I'm not sure how much longer I can go on getting away with stuff like this

My wife and I went out for dinner tonight. I had the shrimp linguini with lobster and she had clams with linguini.

Part way through the meal she noted that the clams were rather small. And I, as quick as a flash, asked 'why don't you complain to the small clams tribunal?'

Boom boom!

Ednas Radio

Shamelessly stolen from CodeProject (and probably the poster over there stole it from elsewhere).

Dear Thorsby School.

God bless you for the beautiful radio I won at your recent senior citizens luncheon. I am 84 years old and live at the Sunnybrook Assisted Home for the Aged. My family have all passed away and I am alone so thank you for your kindness to a forgotten old lady. My roommate is 95 and has always had her own radio, but she would never let me listen to hers, even when she was napping.

The other day her radio fell off the nightstand and broke into a lot of pieces. It was awful and she was in tears.

She asked if she could listen to mine but I told her to feck off.

Thank you for that opportunity.


Sincerely,


Edna.

An unpleasant surprise

I was on the phone today with someone who reminded me of an occurrence that took place quite some time ago. After laughing I remarked that I really must blog about it whereupon the someone said 'oh no mate, don't identify me'. So I won't identify you, mate!

Unfortunately I wasn't present when this story took place so you'll have to take the word of someone else, related many times over the past three and a half decades. On the other hand, once you've read the story, you might agree with me that it was fortunate indeed that I wasn't present.

Our anonymous actor lived, at that time, in a small house in Williamstown with his folks. Over the back fence was a small theatre occupied by a smaller amateur theatre company. I'm sure you'll remember your nonage, when such things as fences and locked doors presented no moral impediment to exploration. When one is a dozen years old who cares about such things?

So it was that our anonymous actor and his friends of similar age were wont, during the holidays, to scale the back fence and explore the old theatre. I'd have done the same had there been an old theatre nearby to explore. Alas, all I had was the old salmon canning factory, the lemonade factory, the glass works - you know, come to think of it, I wasn't all that badly off!

One afternoon they either broke into, or found unlocked, the costume room. I prefer to think someone had forgotten to lock it. And so our anonymous actor and his friends found an old fur coat. I imagine they strutted around in it for a few minutes, tried on silly hats and bandannas and generally made complete dags of themselves. And it might have been just as well had it stopped there. But no, not for our anonymous actor. He conceived the evil idea of leaving a small calling card in the pocket.

We really don't want to think of a future pillar of society dropping his trousers and taking a crap in the pocket of this coat but, alas, that is apparently what happened.

One can only imagine the feelings of the poor real actor, member of that amateur theatre company, upon trying on the costume for their next production and placing his hand in that pocket.

But if it were a comedy production his wildest dreams will have come true, for that simple act thirty five years ago has provided me, the anonymous actor and all our friends with countless hours of amusement.

And there ain't nothing wrong with a bit of innocent laughter!

That could have been worded a bit better

Our ISP is Cox Communications here in Phoenix. Truth to tell, we don't have a lot of choices - it seems to be QWest or Cox or satellite. Satellite sucks for internet usage and QWest are DSL. There are probably dozens of dial up choices but who wants dial up if you can have better?

For the most part Cox have been ok as an ISP - relatively little down time and reasonably reliable though for some reason we seem to go through a cable modem a year. I could understand that if we were replacing them in mid-summer or during the lightning season but we're not. It seems to be a mid October to late November thing.

Thus to a few weeks ago when we started experiencing the usual (for this time of year) random slowdowns and outages. After three or so days we decided it was time for the annual cable modem purchase. Off to Frys, returning with yet another piece of disposable technology.

If you've ever been through this you know the drill; you can't just replace the modem and expect everything to work. Nope, you have to call em, recite a bunch of details such as modem serial number and MAC address and wait while they 'provision' the modem. Just why they call it provisioning is beyond me - I provided it, all they're doing is adding the MAC address to the 'allow' database so the system will function. Not a terribly painful process but it does take time. Presumably they deactivate the MAC address that used to be recorded against ones account so the old modem can't be used somewhere else on their network.

