Health Tips

We received this from our good friend Faye (aka Me-Me).

WATER...... It has been scientifically proven that if we drank 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli ( E. Coli) bacteria found in feces, in other words, we are consuming 2 lbs of POOP each year!


However, we don't run that risk when drinking wine, rum, whiskey,vodka, beer or other liquors, because alcohol has to go through adistillation process of boiling, filtering and fermenting.

WATER = POOP
BOOZE = HEALTH

Free yourself of POOP, drink BOOZE!!!

It's better to drink booze and feel like shit than drink water and be full of shit.

There's no need to thank me for this valuable information, I'm doing it as a public service

A New Project.....

Last weekend Niagra Falls was host to the first annual Rocketbelt convention. You might remember these devices from the James Bond Thunderball movie.

Rueters has a video clip, well worth watching!

Maybe I should build me one of these, that would make a great Sunday morning project. My wife will be so happy!

The Road To Fame And Fortune?

Well I have been plugging away at this blog thing for about 5 months now and it looks like Google has finally decided to give it some recognition. As of yesterday the Google Data Centres were starting to Page Rank it. So far about half the Data Centres have picked it up with a Page Rank of 3!!!!!!!!!!!

Woohoo, good times!

Now we have the fame, all we have to figure out is how to make the fortune.

Fun With Google News

Sorry about being so tardy with an update on here. It's been a busy week and I just have not had much time to blog.

I have however been playing in Google News and having a ball. The Google News feature basically trolls a list of 'accredited' news web sites and indexes news stories. One of the sites that I write articles for www.bloggernews.net is part of the Google News world.

It's fun to tinker with, you write a news article and the game is to try and get ranked #1 on a Google News search. I have had great success this week, at one point I was #1 on a keyword search of "NSA", "Simpsons", and "Tap dancing". hahahahahaha

It's great to get ranked higher than CNN, The Washington Post, etc.

Hell I need to get a life! hahahahahah

Rent-A-Protester

Being really stinking old (well NOT quite as old as my lovely wife) I have seen many things in my time stomping around this small blue green planet. Growing up I had plenty of opportunity to witness protests about various things.

In the 60's I lived in England (small drab island where it rains a lot) and I can remember people being incensed that the Trade Unions were Bussing protesters in from other parts of the country when some company or another went on strike, with the promise of free beer and sandwiches to join the picket line.

In the 70's the big social events were put on by the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), the protesters came from far and wide, although they were not paid, they knew that there would bee a plentiful supply of free recreational pharmaceuticals.

In the 80's I was freezing my nether regions off in the frozen tundra that is called Calgary (hell, I am back here again), and can remember the big 'beer strike', but there were no protesters. Canadians love their beer, and if some striking beer worker had been stood outside of a Government Liquor store waving a placard, they would have run the risk of some passing, 1/2 ton truck driving oil worker hurling an empty beer bottle at his head!

"Where is this all leading?", I hear you ask. Simon is long on scene setting hahaha

As some of you know I work at a Homeless Shelter. I was standing outside this morning at at the end of the driveway I could see a group of people holding banners up. I could only think that one of two things were about to happen. Some group was about to protest our existence, and there are several downtown organizations that have made it clear that they would much prefer that we relocate to the north pole. The second thought I had was it was some of our residents protesting about how hot the showers are, the quality of our library, or maybe even how good the coffee is in the Computer Centre.

I found out a couple of hours later that I was completely off mark with my ideas. Some guy from Vancouver wanted to protest about his treatment in Family Court about the visitation rights that he had been granted. His solution was to make up 20 placards, come to our location and offer people $10 if they would carry the placard down to the court building and hang out with him for a hour!

Mondays Are Hell!

One of my many hobbies is sailing, and my favorite sailing related site is the very irreverent www.sailinganarchy.com. I love people that do not take themselves too seriously. Their lead article this morning was....

"Today

Due to some technical difficulties (hangover), we will be a bit late getting today's content up (lazy). We should have some great stuff (doubtful) for you very soon (don't hold your breath). As always, we try to move forward (heard that before).

