2004-12-30

Finding old Friends

I was thinking about my old friend "aifos" from Sweden who used to post on the ol' IRC #caribchat forum and eventually visited some of the Cave Hill crew back at UWI. Trying to locate her wherabouts. Wonder how far I can get. Her e-mail addy I can still get but don't know how active it is. Maybe I should take on the adventure and fly to Sweden and search. People would think I'm a CIA agent or something, I wager, but heck. Sofia B., if you stumble upon this, drop me a line okay?

In the news, well that earthquake and subsequent tsunami... incredible. Damage beyond belief. Over 80,000 lives lost, from Indonesia to Thailand to Bangladesh to Sri Lanka to India to even Somalia? Tragic. I'll be making a donation to the International Red Cross to try to help out. I can't come up with words to describe what the tragedy means or how fortunate many of us are in that we don't deal with poverty and the like.

2004-12-23

The police are gonna be busy - we hope

We have some Evel Kinivel wannabes out here. This deliquent this evening decides that he wants to play Moto Racer on our roads, passing cars around corners and whatnot, forcing vehicles to slow down suddenly and whatnot. 989 AE, you're Booked, and hopefully the Police will follow suit quickly before someone gets hurt by the madness.

Weird thing happened the other evening when I was on my way home. There was this car that was stopped in the road holding up traffic. The other way was clear so I overtook the small line, curious to know why the car had stopped. I saw ahead this bike and as I caught up, I could see what appeared to be a small dog running ahead of it. I got to admit, this dog, and it was like the size of a large cat at best, was tearing down the road, and staying in the lane - I can't say the same for some of the motorists out here!

The passenger on the bike seemed to be trying to get the dog to slow down but it was to no avail - eventually the rider tried to hem the dog in by pulling alongside it, but then the dog made an abrupt right turn and fled up another road to the right. I'm assuming that what happened was that the dog somehow had jumped out of the window of the car or something, and the people on the bike were attempting to stop it from running off. It was odd. I'm hoping that the dog was only heading home, and that the car drivers found the little one safe and sound. I think I'll make a few inquiries tomorrow to see if anything became of it.

2004-12-21

Yet another driver risking it all

Yes, I feel that during this time of year, I'm going to find myself ticked off at the driving populace in general multiple times during the day, and I'm unapolegetic for it.

I was right behind this car, you know the type, with one of those kooky customized licence plates (congrats to the Government for taking advantage of Bermudians' vanity - and that's another topic altogether), it was something like K8R2U or K8R4U - I was too busy shaking my head at the silliness of the driver's action to pay the detailed attention I usually do to these situations - but the driver failed to recognize that the green light was only a green arrow pointing left, so you can go if and only if (what's that computer term, "iff", right?) you're turning left. If you're turning right, you still need to wait because there's a green light for traffic coming from the other junction to continue along their path. Luckily, there was none and the driver continued his or her merry way along. I could theorize that the driver took the chance on purpose as they didn't see the traffic.

Cameras at traffic lights, please!

2004-12-19

The Annual Birthday Speech

I have managed to survive for another year. Still on the rapidly ascending (descending?) road to Thirty.

As has been the norm for the past six or seven years, whenever my birthday approaches I hear that ticking sound in my head - as if my biological clock gets louder every time or something. I think it's something to do with that. Again, at this time I think about the things that I thought I'd be well on my way to achieving - house, car, wife, family. Those things are still specks on the horizon for me, I think, but I think I'm a little closer to them. Besides, I still have a job at least right?

I'm a step closer to biting the proverbial bullet and buying a new PC before I delve deeper into Upgrade Hell.Vendors in Bermuda put large mark-ups on PCs and PC equipment here but it's not yet worth the hassle of going abroad and bringing one back from the US or Canada - and I can't be bothered to deal with Customs hassle with online ordering just yet.

Survivor has ended (satisfactory), the Apprentice has ended (not quite as satisfactory), and The Amazing Race is in full swing (although with a batch of hateful characters already). Not much else on TV so heck.

