Coup ??? Schmoup!!!

Posted on April 30, 2007 by borysSNORC

For the first time ever I’m about to go off travelling and not get screwed on exchange rates! I think the worst of it was when I was in the UK in ’98 and we had a real shit exchange rate – was something like nearly 3-1 on the Aus dollar to the GBPound… nothing worse than picking up a block of cheese in the supermarket and doing some quick arithmetic in your head and realizing that you’re about to pay $14 for a block of boring cheese! $10 for a teeny wedge of exotic cheese is a different matter of course 😉Couldn’t ask for better really – the $AUD is buying about $US0.82 which is like a 14 year high… and now I can get even more excited cos the Turkish Lira has just started to tank too! Yay for being able to afford more rugs and gold in the Grand Bazaar! Now if only that impending nasty military coup could just hold off until I’ve left the country!!! 😀

Turkish stocks and currency slump

Turkey is in the process of negotiating membership of the EU

Turkey’s main stock index and its currency, the lira, have tumbled amid fears that the army will block the government’s pick for president.

The main ISE National 100 index lost 8% of its value upon opening and the lira dropped as much as 4% in early trading.

Click here for the rest if you’re interested

Unsecure

Posted on April 29, 2007 by borysSNORC

One of the consultants at work today got a call today from a customer who’d had a new ADSL wifi service installed last month and had just received his first bill…. for $13,000. 😐 Seems his wifi was left unsecure, and someone (or someones) had accessed it and absolutely reamed his account. Now I’m not one for math, but it seems to me that $13,000 in excess usage at 15c / MB is a LOT of download!!! Correction… a hellava LOT of download.

I mean who has that kinda storage?!?!?

I wonder who left the wifi unsecured?? I wonder how they stole so much in such a short time?? I wonder…. how much of it was porn? 😛 Oh… maybe there was even some Turtle Porn downloaded in there somewhere!!!
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We didn’t get dead, but…

Posted on April 28, 2007 by borysSNORC

I nearly killed us the other night…. 🙁

Literally. I can’t stop thinking about it now. We were on our way home from work, and it was late, after midnight, as we’ve been doing evening shifts for the last month and a half. Anyway, I pulled up at the red lights at the Gabba, there was quite a bit of traffic even though it was late… it’s always a pretty busy area there as you come off the freeway…. which so far is sounding all pretty normal. But then for some reason, while I was stopped at the lights…I was watching the lights at intersection ahead of the one that I was stopped at turn green…..and ….. without thinking…. drove off….. across the intersection…. even though the lights were still red. 😐

I can’t explain it. I just wasn’t paying attention. I was just too tired. Obviously shouldn’t have been driving at all, but what can you do? I’ve been drinking V and taking NoDoze most of last week to get through my shifts, as I’m just not someone who can survive on little sleep for weeks on end…. or maybe half the problem stems from not getting decent sleep because of my stupid back even when I do manage to get enough hours of sleep :S I dont know… but I think I need to do something about it…… before I quite literally kill us on the way home. 🙁

After much begging and scrounging, I’ve got some earlier shifts next week so I hope that a few early nights helps…. :S
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Weird weird world

Posted on April 27, 2007 by borysSNORC

Had to post this here for MD and Sir_Phil … you know you wanted to know about this!!!

Sudan man forced to ‘marry’ goat

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders. They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi. “We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, of Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat. “When I asked him: ‘What are you doing there?’, he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up.”

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case. “They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife,” Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

Does anybody know?

Posted on April 26, 2007 by borysSNORC

HelpDesk Chickie: What sort of internet do you have?
Customer #147: (sounding confident) I have the ADSL Cable Wireless.

How can you have purchased something, or in my book even worse, signed up a contract for a long term service, and yet have absolutely no idea what you’ve bought yourself into? I reckon about 40-50% of the people I speak to at work every day have absolutely no idea what they’ve bought. Many of them barely seem to know how their internet access is delivered to house, let alone what sort of account they have or how their connection works. It’s weird…. I mean I’m not the most techno savvy person on the planet (I’m getting better – honest) but I’ve always known that I have (or rather… ‘had’ – we switched to ADSL this week!) cable internet access, and had rough understanding of how it got into my house and how it was connected to my computer. I am just finding it amazing that so many people we talk to haven’t got a clue what they got…. and they paid good money for it! :S

All they know is … you turn it on … and it works …. and if you turn it on … and it doesn’t work … call tech support and demand they fix it. I particularly love the customers who want you to fix their internet for them when they aren’t on the premises. Yep… goes something like this…

Customer: Hi my internet isn’t working…

HelpDesk Chickie: What’s your username and what sort of internet do you have?

Customer:   Ummm… my username is [email protected] & we have ADSL I think.

Help Desk Chickie:
    Okay, I’ll just run a test out on the line while I look up your account….
    Everything seems to be okay on the line … your modem is logged in..
    It might be your wifi connection that is giving you troubles…
    Can I get you to click on the Start Menu please…

Customer: Oh, I’m not at home, I’m calling from work… can’t you just fix it?

I’m obviously spending way too much time at work and have nothing else to write about! :S   Have to fix that I guess… will have to see what exciting things I can get up to on the weekend.