Satan’s Poodle is Go

Good news! The long awaited Satan’s Poodle Blog has its first post.
You are invited to visit there now. I will attempt to regularly update my account of the trials and tribulations of Mumphred the Yellow Plush Toy.

The current colour scheme is not ideal (although the minimalist aspect feels right). You make me a better template and I’ll give you a thank you (and a mention on the page).
If you are keen to design the look and feel of satans-poodle.blogspot.com then drop me a line and I can supply you with high resolution images of the satanic poodle so that you may design a suitable logo or whatever. Oh, and also discuss your ideas with me.

I must sleep now.

That’s Just Not Cricket

Today’s ODI between Sri Lanka and South Africa was blessed with radio commentators. I listened to these guys while I worked and I’m pretty sure they were stoned. They laughed a lot at mundane things. That’s as sure a sign as ever.
Somehow the topic of music came up, which obviously just isn’t cricket, and is an indication that these guys were not focusing. Yet more evidence to support my hypothesis.
The South African commentator mentioned Johnny Clegg, and explained how he was one of the first white men to perform traditional African music. In an effort to understand fully, the Australian commentator asked, “Kind of like Eminem?”

Um. No. Not like that at all.

Ubuntu Upgrade: 5.04 –> 5.10

Being possessed of a masochistic streak, I decided that since a new
version of Ubuntu Linux was available, I would upgrade.
In a country where broadband internet access is taken for granted, this
would be a simple task of using the smart upgrade feature of Synaptic,
waiting a few moments for everything to download and install, and smiles
all round. Of course, even in that telecoms utopia, something would
probably go wrong, thus breaking one’s entire system and forcing a
complete re-installation (a.k.a. very bad things).

Telecoms Utopia is not a term with which sane people would describe
South Africa. Fortunately the fine people running the Ubuntu show know
that the world is not confined to Europe and North America. Gloriously
they sent me installation discs, free of charge. Hell, they sent me as
many as I’d like, so that I could distribute them, free of charge.

I am growing weary with this post as it is growing longer than intended.
The rest of the tale will be related using short sentences and where
ever possible, monosyllablic words.

I put disc in Pee See. I show Syn Ap Tic disc. I change all old re pos
it or ree to new ver shun. I smart up grade. It down load some pack age.
It take two days. It up grade. It no break Pee See.
I much glad! Vi va Ooh Boon Too! Vi va ANC!

The Non-excuse

Travelling around Europe is no excuse for not posting anything here. Not that anyone has actually complained.
Still, the excuse is that internet connectivity is terrible in the UK, especially compared to the superlative offerings in South Africa.
No no. That is also a lie.

It is because the UK was actually invaded by the French, and everyone is forced to talk in French, and I cannot speak French.

Ok. The real reason is that there is a fire burning at the oil refinery near Essex, and the black smoke is reducing visibility — thus the data packets can’t see where to go and keep on getting lost.

If you still don’t believe me, that would be perfectly reasonable and probably indicate that you are still quite sane.

Johnny Karma and the Fundamentalist Buddhists

I’ve never considered myself a particularly spiritual person, so I have surprised myself in the last week by finding something deep within myself that was previously unexposed.
I’ve changed my diet.
I’ve changed my attitude to what makes me happy.
I’ve changed my approach to how I deal with other people.
I’ve changed my approach to life.
I’ve changed my underwear.

I think it came about from my obsession with having enough money. I’ve been struggling with this since I can remember. I’ve never wanted to be outrageously wealthy, but I’ve always been concerned about running out of money or losing the things that I possess.
I stumbled upon this thread about Buddhism on the forum of The Ornery American. Adam Masterman is clearly a practising Buddhist, and his posts made a lot of sense. In particular he says that the Buddhist attitude towards wealth is: “If it comes, that’s fine. If it goes, that’s fine.”
My problem is that I’ve never believed that before. My perception has always been, “If it comes, that’s fine. If it goes, that sucks.” But the Adam explained things so well that I was inspired to do a little more digging. I found an introductory course on Buddhism and eagerly devoured the information.