Which, of course, leaves a bit of a quandary when troubleshooting ones network. Once one has concluded that the problem lies either with the modem or the infrastructure at the other end of the cable one has to get them involved. Can't simply swap out the new modem and try the old one again. Worse, the people one has to deal with have 'scripts' to follow.

Obviously the cable modem replacement, this time around, didn't resolve the issue. Our connection can be great one moment and maddeningly slow the next. When investigating this I usually disconnect the modem from the router and run it direct to just one computer. If everything springs into life on that one computer I know it's us; if not it's them. If them then comes a long drawn out process of doing what they ask, no matter how inane. Little use to protest that I've already cycled power on the modem and rebooted the PC.

This time the problem looks for all the world like someone else on our cable segment has a DHCP server running on the WAN side; sometimes we cop a 192.168.x.x address when renewing the IP lease. My guess is someone has recently added a second computer and a router to their home network and they've plugged the cable modem into one of the downlink ports on the router instead of the uplink port. That would certainly explain why our lease renewals sometimes get a private network address. I'm pretty sure we can't solve this one without Cox assistance.

Today Sonya was getting toward the end of her tether with the internet connection. We'd already been on the phone with Cox yet again; this time I must have sounded knowledgeable because they forwarded us to their operations centre and they agreed that my theory sounded sound. They 'provisioned' the modem yet again and told us to call back if the problem continued. Which it did.

Sonya, fed up with slow connections, asked, 'How about Vern and Guy' (friends). 'Do they both have Cox?'

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Andrew slyly smiling, wondering if I was going to go for it. Was I? Does the pope wear a funny hat and expect not to be laughed at?

'Of course they do, my dear' I replied. 'That's why they're called blokes!'

Maybe you had to be there.

Mullum Mullum

I'll admit I've been slack about writing now that I'm here in Melbourne. It's not that nothing's been happening, more that I've become a temporarily lazy bastard.

I arrived at Tullamarine at the usual time after a flight twice delayed by missing passengers. The first delay was at San Francisco, where they boarded us and then discovered that there was a no-show. Thus to the inevitable delay while they fished the baggage out of the hold. Of course, considering how long it takes to board a 747 and settle everyone down, there was no way they were going to let us off the plane during the delay. Fortunately, there's ample opportunity to make up lost time on the flight and we arrived at Sydney only 20 minutes later than scheduled.

I sadly report that there is no longer a smoking lounge[^] at Sydney Airport. I had a sneaking suspicion the anti-smoking nazis would have made it so but nonetheless it was a bitter disappointment to be denied that pleasure with three hours to go until arrival at Melbourne.

The second delay was on the ground at Melbourne, waiting for the gate to be available. You guessed it, the flight occupying the gate which was supposed to have departed was delayed while they removed luggage belonging to a no show. It beats me how someone can check their bags in and so completely disappear. Why else did they check in if not to take the damn flight?

From Tullamarine at my request straight to the fish shop in Williamstown. After three years without fish and chips I didn't want to wait any longer than necessary. We did, however, stop off at the Coles supermarket to buy a bottle of Rosella Tomato Sauce to go with the chips. Pure unadulterated bloody heaven!

Then Heino and I dagged around Williamstown for a while, reliving scenes from the distant past (well, thirty years ago which is near enough). But eventually it was time to take the trek across Melbourne to Heino's house which is not terribly close to Williamstown. In fact, he lives right by the northern end of the newly opened Eastlink Tollway. Which meant that, having taken the Eastern Freeway through Doncaster, we ended up at the Mullum Mullum Tunnel.

They've been planning to build that tunnel for almost as long as I can remember; it opened this year. Heino assures me it's a Melbourne tradition to chant Mullum Mullum as one drives through it. So I obliged him, feeling a trifle silly as I did so. 'No mate' he assured me, 'just watch the other drivers. They're chanting it too'. I looked and, sure enough, it looked just like they were.

The following morning we headed back the other way through the tunnels to pick up my hire car. I learn fast so I was ready to chant Mullum Mullum as we went through the tunnel. I even pointed out that it was pretty obvious one had to chant it backwards as we were going in the opposite direction. I was warming up as we approached the tunnel when Heino broke the sad news to me; the northbound tunnel is called the Melba tunnel and one does not chant at all.