Ed (slacker)09/25/06"

A Man After My Own Heart

If you are a regular reader of this site you will have no doubt realized that one of my favorite pastimes is the wanton destruction of perfectly servicable computers. A fine example of this was the Tablet PC story.

I was cruising the net earlier today and came across a site created by someone who obviously shares my interest. His approach tho, is somewhat more permanent than my minor tweaks.

Have a look, it's a hoot!

Things You Learn From Blogging...

I wrote an article on Blogger News Network last week. I thought it was fairly serious and objective. It generated a huge amount of traffic to this site. Unfortunately It was mostly of the negative type.

The lesson to be learned here folks is its ok to be rude about the president.

And there are a gazillion sites out there that want him 'drawn and quartered', hung by the 'Yard Arm', impeached, etc.

But god forbid that you write a less than glowing article about Dog the bounty hunter!

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

I often wonder why I always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe it is ordained, or maybe I am just genuinely unlucky.

We had a 'boat load' of computers donated to us a while ago. Part of the 'boat load' was a bunch of the smallest lap tops I have ever seen. They are Toshiba Portege 3100ct models. At first sight they look very cute and exciting.

For a week or so I heard mumblings and grumblings about these lap tops. I am not part of the refurbishing operation other than being the king of the idiot projects, and the undisputed expert at finding drivers for bizarre bits of hardware.

finally I decided that I had to get the scoop on what the problem was. It turns out that the reason the Toshiba Portege is so small is because it does not have an internal CD drive, or floppy drive.

When the units were first purchased they were preloaded with Windows 98, and came with an external floppy, and an external PCMCIA CD ROM. Unfortunately none of the external CD Drives had been included in the donation. As a result the refurbishing crew were at a loss about how to reload a clean copy of Windows.

I could see this project was going nowhere, and the laptops would end up sitting in a large pile in a dark corner of the workshop. So Silly me says "give me one for a few days and let me have a play with it".


These stupid laptops are so tiny that you have to use a funky little add on docking station to even get at a USB port.


Plan A was to build a custom boot disk for Win98 with the USB support included, and the drivers to get a USB backpack CD loaded.

It took about half a nanosecond to figure out that that was next to impossible (actually a couple of hours). The good old Win98 boot disks are just thinly disguised DOS 6.2 boot disks, meaning that they have next to no ability to deal with USB and certainly not USB connected fancy CD devices.

Being the undisputed king of bizarre uses for computers I cracked another beer and decided that I needed to rethink my strategy. Several ideas came to me, but I dismissed them because they did not have the right level of craziness:

Load up Windows 95 from diskette, install the CD driver's and upgrade to 98. This was immediately rejected on the basis that it was far too mainstream, and far too time consuming to do with each machine. Windows 95 came on about 25 diskettes.

Create a bootdisk that got the backpack Ethernet connector running and do an across the network install. This was rejected on the grounds that it was too easy, and why the hell hadn't the referb team done this already?


Then it came to me, something completely off the wall! Lets put the Penguin on the systems!

My first choice of Penguin was Fedora, but alas Fedora does not come with a boot diskette install option.

Debian however does! I downloaded and created the two diskettes (Boot and Root). Booted up the puter, selected an 'Over the Internet' install, and 2 hours later I had a perfectly good working laptop.

Oh my boss is going to hate this hahahahahahahahahahah

Oh Crap, What Is The World coming To?

It has been a busy few days in the new world. I am finding it hard to keep up with all the action. A couple of my favorite stories are:

Willie Nelson gets busted for having a pound and a half of weed, and some magic mushrooms on his tour bus. It is hard to believe that a music icon like Willie would play in the bad world of drugs! (Simon grins).

In Hawaii Dwayne (Dog) Chapman was busted on kidnapping charges.


It is clear that the world is in turmoil! These paragons of Western Civilization are under fire. I thought the fighting was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, not so, the hot spots are Hawaii and Louisiana.

