But I’m so good at it… so…

I just saw a newspaper from the 25th of March where a family got hit by a train in country Victoria. They were driving a large 4WD (a Nissan Navara), didn’t see the train and the driver tried to stop, left a 40m skidmark and hit the side of the train. Two family members died, the rest are in hospital.

Things I must point out:

1. Driving a 4WD will not save you - you still need to pay attention to what you’re doing. A truck, bus or train will still handily kill you.

2. Driving a smaller, lighter car would likely have saved their lives. A Mazda3 will stop from 100kph in 38 metres.

3. If the big, heavy vehicle was necessary (and it probably wasn’t), money saved on skipping ABS is a false economy. If the vehicle was fitted with ABS it would not have been skidding.

We don’t need speed restrictions in this state, we need driver education and the removal of import duty cuts on 4WDs purchased by city dwellers. They’re freaking dangerous.

Ahhhh, I’ve missed the rain so much.

I’ve missed the weather where it’s not so horrible outside that you can’t go out of the house if you need to, but just wet and windy enough to encourage you to curl up on the couch under a throw rug and get some reading/film watching/relaxing done.

I took the dogs down the street earlier, and it started to spit as I closed the gate. Did I go back for an umbrella? No, I did not. I enjoyed the rain.

Other things I enjoy:

Amazon pricing errors - I’ve benefited from this twice - just recently when the Blu-ray edition of Lost: Season 3 listed at $40 (instead of the regular discount of $65), and a while ago when the first edition of The Absolute Sandman was listed at under $15 (currently it sells for $77). You’d never see an Australian store eating a loss like that without complaining.

Speaking of Amazon, I found out that I was mistaken about the affiliate program - turns out I make at least 4% of all sales, with no minimum monthly turnover required. Thanks must go out to APM, who’s already earned me $3.20 on his first three items. Make your own account, sir, and I’ll return the favour! Probably by catching up with that Sandman series - Neil Gaiman can do some excellent work in this narrow niche.

Nights when Crumpet is feeling too lazy to cook - Can you say… PIZZA? Yum. Mr. Natural? Obviously.

Having a new Mac mini for work - Sorry, Giz, but it’s so nice. The new laptop-style keyboard is a little odd though - there’s no real sense of where your hands are like the older style.

Podcasts - Today I listened to one of the recent GeeksOn episodes in which they discussed the passing of Gary Gygax. Wow, so many D&D memories. I can’t even remember what happened to the red D&D Basic Edition manual that I used to own… did my mother throw it away after being frightened by the nonsense on the television in the mid-80s linking Dungeons & Dragons with suicide and Satanism? Or do I misremember, and perhaps only borrowed it from a friend? Why don’t I own a 20-sided die? They are seriously cool.

Slumming on the couch in front of the projector - Although… I turned it off to clean the filter and do the dishes, and then Crumpet called and said something about it being Earth Day where we get shot if we use power between 7pm and 8pm or something… some hippie nonsense. I guess I’ll turn it back on later.

Chatting with Giz, I think I managed to work out the US government strategy to combat terrorism: Simply make the public too poor to be able to afford a plane trip - if you can’t fly to another country, you can’t fly back, meaning that a terrorist would have to use a plane filled entirely with non-Americans, which you can naturally just shoot down.

It’s BRILLIANT!

I finished my ITIL training today and did my first exam in (I’m fairly sure) 17 years. I actually got nervous - the reason being that I really couldn’t identify with the material. Plus, the lecturer was using new slides and misjudged the time required to teach the subject, leaving us short on time to do the mock exams. One exercise was skipped entirely. Continue Reading »

Wow. I seem to have enjoyed Flightplan a lot more than most people did.

After it was done I suggested that Jodie Foster did a good job, and that I couldn’t think of many who could have substituted for her.

“Sigourney could have handled it,” I suggested, “except that she’s too old for the part.”

Crumpet disputed this, and I had to bust my film nerd chops: “Weaver was in Alien in 1979, and she was in her early 30s. Foster was in Taxi Driver in 1976 and was only a teenager. That puts Sigourney in her 50s in 2005.”

I’m in the middle of a training course at the moment, and it’s really not my bag. I had very bad posture on the first day and hurt my back, but I did a mock exam tonight (before doing the final day of training) and got the exact score I needed to pass - 26/40. I think I’ll be all right once I have been taught the stuff I didn’t have a clue about.

Today I replaced my dear old Yamaha DSP-A1, with… another Yamaha! It’s the RX-V3800 (yes, an Amazon link for the Americans.. buy! Buy!), which does many wonderful things, most importantly it lets me use my old technology with the projector, so I can finally play my PS2 games again. Guitar Hero fights with M1k3y, ahoy!

Audio Trends was having a 20% off sale, so I got the amp, a pair of Klipsch RS-10 Surround speakers, a pair of HDMI cables and 10 metres of speaker cable for a little less than the amp itself would normally set me back. I’m streaming Dusty Springfield from the Mac as I type - sounds fine, just fine.

I can also switch between the DVD player and PS3 without yanking cables, which is a huge improvement. By the way, the guy from Audio Trends tried to sell me the expensive HDMI cables. I told him there was no way I was spending $60 on a 1.5m cable (after he had already dropped $15 from the price tag). He told me I could buy cheaper, but they were rubbish. I said that in my experience, as long as a digital cable was properly assembled, they’re all the same. I bought a 1.5m cable at Jaycar for $30 - still too much, but I wanted something immediately. And guess what, it works perfectly well. As does the $50 3m cable (instead of the $130 cable from Audio Trends).

The old amp had three VCR inputs, the new one has only the one, plus a DVR input. The new amp also drops the LD connection, which means I can’t play Dolby Digital from the laserdisc player. Oh well.

So, after 10 years I finally got the front effect speakers that I always liked the idea of… and I’m in the least acceptable home theatre room in 10 years - totally bloody square! Never mind, the speakers will make a properly-shaped room really open up.

Amount of time spent today referring to each of my nephews and niece respectively as ‘the King/Queen of Pies’: 40 minutes

Amount of time spent today thinking about Jesus: 0 minutes

Oh. Yeah.

Homeowners in the US voluntarily foreclosing their mortgages once the value of the mortgage exceeds their property equity.

I really had no idea what the housing market in the States was like. I’m starting to realise how boned their economy truly is right now.

Well, damn it all. I had all these ideas for a blog post over the last few days and I think I’ve just over-thought it and fallen out of love with the topic (I was going to spout some uninformed ramblings about the future of cinema in this country).

Or perhaps I’m afraid to commit to writing something substantial after so many years spent writing nothing worthwhile. Maybe I worry that nobody is interested in what I have to say. That’s something I can sort out with some drinkyhol over Easter, perhaps. Continue Reading »

A good explanation of the issues with rsync under OS X.