So much for inspired guesswork!

The Water Trick

I watched this[^] last night. Not a particularly good movie though it did have some fascinating moments, such as the automated garage parking system shown in Reno Nevada in 1955! But then I get fascinated by such things. My equivalent of Bright Shiny Things[^] methinks.

There was one scene that made me laugh. One of the minor characters is tricked into a bet; he sits on the floor and someone pours a glass of water onto the floor between his legs. The bet is that the character who pours the water can wipe it up before the person sitting on the floor can stab him with a knife. Bet accepted, the victim sits and the water is poured. Then, on the count of three they go, one to wipe the water up, the second to stab the wiper. And, on the count of three, the wiper grabs the stabbers legs and drags him through the puddle!

Like I say, it made me laugh and as I chuckled I bethought of a victim upon whom I could play the same trick. Andrew of course. Thus at dinner I offered him a bet of two hundred bucks. Scenting a trick he demurred and admitted that he hadn't the two hundred bucks on his side. No problem I told him, if he lost the bet no money need change hands but if I lost he'd get two hundred smackeroos.

Greed took over as I demonstrated how he'd be sitting and soon he was in place on the kitchen floor. Just in case, we substituted a wooden spoon for the knife. Heh, I'm not that silly. I even let him choose how much water would go into the glass and he, being a greedy bastard, filled it to the brim.

The anti-climax is that it worked a treat and he's no richer now than he was before dinner. But I honestly thought Sonya would choke to death, she was laughing so hard.

And he took it well; methinks he's planning to try it on his friends.

A bigger mystery

So yesterday I mentioned[^] a minor mystery being solved. Not that big of a mystery but, having learned that 'Ring a Ring a Rosy' was apparently an allegorical reference to the Black Plague in London[^] one was naturally curious about other nursery rhymes. My curiousity on the subject was also piqued when I read a copy of Martin Greens 'The Annotated Alice', where he delved in great detail and wonderfully written footnotes into some of the more outré references Lewis Carroll used.

In short, grist to the mill of curiousity.

Filled with the trivia of Mary Sawyer I held it to myself until dinner time.

'Hey Andrew' I said, 'you know about Mary, the one with the lamb?'

A couple of grunts and he replied 'I think I've heard of it'.

That answer staggered me! I mean, okay, I know his interests are somewhat narrow, currently revolving around World of Warcraft but geeze, how could even he have forgotten the nursery rhymes of a mere decade or so ago?

Dinner yesterday was to be one mystery piled upon another; for Sonya piped up and informed me that they don't teach kids nursery rhymes any more. Apparently they use 'poetry' instead. Strangely enough I'd always thought that nursery rhymes qualified for that description. Shows what I know.

As for why? She didn't know. I don't know either but methinks some well meaning idiot decided that nursery rhymes were unsuitable for developing minds. Looking at some of the less admirable achievements of my generation and that of my parents they may have a point. But really! No wonder I'm having such trouble understanding Andrew; we don't have any common frame of reference to work within.

So I took it upon myself to teach him at least one or two nursery rhymes. The one about Mary and her lamb and the other about Old MacDonald. Let's see how it goes...

When Mary had a little lamb,
the doctors were surprised.
But when old MacDonald had a farm,
they couldn't believe their eyes!

It got a laugh!

What I wanted for Christmas

Many years ago my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I thought for a moment and replied 'I wanna watch'. So they let me!

*boom boom*

Yeah, an old joke. I must have been telling it at (in)appropriate moments for at least thirty years so it should come as no surprise whatsoever that when, the other night, we were talking about Christmas over dinner, I trotted it out. Andrew mulled it a moment and then let out a half embarassed laugh along with a sheepish grin. Sonya, however, looked at me and said, in a voice of incredulity, 'Really???'.

