What’s the difference between this:

rm ice*

and this:

rm ice *

?
Well, the answer is that the first one removes some unwanted files, while the second one destroys an entire fucking days work at 5:22pm leading to much annoyance and swearing.

Here’s a stupid idea I had: LOLSuits. If you don’t get it, don’t worry, it’s not funny, just stupid. Submissions most welcome.

Now that the environment has yielded its four-month protest against humanity, it’s safe to leave the house without risk of drowning in sweat and exhausted anger. This has been a long, hard summer, that started just before spring got a chance to spread its wings. This week has consisted of a few days of utopian weather pleasure. About 78 (25C), not humid, bright, and beautiful. So, for the first time in months, I went out a couple of times this week.

This rather excellent guy called Tom invited me along to something that sounded too good to be true: a night of gastronomic excess, for $20 a head…with beer! It was also going to be a double date: me and Michele, he and his long-term love-sink. It wasn’t until we arrived that we realised we were actually taking part in a Sam Adams survey, but in honesty that didn’t strike me as a bad thing. And I was right not to worry. We had four courses of gourmet food, with each course including the perfect beer accompaniment. For the record, the courses were:

• Cheese (smoked Gouda and Morbier) with walnuts and some yummy prosciutto-style beef.
• Home-made chorizo crumbled on scallops.
• New York Strip (rare) sprinked with ground coffee beans in a raspberry sauce.
• Beeramisu – guess how good that was…

Each course had its own beer that was supposed to perfectly accompany the flavours. I can’t tell you how good the whole experience was. Tom and I plan to go back there this Saturday to sample some of their Shepherds pie, which is, correctly, made with lamb.

The next evening I went downtown to meet a couple of good friends for a fish dinner at Anastasi Seafood followed by my first ever go at Rock Band 2. Let me tell you, that is a fucking fun way to spend time! Even on “easy” I was crap at the drums, but I now have a great deal of respect for Bill Ward.

Good night.

1. Capitalism doesn’t work. If it did, there would be no need for regulation, antitrust, monopolies commissions or any of the other bandages that are used to heal the wounds. Capitalism isn’t supposed to be regulated, it’s supposed to take care of itself. The invisible hand of the market is supposed to keep things in order and make the world a functional and happy place. As I said, capitalism doesn’t work, and so that clearly doesn’t happen. But rather than ditch capitalism, we bandage over it from time to time.
2. When the capitalists are in control, they do whatever they can to remove the bandages, to show how well capitalism works unaided. In fact, for them, it works very well indeed as they get more wealth than can understand.
3. The wounds go septic with all of the pus-filled bubbles and everything starts collapsing – the core of the infection affects the low-level workers first, and slowly moves outwards.
4. Before the infections reach the top-level capitalists and law-makers, they panic and re-apply the bandages and then buy expensive antibiotics like “regulation” and “nationalisation” which keep the top-level rich, and are paid for by the low-level dying in the form of taxes.

That’s it! This time the wounds are pretty serious; they may even lead to proper change, but I doubt it.
Personally I’ve been enjoying watching lots of people in suits get a slapping. It’s just a pity that it’s only those people that are deemed newsworthy, and not the hundreds of millions who really are getting the shitty end of the stick. Pity them, not the wunches of bankers.

Citi ringtones. What more could I add ?

It’s difficult to bear in mind that life and politics back in England is just as shallow, stupid and shitty as it is here, especially during the Republican National Convention week.
So, in the middle of all the blather and bluster it’s refreshing to see people commemorating one of the most significant examples of people power in the 20th century: The Battle of Cable Street.
On October the 12th is an anti-fascist historical walk around the east-end of London; I wish I could just hop on a bus and attend.
On one of the sites linking to the walk, someone posted an excellent YouTube clip of a newsreel with footage of the actual battle. I’ve never seen film of it before and it blew me away. Have a look.

A while back, the tech-press mumbled a lot about a device that goes between your mobile [cell] and your SIM that effectively unlocks your phone. Yeah right. A device that unlocks any GSM phone, regardless of manufacturer ? Does it come with snake-oil dressing ?

