Category: Rant

Ouch

Paris-Roubaix. The Hell Of The North. One of the most classic of the one day Spring Classics. Long stretches of “pave” (cobblestones) that test man and machine. You expect crashes and you expect upsets. And this one didn’t disappoint.

First you had race favourite and defending champion Tom Boonen isolated in a 15 man break-away with no team-mates, but all his big rivals there, including George Hincape who had two team-mates with him to help. Things were looking good for George Hincape, until suddenly you saw him sitting up with his hands not on the handlebars. Of course he crashed – you can’t ride no-hands on pave. Then they showed the replay and it was obvious that the reason he didn’t have his hands on the handlebars is that they’d broken off!

Then that leading group broke into chunks, and Boonen wasn’t in the lead group of one, or in the chasing group of 3 (which included Hincape’s two Discovery team-mates). But then another disaster for Discovery – a train crossing barrier dropped in between the single leader and the group of three. But they obviously had their eyes on the leader rather than the rulebook, because they went through the barrier. The race mashalls stopped the next group with Boonen, which is just as well because the second they stopped the train went through.

Boonen was fuming about the stop, but it was probably the best thing that happened to him in the race, because after the finish they disqualified the three who went through the barrier, and so Boonen ended up second.

Well, that’s bike racing.

The comment spam scourge

A while back I was revelling in the fact that the comment spammers appeared to still be targetting my blog through the old Moveable Type comment URLS (which don’t work) instead of the new WordPress comment URLs. Up until a few weeks ago, it seemed that I’d get a spate of 7 or 8 comment spams over a weekend, and then nothing for weeks or months at a time. But then they found me, and I’ve been cleaning stuff out of my SpamKarma 2 interface daily. But the volume is going up and up and up – last night I cleaned out all the spam before bed-time, and woke up this morning to find 217 new comment spams to clean up.

Because of this volume, I’ve activated the “auto cleanup” function on SpamKarma 2, and I will no longer be examing the comments that it flags as spam to see if they were mis-characterized. So if your comment got flagged as spam, and you failed the capcha check, I’m sorry, but it’s gone. I hate to take this step, but by the same token I haven’t seen any false positives in a while.

As seen on Lean Left

According to Lean Left » Drunken Lullabies, anybody who reads this is supposed to post an anti-war song on their own blog.

Recruiting Sargeant

Two recruiting sergeants came to the CLB,
for the sons of the merchants, to join the Blue Puttees
So all the hands enlisted, five hundred young men
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me

They crossed the broad Atlantic in the brave Florizel,
And on the sands of Suvla, they entered into hell
And on those bloody beaches, the first of them fell

Chorus
So it’s over the mountains, and over the sea
Come brave Newfoundlanders and join the Blue Puttees
You’ll fight in Flanders, and at Galipoli
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me

Then the call came from London, for the last July drive
To the trenches with the regiment, prepare yourselves to die
The roll call next morning, just a handful survived.
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me

Chorus

The stone men on Water Street still cry for the day
When the pride of the city went marching away
A thousand men slaughtered, to hear the King say
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me

Chorus x3

The Blue Puttees are the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, later given Royal assent as the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.

The song refers to Suvla, which was part of the Gallolipoli battle, which the ANZACs seem to think was their own private hell, but they also shared it with the 1st Newfoundland and a few British Corps. The “last July drive” part is a reference to Beaumont-Hamel, one of the more atrocious parts of the atrocity that was the Battle of the Somme. 800+ members of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment went over the top on the first day, and the next day 68 of them were still standing for roll call.

People laughed at the line in Braveheart where Longshanks refers to sending Irish troopers because they were cheaper than arrows. But there was at least a touch of that attitude still prevelent in the British Army officer corps in 1917. As my dad said a little while ago, if commanders tried that sort of thing today they’d be tried as war criminals by their own side.

Up and mostly running again

So after a titanic two day struggle, we’ve got my home account moved to a server with a slightly newer version of NFS, and I seem to be running again. Except I don’t have Lotus Notes or Microsoft Office. Which, unfortunately, I really need in spite of the horror of having to use them on a daily basis. It seems that when I decided to blow the machine away and re-install, I didn’t save a precious little “id” file that allows me to log into the Lotus Notes server. The help desk form for requesting help for Notes requires you to specify what your Notes server is, and shows you how you can find it on your Notes screen – which of course I can’t do because I can’t get into Notes without this id file. It also promised that they’ll get back to you within three business days. Rob has warned me that there will be two more hurdles:

  • First they will refuse to help me because they don’t support Linux, and/or because Notes doesn’t run under Linux. Evidently the fact that everybody in our office runs it under Crossover Office under Linux is just a figment of our imagination. Pointing out that this is just an authentication issue and not an OS issue evidently isn’t enough to get them to cough up this file without a fight.
  • Even after they relent and send you the file, they don’t actually send it to you, they send it to your boss. And since my boss never reads his email and his secretary can never be bothered to send me the information when I try to recover my Windows network password (too busy with eBay and Solitaire), I’m not holding out great hope of getting this either.

Bummer

When you or I advertise a piece of used equipment for sale, it means “I have a piece of used equipment, and I want to sell it”. On the other hand, when Aircraft Spruce and Specialty advertises a piece of used equipment for sale, it means “I might get some used equipment some day, and when I do, I’ll sell it to you”. They sent me an email today to say that they don’t have the advertised unit, and don’t know when they’re going to get it, but if I want I can cancel my order.

What’s the point?

Oh well, back to eBay.