Now I do Not Like To Brag.....

This has to be the ultimate Condom!

Overdrawn At The Clicker Bank!

It was with shock and horror that I logged onto Blogmad and discovered that i was overdrawn at the Clicker Bank.

Who would have thought that it was possible to have an overdraft with a blog clicking thing?

And You Thought You Had Problems...

I came across a great article on Reuters news wire today. There is a US based religious cult that apparently is/was firmly convinced that the world was going to end in a big atomic explosion yesterday.

The group who decided to make their home in Kenya (presumably because not too many nukes are targeted on the Kenyan Game Reserves). They have created a big underground bunker, and stocked it with a years worth of food.

Apparently yesterday several dozen members of the "House of Yahweh", resplendent in gas masks, gloves, and long overcoats entered the bunker and plan on staying underground for an entire year while the whole atomic destruction of life as we know it blows over!

According to Sang (their leader) , a nuclear war between the United States and North Korea only failed to kick off Tuesday as expected due to difference in international time zones.

OMG! lets all get under the kitchen table and put paper bags on our heads to protect us from the fallout!

Too Cool For Words

Recently I joined another blogging endevour. The Blogger News Network is a site where people post news items. It is a fairly high traffic site and has good visibility with our good buddies at Google. It is also on the Google list of sites that it trolls for the Google News feature.

Yesterday I wrote a short article about Digital Literacy. I was just on Google and did a news search for "Digital Literacy", and woohoo, my story was ranked number one!

Check it out!

Axe Head Beer .. and another thing...

I apparently have lost my number one spot on Google. Some homebrewer makes a beer called Axe Head and has gazumped me in the Google ratings.

I am pissed off! How can some company steal my thunder?

I was not the inventor of Axe Head beer, but I have been a user! hahahahaha

I guess everyone needs their hour of 'Axe Head Beer'.

Have a great day, its Sunday here, and I am about to cook breakfast. Jan is already in the 'bunker', tho I think that it should be basically edible. Of course I have not told her that the Champaign is actually Axe Head.

Another Axe Head Beer Story

The infamous DW came for a visit this morning. In case you are new here, DW was the source of my inspiration for my big adventure of drinking Axe Head beer early one Sunday morning.

Anyway DW came limping into the lab today, the limp did not surprise me, he is one of the worlds most unlucky people, he has broken almost every major bone in his body.

It turns out that the cause of the limp was directly attributable to Axe Head beer. He was drunk, the bottle was slippery, and he managed to drop it on his foot, breaking his little toe!

Be warned, Axe head is bad for your health.

My Wife Is Gonna Kill Me

Due to circumstances beyond my control I have had to start operating out of a different Computer Lab. This has not made me a happy camper but I have played along with their game (cos I really need the pay check). Oh to be independently wealthy! Bill, if you are reading this why don't you and Melinda send me a couple of million from your foundation and it will fix all my problems! hahaha

Anyway, the problem I have is Typewriters. It can be argued that I already have too many of them at home, but I like them.

Oh, don't be fooled by the picture, this is just a few of them!

My real problem is the ones that I have at work. Moving to the new lab has meant that the 'Powers that be' want me to 'do something' with the stuff in the old lab. A rough count shows a couple of IBM Selectrics, a couple of Underwoods, some more Smith Coronas, in total there are about a dozen. Oh and they also want me to relocate my ever growing museum of computers, Kaypro 10, TRS 80, and a variety of other bits and pieces.

Jan is gonna kill me when I bring all this home!

Not even playing BadgerBadgerBadger to her over and over and over again is going to soften her up over this!

More Insanity From The Net

I am not sure if this comes under the label of 'too much time on their hands', or the author was just insane!

This is a web site guaranteed to drive your spouse insane. Jan hates it!

I recommend that you turn your volume up to high, and click here.

Big Screen TV Simon Style

A couple of years ago I acquired an LCD projector.

On Sunday evening I decided that it was time to take it on the whirl. Of course I could have hooked it up in the livingroom, but that seemed too easy.

