Build on this

Anyone that knows me knows that I have been wrestling with building problems ever since I moved into my apartment. Here is the letter I am going to send to the builders (slightly modified, I don’t want to get sued...)

"Dear Sir/Madam,

I bought one of your apartments two years ago. I sure you know the ones; built by monkeys, maintained by morons. For the past two years your teams have been in my domicile snagging the place. At last count, they have been in twenty plus times. You can tell it’s been your builders fixing my problems, because they’re still not fixed and my walls are painted the wrong colour.

I try ringing the director of your maintenance company on a day to day basis. When he is not ignoring my calls he occasionally answers and then hangs up; if he doesn’t answer I leave a message for him to ignore at his convenience. I’m sure he is a busy man and doesn’t have time to take my calls; there are many other apartment owners to ignore.

I have two particular issues.

Number one, a leaky shower. This problem saw three foremen trying to fix it. Yes, the shower was installed by you. Yes, you did the tiles and plumbing too. Your snagger and his team fixed it. Then fixed it again. And again. And another time. Then one last time to fix it again. The leak has stopped. The skirting in my house is wrecked, the wallpaper damaged, the floor underlay rotten, and carpet stained. Good job, well done.

Number two, a leaky roof. I am the top floor. Apparently the angle of pipes from the extractor is such that condensation forms and drips on to my bedroom ceiling. Your snagger and his team came into fix it. And again. And again, leaving paint on sink and toilet bowl. And again, painting the walls the wrong colour and leaving paint all over one of my chairs. Problem is back again, but mister maintenance is unavailable.

I would really like someone to address these problems. Do the math, if a call out costs approximately €200 in time, effort etc., (and I’d say this is a conservative estimate), then the problems have so far have cost your company €4000. If I wasted that in my company I’d be fired, or at least sternly reprimanded.

How’s about this for a solution. You send someone competent around to fix the problems, then leave. Works for both of us I imagine. Certainly works for me.

Please don’t bin or ignore this fax, even if it is company policy.

I am not a crank,
Yours etc.,"

Its been a while but theres no way i'm letting this one by ...

Have you heard of 'creation science'?

This is the 'science' underlying the genesis version of life on earth. I dare not use the word evolution because apparently
that is exactly what this disproves ... well you see not exactly ..they are being cute saying nothing is proven its 'all' theory and
creation 'science' is just another theory ... disengenious i think you will agree...

well in the good ole USA this science is now taught on a par with the old tired run of the mill science of darwin et all..

it wouldnt be so bad ....after all we know parts of America are practically theocratic but its working it's way into europe..

....and you never guess where ...the home of the Enlightenment ..England...

I dont even know where to begin with this one.... life as a product of millions of years of chemical reactions ... or God and six days ..
its just like that schoolyard rubbish about why apes are not evolving into humans..

It might be time to take up the gun in a few years if this nonsense carries on..

Holiday Post #4

The name of Bangkok in Thai is:

Krungthepmahanakonbowornratanakosin-
mahintarayudyayamahadilopo-
noparatanarajthaniburiromudomrajniwesmahasatarn-
amornpimarnavatarsatitsakattiyavisanukamphrasit

If you can follow that, well done!!!!

The translation here is pretty much the unabridged history of the city rather than a word:

krungthep mahanakhon----------------------The land of angels, the great city of
amorn rattanakosin----------------------------immortality, various of devine gems,
mahintara yudthaya mahadilok pohp-------the great angelic land unconquerable,
noparat rajathanee bureerom---------------land of nine noble gems, the royal city, the pleasant capital,
udomrajniwes mahasatarn-------------------place of the grand royal palace,
amorn pimarn avaltarnsatit-------------------forever land of angels and reincarnated spirits,
sakatattiya visanukram prasit----------------predestined and created by the highest devas.


How many names do we allow places?

Could a city such as Dublin, simply vote to add more names, say:

theweecitybytheriverliffeywithitsdirtybrownwaterandfarmorebridges-
thananystretchofwaterhasarightowhichisalittleovereighthundredyears-
oldbutislessthanahundredyearsthecapitalofthisfairisle-


Might have a little trouble fitting it onto those "Welcome To" signs you see as you drive into the county.

For hecks sake!

Case:
That Australia should be banned from exporting television.

Case for the prosecution:
Neighbours
Home and Away
The Secret Life of Us
All Saints
The Flying Doctors
Skippy
Sons and Daughters
Heartbreak High
Jason Donavan
Craig McLachlan
Danii Minogue

Case for the defence:
Kylie Minogue
Holly Valance
Natalie Imbruglia
Guy Pierce

Summation:
Do Kylie, Holly, Natalie and Guy have the star power to have made it without the launch pad of neighbours? Do they provide enough star power to permit the crimes perpetrated by Criag, Danii and Jason? Has a good television program ever been made in Australia by Austalians? Is it a surprise that The Secret Life of Us has a late slot? Can we ever, ever, forgive Sons and daughters? Was Skippy a poor marsupial rip-off of Lassie? Is All Saints ER without the budget or drama? Do we have the power to change the path of daytime TV? Do we have to stop the Canadians exporting TV as well?

