You might have Aspergers Syndrome if…

Your sexual preference is ‘get the hell away from me!’

Some applicable examples from an old list I stumbled over…

  • You have passed many a happy minute watching a fan spin.
  • On the one hand you think you are the most interesting person you know, but not too many other people are trying to get to know you.
  • People sometimes check you out to see if you really do, “know everything”.
  • You know the historical derivation of the word, “trivia”.
  • You get extremely disappointed in yourself if you don’t know something when you need to know it because you really *SHOULD* know that.
  • You choose the grocery aisle that you go down based on whether or not there are any other people in that aisle.
  • You will go many extra steps and take lots of extra time to figure out the answer to something rather than taking 30 seconds to ask someone.
  • You ever stayed with a hobby so long and with such intensity that you hurt yourself (can you say “carpal tunnel syndrome”?).
  • You talk back to the people on the TV and radio and call them idiots or say sarcastic things to commercials.
  • You think an old fashioned egg beater is a very cool toy.
  • One of your favorite hobbies is “autie spotting”.
  • You get irritated when people come up to talk to you when you are doing something important like staring at a wall.
  • You get irritated when people come by unannounced when you are totally getting into some research topic or painting or doing mosaics or whatever.
  • You feel somehow privileged to have insights into the subject of cultural anthropology because you have been studying anthropo’s your whole life trying to figure out what makes their culture tick.
  • You think “Cure Autism Now” ought to be called “Eliminate Autistics Now”.
  • You can smell the storm before it starts to rain, But you go and check the weather channel anyway just to be sure.
  • You’re friends with the church secretary, but can’t recognize her when you run into her in the store.
  • You keep bumping into people but the only time you actually remember to apologize is when you bump into a tree.
  • You forget to eat or drink for a few days because you are working on an interesting project.
  • Someone wants to get past you and says “excuse me” and you reply “sure” without moving a bit.
  • Someone asks you for directions but because you can’t remember streetnames you reply with “second chewing gum machine right, then left at the yellow fence the dogs use as marker…”
  • You constantly forget taking the trash out even if you walk past it all the time because it isn’t on your mental agenda of things to do.
  • You spend hours trying to figure out how someone could find a meaning in your words that was not there.
  • You clean up the house and later find you put the oranges in the shoeholder and the shoes in the fridge.
  • You are asked to write a short report and it gets over 10 pages long because otherwise you’d not fit all the important details in.
  • You are at a tour at a science museum and can’t help correcting your touring guide on matters of quantum mechanics.
  • You sit around trying to decide what to work on today, and by the time you are done deciding the day is over.
  • Someone tells you to “smile sometimes” and you reply “I’ll do it later.”
  • Your standard reply to any “when” questions is “In a moment” but your definition of a moment never agrees with anyone else.
  • You still remember poems you learned at school 25 years ago.
  • Someone tries to wash the dishes for you and you freak because your home is part of your personal space and you feel like they’ve touched you without asking.
  • As a child you didn’t comprehend the concept of lying or “teasing”. So if your older brother told you that clouds are floating rocks you believed him until you learnt otherwise in school.
  • You can’t stand kids but you spend inordinate amounts of time browsing through “Toys ‘R’ Us”.
  • You’ve ever re-enacted all the parts of a one-act play in the shower.
  • The words “Do you want fries with that” aggravate your PTSD.
  • You keep a couple of shoeboxes full of love letters you wrote but were scared to death of delivering.
  • Every couple of months you have a chuckle over the sword-on-the-table scene in “Get Smart” even though the last time you saw it was over 30 years ago.
  • You have to ransack your entire home a couple of times a week trying to find something you often need, and even though you usually don’t find what you’re looking for you find half a dozen useful other things you thought you’d lost.
  • You get your front door key out and ready to insert in the lock while still a minute’s walk from your house
  • You need to reinforce the foundations of your house to allow for the sheer tonnage of books you own and insist on keeping around, even though you remember everything in them.
  • You shop for new clothes once a year or less and only retire old ones when they are no longer providing enough coverage to avoid indecent exposure charges.
  • You own 7 sets of identical fleece trousers and soft cotton T-shirts.
  • You gave up on ever convincing people that you are not odd ages ago.
  • You hate having to talk on the phone and confine your conversational depth to ‘Yup’, ‘Nope’, and ‘Bye’.
  • You refer to what is supposedly your own species as “the humans”.
  • You shake your head and mutter “humans….” when you see some example of social behavior that you find unattractive.
  • The last time you moved house, you had 25 large boxes of books to every one smallish box of clothing.
  • It took you, your parents, a friend, and 4 movers 3 days to move all your stuff, and you were only moving out of a 2 bedroom apartment.
  • You don’t mind visitors signing their names in the dust on your furniture… but you’ll get pissed off if they add the date.
  • You’re the only person around who will decline an invite to a big party to stay at home to watch a TV show.
  • You wear jeans to the beach in the summer.
  • You can remember the exact date The Flintstones premiered (Oct. 1, 1960) and the name and production number of the first episode (P-1, “The Swimming Pool”) but completely forgot about the now-congealed casserole that’s been sitting in your microwave for three days.
  • You get really annoyed because you realize the first episode of “The Flintstones” to air on Oct. 1, 1960 was episode P-2, “The Flintstone Flyer” (it aired out of production order) but didn’t catch the mistake until you sent off the e-mail, and now you’re going to look like an idiot.

