A waste of bits and bandwidth

…which means squat to me. As I said to Karan last night ‘I have no job and I’m running out of free pr0n sites…’

Today’s entry will be a variety of links and some bitching as I have shit going on… I’m up to 487 downloads of the video of Nick Berg’s decapitation. Impressive numbers. I also suspect that some ‘people’ have been using my bandwidth by linking to my server to show it.

Given that these are pr0n sites, it doesn’t surprise me. As such, I have just broken all their previous links though that will most likely last only a short time. I don’t pay for bandwidth, but that’s not the point; save it on your own server twits. On to the links…

This site provides a simulation of MacOS 7.0 done in Flash (one of the few good uses of Flash) Test drive a Macintosh. This is circa April 1991 but is really pretty cool and sorta functional.

I forget where I saw this one, but it’s a face maniputaion site. I gave it a try and couldn’t figure it out though I was only mildly interested. Apparently it’s cool. Don’t know, don’t care, have no idea why I’m linking to it.

Lastly, Sevenapril.ca is ranked at 4,523,958 on Alexa… Looks like I kick your ass Angelo!

Today’s blog entry is brought to you by Colace? Stool Softener…

*Have nothing to say* let’s see… I built a Linux box over the weekend; a 200GB file server! How cool is that? Do I have 200GB of files? No, but that’s not the point. Naturally I screwed it up the first time but the second time was the charm.

Went to a party on Saturday night which was interesting. Jen and Ryan are moving to the UK next month and had a bash to celebrate. I didn’t know many people there but it was good to see the people that I knew. Too bad Karan and Claire didn’t make it as we haven’t gotten together in ages.

I see that well over 200 people have downloaded the video of Nick Berg’s decapitation. At the time I posted it, there were very few places to get it and most were swamped with traffic. I was very angry that there was so little reaction to it in the US and continue to be angry about the deafening silence coming out of the Middle East.

I also finished my uncle’s site and got it on the net up this weekend. Go have a look at his work. Good stuff and more to come shortly…

Should I be concerned that someone at the RCMP was looking at my site? I don’t think so yet it unsettled me…

I guess this is the definition of writers block… Hopefully reading this hasn’t been as painful as writing it…

Today was the infamous EI ‘Information Session’. Lord, I knew I was in for it as soon as I got on the #3 Main St. bus… A lingering stench of cigarettes, beer and BO greeted me as boarded the bus and no, it wasn’t coming from me. There are quite the number of ‘characters’ riding that line…

The meeting wasn’t all bad and didn’t go too long. It was funny to see all the paperwork that was generated and it was mostly silly. “Oh, all this paperwork! I’d better take my 90 minute break before I get started on my filing….”

We were chosen randomly because there had been no activity with our claims; we hadn’t requested any services so they wanted to make sure we were aware of our rights and obligations. Sadly, some people couldn’t even fill out the form without help… how sad.

Truthfully it might have been useful if you had never had the pleasure of being on EI. What is also true is that they could create yet another flyer, stick it in your first mailing and that would have been good too.

Shifting gears, I saw the video of Nick Berg being decapitaded in Iraq after hearing the audio on the radio. It’s the most horrific thing I have ever seen. In fact you don’t need to even see it; you just need listen to him scream as those al-Qaida bastards saw away at his neck while they chant “God is Great”.

It wasn’t quick and and it wasn’t painless… If it doesn’t make you furious, I have no idea what would. He wasn’t even a soldier… he was just a kid. He shouldn’t have been there but he didn’t deserve that. No one does, not even al-Qaida themselves.

I think it should be on TV so people know what is really going on there and the type of ‘people’ that need to be dealt with. Kill a hostage? OK. Shoot him. War is hell, but they went out of their way to make this gruesome.

If you want to see it, it’s here. Brace yourself. It’s not there for entertainment; it’s there so that people can see what these al-Qaida animals are like. And why they need to be extinguished.

So I talked to the headhunter today and the wheels are in motion though it may be later than the 17th. Given how the weather is, that’s ok but I’d sleep better if I had actually signed something…

MiHwa lost her Blenz mug and asked me to pick up a new one for her. No problem so last week I shipped it to her. She still doesn’t have it and it turns out I sent the mug to her old address… Nice. The shipping was twice what the mug cost… So the one I’m going to send tomorrow will be one of the more expensive ones I ever bought.

I had a nice weekend in Hooterville… It was too short and I was coming back to sign a contract so it’s too bad as I would have stayed a day or two longer. Of course this also means that I’ll have to go to the EI brainwash session on Wednesday.

The letter starts off pleasantly, describing the meeting as an ‘information session’ and that it’s to help me find a job and then ends with bold text threatening to cut my EI if I don’t show up. Sounds like fun to me…

Nothing like sitting in a meeting put on by a federal government agency; 90 minutes of my life that I won’t get back and untold dead brain cells. That’s even worse than a developers meeting.

Lastly, tonight I discovered that Andrea can guesstimate a woman’s size by looking at a picture. She’s a woman of many talents…

I pulled out my lumbering hulk of a mountain bike this weekend with the faint hope that I might be able to salvage it. It’s been sitting in the bike locker for almost two years so it was in need of some work. With a can of WD-40, a rag and a tire pump that I found in the locker I was able to get it going enough to take it for a spin.

It still needs work but it was fun to go burning around Stanley Park and the seawall. It also saved me some cash (of which I have none) because I was really giving some thought to buying a cheap one to rip around on. On Monday I even ran into Jen and Annie Ho who were jogging on the seawall. I almost felt healthy…

I need to do something to stem my ever burgeoning waistline and this is a good start. I don’t think I could run very far before my lungs would decide to depart my body but this way I can get the heart rate up and maintain it at a manageable rate. Yay me…

I also have good news on the job front in as much as I have found one. Nothing has been signed yet but it should be finalized late this week or early next. Right now it’s a three month contract doing server support but there’s a realistic chance that I could be made full time after that. Maybe if I wear tight clothing for three months…

FYI, the new banner is a picture that I took of the North Shore from the 24th floor of the Coast Hotel. Ain’t I artsy?