So I like to have a little fun with my Facebook status messages. I’d rather post something entertaining than some thing mundane such as “I had eggs for breakfast”, or fishing for attention using something like “Three more days!”.
Here are some of my favourites from the last few months. Some names are blacked out to protect the innocent. Some are not, because they aren’t using their real names so they’re already anonymous.
An interesting web comic/graphic I found on the tubes. I can see that that there’s a lot of truth in this. In today’s society, we do indeed have in infinite appetite for distractions which lead us away from what is really important in our lives and I’m somewhat guilty myself. Can these distractions ruin a person? You betcha.
The results are in from my Personality Disorder Test. If there’s one thing I did learn out of this, it’s that Schizoid doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.
| Disorder | Rating |
| Paranoid: | Low |
| Schizoid: | High |
| Schizotypal: | Low |
| Antisocial: | Low |
| Borderline: | Low |
| Histrionic: | Low |
| Narcissistic: | Low |
| Avoidant: | Very High |
| Dependent: | Low |
| Obsessive-Compulsive: | Moderate |
– Personality Disorder Test – – Personality Disorder Information – |
|
An interesting mix of questions, and I think the results are accurate. Go on, take the test and post your results in the Comments section. You know you wanna!
Yeah, so BP has little chance of ever doing business in America again on any large scale. All the PR spin and hand wringing in the world isn’t going to salvage anything out of the current mess so they should probably cut their losses and fire a few parting shots across the bows before burning all their bridges and pulling out for good.
BP should tell the American hypocrites to DIAF. Sure, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest man-made disasters in recent years, but America is the largest consumer of oil in the world, with an insatiable demand. And yet they’re refused to do anything about global climate change of which their use of oil is a direct result, and is an ongoing man-made disaster. To keep up with the demand, the oil companies need to drill in ever more dangerous and sensitive places. There are consequences to be addicted to cheap oil. This is one of them.
BP should’t worry about it’s image by hiring PR consultants and advertising agencies to dream up ads about making love to dolphins in rain forests. It’s not going to work. They should just hire armies of lawyers to doggedly fight every claim against them and protect their shareholders. BP can easily do business with the rest of the world.
A friend of mine named Trish and her husband Glen, both of whom I used to work with during the Dark Times at iiNet, got in touch with my wife the other day. They’ve got young kids who are just fascinated with Star Wars, and they’re driving their parents mad with questions. Not being Star Wars fans themselves, they don’t know the answers but they told their kids they know someone who may have the answers they seek by the name of Mr Hoover. They’ve been bugging Trish if they can go and see this mysterious Mr Hoover and ask him questions. So Trish asked Suzanne if I’d be up for a Skype call so the kids could meet Mr Hoover face to face.
So last Saturday Trish and her two kids Skyped Suzanne and asked me to join. The kids were very well behaved, very courteous and had very good questions. I told them “dispense with the pleasantries”, and instead of Mr Hoover they could simply call me Brian. It turns out they haven’t actually seen all the movies yet, just the first half of Episode 4. Trish’s reasoning is that Empire Strikes Back is a bit “darker” and more violent, too much for six and four year olds. That’s her call, and fair enough. But what they have seen has pretty much captured and focussed their little minds to the point where they, and perhaps their parents, would respond to counselling if what Trish tells me is true. I’ve seen a couple facebook updates from her and wondered what they were about.
We had a couple quick fire questions about who their favourite characters are. They haven’t made that judgement yet, because they haven’t seen all the characters. I found this to be a very mature position to take for a six year old. They asked me who my favourite was. I explained that Star Wars is the story of Darth Vader, and that every other character exists only to tell his story. They thought this was pretty cool. They’d heard rumours that I had mountains of toys, and asked to see some. I told them that we are in the middle of moving and they are in storage, but they could see some of them at my web site, DarthVaderFigures.com. They got Trish to bring it up in a browser, and I could see them marveling at what they saw. I said that I’d been collecting Star Wars toys since I was about their age, so I had quite a few. They liked this idea and I could see their minds ticking over.
