Tuesday, September 18
Do any Australians remember the increase in burns that resulted after the gas supply was shut down in one of our states a few years back? Well the Sept 11 events already have their own version. Please people, be careful if you change your routine or start doing something you're not familar with. [Chris, 12:04]
Fine. We all know the Dow has had it's largest single day fall. But is it also the largest five day fall? Since that's effectively what it is. [Chris, 07:15]
Monday, September 17
Does anyone know of a free service that will send breaking news stories via SMS to an Australian mobile phone number? Mostly I can only find e-mail bulletins sent at specific times... [Chris, 10:02]
...and one who was a senior person from a former Afghani regime associated with serious human rights abuses. -- referring to the flood of "Boat People" to Australian shores and the now very real security risk they pose. [Chris, 08:59]
Friday, September 14
New news of the, well, opening stages of a war really, has dried up again. Here in Australia it has to compete with Ansett's demise, which has already been described as the "Top Story".
72 hours seems to be the maximum attention span these days, when only 200 years ago it would have taken as much as 6 months to find out about such an event on the other side of the world. How quickly people forget. [Chris, 14:10]
I don't think it's an illusion -- I'm noticing a lot more people smoking in the city today. So while they may try to act like it's not affecting them, many people are feeling the tension.
While I'm posting, one of the best places to stay up to date is MetaFilter. I've been submitting the odd update as I find breaking news. [Chris, 13:09]
Here in Australia it's disappointing and a little sickening how quickly the Free-to-air TV stations and radio have dropped the US coverage and returned to normal programming. This morning Channel 10 was showing cartoons, Channel 7 was playing music videos and Channel 2 had some adult-ed stuff. News radio is more interested in the financial collapse of a major Australian airline (nothing to do with the US) and assorted sport than the real world news. If it wasn't for pay-tv I'd think it was over and if it wasn't for the 'Net I wouldn't know that there have been more than a dozen further arrests of people with false papers and knives at some US (and UK?) airports. [Chris, 10:35]
Thursday, September 13
The only thing worse than using this horrific event for political gain, is to use it for financial gain.
In similar news, it's disturbing the number of domain names related to the date have been gobbled up, 11092001 and 11sept2001 to name but a couple...
[Jeremy, 14:40]
Too true.
New news appears to be grinding to a halt already today (well, it is 1am at ground zero). I lost a Yahoo group (sept11-something) that looked very promising, so I'm looking for other interesting news sources. By interesting I mean not full of people doing their varient on the story linked to above. [Chris, 13:04]
The following will keep updating, I hope.
[Chris, 09:44]
I don't know if any of the winners of my recent auctions are listening, but you're going to have to wait 'till the weekend for me to catch up. [Chris, 07:16]
I'm a little concerned that the majority of the news coverage has turned from the "hot zone" to leagues of talking heads. I don't want to see/hear some analyst's thoughts on the subject, I want to know if there are any real developments. [Chris, 07:07]
Wednesday, September 12
As darkness descends on the devistation, internet news sites go quiet -- stories are no longer updated, posts reduce in frequency... TV and radio stations, lacking new news have been repeating the same stuff for a few hours now, or returning to other news. In about four hours The Day After will begin. [Chris, 17:03]
I haven't posted all day because I didn't think Blogger needed the load... [Chris, 15:11]
Tuesday, September 11
I really should start submitting stuff to memepool again...MANAGER: So, can you work weekends and holidays?
WW: I don't mind working on weekends or most holidays, but I will need to be off for the solstices and equinoxes, those are my major religious holidays.
MANAGER: Does that mean you can work on Christmas?
Excerpt from Job Interview With: Waffle Woman
[Chris, 16:12]
Another eBay classic (well, Saturn) game listing: Pebble Beach Golf Links. I've also relisted some prior auctions -- checkout the "eBay" link at the bottom of your window. I'm aiming to list four Mega Drive (Genesis) games this Thurs... [Chris, 07:13]
Monday, September 10
The curse of the "hurry up and wait" job made worse by Australian Mondays.
Since I have to be ready at a moment's notice to shoe-horn two weeks of work into a few hours I spend quite a bit of time doing "nothing". Note the quotes. This is not a real nothing, as there are often tiny jobs, or appropriate (inspirational?) resources that can be browsed. Much of the nothing is filled with contemporary stuff -- the latest news and creative projects 'round the 'Net. Monday in Perth is, however, still Sunday in most of the rest of the world. This leads to a derth of interesting news, a lack of new e-mail and a general absence of stuff.
At least I can get a bit of reading done... [Chris, 14:04]
Saturday, September 8
From courtroom transcripts. Aledgedly.Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him.
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, never the less?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.
[Chris, 07:55]
What a week. If I earnt money at the same rate as this week for the whole year I'd be raking in about A$49k annually.
In actual news, there's some commentary about the HP-Compaq thing and the person at the top of it. Are shareholders the customers of modern management? In a huge company that makes "things" are the things less important than the company's stock price? Does top level management care more about reviews from stock analysts than they do about reviews of the products the company makes? Are profits to shareholders the real products that these huge multinationals make now and are the goods that are sold to consumers just a means to an end? And why does this sort of thing keep reminding me of the excesses of the Roman empire just before its fall? [Chris, 07:26]
Friday, September 7
Mobile Phones. SMS your way to divorce. Crank your way to a call. Annoy your way to the record books. [Chris, 07:04]
Thursday, September 6
Wonderful quote from a post to Slashdot..."I love Assembly. Back in high school, I was ordered to write a program that made a computer play music. Everyone else wrote little Pascal and structured BASIC programs to play Chopsticks on the school's Macs 512s.I wrote a TMS9900 Assembly program which played Flight of the Bumblebees in three-part harmony with the stepper motors of my TI-99/4A's three 5.25" full-height SSSD diskette drives. Percussion was achieved by toggling the head pad solenoids.
My Computer Studies teacher didn't like it because he couldn't understand it to critique it. But he gave me an A+ anyway, probably because the source code was about 30 pages long."
-- BigBlockMopar
Show off. [Chris, 15:19]
Well, Blogger is back up but now it appears Plastic is ill. I hope it's nothing serious. [Chris, 09:52]
Wednesday, September 5
I managed to pickup a Sega Mega CD game and five controllers (2x MD, 3x Saturn) for A$52 yesterday, and I damn well left them at work. And I dropped my Nokia 8810 into a pocket with a freshly cut key -- Ooh the pain. Lucky it's just a little scratch. Now I can at least check my personal e-mail at work through their network I won't have to do the mobile data thing anymore, so I'll move back to my T28 probably tomorrow -- after I've given it a good charge. No, actually, I need my Rio on Thursday evening (can't listen to music from a phone that might right when you're supervising a large exam) -- I'll switch to the T28 on Friday. [Chris, 07:22]
Tuesday, September 4
4 music CDs, a conspiracy book, an internet connection, distributed.net and thou. [Chris, 10:12]