There’s a lot of gobbledy-gook. A whole bunch of the stuff just doesn’t make much sense to me at the moment. What I like about the philosophy is that it doesn’t matter if you don’t get it all or don’t want to buy into the teachings. A skeptical and critical attitude is actively encouraged. Buddhists don’t want you to take anything on faith and just believe that what they say goes. Instead they say, this is how it is — experiment using logic and see whether or not you agree. Even if you don’t agree, keep experimenting.

If only I’d realised how scientific Buddhism was, I’d have been more spiritual a long time ago. It’s a pseudo-scientific philosophy! Kind of like Intelligent Design (ID) is pseudo-scientific. Uh…
ID is certainly not logical though. If an intelligent designer designed everything, then who designed the intelligent designer? (I much prefered the word “god,” because that’s only three letters to type when debating online).

Ok, so there are unresolved problems. Still, Buddhism really is one kick-ass way to live because you don’t kick-ass, and that’s kick-ass.
Ask Johnny Karma if you don’t believe me.

Sony disrespects its customers

Do not buy anything that Sony manufactures, specifically any of their bullshit copy-protected CDs. I figure all of their products deserve boycotting though.

Sony BMG installs software that hides its presence from you on your PC. It does this if you just play the CD, never mind make legal copies. Sony doesn’t get your permission. If you know what you’re doing and actually find the programme and remove it, it breaks your CD-ROM.
Crackers write viruses that behave in the same way, and in fact a virus that takes advantage of Sony’s nefarious work has already surfaced.

And their EULA is full of fun and games too.

Again I say: Don’t buy even a single writable CD from these cretins!

Woolworths sent me some crap

And I’m not happy about it. I decided to email them the following letter listing my grievances.

[edit]It seems I made a typo in the email address. Could this be a sign from a higher being that it is inadvisable to send the message in its current form? You tell me. Perhaps I need to tone down the language or something?[/edit]

Do enjoy:

Dear Customer Services Manager

I’ll start by quoting from the letter that you sent me on 19 October, 2005. The same letter that included my Woolworths Store Charge Card.

“Your world of difference Store Charge Card is your key to a wonderful new world. A world created especially for you. A world where membership is free. A world where you will always have the inside track on everything happening at Woolworths. A world where you don’t need to wait for what you want, just hand over your card to pay for whatever your heart desires.”

Now let’s run that through a little de-obfuscation, and closely analyse the statements you have made.

1. “Your world of difference Store Charge Card is your key to a wonderful new world. A world created especially for you.”
What a blatant load of crap. I’ll be generous in my criticism and let the ‘wonderful new world’ metaphor slide. You’ve created a supposedly wonderful world of shopping, and I’ll accept that. What I refuse to accept is that you’ve created it especially for me.
That statement insults my intelligence. It even insults the intelligence of people with below average IQ’s. If this world you created was created especially for me, that implies that I am the most important person in that world. Surely then my account number shouldn’t be 6007 8501 0196 1967? That’s an unnecessarily long number when I’m No.1.
But I’m not really 1st in line, am I?

2. “A world where membership is free.”
It is incidentally also a world where membership is unwanted. Membership is free, but buying stuff isn’t, and ultimately you want me to go into debt so you can charge me interest. Will the interest be free?

3. ‘A world where you will always have the inside track on everything happening at Woolworths’
This doesn’t seem nefarious, but the next line…

4. ‘A world where you don’t need to wait for what you want, just hand over your card soul to pay for whatever your heart desires.’
Note the alteration I’ve made to the above quote. Less deceptive now, in my opinion.

Your annoying letter goes on to tell me that the best thing of all is that I don’t need to apply and that I’ve already been pre-approved for R5500 credit. Plus, you gave me a R25-off voucher if I spend R150 or more using the card of evil.
Thanks. That’s very generous and accommodating of you. Helping pave my road to insolvency. Standard Bank is already doing a fine job without your assistance, but I specifically asked them for a credit card so they get a state pardon.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say in my very long-winded fashion, is that sending me unsolicited mail pisses me off. Sending me unsolicited mail that tries to tempt me into taking out credit pisses me off a lot. Pissing me off tarnishes my perception of your brand and makes me think twice about shopping in your store.
Pissing people off is not something you want to do, because you never know how influential or powerful someone you piss-off might be.

Good day