2004-12-17

Another quick traffic rant

Driver of car #36879, you are Booked for the simple reason that a turn-signal is not that hard to perform, plus it is the law, even if it is 9:00 pm.

And just so that it doesn't seem that it's only the drivers who are terrible on the road, I have to say that there are some people who while walking seem to think that the road is their red carpet or something. I see people walk across the road while the light is green, with the sure confidence that the vehicles will slam brakes (risking their own health and that of fellow drivers behind them) in order not to hit them.

This is the worst time to be working in town. School lets out this week so what this means is that from today and lasting the next couple of weeks, town will be overloaded with holiday shoppers, teenagers milling about and lines of cars, bikes and trucks. Considering I still have a bit of holiday shopping to do, I am so not looking forward to the next few workdays.

I'm convincing myself to get a new PC. There's a vendor here offering something for under $900 but I'd like a processor upgrade of it - the vendor is recommending instead I go for a higher model which would set me back $1400 instead. Arrrgh, I hate spending so much money - yep it's somewhat of a character fault in certain instances, on the plus side of course I'm not in debt to anyone :-) I think I'm going to do it though, and then end up cursing myelf for the first few weeks then forget about it when I'm able to do what I like with my new gadget.

2004-12-13

Install cameras at street junctions

For blatantly running a red light, bike 734 AD, you are Booked. And I don't care that it was 8pm and there was little traffic in the area.

Just another reason why they need to install cameras in town - these traffic law violations are dangerous. And yes I know I sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but sheesh. It wasn't even close.

Anyway life is okay. Computer is okay. FIFA 2005 won't run on it though. Keeps crashing. Sigh.

2004-12-07

They've stated decorating our office

More on the Yuletide goings-on later. Anyway.

I may now need to get a new power supply unit for my PC. The power light keeps flashing on, and I've got a workaround in place that disables power management (ie system going on standby). Maybe there's a leak or something. I dunno. Sigh. Will try to install new games this week I think.

My ISP finally cut my dial-up rates, now I'm supposed to be paying only 25 bucks a month and now it's unlimited. Yay, I suppose. DSL still requires buying an expensive modem from the telephone company. Bleh.

Comp Ops had their annual Christmas dinner the other day, pictures are somewhere on Mitch's website. I'm somewhere in there, I think. Was a decent night out.

Plus, from that, I realized that everybody now has a digital camera. Maybe I can add a new camera to my Christmas wish list, not like I keep wish lists around, mind you. I'm not too fond of people asking me "what do you want for your birthday or Christmas". Just icks me out a bit these days, I imagine. Maybe I need to have kids to appreciate it or something.

Honestly, I'm not bothered at all about receiving gifts. But I think I'll be doing a fair bit of shopping the next couple of weeks for people. I don't mind that too much, except for the rush in the stores. Luckily the Web is my friend.

2004-12-01

Adventures with my PC

As December rolls in...

My sister bought me a couple of sports games for my PC (thanks sis), but I realized that the hard disk requirements were well over 1 GB. With only like 700 MB to spare on my measly 12 GB hard drive, I decided to buy a new hard drive that would eventually become my primary drive. So I get this nice 80 GB drive and feel good - all I need to do is study up on the art of partitioning.

Problem, my BIOS was dated and couldn't recognize the large hard drive. So I ordered a BIOS upgrade from the BIOS manufacturer - pretty easily, mind you. Download and install was okay.

After partitioning my new hard drive, I'm unable to get too far because sometime after I boot to Windows and am apparently all right, the system hangs. The power light goes into a rapid flashing state. I think it has to do with the system thinking that it's in standby mode. So I'll have to figure out how to beat that.

Meanwhile, I already know the step that I'll have to take afterwards: my processor speed is only 500 MHz. Potentially, I'll need to upgrade my video card as well. Kevin S is correct - I should just get a new PC already. Heh.