Verdict:
Guilty. We should start sending our convicts to Australia again. That’ll learn them.

Envelope? Sealed bids please.

I work in a medium sized company, 120 employees. When someone leaves, gets married, has a baby, retires or supports a cause an envelope gets sent around. This is usually an internal envelope that you put your name on, with a flag; paid or returned. Without further ado, here is my envelope scale by category:

Leavers:
My department €5
My team €10
Rest of company €0
Leaves to go to a higher paid job than me -€5

Married:
My department €10
My team €20
Rest of company €0 - €5

Wedding present scale:
Wedding invitation €150 - €200*
Afters invitation – See married envelope scale
*average

Has a baby or retires:
My department €5
My team €10
Rest of company €0

Supports a cause:
Cancer, leukaemia €20
Irish charity, SVP etc €10
Third world charity €5
Girl guides, go walking in the Andes €0

If you are thinking about sending around an envelope, please consult my scale before bothering to leave it on my desk. If the card arrives around, I will not sign it if I have not donated. Clear? Clear.

The Insomniac Eye - Bad City Orange

Last night, I was continuing to sleep badly. During my insomnia, I began to think about how city children are being deprived of the colour blue. Try not sleeping, you’ll see that thoughts like this are completely normal.

Allow me to explain.

The human eye is made up of rods and cones. The rods, which we have lots of, are responsible for the bulk of our vision, but are not sensitive to colour. These rods, while only useful for black and white sight, are responsible for peripheral vision and motion detection. They are also responsible for night vision, and that’s ultimately where I am going with this.
The cones, are responsible for your colour vision. You don’t have very many of these and they are concentrated right in the middle of your eye. They work off the primary colour (light) spectrum. Red, green and blue. The percentage breaks down as "red"(64%), "green" (32%), and "blue"(2%). The blue are the most sensitive, but there are very few of them. Current theory is that there is a blue amplifier in the brain to make up for the lack of blue rods in your eye.

Fascinating I’m sure.

Lying in bed last night, all I could see was orange. When I was growing up in the country, lying in bed at night all I could see was blue. The orange is being caused by streetlamps, the blue caused by the ultra-sensitive blue rods in my eyes making the best of a low light situation. City Vs Country.

Current trends in colour therapy will tell you that these two colours stimulate entirely different chakras in the body, the blue chakra is in the throat, the orange chakra is in the sacral, or groinal region. The blue promotes calm, the orange is more dynamic. City councils are subliminally programming our children to be hyperactive sex machines. Can it be long before we see the government recommend the use of orange night lights in the country? Try leaving a glass of water on your window sill at night to solarize it, first in the city with orange, then in the country with blue. Feed to it your children, mark the difference, reverse the programming before it is too late.

I need more sleep.

Holiday Post #3

Just booked my first few nights accomadation in Bangkok.

Its in the very nice Peninsula, Bangkok.

Which was Travel & Leisure's 2003 Best Hotel in the World.

Given that I mostly plan on staying in grimy Guesthouses and Hostels, I feel that getting off on the right foot in important

Holiday Post #2

Oh, and in order to avoid any questions, I might as well add a short list of

Things which I'm not planning on doing while on holidays.

Smuggle Drugs
Visit the Ladyboys.
Put things in places they're not meant to go.
Stand on a landmine.
Swim in the Mekong Delta.
Catch Avian Bird Flu
Catch Japanese B Encephalitis
Get Hijacked.
Clean my ass with my bare hand.
Come home with a 10 year old boy in tow.
Join the Communist party of Vietnam

Holiday Post #1

In the first of what might well be a series of blogs on the topic, let me tell me you about my holidays. Given our current readership of about 6, there's a good chance that if your reading this, you already know about them, in fact you're probably pretty sick of listening to me drone on and on about them. From that point of view, consider that this blog is really doing its best to take a bullet for you.

In less than three weeks I get to disapear away from work for 8 weeks and do my best to forget all about how to program crap Java. With any luck when I come back I'll only remember how to code good Java.

Anyhoo, my tentative plan involves, flying to Bangkok on the 28th of February. Staying for a few days. Travelling by bus to Siem Riep. Visit the Temples of Angkor Wat for a few days. Travel by Boat to Phnom Penh. Loiter for a few days. Travel to Ho Chi Minh by Bus/Boat. Meet Kieran. Visit the Chu Chi Tunnels. Travel about the Mekong Delta. And perhaps depending on how time is, fly to Hanoi to visit Halong Bay and/or the Sapa Hill Tribes.

