The country has been going on the last two days about an 18 year old boy who killed another boy at school with a sword, and then attacked two gardeners. The original reports described the boy as being dressed in a balaclava, with his face smeared in black paint. Details emerged later in the day about how the boy blamed Satan for his actions, and was dressed like the drummer in a band called Slipknot. He was also high on drugs at the time.

I'm fed up with people blaming a supernatural force for their own actions. I'm fed up with others believing those who blame a supernatural force for their actions. I'm especially fed up with those who blame *music* for "Satanic" acts. People must take responsibility for their actions, and parents need to reinforce this behaviour from birth.

In matric I did a speech for the Senior Best Speaker competition about this very matter. I didn't win the competition, but I feel the same way about it now as I did in 1994: music is *not* evil. If you take a psychologically troubled person and let their imagination get away with them, then they will try to find anything to blame except themselves. Now throw drugs into the equation.

Police have released statistics which show that violent crimes are usually as a result of drug abuse. There are countless articles worldwide defending this point of view (check Google), and I am inclined to believe it. Drugs cause an altered state of consciousness that affect a person's ability to tell right from wrong, and music and Satan are the convenient scapegoats.

So to all those people out there bringing up the heavy metal and Satan angle, stop your shit. It's tired and worn out and I don't buy it. For the amount of heavy metal music I've listened to, I should be a raving Satanist by now, killing cats and other humans by the dozen. I've only willfully killed one animal before, and I'm not proud of it (it was a hunting party, I was 14 and it was a hare), and although I joke about killing stupid people all the time, I don't act on it. Probably because a) I take responsibility for my actions, and b) I'm not high on drugs.

Last Tuesday, I bought a Linksys AM200 ADSL modem from PC Mall. On Thursday, I dropped them an email asking when I could expect delivery. Someone called Iain replied with a vague email about freight and suppliers and so forth, indicating that I'd be in for a bit of a wait. So I contacted a friend and acquired a borrowed unit to sync my line on Thursday evening.

On Friday, out of the blue, a delivery man appeared with a Linksys AM200 ADSL modem in hand, and my name on the delivery note, so I was pleasantly surprised. However, upon opening the box, I discovered a fault report dated 28 May 2008, for the exact model (I compared serial numbers), and not much in the way of "package contents". The plug wasn't even localised.

On Friday evening, I had to download the manual off the Internet using my borrowed router, and fought for a long time to get the connection working. M was frustrated to the point of going to watch a Ryan Reynolds movie, much to my chagrin.

Eventually it was all working, and I forgot about the whole thing until Monday morning, when I received a "Customer Feedback Survey" in my mailbox. This is what I wrote:
Read More...

"Police are investigating how a controversial Zimbabwean politician - hell-bent on stalling the power-sharing talks - has come into possession of a R1,4-million armoured Mercedes-Benz allegedly registered with the South African government's VIP protection unit." (Source)

If you recall, I wrote about this very same vehicle trying to drive me off the road last year.

On the bright side, if you read the article, police are not very impressed with Justine Chiota. Neither am I, of course (see related link).

If they bother using Google at all, and ask me to testify, my original charge of attempted murder stands.

That's me, too quiet ... on the issue of Jon Qwelane's article this last Sunday equating homosexuality with bestiality. He must be fired by his newspaper, fined by the Human Rights Commission, and banned from writing in public media. He is no better than the Mugabe he praises, or Hitler before him.

"The words 'Friendster', 'Klum', 'Nazr', 'Obama', and 'Racicot' are not recognized when you check the spelling in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008."

Let's analyse this for a second. Granted, Merriam-Webster have just added about a hundred new words to their collegiate dictionary, but I'm very confused. How are the above words English?

Anyway, if you have Vista or Server 2008, you would have seen something about an "Important" download for Windows in yesterday's monthly updates. In this case, one file of 62.9MB, to add the above five words to the dictionary.

The workaround, on Microsoft's website, is to add those words to the custom dictionary. Problem solved.

What a waste of bandwidth!

In the interests of public health and safety, I have reproduced an article from Health 24 in its entirety.

