ɔimoɈɒ

I’m not happy about the state of the world.

For as long as I’ve been able to understand the concept, I’ve been a victim of bigotry and sectarianism – par for the course if you live in Northern Ireland. Every time I was stopped at a vehicle checkpoint, even as a minor, I felt threatened by the man holding the automatic rifle at my window as another armed man checked my, or my parents, credentials and enquired where we were coming from or where we were going. I felt violated.

The world has gone to hell. I’m getting tired of online columnists who profess to be Christian, printing articles on their websites that refer to a “large part of the Islamic world” as “medieval savages” and then talking about ethnic cleansing as if that’s a good thing “This is not about revenge, it’s about sanitation.”.

Said online columnist replies to this racist and sectarian ape with “I’m inclined to agree with you. I basically don’t give a hoot about the niceties of international law. The only prudent solution is to … terminate him with extreme prejudice”.

This is a devout Christian! What the hell is going on! What happened to turn the other cheek? What about forgiveness?

I mean, for f*’s sake, what would Jesus say?

Two dogs fighting in the street have to be pulled apart by their owners because the dogs, being dogs, don’t know any better. They act this way because they are dogs. And dogs are animals.

Due to this guy, my opinion of humanity just fell thru the floor. My opinion of dogs, on the other hand, just improved.

http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2001/10/20011019123921.shtml

The Secretary of State for NI has declared the peacefire for two Christian Extremist groups null and void. Their participation in terrorising the people of the province including throwing a pipe bomb at schoolchildren is to blame for this. The Unionist members of the Local Assembly have now called for the same to be done for the Christian Fundamentalist group known as the IRA and have threatened to remove their members from the Local Alliance unless some decommissioning of arms is forthcoming.

Yeah, it sounds weird referring to loyalist and republican paramilitaries as “Christian Extremists” and “Christian Fundamentalists” but that’s the way the media wants us to speak.

I got a little frustrated when talking to a guy on the web that I normally respect. I knew he was a devout Christian, I didn’t realise he was a bigot. He’s under the impression that Islam is a second-class religion.

Religion should be something that brings us together.

I don’t know about you guys but CodeRed and Nimda caused one hell of a headache. I’d be inclined to demand the heads of every administrator who had an infected server under their control. I have four or five machines and none of them were affected – then again NONE of them run Winblows.

Exercise: Every time you have to say “Windows” in relation to an operating system, substitute it with “legacy Windows”.

Exercise: Any time someone relates a story about IIS, look at them incredulously and ask “Are you still running that?”

We got the scan done on Friday. Apparently, from what we can see in a dodgy ultrasound picture that glosses over detail like flesh and organs….it has my nose.

Evidently my nose is a ragged stump on the front of my head.

We’ve got to go to Paris tomorrow and we’re not packed yet. The real scan which will show us real detail is in four weeks….I’d put up a picture of the tike but..well…it’s an 800K jpeg and well…it shows very little.

So I’m now married. Nothing seems different and I’m even getting used to this gold ring – so much so that I took it off as it was nipping me while driving and I found it was more comfortable with it. I swear it’s going to kill that finger…

I’ll never forget this week. A week that begins with my Dad’s birthday and ends in my wedding with a huge disaster in the middle. Sobering stuff.

We’ve got to get focussed now on getting the little room ready for Baby. The little tike won’t be in there for ages yet but it’s important to get it ready. I’m also wondering if this house is too cold – I think it’s fine but then I’m an old goat really as opposed to a tiny newborn.

Many, many things to think about.

Only a day to go.

Was just saying to Lesley that I feel there is a wall of impending doom heading towards us – I’m not sure whether it’s the imminent arrival of my family or the wedding tomorrow. I guess I’ll find out. I think the enormity of the task hit me when Lesley handed me the rings for my safe-keeping. I’m going to then have to hand them to my brother for safe-keeping in return. Yikes!

Watched both Fight Club and The Exorcist yesterday. Fight Club is a fun romp but I think there are too many guys out there who try to identify with the lead characters. They don’t want to be Jack yet they wish to be Tyler. I think there’s something sadly profound when Tyler is waxing lyrical about how we all want to be film stars and models and have the millionaire lifestyle…but we won’t…yet…actors Edward Norton and Brad Pitt would absolutely represent the lifestyle and personas that normal joes would want to emulate. In effect they are playing guys who want to be like them and trying to empathise with guys who can’t possibly be like them. Horrendous. But an entertaining film nonetheless which I’d certainly watch again – the performances were well done.

As for the Exorcist – I’d seen bits of it loads of times but never sat down and actually watched it. It’s a scary film alright – right up until Regan is possessed. You have then one half of a film that is genuinely creepy and the second half is more of an attempt to shock and that’s where it falls down in my opinion. Maybe it was just a stupid demon but a much more creepy story would have been the invasion of the home by the demon in a much more subtle way. And the ending – what happened to the demon? This is why I think Fallen is a much better story about demonic possession. Heck, even Fight Club tells a better story about possession.

As most of you may know…I’m getting married on the 14th. Short update eh? Short and sweet.

A speedy two hour drive from the Lake district to Stranraer got us home on the earlier boat which meant we got to lounge around home for several hours.

I fly off to London tomorrow for a training course in Advanced IP. Hope I don’t feel quite so tired – I feel almost “lagged” from the holiday.

Other stuff?
Well…I’m 9 pages into Creed, Testament is finished so things are looking up in that respect. Watched Three Kings the other night – hey it wasn’t as bad as everyone said – and High Fidelity the night before which was just flippin’ fantastic. Another DVD I’m going to have to invest in 🙂

Anyway, I’m tired and I have Fight Club to watch…should I do that now or later…

Cringely has a good article about rolling your own DSL. At some point though it needs to be connected to “the real world” or “the real internet”.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010823.html

My interest is more along the lines of setting up an undercurrent.

Imagine I have a 2 mbit ADSL line (whoo baby…yeah). why don’t I route it onto an undercurrent network which uses “dry copper” to transmit to Kieran’s house. He piggy-backs on my DSL and it also means that if we need to share files we don’t have to resort to stupid zip disks or crappy 56K modems.

Imagine everyone in your neighbourhood had a copper wire leading to someone elses. You could daisy-chain huge networks together and deny BT the several thousand they would demand for the piddle-all service.

Watched Kalifornia last night – still a good film. I guess that Pitt must be a good actor as he seems to be taking on all sorts of roles. He was good in this one and was also good in Snatch.

The weather here was bright yesterday and we drove up to Grasmere and down again to Kendal (home of Mint Cake) via Ambleside and Windermere. I’m meant to meeting Wangy later on this evening – she’s at a wedding in Gretna Green and that’s only 50 miles up the road.

Got email! Woohoo. I’m connected, I’m online, I’m with the outside world! I’m not lost!

Lesley feels really dehydrated. She just told me. She also wants me to explain to the landlords about the toll-free dialup thing cos we’re sort of bypassing their handy BT payphone thing. Hyuk Hyuk….