Countdown to arrival in the UK – 7 days…

The Invisible Wandjina of Coode Hill

You know, I can’t remember if it was Google Maps or Google Earth actually…

My life is getting more and more frantic the closer I get to my trip to the UK for Ali’s wedding (I have mentioned that on here before, right?). It’s madness at work, and madness at home as I try and get things sorted to jet out in the early hours of Monday next week (that is the Monday after the next Monday – we really need some more precise time-based terminology in this language).

Anyway I had reason today to think about the Wandjinna of Coode Hill. So I went looking for it.

Coode Hill is what I call the fairly impressive rise on Coode Street between Broun Avenue and Railway Parade in Bayswater. I don’t think it has an official title, but I’m all for giving local names to local features. As such I regard Coode Hill to be an outflung western arm of the Collier Hills, overlooking the Chisholm Valley and the Meltham Basin (names you won’t find on any map). Coode Hill is fairly impressive – rising a good 20 metres (65 odd feet) above the surrounding landscape, and its eastern side is particularly impressive, the hill having been carved out to make a nice, flat cricket pitch at Hillcrest Reserve. This cliff was the location of the Wandjina.

What’s a Wandjina you ask? Well, for the last few years, someone (or more likely a number of someones) has been painting Wandjinas all over the northern suburbs. Wandjinas are the ancestral creator spirits of several Aboriginal nations up in the northwest, and are famously depicted in sacred rock art sites throughout the Kimberly. The mysterious artist has been adding them to walls, bins, rocks and even trees scattered all around the place. This has caused a fair bit of debate and consternation within the Aboriginal community – according to some Elders the Wandjina is a sacred symbol and should not be painted by anyone who hasn’t been properly initiated. Other people (such as myself) have watched on with interest, and kept an eye out for new ones – there are quite a few sets of them on Flickr.

In any case, the biggest Wandjina I’ve seen was either daubed or painted on the slopes of Coode Hill for a while. I know this because although I never saw it with my own eyes, it was clearly visible on Google Maps.

So today I went to take another look at it, and maybe post a screenshot of it to my Flickr account, only to discover that it was gone! Removed in the latest update of imagery – which I have to admit does a much better job of showing the local area.

So, the Wandjina is lost. I tried looking for it in the historic imagery in Google Earth, but no dice. It has disappeared completely. Boo!!

That’s about all I’ve got to say. Depending on how crazy the next week is my next post may well be from merry olde Englande.

(PS: Aha! Someone else got it!)

Dumb it Down! No! Dumber!

Now I know what that guy on the train yesterday felt like…

So, some time ago I built a rather complex system for a client. I gave it a name, a good solid, Latin derived name that sounds good and has done perfectly well for the last two or three years.

Recently the client has licensed the system to a much bigger company, and I’ve been working day and night to add in new features and generally neaten up the edges of the whole thing, which is fine. But then I come in this morning and and am informed that the client has unilaterally and without so much as a ‘by your leave’ changed the name of the system. Changed it from its good, solid Latin based name to a weak, insipid, non-memorable, three-times-as-long name that isn’t so much a name as a description of what the system does.

This is like renaming the Ford Thunderbird to the Ford ‘Rather Fast Car’ or Coca-Cola to ‘Fizzy Black Drink’. And to add insult to injury they’ve hooked the name up to a crappy ‘surf the internet!’ logo that looks like something from 1997.

Bastards.

If I’d been informed of this at the start of the project I would be annoyed. But to have it dropped on me halfway through (oh, on top of all the other stuff you’ve got to do, can you engage in a total rebranding with our shitty new logo? thanks!) makes me f’ing furious.

I’m going to continue with the programming work and give this all the attention it deserves (ie: none) until I’m got some time free – probably in about two weeks.

Wacky Train Adventures

The wonders of public transport

The scene – the train to work this morning, stopped at Perth station. I’ve taken a seat towards the end of one of the carriages, reading a book while waiting for the service to get on its way again. Seated at the end of the carriage is a slightly scruffy yet basically normal looking man with a pair of crutches. Numerous other folk are sitting and standing around the carriage, minding their own business.

The automated voice thingie in the carriage comes on. “This train runs from Perth to Shenton Park, stopping all stations. Rail replacement buses to Fremantle are available at Shenton Park. Transperth apologises for any inconvenience”.

The fellow with the crutches looks up, startled, and opens his mouth…

“F***ING C****S!! F***ING C*** TRAINS!! F***!! F***ING C***S!! F***!!” he literally screams at the top of his lungs. He gets to his feet and charges down the carriage to the door, continuing to screech obscenities as loud as he can, and carrying his crutches. “F***!!! F***ING C***S!! F***ING F***!!!”.

On the platform he screams more obscenities at a rail guard before (apparently somewhat mollified) reboarding the train and proceeding back to his seat, muttering under his breath. “F***ing c*** train f***ing stupid c*** country, f***ing f***!“.

He was actually pretty quiet for the rest of the trip.

Nimboid

It’s new word time!

Nimboidadjective – Highly musclebound, of low intellect and prone to violence, often as the result of hormonal imbalance (see nimboidism).

My brother and I invented the word ‘nimboid’ as children after seeing a TV news article about the z-movie classic A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell and mishearing the title. We didn’t necessarily formalise the definition, I just always figured – after assuming one of the musclebound freaks show in clips from the movie was the barbarian of the title – that this is what it meant.

Go on! try it out next time you pass a rugby league player!

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