Excuse the partial reference to a Young Ones joke, but today I learned a new phrase. I like to think that I’m still a kid in a lot of ways and am up on current street lingo, but much like the time I was caught unwares by that great American word “cool”, I’ve now discovered “tool around”.

Back in about 1991, I heard the word “cool” used by some friends, yet refused to use it, images of Happy Days, and U.S. English once again intruding upon the Australian vernacular. Of course six months later, due to the risk of sounding old and uncool, I of course was calling everything cool as well. How cool is that? The point is however, that I missed the coming of cool, which taught me a valuable lesson in ageing, which was pretty uncool.

So today I heard “tool around”, as in “What will we do for the web site demo?” “Well, we’ll probably just tool around a bit.”

And to my surprise, tool around actually has an unofficial definition.

Verb 1. tool around – ride in a car with no particular goal and just for the pleasure of it; “We tooled down the street”

Well, I guess I could have worked that out, and may have just heard it once or twice in that context, but it was interesting to hear it in common use none the less.

So, it is cool to tool around. Not exactly the definition I thought of when I first heard it, believe me.

Oh deary me. Recent news stories are talking up the threat of al-Qaeda terrorist attacks during the U.S. elections, such as this story (US warns of ‘large-scale’ terror attack) in the SMH.

Of course many are suggesting that this is yet another ploy by G.W. et al for election glory, as what better time to want Big Boy Bush in charge of the U.S. military. When you think about it, you’ve got to wonder why al-Qaeda would want to disrupt an election which is looking more and more likely to dump G.W. and pull the U.S. out of the middle east. al-Qaeda’s whole point is that the U.S. is run by nationalistic interventionist infidels.

If G.W. is expecting the U.S. citizenry to believe that one, then… well… yeah…

More amusing however is a quick search on Google News shows about 10 nations, including our very own SMH reporting the fact in their local media before any of the mainstream U.S. media outlets.

However the stupidity doesn’t end overseas, as the Australian government has just signed a $530 million deal to purchase 59 “refurbished and updated” M1A1 Abrams tanks. I’m assuming they’ll go quite nicely with our airforce of 3.5 FA18s or how ever many we own now.

These tanks will be of great use for invading other countries protecting our borders from land based threats from other nations. One wonders if we’re about to be invaded by submersible tanks from New Zealand. Excellently thought through Senator Hill. Periscope up!

In celebration of the fact that we’re about to head into day 11 without an Internet connection, the fact that we’re rapidly approaching the “up to 12 days, but usually much less” that I was told it would take to transfer, and in a feeble attempt to generate good luck even though it is well and truly outside the bounds of my belief structure, I give to you, The Twelve Days of Telstra.

28/6 – On the first day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

29/6 – On the second day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

30/6 – On the third day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

1/7 – On the fourth day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, four strands of copper, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

2/7 – On the fifth day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, the — fucking shits. Four strands of copper, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

3/7 – On the sixth day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, six Telstra techos, and the — fucking shits. Four strands of copper, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

4/7 – On the seventh day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, seven dumb excuses, six Telstra techos, and the — fucking shits. Four strands of copper, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

5/7 – On the eighth day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, eight certified handsets, seven dumb excuses, six Telstra techos, and the — fucking shits. Four strands of copper, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

6/7 – On the ninth day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, a motive for my sabotage, eight certified handsets, seven dumb excuses, six Telstra techos, and the — fucking shits. Four strands of copper, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

7/7 – On the tenth day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, ten reasons to get Optus, a motive for my sabotage, eight certified handsets, seven dumb excuses, six Telstra techos, and the — fucking shits. Four strands of copper, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

8/7 – On the eleventh day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, eleven minutes of dial up, ten reasons to get Optus, a motive for my sabotage, eight certified handsets, seven dumb excuses, six Telstra techos, and the — fucking shits. Four strands of copper, three bad connections, two empty sockets, and a whopping transfer of ADSL fee.

9/7 – On the twelth day without Internet, Telstra gave to me, A, D, S L.

