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.