Offered as proof

of two propositions. The first is that I can be very childish when I wish. Like that's news to you lot! The second is that sometimes my wife can be very gullible :-)

Over dinner I was trying to get a raise out of Andrew. So I concocted a rambling story about walking past a golf course when I looked down and beheld a dickfor! Andrew let it go in one ear and out the other. But not Sonya; with a puzzled look she enquired 'what's a dickfor?'. To which there's only one answer if Andrew's around; 'if you don't know by now you'll never know!'

*boom boom*

You can blame Heino for this one! *

This guy walks into a bar. The bartender sees that he has a big bulge in his pants. So the bartender says, 'Hey, it looks like you have a steering wheel in your pants.' And the guy says, 'Yeah, and it's driving me nuts.'

*of course, I *did* choose to post it... :-)

The Deaf Man

Sometime in the mid 1990's a new set of telephone services were launched in Australia. Along with the usual suspects such as phone sex, dating and sports scores there was a number you could call to 'The Deaf Man'. 'The Deaf Man' was not a number you'd ever call yourself!

These new services were initially launched as 0055 numbers and, as such, they didn't look a lot different to an interstate phone number. I think they've become 1-800 numbers these days but I'm not sure; if so that's a good thing because it's instantly apparent that it's 'special'.

We used the initial similarity of the number to a 'real' number to good advantage. We'd pick a suitable victim at the office and leave a 'while you were out' note on his desk requesting that he call the number.

Such a conversation would typically go something like this:

Victim: 'Hello, this is so and so returning your call.'

Deaf Man: 'Can you speak up?'

Victim: (A little louder) 'Hello, this is so and so returning your call.'

Deaf Man: 'I'm sorry, I can't hear you'.

And so on. The longer the call went the more The Deaf Man implored the victim to speak up or more clearly or repeat that or... And the longer the call went on the louder and more frustrated the victim became!

Yeah, I was 'got'! How else would I even know about it? Most people in our office were 'got' at one point or another. One woman, not the brightest penny in the purse, was 'got' about 5 times before she understood the joke!

And on a lighter note

Joe couldn't take much more of his blind date. Luckily, he had arranged for a friend to ring the restaurant at nine with an excuse for him to leave.

Sure enough, he was called to the phone on the hour and returned to tell his date, " I've got to go. My father's died."

"Thank god for that," the date replied. "If yours hadn't, mine would have had to."

Corny jokes

Though, for a change, not mine!

When I worked on software at Hewlett Packard in 1989 it was on HPUX, their port of UNIX to their hardware. I was a pretty big fan of UNIX in those days and I still reckon the original architects had some great ideas. The idea of piping the output of one program into another is still breathtaking in the range of possibilities. A pity in some ways that they were also lazy typists; ls really doesn't leap out at the newbie as the obvious command to see what files you have!

There was one feature I really liked the first time I saw it and that was the core dump. It's a given that as a developer I'm going to make mistakes; it's also a given that the program is probably going to crash at the most inconvenient time and most likely when not running under the debugger. Having UNIX automatically create a core dump made it a lot easier to find the reason and fix it. In comparison, at the time MS-DOS had no such facility and it was hardly possible to implement it under a real mode operating system where no instruction could ever cause a protection exception. Instead we saw the system hang and most of the time not even the 3 finger salute (Ctrl Alt Delete) would work.

Core dumps were pretty frequent at the time I was on the team; we were moving from the initial 'hot frenzy' of coding into the stabilisation phase and it was usual to arrive at the office in the morning to find half a dozen or more core dumps per team member awaiting analysis from the overnight regression test runs.

Simon took the term literally. At lunch he'd eat an apple and, without fail, having finished the apple he'd drop the core in the bin and announce 'another core dump!'.

Boom boom!!!

Ultramaroons tenth birthday

UltraMaroon is about 10 years old. I honestly don't remember the exact date though I suppose I could do a google search for the date that corresponds to Easter Monday 1996. Don't much care if the truth be told.

I wrote[^] about the day UltraMaroon was created.

Ten years down the track I remember something else about that time. We had a State election at the start of March 1996. Australian elections aren't calendared; they occur when the incumbent has to submit to the electorate and he thinks he can win.

