Nicht mehr genügend Salz

Turning a bit chilly again isn't it, might even get some snow again. That means blocked roads, closed schools, stranded trains and the predictable "waaahhh... why are we so crap at bad weather when those European jonnies are so good at it" from the MSM.

Well as I pointed out in an earlier post, they aren't and I just got sent this report a friend of mine who works for a German media outlet posted.

http://www.wdr.de/themen/verkehr/a44_streusalz_sperrung.jhtml

Es gibt nicht mehr genügend Salz, um die Strecke eisfrei zu halten. roughly translates as "There is no longer enough salt to keep the route free of ice"

Bet the trains are still running on time though

The "go to" dragon

I'm not sure but I think I just got promoted.

This is actually quite an achievement as when I joined Banko Di Haggis I reported directly to the guy who is now the manager of my managers managers manager and I had got the impression that in the corporate organisation chart I ranked somewhere around the level of the mould behind the coffee machine.

But I was happy being ranked alongside fungus. They paid me tolerably well, were pretty cool about my hours, I had plenty of interesting stuff to work on, I got to work from home (which normally meant tapping away on the lappy at the kitchen table in my dressing gown - something I can no longer do as Freja took to stuffing her nose into my genitals for some reason known only to canines) one day a week and the sausage sandwiches from the canteen were quite acceptable. Best of all I had made it quite clear when I took the gig that at the slightest sniff of man-management responsibilities being assigned to yours truly the building and everyone in it would disappear in the most colossal breath weapon attack since a log time ago - and all credit to my various managers as I made my way to the bottom of the organisation chart they honoured that.

So I was quite surprised to be called over by my latest manager who is pretty newly minted himself - I think they gave him the title of "development lead", basically he's what we called a team leader in the old days - to be asked if I wouldn't mind being made "Technical Lead" on the project, Basically what this seems to entail is being the "go to" dragon on questions of architecture and coding and having the casting vote on how we end up building stuff. I was actually rather flattered that people thought enough of my coding abilities (which are not bad but hardly l33t) to put me in this position.

It was a little later that the realisation dawned that of course should any technical decisions go amiss that I was the "go to" dragon when it came to dishing out the blame.

Apart from that I can't see as my job has changed in any material way, I still cut the code and sort out the database after the traders decided to make a horlicks of upgrading their pricing models as they did today. There's not officially any money but I am told "something will be done" when it comes to pay rise and bonus time later this month; can't say I am holding my breath though.

On the blame thing my plan there is to make sure I get a touchy-feely group hug consensus that I can say everyone "bought into at the meeting" should it prove that swapping the database server for a bowl of fruit was maybe not technically the best thing we could have done.

I approve

I would happily fly alongside this plane, it would give me something to read.



Look they even tell you where the black box is... that would make the job of the NTSB a lot easier ^*



See the rest of the pics here: http://www.psfk.com/2010/02/kulula-airplane-rebranding.html


^* Well it would if they had put it in the right place. Normally it's located in the tail section because aircraft rarely reverse into mountains.

Told you so

Sikhs should be allowed to wear their ceremonial daggers - known as Kirpans - to school and other public places, Britain's first Asian judge has said.

Told you that would happen: http://grumpy-dragon.blogspot.com/2008/07/bangles-vs-unicorn-horns.html

Obsolete

Over the weekend I had a tidy up of the lair, it needed doing as I'd run out of shelf space and it looked a bloody mess to be honest - messy enough to start bothering me anyway.

So TV box sets of DVDs were put into little CD wallet things, papers were gone through and irrelevant stuff chucked out including instruction manuals for equipment I no longer own and I also threw out whole load of empty CD boxes and cover mounted CDs from computer magazines on the basis that I was highly unlikely to want to load a 2006 version of some 3d rendering program at any point in the foreseeable future and as my music making stuff just acts as a dust repository these days "1001 Chill Out Ibiza Samples" probably wasn't going to get installed either.

And then I came upon a box of floppy disks. Mostly these were old drivers and operating system boot disks from the days when that was how you got a brand new computer to spring into life but a few were labelled "Work code" and suchlike.

And I realised that I had absolutely no way of reading these disks. I don't possess a single computer that has a 3.5 inch floppy drive in them, not one. This data may just as well have been written on punched tape.

While we weren't looking the floppy disk died out like the dodo (apart from the fact we didn't eat all of them, like we did with dodos) and I wondered how many people put stuff onto floppies or zip disks and never got to transfer it to the shiny silver discs. I also wondered about how historians in the future are going to find out about people living now. I mean we have all of somebody like Winston Churchill's letters and papers so can find out more about the man and they're all on paper for anyone to read. Is anyone in a hundred years from now going to be able to access all the drivel I've written in emails, on this blog and the occasional tweet about gargling boiling wolf semen as well as the gigabytes of stuff on funny little disks that we don't have the ability to read any more? Well maybe not me but people more "important" than me, like that bastard Gordon Brown for example. Sure you might be able to track down a working 3.5" drive now but how about the real 5¼" floppys that really were floppy - and yes my first "real" PC, an 486SX clone, had one of them in it so I've used on within the last 20 years.

