroyed
The lives and loves we’d known
Sweet Liberty and Uncle Sam
Unseated from their throne

But from the farthest point northwest
A light dawned bright and clear
Noble deeds and love prevailed
To drive away the fear
A shared resolve to build again
The country we revere
And when we’re done to not forget
The ones no longer here

Whaddya think eh? Not bad for an IT nerd :p

So the other day at work we had this big discussion about Harvey Norman’s interest free etc. This is a subject I am passionate about, having worked in a retail environment for a long time (in a business that didn’t do interest free because of the cost).

Basically (and this is all my opinion) it is a ripoff – in most cases you are better off getting a low interest credit card. In store interest free finance has a number of “gotchas” for the average consumer including:

1. Very high interest rates after the interest free period (can be as high as 27%)

2. High account keeping and payment processing fees

3. Cost to retailer – my understanding is that retailers have to pay somewhere in the vicinity of 8% of the sale price back to the finance company to cover the cost of the interest free, it could even be higher now (as interest free periods seem to be getting longer and longer). This means that in order to cover this cost, margins are higher and YOU as a consumer pay more for the product.

My understanding is that the default rate on in store finance can be up to 60% – this explains the high costs somewhat. I also know a number of people who’ve been caught out by the high interest at the end of the installment loans online and found themselves in a neverending cycle of debt which is very difficult to get out of.

But in summary… it’s expensive… and it drives the price of goods up… but people still use it because it’s convenient. I have personally seen people refuse to take an (reducible) interest bearing loan, and go down the street to purchase a product that is 20% more expensive just because they could get it on interest free. How dumb is that?

So anyway, we have this discussion at work… next thing you know one of my colleagues changes his facebook status to “Don’t get interest free finance from Harvey Norman, it’s a ripoff etc etc…” – I had to laugh. At least he listened to me from the sounds of it!

On another note, I hate Harvey Norman in general. They seem to be able to advertise as being “the specialists” in everything. “Specialists” in mobile phones, “specialists” in home entertainment, “specialists” in Dysons, “specialists” in floor coverings… I mean WTF? They are the antithesis of specialists. They are a multi department franchise, staffed by underknowledged salespeople who (for the most part) are only interested in closing the sale so they can get their next commission cheque and couldn’t give a stuff what happens after you leave the store. I have not (in the last decade) heard one person tell a story of giving repeat business to a Harvey Norman store because of the good service or help they received or the good relationship they have with the salespeople.

And yet people still choose to shop there. That is the power of advertising and the laziness of the general population.

People never cease to amaze me. And not in a good way.

Fair dinkum.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/labors-blogwatch-plan-hits-whirlpool-of-dissent-20090321-951z.html

Apparently the Government’s new internet censorship plan now includes plans to monitor “blog” sites (like Whirlpool – not that I would call it a “blog” site) with specific interest in sites with criticism of Stephen Conroy.

I say this Mr. Conroy – THIS is a blog site.

I will also say that your policy on internet censorship is abhorrent to (in my opinion) the vast majority of internet users in Australia, and will do NOTHING to stop the scourge that is child pornography. The recent leak of the ACMA blacklist to WikiLeaks also shows the incredibly slippery slope you’re trying to slide us down… from blocking illegal content, to blocking legal (adults only) content.. to monitoring and potentially blocking simple discussion of the Government and their policies.

The previous government’s offer of free internet filtering software was ignored by all but a miniscule proportion of parents – surely this tells you how many parents believe their children are under threat from the evils of the internet?

Stop pandering to the wishes of minority groups and impinging on the freedoms of the MAJORITY of Australians. Get your head out of your arse and LISTEN to what people are trying to tell you.

Monitor this. You are a prize luddite and your Government seem to be hell bent on ignoring the wishes of your constituents – do that at your peril. You plonker.

I await the men in black coats to come and take me away.

I had actually planned to post weekly to give updates on the diet. So much for that.

On the upside – I’m still on it, and have lost about 13kgs so far. Not too shabby! On the downside my weight has remained fairly static for the last 3-4 weeks – seems as if my body is used to what I’ve been putting in, so I now need to change things up a bit to try to shock the metabolism into action again.

Sorry for the extra vitriol in my last post. Too many beers, methinks, and incredibly pissed off at not being able to get my peaceful internet time without being chewed on. I tend to lose my patience after the fourth or fifth beer… not that I get violent, just very loud and obnoxious and tend to yell at inanimate objects (and naughty puppies). Ahh well…

Anyway this week my favourite subject is reversing cameras on cars. I saw some thing on some inane morning show (actually it was probably Today, because Clare can’t stand Sunrise, as if one is somehow less pathetically perky and politically correct than the other) about reversing cameras on cars. Apparently because of the amount of kids that are getting run over in their own driveways by their parents, some lobby group or other is lobbying (that’s what they do I suppose) for reversing cameras/sensors to be mandatory in all vehicles, and encouraging people to get them fitted aftermarket to their existing cars. Now I have a number of issues with this.

Firstly – instead of making cars easier and easier to drive, shouldn’t we actually be teaching people how to drive properly? To my mind all these bloody driving aids are wonderful, but slowly but surely they’re eroding the skillset of the average driver. In 20 years there won’t be a driver on the road who can’t stop in an emergency in a non-ABS car without locking up all four wheels, or who won’t know how to accelerate heavily without spinning the wheels unless the traction control is turned on.

Secondly, and this partly is the same as the first point, why aren’t these people looking where they’re bloody going? Are they reversing with their eyes closed? I drive a late model Holden Combo every day (the same as a Opel Combo if there’s any poms reading this) – that thing has got to have the worst rear and side vision of any vehicle I’ve ever driven. Two small windows in the back doors, no side windows… yet I’ve never hit anything and I can even reverse park the damn thing. It has these two ginormous things hanging off the a-pillar on each side… they are called mirrors and if you look in them they show you what’s behind you. It also pays to take it fairly slow and steady, as not everyone appreciates your lack of x-ray vision when reversing out of a car parking space in a busy supermarket car park. But so far, after 6 months or so of ownership, not a bingle in sight.

Thirdly, the vision is far better in a normal passenger vehicle than in a 4WD. If these soccer mums weren’t driving Pajeros and Prados (ironically many of them have some sort of greenie sticker on the rear window.. yet the aforementioned vehicles are big gas guzzlers and usually have never been offroad in their lives) for taking the kids to school and back, they would have far better rear vision and would be less accident prone (even if the aforementioned soccer mums had any driving skills to begin with). Get a bloody station wagon for crying out loud, it was good enough for the baby boomers and it should be good enough for you too. If your friends give you a hard time you can tell them you’re cutting down on carbon emissions so that you can offset your next Thai holiday.

Fourthy… and perhaps most importantly… who’s watching the darn kids when they inexplicably run out in front of your moving vehicle and you don’t see them???

Once again we have a classic case of trying to remove responsibility from the people that should be taking it…. am I the only one that has a problem with this? I’m all for making things safer… but not at the expense of common sense.

So let’s not put the cart before the horse… instead of giving people more electronic gadgets to distract them while they drive (as if there aren’t enough distractions in the first place… and it could be argued that in many of these cases where kids get run over, distraction is actually a big part of the cause)… let’s teach them how to drive and teach them to be responsible for their children.

Happy trails!