2004-11-30

Independence: Make a Nation

This is the 38th year of Independence for Barbados. I wish those in Barbados a happy Independence Day. Aquamarine and gold (I know, "blue" would be easier to say) forever!

The Barbados Association of Bermuda had their pre-Independence banquet a couple of days ago and the guest speaker was Noel Lynch, Minister of Tourism of Barbados. I'm impressed that the Association was able to bring in the Minister. He gave an interesting and thought-provoking speech which covered the topic of Independence.

Bermuda is going through a period where the topic of Independence from Great Britain has come to the forefront again. Government appears to want to press forward with plans while the majority of the public appears to prefer the status quo as a self-governing territory.

There are interesting arguments for both sides of the debate, my impression is that it's being made into an argument of following your heart (pro-Independence) or following your head (anti-Independence). What's the best course of action?

2004-11-26

Gullible? Or Bored?

I am amazed at how many people believe what they read in forwarded e-mails. This time, it was the old and rehashed tale of a young (white) man who solicits a prostitute (asian), is asked for kinky sex, allows himself to be tied up, then a large (black) man comes in and sodomizes him and he's found the next morning with no money and bleeding everywhere.

If I had a dollar for every urban legend or chain letter hoax that I've seen via e-mail or message board, I'd be able to buy a house... in Bermuda, even!

Anyway, I'm tired of them, so please never ever send me a chain letter or hoax. If you get one, verify the authenticity of it if you must (which is quite easy to do on the Web), but don't turn around and add a bit saying "I don't know if this is true, but what if it is, better safe than sorry" or the like. It's pretty aggravating.

2004-11-23

Web coding for the older browsers

Internet Explorer 5 isn't that much of a relic.

I attempted to get to abcnews.com this morning and was astounded to see a "browser upgrade" page telling me that I should upgrade to IE 5.5 or 6, Opera or Firefox, etc., in order to view the content of the site.

Talk about terrible. When you have a huge website such as ABCNews.com, shouldn't your business be to provide information to as many people as possible, regardless of their chosen web browser? Instead, they have excluded thousands of people from viewing their content because of their desire to provide "interactive content", blah blah blah. It's okay to provide that for the newer browsers, and rightfully so, but you should have an option for the guys who aren't able to have the latest and greatest browser software, especially if all they want to do is read a report and don't necessarily need to hear bells and whistles and whatever gimmickry they've undoubtably thrown up there.

2004-11-17

Take this guy off the road, now

I'm riding on Cedar Avenue on my way to work (traffic's not bad, oddly enough) and I see up ahead this guy on a bike overtake a van. The traffic light has clearly just turned red and the guy still doesn't slow down. The guy finally realizes that he's in a bit of a spot and slams brakes hard, his bike coming to a stop in the middle of the darn intersection. He predictably wobbles about but holds firm. Problem is, he's still in the middle of the bloody intersection and only notices that predicament when cars start coming across the lane! He backs his bike up and I'm shaking my head the whole time. I hope he knows how close he came to causing something really horrific to happen.

Dude, you need to be made a permanent pedestrian. Driver of bike licence # AY 139, you are Booked. I think I need to trademark these catch phrases.

On top of this and on a more serious note, I heard a report that someone did lose their life in a road accident last night. Tragic, whatever the circumstances of that, if it's indeed true.

Other news: bought an 80GB hard drive so that I could install my new copies of Madden and FIFA 2005 (thanks, little sis!). Got an optical mouse (cordless!) as well. Mind you, I still have Win 98 so I'm going to be taking a chance I presume, when I go about partitioning and swapping disks later on. Ah well. Heck, you know what they say about boys and their toys...

2004-11-16

El Quickie

I have somewhat of a pet peeve about grammar, but here's a trend that I am not fond of at all. That is, the misuse of double quotes.
Example: a memo sent out over our intranet with the text containing something like this: 'Our department wishes to express our "Thanks" for your generous contributions...'
Why not just say thank you without the quotes? To me, this comes across as insincere or some kind of silly corporate-speak - yes another pet peeve, but that's for another day.
For some reason, the corporate world likes to add the double quotes to words like "Congratulations", "Special" and "Surprise" as well. Ugh. Give me a break.