When does a quote become a phrase of common usage and free from attribution? Rather naively, several weeks ago I quoted a SMH writer with a classic line about Alexander Downer, without realising that he’d himself quoted the line from where else but the 5th February 2003 Hansard, and I’m assuming probably all the popularist media as well. That must have been one of the those weeks when I was stuck in a hotel room in Canberra hacking code or something, isolated from what was happening in the world. The embarrassing thing though is that my post is now the top Google result for conga line of suck holes, so the whole world can now revel in my complete inability to do research. Lesson learnt. The quote itself of course being originally from Latham:

Mr Howard and his government are just yes-men to the United States. There they are, a conga line of suckholes on the conservative side of Australian politics. The backbench sucks up to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister sucks up to George W. […] In my book they are not Australian at all. They are just the little toriesthe little tory suckholes.

Amen brother, amen!

So we moved house, fairly successfully, and with all the crap that I cart around from place to place because I’m too sentimental to dump it all.

We’re keeping the same telephone number, but of course Telstra need to install an ADSL modem at the exchange on the new line, which according to my ISP will take up to two weeks. On top of that, it can’t be ordered through Telstra’s database until the telephone is actually switched over. So here we are, knowing we’ll be off the (Internet) air for up to two weeks, knowing which day the move will be, knowing which day Telstra will physically change the phone line over, yet not being able to warn Telstra until the new line is in place!

The irony of course is that if I was instead using that 20th century technology, a dial up modem, there would be no delay and we’d have Internet access the same day. Isn’t new technology supposed to make things easier, more flexible or cheaper? Well, ordering the change is more complex, waiting up to two weeks is not flexible, and of course we get charged by both my ISP and Telstra for the privilege.

On the day we had the telephone switched over, I had to report that the phone wasn’t actually working. So out comes the Telstra guy, late the following day of course, and finds that the Optus technician who installed the previous resident’s lines, dumped the Telstra copper under the house, before rewiring all the internal phone extensions to ride over Optus’ network instead. And of course the ADSL can’t be switched over until the line is working…

Anyway, six days without Internet access, and four days of sickening flu later, and I finally get our network set up at the new house and manage to dial in to my ISP via 56K. It aint broadband, and several machines all sharing the line isn’t very speedy, but at least I was able to download my 600 odd emails. One of which was about an expired domain name, which nobody thought to phone me about.

Telstra. Anyone who tells you that public ownership has improved Telstra, is simply full of it. Ziggy Distrust has spent the last 10 years investing in failed Internet start ups and ignoring Telstra’s core business and customer base. But of course he has, that’s what shareholders want, which sort of conflicts with their raison detre. They’re a telco for fuck’s sake, that’s what they should be concentrating on.

Public ownership of all government utilities is dumb for this very reason, even if there is a core mission statement locked up tighter than a nat’s chuff. Some utilities will be less profitable by nature of their business, which directly conflicts with the capitalist nature of stockholding. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s not right, just that they’re incompatible models.

So why am I still a customer? Good question. I’m off to ponder that one myself… making good use of the two weeks I have without an Internet connection…

Maggi have released a new improved 2 Minute Noodles in all the flavours that you know and love. The difference however is that these noodles are uniquely personalised for you. Maggi’s new 2 Minute Personal Noodles contains two new important technologies, and are a huge step forward into the future of food personalisation.

The personalisation begins when you buy the noodles, unique biometric finger print sensing detects your own personal prints. When the noodles are eventually opened, if the finger prints don’t match, the noodles are intentionally soiled from the inside. No more will flatmates steal your precious noodles. Now you can be sure that only you can eat the noodles that you paid for.

The second new personalisation is Maggi’s unique location sensing technology, another huge step forward in personal consumption protection technology. Once the noodles leave the store, sensors built into the packaging automatically detect it’s surroundings, locking in a unique olfactory and acoustic stamp of the first after-store location that the noodles are stored in for more than 24 hours. This unique personalisation ensures that your precious noodles cannot be stolen from your kitchen, guaranteeing that only you can prepare the noodles… in your kitchen… in your house.