Just before sundown I dragged the projector and my media PC (an old pile of HP crap) outside. My next door neighbor's house has a really nice large white stucco wall with no windows in it. I guessed that this would make a perfect screen.

The whole adventure came close to being derailed, the f'ing HP decided that this would be the perfect time for stinking windows to start crashing. Some quick thinking was required, and before you can say "blue screen of death" I had XP reloaded.

By now it was dark and so I powered up the gear. I have to say that the Windows desktop is quite magnificent when it is 12 feet wide and 10 feet high.

A quick copy across the local area network, it's always handy to have a 100 foot cat 5 cable, and we were all set.

Armed with a plentiful supply of cold beverages (Lucky Extra 6%) we watched 'O Brother, where art thou'. This is one of my favorite movies, if you have not seen it go rent it from Blockbuster.

I am sure that the passing motorists were impressed.

The most perilous part of the whole endeavor was the disassembly phase. It was nearly midnight and the Lucky Extra was becoming a significant factor. Joey, my stepson, came to our rescue and handled most of the heavy lifting.

Ah, just another day in the strange life of Simon!

Stupid Internet Tricks

I guess this is another entry in the "way too much time on their hands" category.

In October of 2005 AOL bought a blogging company called Weblogs Inc, although the exact amount was not disclosed the hot rumour was that the final cost was between $25 and $40 million dollars. Based on the fact that Weblogs Inc had been in business for only 2 years I would say thats a prety good return on investment.

Anyway, someone with way too much time on their hands did an analysis of all of the blogs that were hosted and how popular they were. Using this data it is possible to 'estimate' what any given blog is worth!

Enjoy.

My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?

Anyone want to buy my blog? hahahahahahahaha

No Parking

There is a great news story doing the rounds. Apparently some joker put up a no parking sign and this resulted in a number of cars being ticketed and towed.

No Parking sign mysteriously appears in Brooklyn, cars towed

The Associated Press Published: September 1, 2006

NEW YORK Several Brooklyn residents woke up to find their cars had been towed by police because someone had posted a No Parking sign on their street. The sign, which claimed to ban parking on their street overnight, mysteriously
appeared Monday or Tuesday, residents said, and then police started ticketing
and towing cars parked there.

This reminded me of one of my adventures. My very first job was working for the Atomic Energy Research folks. The 'campus' was a converted World War 2 airfield.

The air craft hangers served as research facilities. The major problem I had was parking. Now there was no shortage of it, it is just that it was not convenient. To use any of the regular lots resulted in a 20 minute hike to the computer centre.

There were about 3 parking spots right outside of the main computer building. I worked shifts and I quickly discovered that there was no problem getting one of the parking spots at 6am for the morning shift, or 10pm for the night shift. The problem was the afternoon shift that started at 2pm. It was impossible to find a parking spot.

While our location was by no means secret, it's pretty damn hard to hide a big ass air-field, it was however very secure. We had our own police force (and yes they did carry guns), our own fire department, all cars were searched on entry and exit (yes it was a pain in the ass!). We were akin to a small city, with all of the infrastructure that a city would have.


I mulled my parking problem over for a few weeks, and then came up with a plan. I liberated some no parking cones from our Highway (runway) maintenance department.

The day before I was to start the afternoon shift I would wait till the parking space was empty and put up the no parking cones. The next day I'd stash em in the trunk and park, putting them back up when I left.

Life was very good for several months, and I was feeling pretty good about this devious plan. Unfortunately I got busted. One day one of our armed cops came into the centre asking for the owner of the black Moriss Minor, oops, that would be me!

He told me in no uncertain terms that the Police took a very dim view of people parking in no-parking zones. Didn't I know that I was in a no-parking zone? It has been a no-parking zone for months!

I did not feel that it would be in my best interests to tell him that it was me that had created the no-parking zone to begin with.

I took my lumps, and moved my car to the far flung parking lot.

Something Mindless

This is one of those midless but very more ish flash games.



If you want to try it, click here.