Website update: New poem from Tsehay! It's a pretty cool one too, I think. My friend, she's got some skills.

One more thing, and this is the kind of thing that makes me want to get one of those camera phones or carry my digital camera (I need a new one, actually) around with me at all times... I'm riding home today and pass the Shell gas station on North Shore in Smith's Parish. I see the flags that they have raised and do a double-take. The Shell flag farthest from me and the Bermuda flag in the middle are okay, but the Shell flag closest to me has been raised upside-down! I was tempted to call the Shell office and offer my condolences for their loss. Heh. I hope somebody there noticed and alerted someone to fix that mistake. I bet nobody there noticed.

Anyway, the next season of the Amazing Race starts tonight. After all the chaos going on, it'll be good to watch some good entertainment again. Frankly, Anna Nicole on meth or Vibe Music Awards people getting into fights, doesn't do it for me.

2004-11-15

Why our Road Laws won't get changed

For aggressive driving, namely, forcing yourself into the line of traffic which could have caused an accident, GP065 - yes, that indicates a Government car licence, you are booked.

There have been proposals to limit the number of cars in use by banning expat workers from owning them (ooh, this is even better - one proposal was to ban them except for CEOs, etc. Talk about disgusting). Without even considering the possible strain on those workers with young families, this proposal reeks.

I'll say this again - take the bad drivers off the road. And stop bringing in the oversized cars. And enforce rules on when tractor trailers can travel. Make it convenient to use public transportation. Provide incentives to carpool. They're planning to do a survey on carpooling in Bermuda. I already know what the results will be. I did a survey of my own in March 2002.

Between about 8:40 and 8:55 am along my route to work over 5 random days, I observed a total of 441 cars heading in the direction of Hamilton (our capital city). Of them, 112 of then contained one or more passengers. So, 75% of the cars passing by carried no passengers at all. I expect this result to be the same for the upcoming survey by Cedarbridge Academy, although theirs would be admittedly more scientific than my little poll. I have to bear in mind the percentage of those passenger-free cars that may have carried infants to nursery/day-care before they reached me, for example. But the overall result is that Bermudians, they don't carpool. They'll pick up a friend at the bus stop but that's not really carpooling.

Anyway. One of my favourite people, Khaliah, had her birthday on the 14th of this month so I'm giving her a shout-out. She's a delight to be around and if she wasn't engaged to her long-time boyfriend, she'd have been snapped up a long time ago, heheh. Happy B-day, Liah!

2004-11-10

Remembering those who served in WW II

The 11th of November is Rememberance Day, and although I don't personally know anybody who served in that war, I'd like to pay some tribute to the men and women from all over the world who united in a stand against tyranny and for freedom.

If you see a World War II veteran, thank them, whether they were on the front-lines or giving support from the homefront. They deserve our appreciation.

2004-11-08

Hello, Autumn

I was out sick (some stomach malady) on Thursday and Friday, and couldn't even update the blog because I had problems getting to the "Post" page for Blogger. What can you do.

Since the site launch, I've had several nice comments, and thank you to all those who have visited. Oddly enough, only two entries in the Guestbook. Maybe that's the trend. Predictably, people are talking about DAG Theory. Incredible. It just goes to show that people like to talk about the crazy interactions between men and women. The Beachlime Forums are up and running and even that site had a problem over the weekend, which was quickly resolved by the hosting department. Way to go, guys! Visit the Forum, everyone.

In the news, Dubya will be running the USA for another four years. Many people are going crazy over this. I won't say who would have been better for the country but it'll be good for America to encourage Bush to settle things with his allies, such as Russia and France. I don't think we can deal with four more years of Cowboy Politics.

Mortal Kombat's latest edition is now out. Unfortunately I still don't have a console, so until I shell out the bucks for one of those systems, Midway won't be seeing my money. Too bad. The PC was a worthy-enough platform and I'd definitely get that game for it.

