Last night Marinus took me to see Pythonesque at Montecasino in Fourways. He managed (with my help) to keep it a secret right to the point where we sat down, which is admirable considering that I paid for the tickets and signed for them at the box office :)

The show, if you didn't know, is based on the death of Graham Chapman, who has to prove to Heaven that he is worthy of entry, using a series of skits based on the original Monty Python sketches. Imagine the parrot sketch, the "Bruce" sketch, the Cheese shop sketch, and the Lumberjack song turned on their heads and inside out. Hilarity ensues.

If you're a long-standing fan of Monty Python (as am I), or a second-cousin once removed of their work (as is my better half), you'll enjoy it. Fans will spot the sketches that are being mercilessly molested, and I admit to laughing out before most everyone else in the audience on several occasions.

Go see it.

w00t! Petrol is coming down again on Wednesday 7 January 2009, to R6.01 per litre, or 64 US cents (43.8p) at today's prices. To my US readers, that's $2.42 per gallon. Is that good?

The subject line says it all, but here's to 2009. In an interesting bit of news, the 30GB Microsoft Zune player is affected by a feature bug which stops it working past 2008/12/31. Har har. Then again, I'm the guy who purposefully crippled an older version of ShutOff 2000 to stop working past 2007/12/31 and had to issue an emergency update because of it. In my defence, I wasn't expecting people to still be using it, but they do, so there we are! Maybe Microsoft felt the same about the 30GB Zunes.

1: I prefer breasts to legs.
2: Tying the legs together keeps the inside moist.
3: Smother the butter all over the breasts.
4: If I don't undo my trousers, I'll burst!
5: I've never seen a better spread!
6: I fancy a little dark meat for a change.
7: Are you ready for seconds yet?
8: It's a little dry, do you still want to eat it?
9: Just wait your turn, you'll get some!
10: Don't play with your meat!
11: Stuff it up between the legs as far as it will go.
12: Do you think you'll be able to handle all these people at once?
13: I didn't expect everyone to come at the same time!
14: You still have a little bit on your chin.
15: How long will it take after you put it in?
16: You'll know it's ready when it pops up.
17: Just pull the end and wait for the bang..
18: That's the biggest bird I've ever had!
19: I'm so full, I've been gobbling nuts all morning.
20: Wow, I didn't think I could handle all that and still want more.
21: Do you want stuffing?
22: How many do you think this bird will satisfy?
23: I usually give it a good old wash out before I stuff it.

Same as the old one - be kind to animals and children, in that order.

In 1994, South Africa entered the cellular phone market. You could either get with Vodacom, 50% owned by the hated Telkom (and the other 50% by Vodafone, who now has a controlling share), or "the better connection", MTN.

In the last 14 years, MTN and Vodacom have been producing profits in the tens of billions of rands. MTN has reached out into Africa as well, cornering the Nigerian market too. These are big boys.

Anyway, this weekend, MTN's entire network crashed. Their. Entire. Network. Crashed. Okay, so maybe it happens, but we're talking a 14-year old company with billions of rand (or hundreds of millions of dollars) in profit every year. This doesn't happen. Then again, apparently it does.

Let's see what happens when the SABC tries to get comment.

When the national broadcaster phoned the help desk for comment, the "call centre spokesperson ... didn't want to be identified." I'm not surprised - I've had the same issue with my calls to technical support with almost everybody I've dealt with, primarily Sentech, M-Web, Internet Solutions and Hetzner Africa. If you do get through, you speak to someone who gives you their first name, no surname, and refuses to put you through to someone higher up the food chain. Plus, in most cases, you're treated like a criminal. There is no such thing as customer service in this country. But I digress.

According to the article (see related link), the call centre spokesperson "said that engineers were aware of the problem and were working around the clock to fix the fault. He said most parts of the country were affected. Officials from MTN were not available for comment, the broadcaster said."

That was yesterday. Today, as a follow-up, there's this article, which proves that call centre staff are the lowest common denominator, who read from a script, and can't think for themselves.

[Disclaimer - my first job was in a call centre. It was the most painful five months of my life.]

As I posted in 2006:

22 May 2006 is the official founding day of the New Religious Order, or NRO, so we have declared it a Holy Day. 22 May will now be known as Bliksem Day. Henceforth, all days will be in the new calendar dated from BS 1.

BS 1 - 22 May 2006 - 21 May 2007
BS 2 - 22 May 2007 - 21 May 2008
BS 3 - 22 May 2008 - 21 May 2009

This means that tomorrow is BS 3.218. I'm not quite sure why this question was asked of me in the first place.

Some very basic products, like t-shirts, mugs and clocks, are available from the Smiters of Iniquity Shop. Let's see if this thing makes money.

Robert Mugabe, despite his high ranking on the NMC list (see the Smiters Of Iniquity link to the right), said the funniest thing this week, as seen in The Star:

"America is stupid" - Robert Mugabe

Don't you love it? There are so many complex levels of irony in that statement.

I want to migrate my blog from simplephpblog to something running on MySQL. The trouble is, there's nothing that I like. I like this one, but it's not DB-enabled. The Moveable Types of the world look more complicated than necessary. Then there's the small matter of moving all the entries to the DB easily ...