One evening as I was reading news of this miraculous device, I had consumed just enough red wine to lubricate my credit card so that it slid from my wallet and forced me to buy one. Remember kids: don’t drink and HTTP.

I forgot about that particular purchase until today, when a little jiffy bag arrived in the post from Hong Kong. It took a while to find the tiny contents, but once I realised what it was, I tried using with an AT&T SIM, in a T-Mobile locked phone. When I powered up the phone…it worked…perfectly.

There’s no way you could possibly make a little device that unlocks all phones. But they have. I’m very excited. It means that teleport and time-travel will be with us in a matter of weeks.

Damned clever these Chinese.

During my previous employ, the local bank, who were also owned by our company, invited themselves in to see us all and try to flog some bank accounts while they were there. They brought bagels and ran a competition to win an iPod shittle, which I was lucky enough to win. What I neglected to mention in my previous post was that the bank manager pleaded with me to open an account “in return” for winning the iPod. Now, on reflection, I realise the correct and appropriate response should have been “Fuck Off”, but I genuinely pitied the pathetic little man. And anyway, what harm could it do to have another account ?

Six months or so later, I am currently doing my best to avoid any contact with that company, on account of their close alignment with Beelzebub and his army of evil demons. They don’t have our current address, they only have the address of my in-laws where we lived at the time. But recently they have been calling daily, which obviously became quite tiresome. So, I investigated and decided to close the account and sever the last link to the bastards. To cut a long story short, I was overdrawn because:

1. They had charged me for not using the account.
2. This had taken me into a non approved overdraft, for which I was fined.
3. Not thinking about this pointless account, which I had set up out of pity, I hadn’t paid the fine.
4. So I was fined even more.
5. Repeat the last two steps.

So I called their evil automated corporate-fascist system and pressed random keys until the computer gave up and put me through to a human. In the end, there are two things that came of of this experience everyone should know:

Any bank charges you are given will be canceled if you insist.

All banks are cunts.

Now, I’ve worked in some geeky places in the past, but working with a Dave that feels passionately enough to celebrate the birthday of debian with a chocolate cake is pretty special. When he went to the supermarket and asked for the inscription, the lady said “debian ? Is that a girl or a boy ?”

“It’s an operating system” he replied, accurately.

It was pretty bloody yummy too.

In other news, here is a little 20 minute audio documentary about a 6 second snippit of an obscure 1969 b-side that has not only altered the face of music in the last 20 years, but has created several entire genres of its own.

It may sound a little pathetic to the PA posse but this weekend we decided to go on an adventure to Norristown. Anyone that knows Norristown will probably be thinking “why would you go to a shit-hole like that ?” whereas UK readers will no doubt be wondering which “Norris” it was named after…the one in Coronation Street ?

Anyway, we went there because we had heard rumours, and had seen accurate maps on Google, that indicated there was an Indian supermarket there. We miss supermarkets that sell Indian ingredients. A very nice girl that I work with will regularly buy us stuff from the Indian supermarkets she visits, but apart from the hassle we are causing her, we like to shop. So we set off on the perilous mission into the unknown, armed only with loads of money, a car, a GPS navigation device, and The Klub [ a krook-lock ]. Bravely, we drove up Ridge Pike until we reached our first stop-off point: Ah’s Garage Sale. Other adventurers had recommended this place as a source of some wonderful treasures and indeed it was. I’ve never seen such a load of quality crap. I bought a practice bass-amp but Michele persuaded me against buying any of the old radios, DVD players or cash registers.

After this pleasant sojourn, we continued on our journey.

The “Shree Ambe” supermarket exceeded our expectations and was able to provide us with the vital ingredients of the Lamb Dhansak we were planning to cook that night. However, on the way along Ridge Pike, we noticed a nearby “Dosa and Chat house” and so, as we were desperately into the Indian thing, we went along. It was spectacularly good. It was also spectacularly filling – so much so that we couldn’t face cooking a huge curry for dinner. Instead we ordered pizza, and watched The Bank Job, which turns out to be, not only highly enjoyable, but a (partially) true story with all sorts of extra goodness. You can’t get better than that for a weekend’s fun can you ?