In the end I did find an old 3.5" drive in a box later in the day when looking for a double plug for Mrs Dracunculus.

Then I figured that I hadn't needed what was on those disks in at least 5 years and therefore probably didn't need them now.

So they went in the bin.

Grumpy has a new friend

Please welcome "Snaps" to the "Friends of Grumpy" (i.e. people who link to me)

My "Friend" HHV-4

Grumpy is currently playing host to this little fella:



That is my old friend the Epstein-Barr virus. The little bastard first hitched a ride back in 1994 laying me out with Infectious Mononucleosis (a.k.a. Glandular Fever) for five weeks. Unfortunately he's a cunning sod and hides after he's done his work, popping up to say hi every so often and giving you another smaller dose of chronic fatigue, a raging sore throat, joints that feel like someone is bending your arms and legs to places arms and legs were not meant to go and, joy of joys, the feeling that a eighteen-two clydesdale has just planted two rear hooves right in your nuts.

And then jumped up and down on them.

With his friends.

Just for fun.

This is day three... my draught horse friend had laid off my happy sacks enough this morning for me to feel like sitting at a computer. I kind of wish I hadn't as I just looked up EBV and it turns out that it causes cancer as well. Now there's a cheery thought.

Bloody viruses.

More on Ratzinger the Rat.

A couple more worthy reads on the subject of Herr Rat's pending visit...

This guy is getting added to the blogroll:
http://petursey.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/inequality-2-ratzi-the-nazi-sticks-his-bigoted-oar-in/

The Mash in fine form: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-%26-technology/allow-me-to-explain-natural-law,-says-celibate-voodoo-witch%11doctor-201002022430/

And don't forget to sign the "You pay for it you bigoted nazi" petition here http://www.secularism.org.uk/petition-the-pm.html

You're not welcome

Oi you.

Yes, you. The Hitlerjugend member in the dress.



Fuck off, you're not welcome.

You are the leader of a foreign state (a little pissant one in the middle of Italy guarded by people in stripey baggy pants carrying tactical nuclear halberds but a sovereign foreign power nonetheless). So we invite you to come by for a state visit. And then you have the fucking brass neck to tell your Sturmabteilung

The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK's Equality Bill with "missionary zeal".

"...the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs."

"In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

Well boo fucking hoo. So just because you believe in some sky pixie you get to discriminate and persecute and you should be exempt from the law of the land? Well how about if I believe that to achieve communion with The Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) it is necessary for me to get rogered senseless by a shire horse stallion outside Ely cathedral on market day would it be fine for me to have an exception from the law too?

This line from one of his generals was a hoot

(Robert Mickens, Rome correspondent at the Catholic newspaper The Tablet) said "It's not that the Pope is wading so much into the particulars of British society or British law - I think this is very much a piece of his longstanding teaching."

Oh so that makes it OK then? Given these religious types get to sit in the house of lords and there are a number of Catholic MPs who are obliged to give Obergruppenfuhrer Ratzinger their loyalty I would have thought that rather than "longstanding teaching" he was giving them a direct order (vitch vill be obeyed at all times vizout question!)

The National Secular Society said it would mount a protest campaign made up of gay groups, victims of clerical abuse, feminists, family planning organisations and pro-abortion groups among others.

And there will be a small green dragon along as well.

Classy

Rather surprisingly it turns out that Moorhouses can brew something that doesn't initially taste like engine oil that's been filtered through a camel's anus and the pub had a "custom" beer on for my brother in law's birthday do (well it had his name on it but I imagine it is one of their standards). It did rather take on a "chewy" texture though about two thirds of the way down the glass as it started to warm up.

They had Timothy Taylor's Landlord on but TTL is a fussy beer that doesn't travel well and needs looking after; this beer had not been well looked after.

So as I had to drive the following day I went onto Heineken, a beer it is impossible to actually drink enough of to get drunk.

Apart from that I didn't know anyone so stood around looking like a spare part for most of the evening until a respectable length of time had passed and I could make the excuse of a full work week and a long drive up to bugger off and get some kip.

Mind you it was a really classy joint as you can see from the flyer they were handing out advertising their Valentine's day special.



Ah how romantic, a candlelit dinner for two plus someone howling their rendition of "I Will Survive" exactly one semitone flat in your ears. Yep that'll get her knickers off for sure.

All this and the following day I get to visit Ikea under orders from Mrs Dracunculus to pick up some bits and pieces. I have this love / hate relationship with Ikea. On one claw I rather like their furniture and design and the prices are very competitive, on the other claw the whole Ikea shopping experience makes me want to set fire to "Ektingbøg" sofas and "Hürdiburgle" lamp stands. Sunday was no exception with nowhere to fucking park, the obligatory shuffle round the maze before actually getting to the bit where they keep the plates and spoons in the company of every screaming, misbehaving child east of the Pennines plus queueing up for half an hour to pay for everything.

If you were travelling past Junction 27 of the M62 yesterday and noticed a small green dragon eating Swedish meatballs on top a flaming pile of affordable wardrobes, colourful throws and screaming children, that was me.