Quote of the week
Posted: Wed 20 August, 2008 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism 2 Comments »“Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak………”
From Slashdot
Spam Stocks
Posted: Mon 18 August, 2008 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism 2 Comments »Over the last few week or so, I’ve been getting a load of spam mail about some dodgy oil stock or other. Of course, that’s about as much attention as I ever pay to them, but still, it makes me wonder sometimes.
Now I know that the entire idea of spam is that the actual cost of the advertising is pretty negligible, so the spammer can send out millions of emails for mere pence/cents, and so really it only takes one person to respond and buy in order for the spammer to make a profit. But really, how many people are still stupid enough to think “Oh, I’ve been recommended this stock by a spam email, so yes, I’m going to go out and buy as many shares in it as possible“?
I can’t imagine it happening. After all, spam’s been around for so long, you’d think that there couldn’t be anyone still around who was prepared to go for anything offered by spam methods. Then again, you still see people getting stung by the entire “$50m in a Nigerian bank” scams too, so I guess it must be true, that there really is one born every minute…
Delayed Construction
Posted: Fri 18 July, 2008 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »Today, the BBC is making some kind of big story out of the fact that the new visitor centre at the top of Mount Snowdon is going to be delayed until next year. The reason? There’s been a lot of bad weather while they’re building the thing.
The authority said progress on the scheme had been “remarkable” considering the conditions, including snow, heavy rain and winds regularly gusting over 80 mph.
Now my problem with this is simple – surely all the bad weather detailed above is exactly what you’d expect when you’re on the top of a mountain that’s some 3,560ft (nearly 1,100m) above sea level. What the fuck did they expect on a mountain top in Wales? Perfect sunny weather for two years?
So I just don’t see why it’s such a big thing – it would be far more newsworthy if the thing had been opened on time. In fact, it would be far more newsworthy if Carillion, the contractors, had actually planned the project and timescales correctly in the first place. Common sense, competence and professionalism breaks out? That’s a story that would be front page news at the moment.
Corrections
Posted: Mon 7 January, 2008 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »When you’re looking at a ‘news’ site for the town you grew up in, how pedantic is it to email the editor and suggest that they use a spell checker?
In the case I’m thinking of, they’d managed to mis-spell “Helicopter”, which is fairly impressive in the first place.
And if, when you’ve sent in that suggestion and they respond saying thanks, but with the first two words being “Quiet right”, would it be really snarky to point that out too?
After all, this is a site that is trying to make out it’s a news site, and the epitome of local journalism for that town, yet they manage to get at least one spelling error per day…
Or should I just leave well alone?
Foglights
Posted: Thu 20 December, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel 11 Comments »Ah, you knew it wouldn’t be long ’til this one happened (again).
This morning I was driving in to work, and the weather was fairly grungy – lots of freezing fog, and not much fun at all. However, it has to be pointed out that this was at 7am this morning, while it was still completely dark. You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Fog-lights are only supposed to be used in thick fog when visibility is abysmal. They’re not meant as “It’s foggy, use your lights” – there’s supposed to be some application of common sense. In this case, because it’s night, I can see cars half a fucking mile away. There’s no need for foglights if you can see that fucking far, you bollock-minded individuals!
Yes, of course, the foglights came on, and stayed on. Even in the clear bits. Hell, most of the twunts will still have them on this evening when I drive home, I’m sure.
The highway code is a bit wishy-washy on this one – again, I assume, because of the necessity hope of using common sense in these situations – but still it makes it pretty clear that foglights should only be used in poor visibility. Of course, common sense is a commodity in short supply at the moment, so maybe it needs to be re-written in light of that.
Personally, I think that car manufacturers are (slightly) to blame on this one as well – you get a warning light on the dashboard when you put the lights on, but there’s no extra warning/reminder to tell you you’ve put the foglights on. (Well, in Ford cars anyway. I can’t be certain if the same applies to all/most other car manufacturers) But then, if a driver hasn’t got the memory-span to remember they’ve turned the foglights on, should they really be allowed to be driving in the first place?
B&Q Fuckwitticus Commentiara
Posted: Sun 2 December, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, B&Q, Customer Services 5 Comments »Last night, I got another comment on one of my B&Q posts, obviously by someone who doesn’t really understand the entire concept of “read the post, then comment on it”.
This time the comment was
this place is full of shit! did your mum and daddy not teach you fucking manners? try being in our shoes for a day then you’ll know.
Which, considering it was related to the post where I was very polite to the fuckwit chimp “manager” when we were trying to get a sample tile in order to buy 125m² of them. (And yeah, B&Q did lose the sale because of the attitude, but I was still polite to the cretin)
Still, it all adds to the amusement, I guess.