Maggi call it the NRM system, or Noodle Rights Management. At a store near you. But only you.

Speaking of life defining moments, I’m always amazed at what you can find on the web, and I’ve been using the damn thing since the textual Mosaic and Cello days, so I should really have gotten over it by now. Anyway, a few posts ago I spoke about collective asses as a support mechanism for understanding Microsoft Word complexity. Well not exactly, but it’s an amusing paraphrasing so I’ll stick with it. So I got to thinking about what the collective noun was for asses. Pace is apparently the collective noun for asses. A pace of asses. A pace of course is the distance of an asses stride, so somehow I assume it was adapted from there.

Strangely enough, while looking for the history of pace as a collective noun, I stumbled across Matthew Hunt’s site, where I guess his supposedly unfortunate sounding name has lead him to a fair amount of research into the singular noun for bray.

Hmm… what’s the collective noun for paraphrase?

Gina Trapani had an interesting post today on her ever wonderful™ scribbling net, about an experience from her childhood, which reminded me of a personal quest which I embarked upon several years ago.
As human beings we are unique in that the sum of our experiences makes us who we are, and makes no two interactions between people the same. This raises the opportunity for each interaction to be fairly significant in either one or both of the participants’ lives. This is why these days I try to make each experience with a new person if not unique, then at least interesting to some degree.

Today I picked up some lunch at the local Bakers’ Delight, and there’s a rant or two in them let me tell you, but out of holiday season, they tend to use older and less communicative women to man (sic) the store. For the last two months or so the same three or four have been behind the counter, without so much as an interaction beyond “Anything else?” and “This one, or the one next to it?” But today for some reason, well I know the reason, but I’ll get to that later, for now pretend that I don’t know.

Today for some reason, they spoke! Wonder of wonders. The line?

Not blue today?

After a moment pondering the philosphical significance of shopkeepers who can only speak in questions, I worked out what she meant, and the conversion went thus:

SKWCOSIQ #1: Not blue today?

RBF: No, had to visit a prospect.

SKWCOSIQ #2: Was it spray on?

RBF: No, full bleach and dye.

SKWCOSIQ #1: Where’s the blue?

RBF: [speaking slowly and enunciating clearly]I work in I.T., and I had to visit a customer, so I dyed it black.

SKWCNJSIQ #2: Oh, we miss you!

WTF? Not they used to miss me, or they would miss me, but they do miss me. When I’m there with blue hair, for some strange reason I’m a permanent fixture of Bakers’ Delight, and obviously not an interesting enough departure from everyday life to warrant non-baker type interaction. Yet when I walk in with black hair, suddenly I’m the guy! I’m the one they want to talk to, because I’ve changed something in their repetitive world of selling heated flour and water. They’ll probably tell their families when they get home about the interesting thing that happened at work today, the guy with blue hair that dyed it black. I’ve probably impacted the lives of at least a dozen people by dying my hair black. That’s pretty cool when you think about it. But then, while I’m important enough to warrant interaction, there’s a denial that I’m actually me. “I’m sorry, but you’re not the guy with blue hair!” Apology accepted, and I am flattered that I made it onto their RADAR. Hopefully the interaction was significant for them, as obviously it was enough for me to blog about it.

So we are the sum of our experiences, they define our opinions, our emotions and our character, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I realised how important our experiences are. A few of you dear readers may have a similar situation, but there is a very clear and obvious moment in my history which absolutely defines most of who I am, and I didn’t even realise it until I was well into my 30s. Since then, I’ve tried to remember other influential, if not so defining, moments in my life, and tried to bring closure to them, another technique I learnt a few years back. Not because I need such closure, but so I can free my mind of the frustration of moments not taken advantage of and situations which adversely affected or still affect my emotions. Either that or I’m afraid of dying with the only memory of me being the epitaph:

An opinionated punk who never grew up, and liked to dye his hair blue.

Not exactly the four main memorable components of my character, but accurate none the less.