Americans? Put your prejudes away! Every parliament has a maximum lifetime and the election must occur before such and such a date but the date can be set by the incumbent. It works pretty well for us!

The election victory for the party I don't support pretty much coincided with a period of extreme debt for me; it was my own fault but debt it was nonetheless. I had the choice of buying food for my cats or smoking. If you have a way of explaining to a cat that she is hungry because I need a smoke then share the secret with me! So I went without smokes.

Less than a month later Little Johnny Bastard, the current Australian Prime Minister, won the federal election. Fortunately I was back in the funds and thus was born an excuse to purchase a pack of smokes! Yeah, that's right, I'm still smoking because John Howard won the 1996 Australian Federal Election. And today I'm smoking because George W Bush is US president! Uh huh.

You might remember that back in late June 2003 President George W Bush had to undergo a medical procedure that involved his unconsciousness and, as a result, presidential power passed, briefly to Vice President Dick Cheney. The reason was not, so far as my internet checking shows, disclosed to the American Public.

Thus it is my privilege to reveal the true reason.

The operation involved an anal search for Australian Prime Minister John Howards dignity!

Oh, the American Howard, he who comments without leaving an email address? This should help toward your curiosity about my 'left wing' politics. If you want further comment please have the testicular fortitude to leave an email address.

BEEP is louder than beep

Back in the early 80's when I worked for Hewlett Packard I learned to program the HP9825A[^] Programmable Calculator. It was considerably more than a calculator though! If we installed the HPIB interface card and the I/O ROM we could use it to control test instruments and I remember writing more than one program to ease the effort of calibrating a spectrum analyser.

Indeed, if I remember rightly, the major market for the 9825A was the instrument control market.

The programming language it used was called HPL, which as far as I remember was a variation on APL though, given that I've never seen an APL program, that may be no more than faulty remembrance.

Like many specialised languages HPL had a bunch of machine specific keywords. The only one I remember is 'beep' which did exactly what the name would suggest; it beeped the machine. Unlike a great many machines of the period, it was possible to specify the pitch and duration of the beep and you could, if sufficiently misguided, write a program to play monophonic and monotonal tunes on the machine.

The keywords in the language were defiantly lower case; it would accept lines written in upper case, parse them and convert keywords to lower case.

One of my colleagues, Gary, fancied himself a musician and he became interested in the possibilities of the machine. Many a lunch hour he'd spend playing around with the beep statement. He wasn't a programmer so he asked me to explain some of the more subtle nuances of reading data arrays from mass storage so he could store his tunes.

After a while he became unhappy with the lack of control over the volume and he asked me how he could vary it.

'Piece of cake, mate' I said. 'If you type beep in lower case you get low volume, if you type BEEP you get loud and if you type Beep you get something in the middle'. Obviously I'm paraphrasing but it would take way too long to type out the whole conversation.

He was convinced and went off to lunchtime programming happy. It took him ages to realise that no matter what case you used when inputting a program the machine would always convert keywords to lower case!

A really silly joke

which I admit I nicked from a post that David Wulff made on Codeproject[^] a few days ago.

I've been chuckling over it ever since reading it. And yes, I probably word it a little differently than David did. I ran it by my wife a couple of nights ago; she exploded in laughter. So then I ran it by Andrew. He didn't get it. Ran it at the office today and everyone but for one guy got it. *shrug*

So here it is.

Mary had a little lamb,
She also had a duck.
She put them in the yard one day,
to see if they would play!

It probably says much about me that I find it quite as funny as I do.

April Fools day

Alas, I don't have a good Aprils fool joke to share with you that I perpetrated. We did the usual peurile stuff when I was a kid though I can't even remember the exact details. I seem to remember it relied on the extreme youth of the victim and his inexperience. It also seemed to be the rule that one had to perpetrate such tricks before noon; for some reason I never knew a trick played after noon didn't count.

Andrew is young enough to still do the 'pinch and a punch, the first of the month' thang when he remembers. Morgan knows better than to try that one on me!