2004-11-02

I know how I'm going to die

And it's going to be via some idiot driver. I just know it. 5:30 rush hour, the walk sign is on and this guy's crossing the street. Some jackass riding bike licence 483 AC (yes dammit, you're booked), tries to get to the head of the line which means he's going to end up right into the crosswalk. Yep, he almost knocks the man over. Boy.

With all the talk in the news here about the Police cracking down on traffic offenders, I challenge them to actually stop and apprehend someone blatantly violating traffic laws and risking bodily harm to an innocent pedestrian. I'm just sick of it.

The Realm Opens

Site's up and ready. The main items are present. In a strange twist however, my Feedsweep feed, which provides this blog as a quick news item on the home page, went out of service. A bit of a let down, but not anything too critical at this moment.

That in mind, I'm ready for a well-deserved break, but knowing me, I'm probably going to be still plugging away at enhancements. I have a couple of ideas so don't be surprised to be seeing me up late at nights again this week.

2004-10-31

Go figure

Friday late-night, I'm having trouble with the stylesheets - I had tried to fix them so that Firefox would display them correctly and suddenly the display is screwed up in both Firefox AND Internet Explorer. Not easy. Anyway I manage to get something going that will be somewhat presentable if viewed in both browsers (by putting some of the styles internally among other things) and I'm about to blog this success and then Blogger itself flips out and I lose my four paragraphs of stuff. Lesson learned: type your stuff in NOTEPAD first, then copy-and-paste into whatever application you're using. Sheesh.

Anyway I'm happy that I'll be able to launch publically this site by the first of the month, just in time for the U.S. presidential elections. Whoopee. Heh. I hope to eventually get the Beachlime message forum up but it's giving too much trouble at this present time. But stay tuned. I must say that overall though, I'm pretty pleased at what I've been able to throw in here - take that, Kieran... heh. There will be Dorothy's burgers served by the trayload, that's for sure.

2004-10-25

Back to careless drivers, momentarily

Green hatchback (with cool England flag on rear), 10271. Feel free to use your indicator signal,... anytime...

Because it was Monday and things come in threes, I also witnessed a grey car and a motorcycle also fail to use an indicator before making a turn.

These roads are too narrow to be driving carelessly and we're going to see even more problems (I don't want to use the word accident as it implies that nobody is at fault) on Bermuda's roads until there's a serious crackdown on these offences.

I was reading the news about the Police actually enforcing a crackdown but was taken aback when one of the spokespersons for the Police talked about riding with a cellphone propped inside your helmet as if it was no problem. Shoot, if I was head of the Police, that would be one of the first things that I would ban. Again, I wonder if they're allowing it because Government ministers would be the first people to get booked. Woy.

2004-10-21

Irksome

I'm reading The Royal Gazette and see this story about this driver who a few years ago, knocked down this girl. The result was that he got a $450.00 fine. That's it.

That's it?

No suspended license, no rehab, community service, licence demerits or anything like that... just a small fine which goes into the court system and does absolutely zero for the victim or their family?

Absolutely pathetic. Apparently he was charged with driving without due care.

Seriously. Due care is not running through a yellow light. Not avoiding knocking down another human being. Maybe they'll look into adjusting the laws if one of the higher-ups or their children gets run over by something.

2004-10-18

Blog on Beachlime

I think I've done it. With a lot of reading and tinkering, I've been able to template-up the blog and port it to the new website. It appears to work so far, but there seem to be a few bugs still about that I've overlooked. I'll be working on this for the remainder of this week.

With the blog and Photo Shack now up, it will soon be time to retire my old Northrock webspace. It was nice while it lasted, I suppose, 5MB wasn't going to keep me in the game forever and I had to move on, although not until I felt I could actually handle running a larger site with more features.