Mostly that will have taken about 4 weeks.

Then its on to Bangkok, to catch my flight onward to Sydney.

Its funny how the prospect of spending a week on your own in Cambodia will concentrate the mind. Indeed I seem to have read everything thats ever been written on the country, in preparation. Oz, on the other hand, doesn't seem quite as daunting. And as a result, I've done very little planning by any standards.

I know I arrive into Syndney. I plan to spend maybe 4 days. See the opera house, walk the bridge, jump from a plane, sail around the harbour, all the usual touristy stuff. From there I'm not quite so sure. I'd like to travel up the east coast. See Brisbane. Fraser Island. All the way up to Cairns. Think the Witsunday Islands are up there somewhere. By this point I imagine I could be a little knackered and have a few days of doing nothing pencilled in for Cairns. Maybe do some Scuba. I'd like to fly to Alice Springs. See the Rock. The Marbles. Then back to Sydney and off home. As I type this, I'm thinking that I've got too much on my tentative Oz schedule, but then I'm commited to nothing at the moment.

Then its back home, to write some more top class Java.

Last Friday night Sharon and I were locked in religous debate. But amongst the differences, was a question. Are there any old Sweet Atheists about the place. By Sweet I mean Not-Bitter, ie not someone who refuses to believe in God because they've recently lost their sweet wife Edna. Or have lived the last 20 years in excrutiating pain, caused by a gargantuan cancerous growth.

Anyhoo, to that end, I take out this personal add ....


Slightly Cynical 28yr Male
seeks Older, 70+, Non-Bitter
Atheist, for religious discussion
& Fun Time. No Messers pls.


It'll be going in next weeks buyandsell ...

... maybe ...

For the love of God

I always thought Valentines day was one of those stupid Hallmark holidays that people hate. Restaurants are jammed, dinners (and bridges) are burned. An unforeseen strain is put on previously stable relationships. Romantic men are classed by the 99.9% of the male population as overlooked gays. You see new couples trying too hard, middle-aged couples not talking, and elderly couples still happily in love after fifty years. Bah! I hate love. Here is the history of SVD, in greeting card form:

There once was an emperor from Rome,
Who didn’t like his soldiers getting a bone,
He made marriage an outright crime,
So couples went to a priest named Valentine,
Who wed them, and sent them home.

The emperor found out about the couples getting wed,
He prosecuted Valentine, shouting “off with is head!”
Valentine fell in love with the blind daughter of his jailer,
But being a catholic, probably didn’t get to nail her,
So he cured her sight, left a note and to his death he sped.

The fourteenth was a pagan roman festival day,
Pope Gelasius didn’t like it and said “No way, Hosé!”
He looked for a miracle man,
Valentine had one in the can,
And Roman men and women lost their lay.

Confused? Not as confused as the Romans when they found out that instead of pulling a teenage girls name out of a hat on valentines day, they now got a saint instead, who’s virtues they were supposed to emulate. Well, my darling, watch out! In a mixture of Catholic and Roman tradition this valentines day, I will taking on the virtue of St.Gluttonous the engorged.

PharmaCo - Part 3. It’s vitamins, see?

Dear large pharmaceutical company,

Me again. I see you were back in Tara Street this morning. This time you were pimping a popular vitamin supplement, marketed in the form of a sucky-sweet. Going after the children’s market? At least this time you weren’t actually passing the product out, just the brightly coloured literature in easy to understand language.

You took two of my prior suggestions on board, thank you. We now have two beauties in orange windcheaters hawking your product instead of an ugly guy giving it out for free. A step in the right direction. Why don’t you take a further step, and keep your irresponsible shit away from our train stations?

I presume it was you (or the other large pharmaceutical company) that is forcing the closing down all the alternative medicine companies in Ireland. You’ve won the war, don’t over compensate, stop fighting. Fuck off home.

I am not a crank,

Yours etc.,

Here's a simple rule to live life by ...

Never .. Ever .. join any club with "Tequila" in the title ...

"What?" I hear you say ...

Well for example, if you're invited to join the "Tequila buddies drinking club", I heartily recommend that you take a moment or two for quite reflection. Ask youself whether this sounds like the sort of organisation which will aid your cultural growth and help you to become a more rounded individual. Or instead, if perhaps this sounds like a subversive cult, hell bent on the destruction of livers, brain cells and human dignity.

I can understand that some people might feel unconfortable relying on their own judgement calls to distinguish between these different groups. And thats why I suggest, you just don't take the chance. Apply the simple rule. If there's Tequila in the title. Just Don't do it.

You can contact 1-800-555-TQLA, for more Tequila related information and support.