The original source is: http://www.health24.com/Man/Social_addi ... ,46964.asp

Special Report: Drugs

Forget everything you thought you knew about drugs.

Drugs may make you feel great, but the crippling damage they cause to the brain has remained unseen - until now. For the first time scans have shown exactly how these substances mutilate our minds - while psychiatrists deal with the fall-out.
Read More...

My great aunt, who is a resident of Harare, Zimbabwe, went shopping this week. She bought a cabbage and a gem squash, and some meat. The expedition cost Z$1 billion. And now, because of the escalating violence, she has an armed escort and 24-hour security where she lives.

She wakes up every morning at around 2am, so that she can do her washing, because the water runs out by daylight. Fortunately, living on the same electricity grid as Mugabe has its advantages - she gets water and electricity.

That's what the GM said to me as he asked for help.

As I walked around the corner and looked at the screen, rotated 90 degrees, a laugh escaped me before I could contain myself.

Fortunately it was easy to fix, and he plans to do it again to annoy the receptionist.

The legend that was George Carlin died on Sunday evening, Santa Monica time.

We'll miss you, George.

"'Older' sounds a little better than 'old,' doesn't it? Sounds like it might even last a little longer. ... I'm getting old. And it's OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won't have to die — I'll 'pass away.' Or I'll 'expire,' like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they'll call it a 'terminal episode.' The insurance company will refer to it as 'negative patient care outcome.' And if it's the result of malpractice they'll say it was a 'therapeutic misadventure."'


""We're all fucked. It helps to remember that."

The machines are coming. See related link.

Durban - Hijackers are using pool acid to attack motorists, KwaZulu-Natal police warned on Monday.

Spokesperson Superintendent Zandra Wiid said in a recent case in Rivonia, a motorist had stopped at a traffic light when a well-dressed man approached the car.

"He used a syringe and sprayed pool acid on the victim's face. He suffered severe burns," she said.

Wiid said police in other provinces had been alerted to the new method.

Although no such cases had been reported in KwaZulu-Natal, Wiid said motorists had to be aware of the new tactic.

"Motorists should be careful and not wind down their windows for anyone and keep all doors locked. It is important to always be alert," she said.

See related link.

Well, for the meantime anyway. I have blocked China from my server, as well as half of Spain apparently (one errant ISP's IP range kept coming up in my logs).

With luck, this will reduce the load on my server, as well as the traffic volume.

I had this bug on my PC for the last month, which coincided with an update of my Intel motherboard drivers, so I thought I had downloaded some dodgy drivers.

To my relief, after a full scan of 300GB of files under another OS, I have removed the bug and managed to get NOD32 reinstalled. Yay!

John McCain, the Republican candidate and old white man, is going to win the US elections, mainly because everyone has forgotten how a Republic works. The popular vote counts for absolutely nothing. The Electoral College, made up by old white men, chooses the president. That's how GW got in. Do you honestly think they'd choose a black man or a transvestite white woman?

Anyway, if Obama does become president in the next elections, I'll eat tomato.

P.S. For those of you sharp enough, this was nothing more than a thinly-veiled way for me to refer to Hillary as a transvestite.

"... When can you send a plumber?"

I normally don't do toilet humour, but this one is begging to be lampooned. Excuse the pun.

The toilet (only one?) on the International Space Station is broken, apparently with a "bypass" to deal with "liquid waste". "Solid waste" isn't a problem, apparently. They even have "special bags" to collect urine. If it were an African in Space (a la Mark Shuttleworth), he would have rigged up something out of an old Coke bottle and a hole in the side - i.e. pressure differential, also known as an air-assisted pump.

I wonder who's paying the bill for sending up a space shuttle to change a toilet pump. I heard those things are dangerous. Shuttles, not toilet pumps, although from personal experience, the latter can be quite deadly too.

See related link.

Max du Preez, well-known (and well-respected) journalist, has made an interesting and I dare say accurate description of our Governor of the Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni. He uses the words "Terminator", and "robot-like" in his continual increase of the interest rate to combat inflation. While this is hardly the forum for economic discussion, I think it's amusing that the three people in charge of our economy's names all start with "T": Thabo, Trevor and Tito. That makes T3 ...

