Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Can’t sleep. Feral Ghouls will eat me.
Picked up my new computer on Saturday and rather than do anything useful like start migrating data across I spent most of the weekend playing Fallout 3. I think I’ve overdone it a bit – I’m developing a morbid fear of train tunnels and when I saw a dead cockroach at Subiaco station this morning I almost tried looting it for meat.
I think I’d better go cold turkey for a few days 🙂
Well where else would you expect to find a nut?
A comment from my work colleague Daniel about the Tree Man.
“If he’d worked for those four months he could of paid to have the tree moved into his backyard”
Godwin?
We get a lot of spam at work – it kind of goes with the territory. Most of it’s the usual ads for male enhancement products, pleas for help from dying/persecuted millionaires and catalogues of Chinese crapware. But every now and then (for some reason) we get bombarded with poorly written missives protesting about something to do with the University of Aalborg, one Peter Axel Nielson and the hosting of student websites.
It’s hard to figure out exactly what the writer is upset about because his (her?) emails are liberally peppered with barely coherent rants concerning President Obama, Hilary Clinton, Hitler and Jesus (or as the writer prefers, “Jesu”). From what I’ve been able to establish over the months we’ve been been getting this stuff, Peter Alex Nielson (maybe) moved the hosting of a student’s website from the sever in his department (I think) and then called in Obama and Hilary (perhaps) to persecute said student in the United States (possibly). It’s all very confusing.
In any case I’ve been meaning to post one of these insane screeds for months. One came in today, so enjoy!
who does believe that hitler can change his essence?
it is impossible that obama may change his essence of hitler.
many people paraded in my city. I was very angry too.
I do not work at Aalborg university now. I left the criminal university. I never go to Aalborg university again.
Jesu forgives the criminal souls. They schemed the machination together.
in fact, After peter axel nielsen lost the head position, Obama and policemen helped him persecuting the student in USA. We heard all based on the software.
thereby, you may understand why obama came to Europe before presidential campain.
you may understand what the Aalborg university did.
you may understand why there was the financial crisis in the world. you may understand who operated american stock market.
you may understand why Anders Fogh Rasmussen became the secretary-general of NETO.
you may understand why the Aalborg university removed the student’s webpages on each department.
you may understand what obama did. you may understand what obama can do.
you may understand what obama will do
Using obama
It’s natural disaster time!
Well, yesterday afternoon Perth was hit with the biggest storm in, well certainly over a decade, and according to some people since records began. While it didn’t affect my part of Bayswater much, some parts of the city were absolutely pummeled with howling gales, pounding rain and hailstones the size of golf balls (yes that’s a cliche, but seriously, they were actually as big as golf balls). There was flash flooding, lightning strikes and even a landslide on Mount Eliza which blocked Mounts Bay road and buried a bunch of apartments chest deep in mud.
It happened to be my day off yesterday so I missed the excitement at the office when the roof of the light well shattered under the onslaught and the storm poured in, smashing windows and flooding the ground floor. Happily my colleagues took plenty of photos which they’ve given me leave to put up on my Flickr stream (which I shall do in due course).
Nedlands was absolutely pummeled. The trees have been almost completely stripped of foliage, and in some cases bark. At UWA the 80 year old stained glass windows of Winthrop Hall have been almost completely destroyed and a retaining wall at the new semi-sunken library building collapsed – filling the place with at least a foot of mud. In Subiaco the pavements along Rokeby road were solid green with leaves ripped from the plane trees and both my morning and afternoon buses had to divert around roads with downed power lines. The total estimated damage is over 100 million dollars and the city has been declared an official natural disaster zone.
Fun.
Oh, and on the way back through Subiaco I saw a man chase a rat out of his store with a broom. I don’t know if this was connected to the storm, but it is worthy of note. Apparently (according to the bus driver) when they demolished the old TAFE College a few months ago they didn’t bother to poison all the rats first, with the result that the cheery little fellows dispersed through the surrounding area. This particular rodent took cover in the next shop along (a high class clothing boutique) and the shopkeeper seemed content with this situation, leaving it to its own devices.
Some of my storm photos are up on Flickr, the rest will be up soon. Ish.
Rush Limbaugh on the other can’t devolve any further…
Well, America has finally moved into the 20th century. Well done guys!
I wonder how Glen Beck will react? I’m betting on incoherent gibbering, twitching and howling followed by devolution into some kind of lobster-like creature live on air.
Tom Bombodil and the Goffs
Call me easily amused, but the TV Tropes page on the mind-bendingly awful Harry Potter fanfic My Immortal sent my into hysterics today.
Literally, hysterics. The misspelling of “Reader Discretion” in particular had me slumped in my chair, screaming with laughter for about five minutes. My neighbours probably thought I’d gone insane and (once I recovered enough to breath) I discovered I’d given myself a nasty case of the hiccoughs.