The kids told me that they were too young to see the rest of the movies, and that they’d have to wait another 3-4 years before they could see Empire and Jedi and the others. I conceded that their mum probably knows what is best for them and said that they would have great fun in finding more characters and seeing the story unfold when they did get to see the movies. They already knew enough to watch them in the right order, 4-5-6 and then 1-2-3. I could see them coveting my toys, so they know what to ask for this Christmas. I told them that it was also a good day to talk because Empire Strikes Back was released 30 years ago almost to the day that we were speaking. Wow!
One parting shot I took was to explain that we used to call Trish “Darth Vader” at work because we’d all scurry away in fear when we heard her stomping down the corridors, the same way the Stormtroopers and Imperial Officers would quake with fear when they heard Vader coming towards them. Trish said that she already told them about the name, but I’m sure she didn’t fully explain the reasons haha.
It was a pretty entertaining interview, in all, and reminded me about why I like Star Wars and collecting. It “lets the kid out”. It’s fun, imaginative and also enriching to discover the stories behind the characters.
I’ve always thought that Japan, on the whole, make the best cars. Yeah, yeah… Italian and German supercars notwithstanding, but who can afford those? My first car was a Datsun, my second a Mazda. Our current family car is a Toyota.
Since moving to our current address we’ve found the need to buy a second car, because Suzanne and the kids are simply too selfish and lazy to get out of bed before 6am and take me to the train station in the mornings. Because I’m not in the demographic of buying European supercars I could not afford much. All I wanted was a little shitbox to get me from home the the train station in the morning and back again in the afternoon.
Coincidentally, a friend was looking to offload a car of his for cheap so I offered to buy it. It’s a Hyundai, which is a Korean make. The friend assured me it was very well looked after and maintained, and ran well. It does, and knock on wood I hope it keeps going. But there’s one little difference between our Toyota and my Hyundai which bugs me.
See, our Toyota doesn’t require you to turn the headlights off when you turn the car off. As soon as you turn the key to “off”, the headlights go out and the parking lights remain on. It’s not until you open the door that the parking lights turn off. This is pretty convenient for me because it’s just one more little thing I don’t need to remember to do. If I happen to turn the car on the next day in daylight hours and the headlights are on, no problem.
But, this behaviour gets me into trouble in my Hyundai, especially now that we’re in winter. When I leave home, it’s mostly dark. Well, dark enough that driving without headlights would be a bad idea. But when I get to the train station, it’s light enough that you can drive quite safely and legally without headlights. After I’ve parked my Hyundai and turned the key off, my instinct from years of Toyota driving leads me to grab my stuff and go, paying no attention to my headlights which are still on. I can’t tell that they’re on because the sun has already risen and I can’t see the lights reflecting off anything, and the instrumentation lights aren’t bright enough to see in daylight either. And, probably most critically, there is no friendly audible alarm found in other cars, which conveniently tells you that the boolean condition of lighted headlights and an open driver door has been met.
I’ve caught myself a couple times when I look back at my car to see that it’s parked straight, and I see an almost imperceptible red glow from the rear parking lights. D-oh! But on other occasions when I don’t second guess my parking abilities and simply lock-n-leave my car it’s not until I’m actually on the train that the doubts come: “Did I actually turn my headlights off or not?” Usually I can think back and identify that I actually did flip the switch, but one time last week I had to get Suzanne to swing by the train station car park and verify it.
So, who can I blame if I leave my lights on? Certainly not myself! But I can’t decide if I should lay blame at the feet of Toyota (and Mazda and Datsun) for making me the way I am, or blame Hyundai for not adding a feature which any other decent car manufacturer includes in any 20th century car?
Look here to see my first Australian Federal Budget. In a nutshell I have:
Would this work? Who knows. We can be glad it’s a game, and glad that I am not in charge of the Australian economy.
So, 10-Apr marks the milestone of my writing some crap every day for one month straight, just to prove to myself I could do it. Don’t be mistaken in thinking that I overestimate the value of my blogging. No sir, I know it’s crap and of little value to anyone except those who know me. Only about half of the 35 posts in 31 days are about me in particular or my family. The rest of a mix of funny pictures, products I’ve bought, lame social commentary and a history lesson. I just wanted to stick to this until I got it done, so now that I’ve got it out of my system I will probably post a bit less.