On the new site, I plan to have the new Fiction Corner (like the Poetry Corner), a message board (the site seems to provide this easily enough) and more and more of my products. Oh yeah.The old DAG Theory will be archived somewhere here as well. Attleeboy would fire me if I neglected that, heh.

2004-10-07

Some people need to be made permanent pedestrians

Website update: progressing at an okay pace. I don't have a launch date as yet, but I'm pretty optimistic about what I'll be able to provide. Stay tuned. Drop an email (tryangle@northrock.bm) with questions or suggestions.

Meanwhile, I'm getting more and more convinced that we need to take at least five thousand drivers off Bermuda's roads. This morning I'm riding behind this white car that itself was behind a motorist (bike) in a small line of traffic. On several occasions the driver inched across the line, and was tailing the bike ahead so much that the driver was forced to their left, dreading the inevitable overtake of doom. Let me say that in front of the bike was a dump truck and there was no where for the bike to go.

We approach a roundabout. The bike takes the left lane and is 'clear'. The car decides to take both lanes (!), then eventually follow the bike in the left lane, finally deciding to turn the left indicator on - although ordinarily the left indicator would be used to indicate a left turn, not a straight turn - but that's another discussion, as it's already heading straight. I follow, that being my normal route to work.

Eventually the car driver decides she's had enough and squeezes past the bike rider, who's now pressed against the curb. She successfully passes the rider, and to me it doesn't appear that the rider is too pleased. Oddly enough, neither are the driver and her passenger.

As fate would have it, the driver then gets caught behind another driver who's stopped to make a right turn. The biker was clear to overtake on the left-side, and I gladly followed.

Car licence number 37662, you've been booked. And I'll be back for more...

2004-09-28

Web Wonders

I'm currently debating whether to invest my time in throwing in some XML components to the new website. I've already spent quite a bit of time working on a PHP-mySQL service for some of my webpages, and what I may do is take a chance and do both. It can only help my overall web programming knowledge, I believe.

My primary web browser has changed from IE6 (which crashes every time I accept an ActiveX control) to Mozilla Firefox, and as expected, certain things render differently between the two browsers. It is helpful in the sense that I can design webpages with both browsers in mind, but it's frustrating to see a change that makes the page appear better in one and worse in the other. Yep, it's a CSS issue, alright.

And if you're a casual reader with no knowledge of the terms XML, PHP, CSS, etc, I apologize. I'm in a techie-kind-of-mood right now. Let's just say I'm trying to make the webpages look better for everyone.

2004-09-14

Not easy being a rider

Admittedly, I've only been riding the bike (motorscooter in case you're asking) for a year and a half, but I'm amazed at a couple of things...
1. Smokescreen attacks - yep, when you're behind some diesel-pumping, carbon monoxide-producing fume machine, I tell you... talk about a quick way to get emphesema.
2. Flying bugs. Travelling in your face at 50kph+... ugh.
3. Something I'm surprised more accidents haven't come from, if you're behind one of those drivers that smokes and uses their window as the ashtray (Hello! You have an ashtray in your car! Dumbass!), and you can see the sparks flying up at you and I wonder if any of them have gotten caught in someone's eyes. I know, I sound like Andy Rooney now, but wait for...
4. I've gotten splashed a couple of times by errantly-flying windshield-wiper fluid. Who designed those things so that the spray flies right over the roof of the car and all the way back into my face? Ugh. Another thing I wonder about regarding causing possible accidents.

I know, I'm overthinking, but still...

2004-09-07

So this is a blog...

I've signed up with this Blogger service for the time being until I get the new site under way, at which time I may have a custom one set up, unless this thing proves to be beyond excellent and I stick with it. Should be interesting, at least.

What the devil is wrong with motorists? Seriously, if government wants to make some extra bucks quickly, they'd have no problem with flagging motorists for all the law-breaking they do on a regular day. From illegal turns, not giving way, for never using their indicator lights, treating pedestrians like crap, I'd take some of these jokers to the Bank for all they're worth. Seriously (yeah, twice in one paragraph, please don't sue me).