38000 Feet & Falling

The degree completed. The packing-up, the selling-off, the giving to charity, the tearful moments and the closing of utility accounts and more are all done. Andrea has said a fond farewell to good friends and family to live in Ireland and continue this adventure.

This time last year I was planning a similar trip to San Diego with one notable exception, I knew I was coming back to a job, to a house etc. Andrea is taking a much bigger chance.

Andrea will descending from 38000 feet after an 11 hour flight to arrive at Dublin Airport on Saturday December 30th and we’ll begin life as a ‘normal’ couple.

Things that make long-distance relationships easier (in no particular order)

1. Skype
2. Low cost air travel
3. Understanding management
4. Andrea.

Who’s sayin’…

Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at a secure facility in northern Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

Expect footage on YouTube sometime next week, conspiracy theories about his non-death to start immediately.

Massive ice shelf snaps off Arctic

A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada’s Arctic.

Scientists revealed today that the mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800km south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada’s remote north.

Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, travelled to the newly formed ice island and could not
believe what he saw.

“This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are loosing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead,” Dr Vincent said today.

Read more about it here and at the BBC

SEX I.D.

I knew it! After years and years of people suggesting that I may have a monkey brain I can now say with a certain degree of accuracy that I have a male brain.

The BBC have a really interesting study on their Science & Nature: Human Body & Mind a SEX I.D. to help you find out how your mind really works and if you have either a male or female brain.

This does not mean, of course, if you have a female brain (and you’re a guy) that you should start cross-dressing, buying Ophra Winfrey magazines, bursting into tears when someone shouts at you or pee sitting down.

This does not give you the right if you are a female with a male brain to wolf whistle at other females while hanging out at construction sites, grab you groin whenever you want, pee standing up, drive like you own the road, hit on the girl in reception and fart and award yourself a mark out of ten while looking for other female male brained individuals.

The study is divided into six parts and takes about 10 – 20 minutes to complete.

Part 1: Complete simple tasks to find out how your brain works. 3 mins.
Part 2: Your body can reveal clues about your mind. 1 min.
Part 3: What you see in others and the roots of your behaviour. 5 mins.
Part 4: Testosterone and your ring finger – you’ll need a ruler. 5 mins.
Part 5: What’s your mate preference? – 3 mins.
Part 6: Words, 3D shapes and what they say out you. – 5 mins.

Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley

Today a colleague in work asked me if I knew the name of a book store located on Dublin’s Dawson Street. I was racking my brains because there are two or three or them and I got two-thirds of the names but couldn’t get the last.

The person told me that she was looking for a particular book that she couldn’t get anywhere and had been phoning around to find a copy.

I joked, “what’s your name, J.R. Hartley?” She had no idea what I was talking about. So I continued, (imitating an old English gentleman as best I could) “I’m looking for a copy of fly fishing, my name? My name is J.R. Hartley“

However this was lost on her because she’s young. I needed to find the advert. And I did thanks to the nerds who feel compelled to put almost everything up on YouTube!

This was an advert on TV in the UK and Ireland in the 1980s for the Yellow Pages phone service directory. Its classic because its so simple.

Enjoy, and remember simpler times my friends.

The end of days

This image was on the front page of the Irish Times. What an incredible image in tragic circumstances.

A man rinses soot from his face amid the debris of the fuel pipeline
explosion near Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos yesterday.

They’d kill you in a second, given the chance.

BBC News: Robotic baby seal wins top award.

Work continues on robot to club, kill and steal their robotic fur continues unabated.

NORAD

This is a bit of fun to help keep track of Santa, the gang here loved it.   The history of it began is quite interesting too.

Track Santa here.

www.noradsanta.org/index.php

An exciting job offer from Tony Montana

My buddy sent me an email with a really funny attached audio message. It was from Tony Montana from Scarface calling me.

