Thanks For Nothing

Ill start off this post with a small leading statement: I'm not a rude wanker! But why oh Why does society feel the need to thank bus drivers whenever we get off at a bus stop.

Forgive my stereotypical view here but lets consider the variables. These people drive up to a depot/train station/whatever leave whenever they like, leaving people pounding on the door for them to stop and let them on, drive in the most erratic fashion possible either stupidly fast or painfully slow, listen for your 'ding and pull over in the general area of a fluorescent stick in the ground. While I appreciate that sometimes it may be difficult to manoeuvre the fat B.O. Box, its most certainly not rocket science.

Yesterday on my usual journey home from the daily grind, I was pleasantly surprised that the bus was on time, arriving after only a couple of minutes wait.

For those that don't know, the buses in Perth are timed to the trains which generally run like clockwork. My bus is timed with the train after mine so I usually get on and have to sit for 5 mins until the next train load of peeps arrive and get on. Sounds simple enough? No way.

The bus driver decides to leave AS the second train is arriving, causing people to madly dash through the turnstiles, trip fall, get up, slap, kick, sweat and beg at the door to get let inside the bus that should be waiting in open arms. After opening the doors in frustration(!) and letting the people on, he then decides to close the doors and plant his foot on the accelerator like Lewis Hamilton, WHILE everyone is still standing finding their seat, to make a traffic light. By complete luck nobody fell and we were underway.

He then proceeds to 'Lewis' the pedals, both go and stop, slamming into roundabout kerbs at any opportunity until everyone on the bus is ready to gurge their lunch on the rubber floor. After a few minutes, someone 'dings and he pulls into the bay. The person gets off the bus at the driver end (perth people STILL don't get that you exit at the rear) and I'm amazed to notice that he is just staring at the person as they walk away, shaking his head. At the next stop AND the next stop, the same thing happens and it occurs to me that this guy wants a 'thanks', 'cheers' or 'ooroo' like other drivers get for opening the doors. You've got to be kidding!

I do understand that this gentleman isn't the norm however what is so special about this profession that they can insist thanks? I help people everyday (like many of you) and get bugger all............cos its my job! Is it something to do with face to face help? Do people think they need to close off the driver/passenger relationship when they disembark much like if a friend does you a favour and drops you off somewhere?

Tell me!

Are you a government in the Global Financial Crisis?? Need Money???

Here in Nedlands, I'm sitting in my all seeing fishbowl of an office, peering out into the world to distract myself from actual work. It seems the cops have set up shop on the corner of two roads just next to the club. Radars at hand and pens at the ready.

In the first 10 minutes they have been there, I have seen 4 cars pulled over, I assume all going over the required 50km/h. 50 snabs thanks, but you know who can afford it? Anyone driving down this damn road sure as *#%& should be able to spare a pineapple. Good thinking K-Rudd! Robin Hood train of thought right there...

No hits in the last 5 mins so they are packing up shop? Wow, think they might head down to Dalkeith to see if they will pay out...

All this economics is really stimulating my package

Thats MR new guy to you

the management has decided to keep things upvibe and interesting, inviting my good self as a new contibutor to all that is squidy in the world. I'll be going the less nerdy option of reporting, with my areas of interest lying in the world of sport and the enigma of music and a hapless obsession with Poker.

expect the quantity to rise and the quality to fall!

Ice Ice Baby

Geek your freezer with these Tetris style blocks by Martin Žampach

Use them to create vodka jellys, chocolate, biscuits, lemon cubes, cordial bombs, Jaeger bombs or even ice! They are completely food safe so let your imagination run wild.......as long as your imagination doesn't extend beyond molding things into block shapes.

At $8.50 each they aren't bad value when compared to other novelty ice trays I suppose.

To make the post a little more interesting, I did a quick google image search for 'novelty ice tray' and the results are worth a look. Click here or search for yourself - my personal fave: yes you guessed it, I'm a guy, the boobs!

Others include bullets, space invaders, the Titanic!, love hearts, fish bones, penguins and fake teeth complete with gums for that false teeth by the bed look.

Ciao Readers and Happy Thursday to all.

Commentate Yourself

Just a quick entry to say that I think Ive resolved the comment problem so comment away........

Of course if you didn't comment cos you didn't want to then fine - be that way.

Shall see you all at the Paddo tonight for the 2nd last day of PYF Wednesday. Centurion Saturday and 141 grand finale this Sunday!

Next week - detox!

Centurion Is Here

Some of you would have received an email from me a few weeks ago regarding my sudden urge to play Centurion. I'm not talking about dressing up like Russell Crowe and prancing around with a red Mohawk helmet....altho that sounds interesting too........I'm talking about the drinking game.

For those of you under rocks, Centurion is a beer drinking game whereby you are to consume 100 x 30ml shots of beer in 100 consecutive minutes. To save your brain matter, that's 3L in just over an hour and a half which is around 6 pints. I'll admit to consuming that much in 100 minutes in the past but when your drinking from a full glass you are able to speed up/slow down a little. When its spread out, its a whole new ball game.

The venue for the event is my place and bounce-down is 8.30pm this Saturday night after a BBQ around 7pm. Those that are interested in partaking let me know asap, those that just wanna come round for a feed on the BBQ and a laugh, let me know too! BYO meat and drinks and I'll supply the Centurion beers.

For more information on the game itself I highly recommend reading the wikipedia article on it (which is safe for work). My favourite quote by far is "Another Australian variation of the game is known as a "Goon Centurion" and involves the replacement of beer with cheap box wine."

Rules on the night will be quite lax by the article standards, toilet breaks (for one reason or another) are ok as long as your back in time for the next shot but if you miss 2 consecutive shots there is no buy in unless accepted by the other players!