I know it's too early for bad puns, but I think it's funny in an ironic sort of way. Especially how M and I have just bought a house two weeks before the interest rate is due to go up again.

See related link for Max's article.

Long live Postfix. I looked at Exim as well, and decided on the former for the amount of documentation around virtual hosts. It was also easier to install than qmail.

The xenophobic attacks in our very recent history have been spoken about by many people from many perspectives, so I'll avoid the issue as much as I can, except to say that our president is an idiot, and perceptions in the world today are that he is morally bankrupt - I tend to share that worldview.

Wow, that was a long, drawn-out sentence. Kind of like the long, drawn-out sentences our president used in a speech this week in Japan. Yes, Japan. He's the other side of the sea talking about African Development.

Excuse me while I drown in irony.

*glug*

*blup*

*poit*

...

The ITS website has been updated for the first time in 2½ years with a new look and feel. I have removed all the activities which are no longer being performed by myself, since I went back into the corporate environment.

Check it out at http://itsol.co.za/

The similarities are uncanny.

We got this the other day.





After laughing at the various afflictions, as well as the "clients" had to say, I noticed that the good doctor is situated across the road from a hardware store.

Pure class.

Our dogs are called Biscuit and Molly.

"Have you two dogs been good today?"

Rustle of plastic.

"Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Good dog Biscui -- ow, Molly, you bitch."

Austria has a bad reputation politically, and that reputation was sullied even more this week with the news of Josef F, now 73, who allegedly fathered seven children with his daughter, whom he kept locked up in a cellar for 24 years. Along with incinerating one of the babies who died shortly after birth, he kept three others in the dark until now.

Sorry, Arnold. but Adolf, Josef and Wolfgang Priklopil are not helping your chances of changing the US Constitution. Plus your middle name is the same as Adolf's dad. That can't help.

Incidentally, I heard that California is the sixth largest economy in the world. Arnold might as well be president anyway. Just don't mention Austria.

(This is a repost from the related link. Make up your own mind.)

Imagine for a moment what life would be like in South Africa if the evil white man hadn’t come to disturb the rustic idyll of the early black settlers.

Ignored by the Portuguese and Dutch, except as a convenient resting point en route to India. Shunned by the British, who had decided that their empire was already large enough and didn’t need to include bits of Africa.

The vast mineral wealth lying undisturbed below the Highveld soil as simple tribesmen graze their cattle blissfully unaware that beneath them lies one of the richest gold seams in the world. But what would they want with gold?
Read More...

Apparently made famous by Homer Simpson, this expression was first used (I imagine) 96 years ago today, as Captain W Smith went down with the Titanic.

Happy Iceberg Day, Titanic!

When I was 10, I went to England for the first time, and kept a diary. Would any of you be interested if I were to reproduce it here, day for day, from 1987-1988? For that matter, would anyone be interested in seeing the aborted follow-up from 1994? I'm always fascinated how blogging has become so pervasive, and yet I was doing it over 20 years ago, under a different guise.

Well there has definitely been an increase, and I can probably attribute that to spam. In the last two months, I've had 3.39GB of traffic, compared to the 3.67GB from November to February. It's still a little shy of my 50GB per month though.

I received this email, this morning, from the South African Revenue Service.

Dear eFiler

In the light of the financial year-end, SARS politely requests that you effect your tax payments which are due in March by no later than noon on Monday, 31 March 2008.

If the above is not applicable to you, please ignore this message.

Kind regards
The SARS eFiling Team

I checked the mail headers, just to be sure. After all, it was a slim possibility it had been sitting on my mail server for a little while.

Return-Path: <bounce-268436847-23952G@169.35.69.24>
Delivered-To: [[withheld]] @ itsol.co.za
Received: (qmail 21964 invoked by uid 1010); 7 Apr 2008 03:33:52 +0200

(Own highlighting)

Readers are familiar with my previous attempts to abbreviate commonly used phrases, so here's a new one.

WWRD: What Would Ralph Do?

If you work in BI, I'm sure you'll appreciate this.

Bracelets are R50 each, and they come in your choice of pink or green.