Essentially he wants to expand his business all across America, and he wants me to run the operation in California. As he said (Tony) in the message, “no more driving that car, you gonna wear $500 suits man, you gonna smoke Cuban cigars, you gonna have any woman you want…”

Perks like this are not easy to come by in jobs these days. Tony understands how people think, right at the start he knew what I was thinking and pointed it out, “You’re wondering why Tony Montana is calling a cock-a-roach like you?“

Wow, what a people manager he is, that is exactly what I was thinking.

I know Andrea is coming over soon to live in Ireland, but with a job opportunity like this, it might be worth while go move back to California and try my hand as a “Distributor”.

It’s really quite funny to listen to the messages. You can create your own online. Take look right here, but choose United States as the country, this feature isn’t on the UK site.

Line Rider part 1

Line Rider…

This is cool. 

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Everyone.

I tried it; didn’t work.

President Saparmurat Niyazov who ruled Turkmenistan for 21 years died.  He named cities and airports after himself in a personality cult. He renamed months and days after himself and his family, and ordered statutes of himself to be erected throughout the desert nation.

I tried that a couple of alan’s ago.  I remember that it was 21 alan and I might try to limit the amount of days in an alan to the number of my years.  This would increase the amount of days in an alan by one each year. 

I got bored with the idea and went back to the normal months.

The critics have spoken…

78%, 6.6 out of 10, that’s not bad.  What am I talking about? 

Click the link to find out and if anyone who reads this has seen it, let me know what you thought.  Its not out here yet.

A cool way to answer a question

My nephew asked me today, “What’s it like presenting in front of people?”

I looked at him and rubbed my chin, to make it look like I was thinking hard, I suspected that he wasn’t buying it, so I told him,

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity to get your message across, would you capture it, or just let it slip?
My palms get sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. There usually vomit on my sweater, your mom’s spaghetti. I’m nervous, but on the surface I look calm and ready, to pass messages, sometimes I forget what I wrote down, the audience goes so loud, my mouth opens but the words won’t come out, I’m chokin, they’ll all joke now, the clocks run out, time’s up. Snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity, oh there goes Al, he didn’t get his message across, but I won’t give up. It don’t matter, I’m dope, I know that, but the projector broke, I’m so stacked that when I go back to my cubicle, that’s when it’s back to training room six again, better go capture this content and hope it comes off the white board now.

He looked at me with a blank expression, so I continued,

My delegates are escaping, through the door that is gaping, this world is mine for the taking, make me advisory, as we move towards a new team order, dot com life is boring, but a rock star trainers life’s close to post mortom. It only grows harder, only grows hotter.

I knew I was reaching him when his eyes narrowed and he gave me nod to continue, I didn’t need a second invitation,

No more training, I’m a change agent what you call adamant tear the roof off like blue squadron uncaged, I was training in the beginning but the mood all changed, I’ve been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage but I kept trainin and kept writin the next course best believe that someone is payin the pied piper all this pain inside amplified by the fact that I can’t get by with a 5.0 on my evaluation and I can’t get a one in my rating, and it ain’t no movie there’s no Makai Pheiffer, this is my Irish Life and these time are so hard and its getting even harder tryin to get people into rooms, plus manage deal with colleagues who are a pre-madonna fool screamin on and too much for me to wanna stay in one spot, another day of store room slop I’ve got to formulate a plot or end up in sales or not, feet fail me not this presentation may be the only opportunity that I’ve got.

My nephew said, “forget I asked’.

I really should stop listening to Eminem in the car.

See, I told You…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6194929.stm

Azureus Partners with the BBC to sell TV

Azureus, known to many as a program to download BitTorrent files, struck a deal with the BBC to offer TV shows on its new site/store, Zudeo.  Check out http://www.zudeo.com for more information.

Always the bridesmaid never the bride…

I need to come back to this for a moment. My last post about being Time Person of The Year 2006, while justified in my mind, certainly isn’t is the actual decision of the magazine.

It does highlight, however, the low standard that the magazine has reached. Declaring ‘You’ as Person of the year 2006 is just lazy on the part of the magazine. Perhaps the people in question went on a Christmas bender and forgot to do the research for Person of the Year. Is it really relevant or news worthy anyway?