Bring it

No Comment

Hi Grasshoppers

Its been brought to my attention that comment posting isnt working on the blog for some of you. As it obviously works for me and for some others can you please send me an email (with a screenshot if possible) of how far you get before it grinds to a halt.

I'm expecting that you will need to make sure your browser is up to date and java is hunky dory but let me know if you think is something else.

Email me here!

Thanks Players

1 4 All and 141

We're getting to the business end of the 141 and these are the final dates we will be attending the Paddo and will also mark the official end of PYF Wednesday.

As shown on the left, We have around 21 beers to consume in 14 days and here's when we're there next:

Tonight 18/2 from 5.30pm
Friday 20/2 from 5.30pm
Wednesday 25/2 from 5.30pm and
Sunday 1/3 from TBA to finish it off!

Hope to see some of you down there over the coming fortnight.

Just remember, life without beer is ummm...............ummm.............actually I don't know!

One Charger To Rule Them All

In the early days of mobile phone-ing Nokia was king and their universal charing plug could have played a big factor in that success. Whenever you forgot yours, just call out "Who has a Nokia charger!" and you were back to sending stupid sms messages in no time.

Now it seems with the vast number of manufacturers and climate change on everyones lips, the industry has finally done something right. In this weeks Mobile World Congress live from Barcelona, several manufacturers have agreed to switch to a Micro USB charging adapter (no not the one pictured!) for their upcoming models and its the hope that by 2012 90% of devices will charge in this way.

Not only will that be terrific for end users but when you consider that there are > 3 Billion mobile phone users worldwide, the effects on climate are enormous. Not only will you hesitate in throwing old chargers away, manufacturing costs and knock-on greenhouse gas emissions will fall dramatically by an estimated 1/3.

Manufacturers that got on board were: 3, AT&T, KTF, LG, Mobilkom Austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Anyone think of the huge mobile giant that's NOT listed? C'mon its easy... Ill give you a clue - i despise them and their entire organisation is based on crap! I didn't leave them out, they aren't interested, take THAT consumers.

First correct answer gets the cola Chuppa Chup from the bottom of my bag.

A Week Recap

My lordy yes its been a big week, hence the no-posts in awhile. Thought about logging each one but who would want to read all that blab! Lists are the future:

Thursday - Mikes Birthday - Happy 37 braaaaa! Bought beer to celebrate
Saturday - Tyler was last over the plate in TBall, meaning his team climbed back to a draw. Good stuff mate, especially under appalling umpiring conditions (and a third base coach that is good for sweet f all) - High 5. Dinner and late night board games with the Fazari's. Bought beer to make drawing ability worse and Pictionary more fun.
Sunday - Spent 4 hours on the lawn, gardens, edges, paths, weeds and it still looks the same. Bought beer and looked at it for a few more hours. Went to mums for an uber-bbq. Bought beer for good times.
Monday - My dad was officially reported as a missing person. Bought beer and Lotto ticket for the Valentine draw - was one of those days! Went to the Paddo to skim a few more beers off the 141.
Tuesday - Got my Mini Moke back and it rooooooooooooooooocks! Played hockey and won which hasn't happened in a long while. Bought beer to celebrate both.
Wednesday - Dad was officially found. Went to drive the Moke and realised the headlights don't work. Drove to drive through bottle shop before it got dark, Bought beer to drown sorrows
Thursday - Casual dress for a gold coin donation to Vic fire victims at work today. Listening to silverchair and trying to squeeze 8 hours work into my 6.5 hour day. Will be looking at houses and booking bucks drive vans on the net at lunch today. Hopefully fix the Moke and head out for a drive tonight.

I think that covers it all!

The Future of Facebook

Just read a terrific article from a daily site of mine, techdigest.tv.

It relates to the future of the facebook phenomenon and 'brings to front' some of the realistic aspects of running a social networking site of this magnitude. If you have 5 mins its well worth a read.

It hinges on the fact that while everyone USES facebook, where is the money coming from? All efforts to generate spending inside the site via everyday users have failed and according to the advertisers click-through stats - No one is clicking-through either!

Not wanting to copy n paste but here's one of teaser quotes from the article:
"For ages there was the option to give 'gifts' to other users. Each gift cost a dollar, and a short message could be attached. The problem? There was no actual benefit to having them."

Facebook's competitors are taking a larger and larger piece of the web traffic pie, with people realising that web presence doesn't always have to be so scary.

It seems Goliath might fall to David as he does time and time again.

Seen Any Good T-Shirts Recently?

Today we were told at work that 'casual' Friday wasn't completely casual and T-Shirts are no longer acceptable. As I'm sure you have all experienced, this was because someone took it too far and took the mick so much they had to blanket ban them - sigh.

This sparked a small nerd outrage and when nerds get angry, you can imagine the kind of insanity that arises. Yes that's right, photos from the Corporate Directory + Google Images + Photoshop + Floor of Nerds = Image email chains! Yes, I know its sad!

In the mix was this shirt and the sheer number of other brilliant shirt pics that came around were nothing short of extraordinary. It got me thinking, what other shirt slogans are out there that I don't know about? Is there some sort of shirt underground that I completely overlooked?

Well....is there?

What slogans have gripped your humerus bone?

Smash Clock

Do you wake up with the need to inflict pain?

Don't waste money on expensive psychiatrists or a military grade straight jacket, just get the Smash Clock!

As the name implies, instead of carefully touching the Snooze/Off button when your rudely awoken by EEH EEH EEH EEH EEH EEH, smash the living sh*t out of it instead. Sadly its just a concept at this stage but surely this will be brought into production. Imagine waking up to the sound of Gary Shannon (or Chris Moyles for all those London readers!) and starting your day by punching him........ahhh and relaaax

Not sure why they shaped it like a boob tho.....