Head Rambles

Grandad April 26th, 2008

Last night, I watched Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

I consider myself a fair minded person, so I cleared my head of all pre-conceived notions and sat down to watch.

At the end of the film, I was baffled.

Was this the film that had started a global movement to combat Global Warming?

Was this the film that has the world’s nations in a spin?

Was this the film that ultimately led to Al Gore getting a Nobel Prize?

What I saw was an ego trip for a failed president.  We had long lingering shots of votes being recounted in Florida.  We had bits about how he should have won the election.

Then we had loads of shots of Al Gore looking wise and pensive as he stared out an aircraft window, or contemplated a lake.

We had a lot of family history.  We heard all about is father and the cattle they used to breed.  We heard how his father stopped growing tobacco when his sister died of cancer.

In between, there was a lot of stuff about Global Warming, I’ll grant you, but it seemed incidental to the promotion of Gore as a wise and caring person with a terrible line in off the cuff jokes.

The science bit was so dumbed down that I cringed.  Matt Groening cartoons showing greenhouse gasses fighting sunbeams, for God’s sake?  The ‘science’ bits seemed to be selected so that Gore could demonstrate his incredible ‘wit’.  There were so many holes in his arguments I could have driven the entire American Navy through them.

All his data seemed to come from ‘friends of his’.  He was incredibly selective in his data too.

Most of the time, he showed us graphs showing climate trends since 1970 or 1960.  What?  An that basis I can argue that today is colder than yesterday, therefore by the end of next week, we’ll be into another ice age!

He was hot on the computer graphics too.  He showed us Manhattan after the Greenland Icecap has melted, and of course focused on the site of the World Trade Centre.  If you want to whip up American fervour, you must mention the World Trade Centre.

What I saw was a film glorifying Al Gore.  What I didn’t see was anything to make me worry unduly about Global Warming.

I must have seen the wrong film.

If anyone has the right one, can they send it to me please?

• Global Warming
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Grandad April 25th, 2008

I was in a bad mood yesterday.  I was also tired, which is a dangerous combination.

I was having a quiet doze in my armchair, thinking pleasant thoughts about murdering politicians when the phone rang.

I looked at the display for the number – UNAVAILABLE.

Now that means only one thing – a cold caller.  They are too damned chicken to display their numbers.  But it gave me a chance to work up a nice head of steam.

I let it ring a few times and answered it.

"What?" I barked.

There was a woman on the other end of the line.  Now, there are accents and there are accents.  There are some Irish accents that grate on my nerves, and some English ones too.  But this woman had the worst American accent I have ever heard.  And her voice was like a nail being dragged across glass.  She had a high screechy voice that set my nerves at breaking point.

She started into her waffle by saying that she was from ABC and DEF and that she was doing some market re……

"Oy!" I shouted.

There was a pause.

"I beg your pardon?" she screeched.

"Fuck off" I said.

There was an even longer pause.

"I just wanted to know if you could spare some time to answ…"

"I said fuck off" I said.

"…answer a few questions?" she screeched.

"I hate cold callers" I replied.  I had to admire her thick skin.

"You hate what?"

"Cold callers."

"Cold callers?"

"Yes.  What you are.  You rang me.  I never gave you permission to ring me.  You are a cold caller."

There was another long pause.  I thought she was going to argue the toss.

"Thank you for taking the call." she said in a far less screechy voice, and hung up.

I know she was only doing her job, but by working for whatever shower it was, she was knowingly promoting the spamming of private telephone lines.

It is spam.  And it’s nice to be able to tell a spammer to fuck off.

• spam
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Grandad April 24th, 2008

That sod Rick O’Shea has memed me.

He knows I hate memes.

He wants me to describe myself in six words.   Hahahaha!

I could go

• brilliant
• insightful
• articulate
• funny
• hilarious
• modest

but I won’t because one or two of those aren’t true [take your pick].

Thinking about it, I could describe just about anyone else, but me.  I could have a field day with Dubya, Harney or Bertie.

Aw shit!

QUIET.  Yes.  Honestly.  I’m a quiet sort of a bloke.  I’m not the gregarious party-going type.  I keep myself to myself.

CONTENTED.  In my own world.  I hate the world they are trying to impose on us though, with their fucking nanny state, their CCTVs, their intrusion into my affairs and the petty laws to protect us from ourselves.

HAPPY.  With a pipe in one hand and a pint in the other, and a good woman at home in the kitchen where she belongs.  What more could I ask for?