Anyway, it is quite amazing when you think back to events and suddenly realise why they happened, and how they’ve made you the person you are. I’m not saying we should remember, find closure and forget, but remember, find closure and be more comfortable with the past, less embarassed perhaps, less angry, more understanding, and perhaps more thankful. For with experience of all the good and all the bad, we are the unique individuals that we are. And I for one, wouldn’t change a thing. Except perhaps my hair? Do you think green would suit me? Or perhaps I should go back to red, chicks liked red, or maybe…

I really don’t believe it has come to this, but I’m going to explain roughly how languages and spelling work in recent versions of Microsoft Word. This came about from my guilt for luring poor Word users to my site, looking for a solution for the Australian spelling problem, and finding instead my bitch about U.S. English in Word and no solution.

To clear my guilt, perhaps this summary will help fellow travellers as we wander aimlessly around Word, bug ridden compass in hand and our original inspiration for writing clearly beginning to wane, with Word’s infinite complexity firmly inserted up our collective asses. (U.S. English used intentionally, yadda yadda yadda)

In Word, any part of a document can be marked as a particular language, or the default language. This is separate from the spelling checker, so put that out of your head. Now, the nice thing about being able to mark up parts of a document with different languages, is that you can then have different character sets, grammar checking and yes, spell checking, work in the languages you’ve selected. You see, you don’t configure the spell checker for a particular language, that went away many Word versions ago. What you do is mark your selected text as a particular language, and when you select spell check, it automatically detects the language and selects the appropriate dictionary.

You see, you could have French, English and German in the same document, and when you select spell check from the menu, it will switch dictionaries when it gets to each section of marked text. Same with the grammar checker, same with character sets, and who knows what else. This is a huge change from how it used to work, and I’m amazed Microsoft hasn’t publicised it very well, especially as we’re all so used to telling spell checkers which dictionary to use. How I18N of us.

So what’s the problem with U.S. English always being selected in Australian documents? Well, you’re probably selecting the Australian dictionary in the spell check options. All that does is tell it to use Australian for default language text. Problem is, the standard template, which is loaded from disk when you select New from the menu, is set to U.S. English. Or, you may have switched languages specifically from U.S. English to Australia, without realising that you’ve only switched the language for the text where the cursor is, and anything you add from then on. As we know, the spell checker typically repositions the cursor after each mispelling, so it could very easily wrap and jump into the original U.S. English text, thus switching the dictionary back to U.S. English.

OK, so how do we fix the problem? Well, for current documents, select all in the document, then double click on the language in the status bar at the bottom of the window. Change this to Australian English, and you’re done. You’ve now changed the whole document to Australian. But, there is still the odd bug where this may not always take, and you’ll end up back in U.S. English. And that is where my bitch about U.S. English in Word post begins.

So good luck, and if this has helped you in some way, leave me a comment. 13 people found my bitch post through Google over the past 30 days, maybe you’re one of them?

If you put aside the apparently significant work of our (Australian) special forces troops in Iraq, we’re still this fairly insignificant sparsely populated island at the edge of the Pacific ocean, dying to look like we’re of significant importance to the U.S. Perhaps the fact that we’re English speaking, we have our own Australian Idol (where we, like everywhere else, manufacture talent so they can regurgitate other songs written by talented song writers), and John Howard wants to make us a staunchly conservative Christian nation, makes us more than a slight blip on U.S. Inc’s RADAR. It’s all about trade of course, but I’m happy to continue the facade that we actually care about democracy in Iraq, for the sake of argument.

Anyway, you have to smile when G.W. spends time with John Howard, moaning about Mark Latham, which is a bit of a change from John Howard moaning for G.W. The SMH calls Bush’s words a “strong condemnation” of Latham, but more significantly, in a time when the U.S. should be spending more time trying to solve the Iraq problem (some would say it has a simple solution), it is amusing to think that Mark Latham, new Labor leader and yet to stake a real claim on anything locally, can get so much up G.W.’s goit.

Personally, anyone who can do that successfully, gets my vote at the next election.