In Australia in the 1970's if you wanted a 'Big Dick' there was no need to check your email for spam. Sufficient merely to go to Dick Smith Electronics (DSE hereinafter) where you could purchase a DC power supply. Good thing too; we didn't have email in those days! They also sold the 'Little Dick' which was also a DC power supply. I bought one or two of each for various electronics projects. It felt incredibly silly going into DSE and asking for a 'Little Dick'. But that's what marketing is all about; I certainly knew at the time what a 'Little Dick' was though you could torture me today and I wouldn't remember the power ratings.

DSE was originally targetted at hobbyists and they advertised largely in the two Australian Electronics Magazines of the time, Electronics Australia (EA)[^] and Electronics Today[^]. DSE has long since been taken over by one of the Australian department store chains but I'm damned if I can remember which one. No matter; I stopped being a customer sometime around 1983.

In, I think, 1973, they ran an ad in the April issue of EA where they announced a new technology, the PRIC. PRIC stood for 'PRinted IC' and the ad, supported by editorial material, touted a wonderful new process recently invented that allowed for the creation of integrated circuits using special inks and printing technology. The ad itself was represented as a free sample and included instructions on how to activate it. Cut the ad out, soak it in a saltwater solution for so many minutes, glue it down to a non conductive backplane and attach the leads here and there and we'd have an amplifier. Sounded good.

The editorial blurb touted the new technology. It went on to advise we hobbyists to hold the ad up to the light so we could see the intricate patterns printed onto the paper; patterns which would become live, working, electronics.

Sounded intriguing so I followed the instructions. Fresh water with the requisite number of teaspoons of table salt, soak the bugger, hold it up to the light.

And there it was, clear at last. 'April Fool'!

Making progress

My friend Vern[^] with whom I plan to drink beer tonight ran a joke on his blog the other day. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find it.

Not a great joke nor yet a bad one; it played on the difference in perceptions between President George W Bush and a horses arse. Naturally, the horses arse is seen as the better of the two alternatives. For the record, I'd vote for the horses arse before I'd vote for the current incumbent of the office!

Reminded me of the old Australian joke about a bloke who wants to change his name. The judge asks him what his original name is. 'It's John Winston Howard Shit, your honour'. The judge smiles indulgently and says he quite understands. What do you want to change it to? 'John Shit, your honour' he replies! Replace 'John Winston Howard' with that of any politician in the world and you have the joke in essence.

Armed with Verns joke and an American audience could I wish for more as I sat down to dinner tonight? The first time we've dined as a family in a few weeks? So I ran it by them. My wife, who has voted Republican laughed. Andrew scratched his head a few moments until it dawned and then he laughed.

'Mom.' said Andrew, 'I told you he'd have some new jokes when he got back.' Far be it from me to disillusion the lad and admit I nicked it from Verns blog :-) That's another way of saying I'll take the credit and run!

A little later Andrew smiled to himself as I took him to task over leaving his poker table out in the living room. A little defiance, just enough to establish his place in the household but no truculence that I could detect.

It's really starting to feel like he's glad when I'm around. He said as much last night, just after I'd gotten home and taken him to task for leaving the phone lying on the desk next to his computer. Hangdog look with a faint smile and the agreement that he'd stuffed up again. 'Don't apologise' I said, 'just don't do it again.'.

Morgan said the same thing this afternoon but, to be frank, her saying it doesn't make me feel the same way. There was no accompanying sheepish grin; no sign of contrition; just the feeling that she was saying the words. I may be judging the girl harshly and, if I am, I'll be sorry, but going by history I don't think I'm wrong. *shrug*

The blind guy

There's a nun having a bath when there comes a knock on the door.

'Who's there?' she calls out.

'It's the blind guy' responds a gruff masculine voice.

The nun thinks for a moment then decides that, as he's blind, it can't do any harm to let him in.

As he opens the door he glances at her and says,

'Ok lady, where do you want the blinds?'

*boom boom*

An old joke

So tonight my wife mentioned that her computer was humming. Andrew just happened to be within earshot as I shot back with the old line...

*drum roll*

'Why, doesn't it know the words?'

*boom boom!*

Well, I thought it was funny! But what had us both in stitches was that Andrew, even when it was explained to him, totally misunderstood the joke.