WEALTHY.  The above mentioned good woman, a funny dog, a lovely daughter, two fantastic grandchildren and a roof over my head where I love to live.  What more do I need?  Money?  Nah!

HAIRY.  The only places I don’t have hair are my eye-balls and about four inches on the outside of my legs above my ankles.

GRUMPY.  Obviously.  If I’m old, I have to be grumpy.  I have a lot to be grumpy about, with the appalling state of the modern world. It’s mandatory at my age.  But that’s why I started to blog.

That’s six.  I’m not doing any more.  Maybe I’m wrong on them?  Maybe there are other more appropriate words?

And now it’s my turn…..

G’wan Darragh

K8 loves these.

McAWilliams gets one, simply because I was chatting to him earlier.  [The wrong place at the wrong time!]

and

Jefferson, who memed me last week and I haven’t gotten around to it yet…

-oOo-

I have just read over this again.  Jayzus, what a load of bollix!

Six real words -

• Narky
• Grumpy
• Irrascible
• Thirsty
• Intolerant
• Accurate [I can take out an Oriental at 500 yards every time]

There.  That’s better.

• Memes
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Grandad April 24th, 2008

I went down to the pub for a pint last night.

Pullit served me my pint, and I lit up the pipe.

"Were you listening to that shower saying their goodbyes to Bertie?" he asked.

"That shower of hypocritical sycophants? No chance!"

That confused him a bit, as I keep forgetting he doesn’t do the Irish Times crossword, but he got the gist.

"What do you think about the latest thing to cut down drinking?" I asked.

He sighed.  "Another fucking law.  They can stuff it up their arses."

"So you’re not going to install CCTV then?"

"I am in my hole!"

"A good place," I replied.  "Now’s your chance to install one in the ladies jax."

"Hah! I hadn’t thought of that one.  Good thinking, Grandad."

"And what about their sting operation?  Sending kids in to order drinks so they can trap you?"

"Jayzus! Where are they going to find sixteen year old Gardai?  Anyway if some kid came in here dressed in a Garda uniform, I think I’d spot him."

Just then, nine year old Jimmy came in for his granny’s nightly takeaway of a pint of Guinness, so Pullit stabbed out his cigarette and went to serve him.

I feel sorry for the people in the cities, having to put up with all these crazy laws.

• Around the village , Rambles
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Grandad April 23rd, 2008

I’m sure none of you are interested as to how I got myself a web server, but it’s my blog, so I’ll tell you anyway.

It started a couple of weeks ago, as I mentioned before.  I saw this offer on a web site, and it looked geeky.  I always wanted to be a geek, because it’s the next best thing to being a yuppy.

Now, as it happens, that company is owned by my old friend Michele.  I should point out at this stage that Michele is a man [as far as I know] and he gets very touchy when people call him a woman, so there is nothing untoward going on there.  He may fancy me, but I certainly don’t fancy him.

I rang Michele.

"Howya Grandad!  What can I do for you?"

"I want one of those server things you are advertising.  What are they for."

"Putting web sites on," he sighed.

"I’ll take one."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked.  "Do you know anything about setting up servers and maintaining them?"

"Yes," I lied.

Now Michele may be a friend, but he is also a business man.  He demanded money.  I didn’t mind that as I have plenty old credit cards lying around.  I picked one at random, and MaryLou Kawalszki of Florida paid for my server.

I played around with it for a while, looking into various folders and things, but that got boring.  I stuck a web site on it.  That worked a treat.

On Saturday, I had great fun.  I started downloading web sites from the Interweb, and copying them onto my new server.

On Sunday, the server blew up.

I think it may have been the Bank of Ireland web site, or there again, it could have been eBay that caused the problem.  But none of the sites worked and I couldn’t connect to the server to fix it.

I like to lurk on ICQ, and fortunately [for me] Paul, who works with Michele logged on.  So I sent him a message – "HELP!"

He was very nice about it, considering it was half six on a Sunday evening.  He cried for a little while, but eventually he calmed down and he finally got my server running again.  He suggested that I might like to take Google.ie off it and put it back where it belonged.  He also suggested that I might be having memory problems.  I told him it was my age, but he said no, that he meant the server might have memory problems.

So on Monday, I annoyed them all in their office about my server and just to get rid of me, they put in extra memory.  It has been running perfectly ever since.

They are a very nice bunch in Blacknight, though they do tend to get a bit hysterical when I ring them, for some reason.  They need Prozac.

I have just finished uploading Google Earth onto it, and now I’m going to delete all the stuff in the folder called ‘bin’.

There is an awful lot of rubbish in it.

• Internet , work
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