First Tooth

Well this week has been an eventful one...

Noah got his first tooth, after falling off the sofa round a Ben (my brother's) house onto his top lip (first of many no doubt) - the top tooth came through. Pics soon. Looks like we might have a bugs bunny on our hands. He's also v. near to crawling, doing the back-forward bum wiggle...

Another revelation, and not approved by some, is the 'Jolly-Jumper'. Noah absolutely loves it - and just sits inbetween the doorway bouncing up and down. There are those who think that it's bad for their legs, and I can see if it was badly adjusted or over-used it would be, but done properly, the exercise and enjoyment he gets is just amazing. His coordination and ability to 'jump-up, jump-up' changed overnight. Thumbs up from us.

On a more painful note - the bloody computer has been freaking out. It developed a mad instantaneous crash after iTunes v.5 (cheers Apple... but I do love iTunes) was installed, and I eventually traced it back to a clash with the graphics drivers, unfortunately by that point is has lost it's mind. So I decided to perform a Windows 'repair'. More like a baseball bat to the legs actually.

Three times this week I have performed a repair over a repair over a repair, just to get back to some semblance of normality, but it's obvious I now have a totally mental machine. Just in the last touches of migrating all of the customisations to my other disk and will go into the full reformat and reinstall. Now to put this into perspective, and given that I am a bit of a geek who likes to fiddle - I have never reinstalled the operating systems in 4 years - I've added and removed hardware, software and other devices. So maybe that's not a bad thing. We'll we'll see anyway.

On the work front I was nominated as part of the 'Win of the Quarter' Team and for an individual 'Branch Award'. We got the WotQ, but I missed out on the BA. Both were down to my relationship with a client, someone with whom I've developed a good relationship with over time.

Jac is in the final negotiations to go back to her job 3 days a week part-time, although they are playing silly-buggers, trying to say that after maternity leave, you are not entitled to continuation-of-service. This is appalling and amazing that, in this day of 'maternity-rights' how they can even think of trying it on after speaking to their 'legal people', well we'll see...... Take on the Taylors.... that's all I'll say.

Laters,

More Big Brother

2 more stories highlighting the control-freakery going on in the world at the moment...

The first from those friendlies in Canada... A new law which proposes that internet communication can be intercepted without a warrant:
"law enforcement will be able to compel ISPs to disclose subscriber information, including name, address, IP address, telephone number, and cellphone number. It would appear that such information can be compelled without judicial oversight".... amongst other things...

And secondly, the US has won over maintaing control over the Internet, the one item which should remain and become independent:
"U.S. officials said early Wednesday that instead of transferring management of the system to an international body such as the United Nations, an international forum would be created to address concerns. The forum, however, would have no binding authority...."...

But on the brighter side, sort of, is that again that friendly lot in Canada have got some of their Truckers to use an add on to inject hydrogen-made-on-the-go into their engines:
"HFI is a bolt-on, aftermath part that injects small amounts of hydrogen into the engine air intake, said Canadian Hydrogen energies Steve Gilchrist. Fuel efficiency and horsepower are improved because hydrogen burns faster and hotter than diesel, dramatically boosting combustion efficiency... ...But the HFI system uses electricity from an engine's alternator to power the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen as needed from small amounts of distilled water"...

Take Care out There, They are watching You....

Democracy actually works... shock... horror...

Finally, the '90 day detention' bill was overturned. A crass piece of politiking if there ever has been one.

I posted this to the NWA the other day after being riled up over the Terror Bill...

"...Sod the establishment. Don't believe the crap the Police, Bush, Blair and never, ever Thatcher. They are popularist vote grabbers running a hidden agenda.
We are innocent until proven guilty and it MUST stay that way. Never ever must we allow people to be locked up for 90 days without evidence?
Our forefathers fought for Freedom and Democracy (Yes that includes [Is because of] the Unions) and it is being eroded under a mask of political media hype around terrorists.
If the police can't do their jobs now (and a poor Brazilian bloke can say yes to that) what the hell will it be like when they force the 90 day rule in?
Abu Grave in Luton.
There are no more terrorists now than there were 20 / 50 / 100 years ago.
Get with it and understand it's about white/jewish oil money and maintaining control..."

And this after the Paris riots...

"So f*****g what if the immigrants want to stay in their own 'quarters', we raped and pillaged their lands and people for hundreds of years, 'invite' 'them' over to do our shite jobs, complain when 'they' now make more money that us, whinge when people try to break into our lands when they see our riches (made off the back of 'their' raped countries); and we want 'them' to 'integrate'. Integrate is OK (if they want to), but what most people actually mean is 'drop everything and become English/French & get the bulldog/leCoq tattoo'. Balls to that. Share the knowledge and culture.
'They' won't and don't want to integrate - cultures take a long time to merge.
The French have tried to maintain the 'French' way of life in a global land - all of their colonies are still 'departments' or counties or infact, parts of Europe. But the white/jewish class still rule and keep all les monies.
They are kept in slums, unemployment is rife, and they have nowhere to go. OK the social system is now costing them a fortune, but that is not the reason for the unemployment. And neither is a 35 hour week (what the hell is wrong with that?) - the unemployment would be a lot worse if it was higher.
I don't blame them. Remember Bradford? Mmmmm how long ago was that? And New Orleans - kept in a state of perpetual poverty/slavery for 200 years. Shame on them/us.
We WANT people in different dresses, and we don't necessarily want to live their way of life, but we do want to sample some of their culture now and again. Live in peace and harmony and share the riches & culture, or live in shame protecting it.
We created this multi-cultural land, we must live with it and accept that we don't live in countries anymore, we live in a global land - as so many of us can attest to who live around the globe. The sooner we accept it the better.
I'd much rather go to France for an Operation any day. And Croissants. And also to flog Listerine, Imperial Leather & Sure Extra Dry."

So after all that excitement, where have we been over the past couple of weeks... I had my company AwayDay on the 'Sunshine Coast' at the Hyatt Coolum. 600 of us flew up to have a couple of drinks and be really interested in work for a couple of days..... They put on a good show in a great location. Probably the swankiest hotel I've ever stayed in actually.

Uploaded some more pics to the fab flickr - Noah and his mate Finn - bloody good quality pics (if you like that sort of thing...).

35 C in Spring today - a hot summer perhaps?

Time for tea, take care out there...

JT