Why did you say six months?
He's coming.
This matters. This is important. Why did you say six months?
Why did you say five minutes?

Paging Thomas

Would Thomas the tank Engine please come to the white courtesy... platform.

Sydney's trains, normally fairly reliable, are currently a total mess. New regulations for regular medial checkups on drivers - which follow a train crash that killed 7 people after the driver had a heart attack - have sparked a "work to rule" reaction from a driver's union, the DAAG. The drivers involved are refusing to work overtime and driving slowly.

Of those who have had the medical chekups so far, fifteen per cent have failed.

The result is that only a quarter of trains are running on time, with many services running half an hour late.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Too Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Okay.

I can now report that lightning comes in three types:

Type 1: Flash! <Pause> Rumble rumble rumble. Good old comfortable watching-the-show lightning.

Type 2: FLASH! CERACKACKACK!! The "heh, that was pretty close" lightning.

Type 3: BLAM!

Type 3 lightning is particularly effective at 4:30 in the morning when everybody is fast asleep. There's no point in doing it again, though, because nobody's going to get back to sleep for a long time.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:37 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Galaxy Railways

This train is travelling westward toward the planet Destiny.

We will be making a transfer at the Hope & Despair station.

We'll be making use of a timeknot.

Due to this circumstance, please do not open your windows.

Because opening your window on a train travelling through deep space while it is using a timeknot is a bad idea.

Please don't use the the toilet while the train is standing at the station either.

Update: Well, that's nice. They kill half the family in the first episode, and then in the second episode they go back in time and kill them again.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:42 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Valentine's Day, Geek Style

Daniel, MuNu's pet grad student, posts regarding some interesting valentine's day gift ideas for the geek-girl in your life.

But the HTTPanties only come in "200 OK" and "403 Forbidden". Could we not make use of some of the other HTTP error codes?

Let's see:

Hmm...

100 Continue (Works for me.)

101 Switching Protocols (Um...)

204 No Content (Maybe on a guys boxers, if he's had, you know, snip-snip.)

300 Multiple Choices (See 101 Switching Protocols)

303 See Other (Other?)

304 Not Modified (On a ladies' t-shirt)

305 Use Proxy (Safety first)

307 Temporary Redirect ("If the 307 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.")

400 Bad Request (Try flowers or chocolates, maybe dinner and a movie.)

401 Unauthorized

402 Payment Required (!)

404 Not Found (!!)

405 Method Not Allowed (See 101, 300)

406 Not Acceptable (See 400)

409 Conflict ("The request could not be completed due to a conflict with the current state of the resource.")

410 Gone (Gone where?)

411 Length Required (Ouch. That's gotta hurt.)

412 Precondition Failed ("Nibbling the earlobe, uhh, kneading the buttocks, and so on and so forth. So, we have all these possibilities before we stampede towards the clitoris.")

413 Request Entity Too Large (No comment.)

415 Unsupported Media Type ("The server is refusing to service the request because the entity of the request is in a format not supported by the requested resource for the requested method.")

416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable (?)

417 Expectation Failed ("Oh, you men are all alike. Seven or eight quick ones, and you're off with the boys.")

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:41 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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That Other ABC

This, via Instapundit, deserves wider attention:

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.

It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base."

It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.

Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias -- not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!).

The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.

That means the President's communications advisers have a choice:

Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.

That's from the website of ABC News.

Unfortunately, it's the American ABC. If the Australian ABC were to open up like this, I'm not sure what Tim Blair would do for material.

Also on ABC News: Anna Kournikova Trades in Tennis Skirt for Hot Bikini.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Right Twice A Day

No, I'm not up quite as late as it looks. Something has gone screwy with the clock on the MuNu server. It thinks it's the right time (I set it from the clock at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, time.nist.gov), and the Timezone settings in MT haven't changed... Only, all my posts are post-dated.

It's just one of those little What the? Gah. I'll look at it when I have time. things that are all too common in computing.

I'm working up to a rant about software and hardware design, reliability and maintainability here. You can tell, can't you?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The Power Of Rant

Okay.

DVD #22, containing backups of... Well, never mind what, exactly. DVD #22 absolutely positively utterly refused to read, causing Windows XP to go into fits of freezingness to the point where I was forced to kill Windows Explorer. In between freezing, Windows complained bitterly that the disk was unformatted or indeed did not exist at all.

I just stuck it in the drive again. It works. Fine, no problems, first time, no delay, copied all the files off, no errors, all works perfectly, never was a problem in the first place.

Of course.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:23 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Grumble

I'm having enormous difficulties trying to restore files I previously backed up onto DVD-R. A majority of the disks I've tried so far simply won't read; others will read after they've been put in the drive, failed, removed, inspected, wiped free of tiny dust particles, put back in the drive... Three or four times.

All the disks were written - and verified - just a few months ago.

As an added bonus, when you insert a disk that Windows XP doesn't like, it pretty much chokes. Your applications, and sometimes even the mouse pointer, freeze.

Now, either these disks have a lifetime measured in weeks, or this new DVD-ROM drive isn't too great... Or it's Windows stuffing me around. Again.

I should have a DVD/CD-RW combo drive and my DVD writer available to try these disks in, but I don't. Because, you see, my 3-Ware RAID card wouldn't fit in my Lian Li case, and Linux doesn't recognise the extra IDE channels on my Gigabyte 7N400Pro2 so I had to use a PCI IDE card, which only allows me a total of 8 drives (4 from the motherboard, 4 from the card), so I couldn't put my 9 120GB drives in and had to use the 200GB SATA drive which I'd planned to put in my Windows box in the Linux box instead, and put my old 80GB IDE drive and the two left-over 120GB drives in the Windows box, which only leaves me with one IDE channel left instead of all four the way I had originally planned, and if I install the PCI IDE controller I bought to fix that the machine no longer boots at all.

In other news, my Windows machine doesn't like one of those 120GB drives. Or maybe it does. No, bad. No, perfectly fine. Bad. Fine. Can't read. Can't CHKDSK. Can't format. No errors found. Aaarrgh!

I bet if I installed it in a Linux box I'd see no errors whatsoever. Of course, my Linux box is full, so I can't do that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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No, Beal, With A B

As if the latest outbreak of Danish Lemming Measles wasn't bad enough, Susie warns us of the dangers of a new virus disease affliction that is sweeping the blogosphere:

BEAL

Beware, beware, the flashing lights, the floating...

Um. Give generously to the Beal Appeal!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Kerchunk Kasqueek

The office (kerchunk kasqueek) has a new folding and stuffing machine (kerchunk kasqueek) for sending out letters (kerchunk kasqueek) to our customers (kerchunk kasqueek). Since I was away when the infernal gadget arrived (kerchunk kasqueek) they chose to install it (kerchunk kasqueek) on the empty desk (kerchunk kasqueek) next to mine (kerchunk kasqueek).

It can fold (kerchunk kasqueek) and stuff into envelopes (kerchunk kasqueek) 50 letters (kerchunk kasqueek) a minute (kerchunk kasqueek). Hooray (kerchunk kasqueek) for automation (kerchunk kasqueek).

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:46 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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