I have no intention of reading the source material – the text parser in my head would break under the assault – but the summary is pure, radioactive comedy dynamite.
And Dan Abnett
Well, yesterday I paid a one third deposit on a new computer to replace the weather-beaten old box I’ve been working on for the last eight years or so. On the one hand this is great – I won’t have to wait five minutes for it to boot up in the morning or load a program, and I’ll be able to get back into gaming a bit – maybe check out some of those MMOs the young people are all talking about (*grin*). On the other hand I have a certain sentimental attachment to my old box, it almost feels like a betrayal to discard it for a shiny new model (this is of course completely nuts :).
I don’t have the full specs with me, but the processor is an Intel i7-860 and I’m getting 8 Gigs of 1600 Mhz memory, so it should probably do me for another eight years or so. I should be able to pick it up on Thursday, then I can spend a few weeks trying to get all my data across.
Computer excitement aside my life for the last few weeks has pretty much been limited to work and organising an Amazing Race style cryptic treasure hunt through the CBD. I’ve wanted to do something like this ever since my brother lent me a book – possibly by Poppy Z. Bright? – years and years ago that involved a similar race through London (In the book the game was being run by a bunch of evil, rich, land-owning bastards and the penalty for failure was death. I’m being a bit nicer about things :).
With luck I’ll be running the game in mid-April. Results will probably be blogged here at some point.
In the last few days I’ve also been reading one of Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts novels after discovering it on my way to work on Friday morning, buried in a pile of books dumped by the letter boxes. I always take time out to have a quick look through any piles of discarded books – I almost never find anything worth keeping, this was thus a pleasant surprise. I’m quite enjoying it – not a book I would have gone out of my way to buy, but certainly a bargain at the price (my 40k-reading-heart of course forever belongs to CIAPHUS CAIN – HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!! 🙂
Finally I’ve been promising my friends I’d blog about this for ages. On Skype a few weeks back we (somehow) got onto the subject of who we’d cast in a Team Fortress Two movie. We eventually settled on the following folk…
For the Demo-Man, Fabes insisted we cast Don Cheadle. I have no idea who Don Cheadle is, but Fabes says he looks the part and could do a kick-ass Scottish accent, which is good enough for me.
As the Heavy, our top choice is Paul Wight, better known as wrestling’s “The Big Show”. If he wasn’t available Vin Diesel could probably do a decent job, or failing him Yahoots Magoondi.
Given his brilliant performance as the Shoveler in Mystery Men (and just about anything else he’s ever been in) we agreed that William H. Macy would make a great Engineer. If he wasn’t available we’d see if Nathan Fillion could do a Texan accent.
Opinions on The Medic were split. Ryan and I favoured Neil Patrick Harris, based on his performance in the title role of Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. Fabes wasn’t so sure, and suggested this guy. Sure, he doesn’t look much like the Medic and we don’t actually have any idea who he is, but he seems to be an actor, and we think he’s probably German.
We were kind of stuck on the Sniper until Fabes made the brilliant intuitive leap to offer the part to Hugh Laurie. He bears an eerie physical resemblance to the character, and if he can do such a perfect American accent in House he should have no problem producing the strangulated cockney that seems to pass for Australian over at Valve.
The Spy was another problematic role. We eventually settled on Bruce Spence – the guy who portrayed the Mouth of Sauron in The Return of the King – on the basis that he has a big mouth.
The Scout had us baffled for a while, until someone suggested we grab a time machine and hire a young Jim Carey. Perfect!
Fabes was very keen on going right back to the source and casting R. Lee Emery from Full Metal Jacket as the Soldier. Personally I thought Vincent D’onofrio (who, surprisingly, was in the same movie) might be a good choice. If neither was available we agreed that a younger Jack Nicolson would be a great choice.
Finally the Pyro. I suggested Andy Sirkus on the basis that he’s used to communicating via just body language. Working by the same logic Fabes insisted on Johan Kraus from Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Not the guy who played Johan Kraus, the actual “real” Johan Kraus.
(We’re all a bit worried about Fabes… 😉
So there we go. We’re not sure what a TF2 movie would actually be about (apart from involving Toast) but when the script is done we’ve got the cast all ready!
Rising like a phoenix
I woke up this morning, walked out of the bedroom and thought “God, this place is a mess”.This is a good sign 😀
I’m sick of people ‘loosing’ their stuff. What, you had it tied up and then let it go?
If you can’t tell the difference between “lose” and “loose” then you’re an embarrassment to humanity.
That is all.
We are *not* some kind of homosexual department!
Today I actually had to ask a client if they’ve tried turning their PC off and on again. I almost choked myself trying not to do an Irish accent.
(We have a server room, although the last time I checked there were no goths lurking in it 😉