Anyway, I had a good day yesterday.

La la la

See related link for original source.

I read on News24.com that 50% of matriculants last year actually passed, of which only 7% will find jobs. So extrapolating that out, 96.5% of all matriculants will be unemployed.

Something to think about if you're planning to drop maths and / or science. If you do, you're just another dumbass tomcruise.

A lot of things bug me (we all have issues, I guess), but when someone who runs a business like TurboCASH gets defensive and rude when I threaten legal action after my numerous requests to be removed from a mailing list go unanswered, this is the last straw.

Philip Copeman, of TurboCASH, refuses to speak to me. His last email said "leave me alone" when I asked how hard it was to read a simple request to be removed from a mailing list.

Philip Copeman, of TurboCASH, a company he runs in his own name, is hereby named and shamed, since the other people I've been in contact with have not been authorised to represent him.

Here are the details as provided to me, should I wish to take legal action against TurboCASH (run by Philip Copeman) for breaking the law by ignoring numerous requests to be removed from a mailing list.

Philip Copeman (remember, he runs TurboCASH)
5612275062088
Box 12728, 15 Cabernet Way
High Steenberg
Tokai
7945

A screen capture from News24.com:

The second crowd who can't seem to understand unsubscription requests is Sahara Computers. As in my previous incident with TurboCASH, I was receiving four copies of all their sales news. This is usually about ten emails a week, on average, including a price list exceeding 500KB. So, when the price list is sent out, I get over 1.5MB of spam.

I say spam, because I've asked them on at least two occasions to remove the domain and so far, nothing.

I purchased a domain recently (in May 2008) that had just expired, and immediately started receiving emails from various newsletters that the previous owner had subscribed to. That was fine. I was able to find unsubscribe options in most cases, and was successful in all those cases. Except for two.

TurboCASH is the free alternative to Pastel and QuickBooks accounting software, and is maintained by Pink Software. I used it when it ran on DOS, and I used version 3 of the Windows version when I operated my own business. Naturally, I had my own subscription to their newsletter. Unfortunately, so did the previous owner of the domain I bought, as well as one of his staff members. I was getting the same email three times, every time.

I followed the instructions to unsubscribe, and received two confirmations, one for each address.

I did the same thing in June.

And July.

And August.

In September I just deleted the emails.

I got annoyed in October and sent their upstream ISPs an email respectfully requesting removal of emails to this new domain I bought. I received clear confirmation that it had been actioned.

Tonight I received thee more newsletters, two to the domain that was not supposed to get email anymore. I sent and email to everyone @ anywhere and will see what happens next.

---

EDIT: 22h03 - I got this reply after 21 minutes, on a Sunday night. Not bad.

---

Hi Randolph,

I have deleted you and have also discovered why previous deletions did not work. You appeared in our registered users as well as on our mailing list. Because of a shortcoming in our mailing program we had to delete the list and recreate it before sending.When it recreates the mailing list , it does so with reference to registered users , within which your were included.

I am certain that you appear on none now,
Kindly forgive the inconvenience,
Selwyn Wacks
Webmaster
Deleted Randolph

---

EDIT: 2008/11/28: Still getting spam. Obviously Selwyn Wacks is a tomcruise.

Good bye, and thank you for the music.

Ra-ra-ree
Kick her in the knee.
Ra-ra-runt
Kick her in the other knee.

"Vodafone, the world's biggest mobile phone group by revenue, announced on Thursday it had agreed to buy a further 15% stake in Vodacom from Telkom for R22.5bn, giving it control of the mobile operator."

See related link.

This is a transcript of Barack Obama's acceptance speech, taken from News24.com.

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.
Read More...

Kaploes, kaploes,
die branders slaan op my knieë.
Ek weet dit rym nie,
maar ek wag vir hoogwater.

The page has received over 10 000 page views now.

stumbleupon.com (referral) 3,015 83.38%

The page that someone thought was cool enough? See the related link.

"Mylonite is a breccieated brecciated metamorphic rock frequently found in a fault zone".

Blame Scott Adams. He is recycling phrases now.

It's been a while, and I'm sorry I haven't posted anything. Work is insanely busy, and I forced myself *not* to work tonight. Home life just got interesting, with some prospects that will be taking a direction from 25 November. When that time comes, we will know a little better what's happening. And yes, I'm still extraordinarily happily married, so it's nothing to do with that!

P.S. I love my hubby more than ever.

But the political muppets dancing around and haphazardly spraying piss all over each other to mark their lucrative territories are not bright. And when I say not bright, I of course mean unbelievably fucking stupid. -- Chris Roper

See related link.

I have a new favourite insult, courtesy of today's Dilbert.

(See related link.)

My blog has 102 612 words, excluding this entry. In about ten years, I should have enough words to be equivalent to halfway through the first chapter of Stephen King's The Stand.

Equally as funny as the failed $700bn nationalisation of private US banks are the antics of the Ferrari F1 team on Sunday, during the first ever night race. I laughed out loud when Raikonnen crashed into the wall four laps from the end.