Or, is it a sad reflection of the world today (2006) that there just wasn’t anyone better to choose? After all, I’m sure a lot of North Korean people may choose a certain movie fanatic as their person of the year. Or what about the Chinese, would they consider themselves ‘in control’ of the digital age? I don’t think so, considering how Google and Yahoo ‘accomodated’ the Chinese government in 2006.

Or

I’m more inclined to go with the former rather than the latter.

A colleague asked me ‘Who would you choose for Person of the Year?’ Well I’ve been thinking about it and I only have two names at the moment and they are:

Al Gore & Warren Buffett and a third, Me.

Why? Al Gore for his environmental awareness work. Warren Buffett for his amazing wealth-giving-away-thing. You can argue that Al’s environmental work is misleading or that Global Warming doesn’t exist blah blah blah or that Buffet’s generosity saved him a bundle in Tax payments, if you want to argue that go ahead, but remember that this is a blog and my opinion doesn’t really matter. Just like Time’s.

If I can’t be Person of the Year 2006, then for me it is Al Gore.

Who should receive Person of the Year 2006 according to you?

Another goal achieved…

Click on the image for a larger size, why not print it out for your wall, cubicle or even wallet?

Well it looks like I finally did it. I can’t tell you how happy I am at receiving the news. It took a little longer than 5 years and not much effort on my part, but there you go, its when you least expect it that it happens.

Yes friends, it appears that Time magazine has named me the Person of the Year 2006.

While checking the BBCs news site I noticed a headline that said ‘Time Magazine names ‘You’ person of 2006‘. I’m not sure why the put the inverted commas (” “) around You, must be something journalists do when they want to draw attention to me.

Anyway, imagine my surprise. I didn’t need to read the article, I knew it, they knew it and now you know it. I am the Time person of 2006. I’ve tried to call the Time office in London to find out if I get a gift, like a Time Clock or a Time Pen, the type of gift you get when you subscribe to the magazine. They must be pretty busy because they didn’t answer the phone, of course I’m sure if they knew it was me calling they would have answered.

Although this wasn’t entirely unexpected, I didn’t actually prepare a speech to accept my award, I’ve been working on the opening to it because I’m sure that local, nay local, international news will want to interview me and seek my opinion on things to lofty to mention here.

It goes something like:

Friends, Work Colleagues, Family. These are the people whom you must crush in order to win. Win at all costs, for not to win at all costs is unacceptable. It must have been easy for the Time magazine people to choose me as person of 2006, after all, was there really any other real competition?

Bow down now, ye who have not been named, or are likely to every be, Time Person of 2006. Because I’m pretty sure there’s only going to be one 2006 for the foreseeable future.

And it will go on along those lines for a couple of thousand words. Perhaps I should Podcast it too. No doubt it would be the most downloaded file EVER.

All messages of congratulations will be taken and I will read every one to Andrea, Family etc many many times.

Just to be clear, when Time said ‘You’ they meant me, not you.  Okay?

Gran Paradiso

I saw a link or a mention on a site today about Firefox 3.0 being leaked.  I did some digging and its not exactly the case.  The developers are hard at work developing the next release of this excellent browser.  Plenty of information to be had by visiting the Mozilla Wiki and you can even download a very unstable version of 3.0 which is code named ‘minefield’.  I did to have a look.  I then un-installed it because it crashed. I better stick with the soon-to-be fully stable version 2.0.

I’m very impressed by Firefox.  The browser is great and what really adds to the enjoyment of it are the amount of ‘add-ons’.  If you don’t use Firefox and you use the internet a lot, then you owe it to yourself to try it out.  No pop-ups, no annoyances and bleeding edge, that’s right, bleeding edge browsing technology.  If you use IE and have moved to version 7.0 and are impressed by their efforts at tabbed browsing then use the browser that created and perfected said tabs.

Enough of my rant.  You can get it here