Jonathan's Liverstone

SAP is good ... yeah right.

The ${EMPLOYER} uses SAP.
SAP is a good system for keeping records; it has only two faults:
Getting information into it, and geting information out of it.

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/30/2006 09:19:00 am {1 comments }

Peter's Blog

Big Stepping Peter has finally joined the blogsphere.
Peter is an indefatigable tramper, talker and teacher.
I don't hold that latter against him, as I understand he makes quite a good job of it...

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/26/2006 08:57:00 pm {0 comments }

The Updated Wholesale Bitstream Price

The Commerce Commission are at it again.
They are setting the price of wholesale internet, rather than taking a step back and creating the rules which must be operated under.
For the commission to be messing with the price that Telecom should be charging is too much in the play.
They are acting like a referee who makes up the rules to suit his idea of the play, rather than making sure that the players abide fairly to a clear (sic) set of rules.
This nonsense of constantly (re-)setting the price is too open to abuse, and the commission should decide on a set of rules that will have the desired affect, and then make sure that Telecom abides by them.
Tweeking the price from $28.04 to $27.76 is not particularly constructive and is just pissing everybody off.

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/25/2006 10:07:00 pm {0 comments }

The Darkside of Saturn

This is an amazing picture on the NASA site.
Hattip -(the cosmic shovel-handler : who may have seen one too many blackholes)

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/24/2006 10:55:00 pm {0 comments }

There could be a problem guys ....

This is just ridiculous!
US Bans Vegemite
THE United States has slapped a ban on Vegemite, outraging Australian expatriates there.
The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals.
Expatriates say that enforcement of the ban has been stepped up recently and is ruining lifelong traditions of having Vegemite on toast for breakfast.
Former Geelong man Daniel Fogarty, who now lives in Calgary, Canada, said he was stunned when searched while crossing the US border recently.
"The border guard asked us if we were carrying any Vegemite," Mr Fogarty said.
"I was flabbergasted." Paul Watkins, who owns a store called About Australia in San Antonio, Texas, said he had been forced to stop importing Vegemite six months ago.
"We have completely stopped bringing it in," he said.
"(US authorities) have made a stance and there is nothing that can be done about it."

I wonder which is worse ... carrying vegemite or carrying an explosive bottle of vodka?
Hat-tip Doddery

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/24/2006 09:11:00 pm {0 comments }

Gym Musack

An irritating aspect of the modern gym-culture, is being bombarded by
someone else's idea of inspirational music (trans. crappy pop music) at
high volume, from sound systems which cannot cope The result of this echos
around the reflective surfaces of the gym, resulting in an cacophony which
can only be distinguished from "noise" by the fact that it has a beat.
The local gym has just run a survey (which I did not participate in ...
silly me) of what music is prefered. The result, suprise suprise, was that
pop/rock was most popular. Pity they didn't have the option of a "No music
at all" category.
Never mind, I really only go there just to use the swimming pool, and
thankfully, they have yet to try and pump underwater music into the pool.

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/24/2006 08:27:00 pm {0 comments }

Turned out nice again ...

... or perhaps "High above Manners St (Part II)"
The billboard above Manners Mall let go.

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/24/2006 06:56:00 pm {0 comments }

The weather ... again.

In autumn you can get an "indian summer".
I think we are having an "Indian Winter" despite the evidence to the contrary

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/22/2006 11:46:00 am {0 comments }

New Money

The new coins are nickel and copper coated steel ... so they are magnetic.

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/04/2006 09:58:00 pm {0 comments }

The Bloated Gimp

...and while I'm on a roll ...
The Gimp is great isn't it. Marvelous!
So marvelous in fact that it's getting hard to use!
I just wanted to draw a circle on that picture in the previous post, and I gave up.
I'm sure that there is some obscure place, in amongst all the other wonderful features, that you can go to and be able to do something as simple as DRAW A BLOODY CIRCLE!!!!!
That's why I found Photoshop such a pain!
Too many snazzy options.

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/04/2006 09:22:00 pm {0 comments }

American Hegemony

Google's calendar has got a nice wee feature of showing the local holidays.
But, obviously they don't do too well on cultural sensitivities.

If this is what they do to "Hawke's Bay" and "Labour Day", I wonder what they are doing to the sensitivities of cultures that get prickly about small things (that's most of the world between the Mediterranian and the Pacific at a rough stab).
(Extra: That's a *Canadian* Thanksgiving Day on Oct 9th)

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/04/2006 09:02:00 pm {0 comments }

Daylight Saving

I seem to be suffering all the usual grumbles of switching to daylight saving (and it seems to have turned the weather to crap as well!)
The $[EMPLOYER] in their wisdom, have supplied a Telecom 027 cell phone for my use & abuse.
On Sunday morning, I navigated to the time&date setting, and re-set the time ... it instantly reverts to the previous settings. Repeat behaviour (twice); same effect.
Okay, I know I have set it to get it's time from the network, so I decide to just be patient.
It wasn't until around 11:00am on *MONDAY MORNING* that the network time got updated. I know Telecom is playing "lean-and-mean", but are they not paying their network operators overtime to work the weekend, or is it just another example of slackness?
Either way: Not bloody good enough!

Posted by The Denizen @ 10/03/2006 08:52:00 pm {0 comments }

Disclaimer: (I stole this from Internal Affairs.)
All links and references to other websites, organisations or people not within my control are provided for the user's convenience only, and should not be taken as endorsement of those websites, or of the information contained in those websites, nor of organisations or people referred to. I also do not implicitly or impliedly endorse any website, organisation or people who have off-site links to this website.
... But then again; I only link to sites 'cos I see something there that's worth linking to.