November 30, 2001. This is what happens when you privitise public transport - even the Transport Minister (Victoria, Australia) thinks that people who are on public transport without a ticket (if the machine was broken, etc) should be given a chance to buy one, but not this guy!
"National Express chief executive Peter Strachan said commuters faced being fined from the department unless their legitimate explanations could be verified. He said he expected train travellers to leave platforms in search of other Metcard outlets if machines were broken, rather than get on a train without a ticket."
November 29, 2001. New hate mail! In other news, is finding an osteopath in Amsterdam going to be impossible? In still more news, do I have time to find out how to run apache under a very limited user just to get bugzilla up?
November 26, 2001. The John Howard Refugee Game ad is up. I thought of a really good name for the game on the weekend, and didn't bother writing it down cos I thought it was so good I couldn't forget it. I hate that.
I also found another server fuckup - msdn.com was fucked up for a few hours today (Amsterdam time 2pm onwards). It made my shitty day better.
November 23, 2001. I've made an ad for the John Howard Refugee Game, but the iBook isn't seeing the network, so it's stuck on the hard disk for a while. I really should collect all the ranty references to John. In the meantime, I've combined his dorky face with the 'web servers that suck' section.
November 22, 2001. In a desperate bid to avoid doing work yesterday, I checked out my logs (thanks Jacqui!), and found graphics that other people were linking to from forums. I hate that, so I fucked them up. I even signed onto one forum in Turkish to see what they were doing with the graphic they'd stolen. Heh.
One before and after, and below, a 'just plain after' or the after profile. Don't fuck with bored pre-menstrual chicks who can read a bit of Turkish.
November 20, 2001. New section: reader's relationship advice. I'm starting with the story of George Bush's breakup with Tony Blair. I figured something had to be up between those two, because George always looks so miserable when Tony's around now, and it can't just be because Tony makes George look short and stupid.
November 19, 2001.
November 16, 2001. Win some, lose some. Just when I was cheered by the news that Australia is cancelling Ethopia's $11.5 million debt, there comes this:
Dr Wanandi said that under Mr Howard, Australia had lost its reputation as an open, multiracial and multicultural society, and the goodwill built by Australia's pioneering diplomacy in the creation of ASEAN and the resolution of the Cambodian conflict was being undone.
"These achievements may be wiped out by one man's leadership, that of Mr Howard.
November 16, 2001. "They're just normal people. They're Melbourne."
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's got to be the first time an imitation is better than the real thing - fake vodka is 72% alcohol. It doesn't answer the question that must be asked - why would anyone use a product that's meant to be flavourless as a flavour in cooking?
November 16, 2001. People suddenly seem to be speaking more slowly. Even though I've got no idea what the words they're saying mean, I'm amazed that I can tell they're words, not just an undifferentiated mass of funny sounds.
November 15, 2001. It's 2 degrees (Centigrade) (though I have to confess I'm really not clear on the difference between celsius and centigrade. There, I feel better now), the sun is shining strongly enough to warm my skin, but the ground is covered with more frost that I've ever seen. Every blade of grass has a strong outline of frost. The mist is so heavy the buildings at the end of the road are invisible, but the sky is clear and blue.
November 13, 2001. New content, at last: Shania Twain is an alien. A bit of a redesign to make a coherent 'tabloid style' section at the same time. I haven't tested it comprehensively yet but the idea is to use stylesheets instead of tables so that the pages degrade gracefully.
In the process, I came across a 'This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed' at shaniatwain.com.
There aren't enough 'Fucking Encyclopedia Brown' references on the net, but there are too many 'let's roll's. I'm waiting for the 'Let's Roll Dancers' before I get excited.
Smother fuckers!: "You should be smothering your accounts from every angle, and if you see Linux and/or IBM in there with it, then get all over it. Don't lose a single win to Linux."
You would have to be such a loser. You run out and register 'tomhanksland.com' and then have a typo in the reference from your old geocities site to redirect people to http://www.tomhanksland.cpm.
November 12, 2001, 4pm. Fuck. American Airlines Jet Crashes in New York
November 12, 2001. It's not that I'm avoiding reading about the Australian election results or anything, but I'm compelled to ask how the Italian woman "due to give birth in a hospital in Rome this week to a baby girl - before returning three months later to have triplets" is capable of calling the first kid Denise.
And according the NY Times, "U.S. Is Expecting to Spend $1 Billion a Month on War"
Two headlines from the New York Times (online): "AIDS Patients in China Lack Effective Treatment" and "Doctors Worried as Americans Get Organs of Chinese Inmates". And also:
[F]ederal investigators have contacted administrators on more than 200 college campuses to collect information about students from Middle Eastern countries, the most sweeping canvass of the halls of academia since the cold war, the colleges say.
...
The scrutiny of students of Arab descent has so far touched off little protest, a stark contrast to the outrage when American-born students have been profiled by university or law enforcement officials.
November 7, 2001. Paul's voice quivered with outrage. "How did a porn site become the home page on our computer?" he demanded. "Paul's problem was caused by a rogue website invading his Internet browser, cancelling his home page address and substituting its own. Deleting the offending site in the browser has no effect." It's simple, Paul - surf with javascript off until you get a clue. And I bet your voice wasn't the only thing that was quivering, eh?
November 6, 2001. My first reference to the whole September 11 thing for a while (that's so insensitive in the light of recent events...): crazy Canadians, crazy Irish, crazy Germans, all from the one article about Bin Laden Halloween masks around the world.
Those crazy Irish: "It's hard to have a drink in a bin Laden mask," said James Elliott, owner of a costume shop in Belfast. "But we've had lots of requests for the Arab outfit."
Crazy Canadians: "In Canada, trick-or-treaters were dressing up as policemen and firefighters to honour the uniformed officers who rescued victims or died in the attacks."
Crazy Germans: is it just me, or does this statement challenge the definition of the word 'conservative'? "The German people are very conservative ÷ if we had a bin Laden mask in our windows, they would break the windows."
November 1, 2001. Crazy misheard "Lady Marmelade" lyrics, including "Attention scamps in the sunday school". Also, crazy Australian 'revenge sewage' hacker attacks. Queenslanders, eh?
Also, Bangarra are apparently busy shocking the Americans by overlaying swearing and a prayer (The Lord's Prayer or the Our Father, depending on your religious flavour).