JamesX

Just for something different…

If a pizza place sells pizza by the slice, is there a guy in the back tossing a triangle in the air?
If the product says “Do not use if seal is broken”, how are you supposed to open it and use it?
How does a thermos know whether a drink should be hot or cold?
Why do they put Braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM?
Who was the first person to see an egg come from a chicken’s butt and think, “I’ll bet that would be good to eat”?

It’s been a really busy week and I haven’t exactly kept the blog up to date. So instead of trying to recap each day in full, I’m just going to make this entry with a quick run down of the week.

Weekend
Last weekend was good. The hot weather meant a lot of time was spent outdoors. I went out for breakfast on Sunday morning (as usual) only this time it was with a larger group. There were eight all up and it was good to have a few old faces to catch up with. There were the usual pool games and BBQs to keep us entertained and I managed to get into a huge argument with my mum about somewhat meaningless things. I should add that it kinda set the tone for the rest of the week.

Monday
Monday brought with it a new lease of life. Sure it was still hot but it was the last day of uni classes for the year so I was happy to oblige. I had an assignment due, a class presentation, which I’m happy to report went extremely well. All up the presentation went for almost 19 minutes so I should be getting a handsome mark for that. It’s worth 30% of the semester’s mark so it’s quite a biggie.

Tuesday
Tuesday saw me back at work to tackle the graduation PowerPoint disaster and the usual year 9 events. It seems to be Aikman Hall video season lately but the system is working well now so it’s not too bad. Later that night were the Theatre Studies monologue performances in D1. I have to say they are the best group of monologues I’ve seen since Theatre Studies was introduced at work so I’m glad I attended.

Wednesday
Ed returned from San Francisco (via Sydney) this afternoon and I was delegated to go and pick him up from the airport. It was a good drive after all, but it took me 20 minutes to find a parking spot. It worked out well in the end though because his flight was delayed and I would have had to have stood around waiting anyway. I made the trip back from the airport in 35 minutes which must be a record for the family because I had to break at least 10 state laws to accomplish that time. I was in a hurry though because I had to pick Marc up from work in Mount Waverly and was really short on time with the delays at the airport. In the end, I made it to Marc only 5 minutes late so I was impressed with my afternoon. My new car can go very fast when it has to. :)

For those who are wondering, Ed finished somewhere in the ranks og 17-32. He was eliminated by a French guy in the second round of the competition. But being the number 1 in Australia and one of the top 32 in the world at UT 2004 is certainly something to be proud of. Well done Ed!

Thursday
What can I say. Back at work again today. The year 12s are certainly becoming more active but I’ve not been hit with anything as yet.

Friday
Today I took it easy. After a pretty hectic week, this morning I slept in. Then around lunchtime Ed (who’s recovering from his 15 hour flight) and I baked a chocolate cake. In between cooking and other minor things, I’ve been watching The 4400, courtesy of Dean who managed to acquire a copy online. The show is rather interesting and I’m 2/3 of the way through the series. I’ll probably watch the last 2 hours tonight after taking some time out to chat with a few people.

So that just about wraps it up. If you read it all, clearly your life is less interesting than mine. Or maybe you’re just curious. As a reward, I’ll tell you that the Staff Review this year is fantastic. After all, who doesn’t want to see Michelle Hayes on stage wearing a school uniform, short skirt, hair bunched up while sucking a lolly pop. It is not to be missed I assure you!

Also, out of pure entertainment value, here’s a couple of interesting things:
Ed joins in a random protest in the US
The Pipe Dream animation (for Iain Warry - sorry it took me so long Iain!)

It’s been a busy day so to break up the tension, here’s some interesting true stories. Talk about bad luck!

A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise’s car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore - where a tree blew over and killed him.

Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas, was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge - and killed him.

Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head and he died of a fractured skull.

George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, Rhode Island, narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed, killing him.

Talking with Tom last night, we discovered how the Victrip website had met it’s death. The new Metlink/Viclink sites are, quite frankly, horrible so we began to satire the page and some of the things it was saying. To follow on from this, I whipped up a mock metcard and decided to replace the handy hints with some more realistic expectaions of our wonderful public transport system. You can check them out here. Feel free to distribute them as you like. If you have any suggestions, I can create more for you. Have fun!

Today hasn’t been a very exciting day but I have got a few things done. Things I discovered today:

• Unreal Tournament server admins (that’s me) get free CD Keys for UT.
• PayPal gave me a US $1.95 bonus in my account - I still haven’t worked out why.
• Another 3 of my eBay auctions ended. Theme Park World is apparently worth $25!
• The grass needs mowing around here but I couldn’t be bothered doing it.
• Rod Koetsveld is still in business.
• I found the driver CD for my iPAQ was in my briefcase all along.
• I got a HD for my final Computer Foundations assignment.
• Old uni text books are hard to get rid of. In fact, text books for uni are pointless so I’m not buying any next semester.
• No one updated their blog.
• You can’t put ice cream containers in the new recycling bin. But the bin itself holds about 6 times more than the old one.
• The cat didn’t wake me up this morning.
• I’ve had 5,000 hits already this month.
• Behind Big Brother made their homepage read “Behind The Ryan Show” as a protest against Ryan being favoured in the house.
• The WCGau site still hasn’t been updated
• Everyone seems to be offline today. Is there something I should know?
• The Axis cam I borrowed from work is online (but only during the holidays - address is /cam)
• Bookmarks are much more organised when you put them in folders.
• Egg and chips for lunch and pizza for dinner is not a healthy diet.
• Camino doesn’t like being maximised and scrolled at the same time.
• The Powerbook battery doesn’t last long enough when you are on wireless in bed and you don’t want to get up.

I’m sure there’s a lot more, but that’s the dot pointed way my day went.

This one gets today’s “what the” award. It’s the PowerPizza, a new way to disguse your Powerbook as, you guessed it, a pizza.

“Disguise your laptop with a PowerPizza and reduce the risk of getting it nicked. PowerPizza is designed so you can use your laptop without removing it from it’s disguise.”

Humanbeans PowerPizza

What will they think of next?