Monthly Archive for July, 2006

Its here, its here!

I’ve come back to Amsterdam to find a letter addressed to me in my own handwriting with the Dublin corporation logo on it. I knew exactly what it was….

Hurray my provisional driving license has arrived! I can now drive a car (assuming I have a full license holder with me) anywhere in Ireland (except motorways) and being in Dublin, thats a very bad thing. I have the M50 about 5 minute drive away from my house. A good friend of mine lives out near the Clearwater Shopping Center and guess whats the easiest way to get there? I need to schedule a full driving test so in about a year I’ll be able to get a full license and not have to deal with all this bullshit.

Now its time to bend over and get insurance.

Goodbye Amsterdam!

And so I’m back from Amsterdam. I’ve been meaning to add more to my flickr account, but my upload speed and the amount of photos I have just don’t go together. However it is time to sleep and thats what I’m going to do.

Greetings from Amsterdam!

Hello hello! I’m currently sitting in my apartment in Amsterdam on holidays. I just thought I’d let you guys know in case you were worried about my disappearence off the net.

Its clear blue skies and very warm here. Check out my flickr set here of the few photos I’ve taken while here. Expect more over the next few days. I’m flying back to Dublin on friday. So until then.

Web-based drawing tools

I’ve found these two different tools while on my adventures around the internet. Gliffy the visio killer? While its nice, Visio has alot more images/items (whatever you want to call them). However it is a nice product for doing quick diagrams and one day I drew up a proposed network design for home. I’ll upload a copy (when I can get it off my laptop in work).

I’ve only discovered Imagination Cubed from GE now, and i’m not too sure what to make of it. The fact you can invite other people into your whiteboard seems promising and I think this is the only web-based application whiteboard I know of.

Another server for me!

Yesterday I ordered a VPS from XenPlanet which arrived at 10:29am this morning. Unfournatly in the interests of security I choose a random password and forgot what it was, a quick email was sent and a few hours later I had the password on the server reset. At the moment I’m not sure what I’m going to exactly do with it. DNS Services for some sites alright and for connecting to in work to get around the pesky filters.

Of course I could always go down to the test lab and plug directly into the net there but that might look a bit odd until those servers arrive. More about those later when they are setup. Even then telling you exactly about them would reveal the company I’m working for which I don’t want to advertise, because I don’t want to be pestered like my boss.

Email jokes part II

SOCIALISM:
You have 2 cows
and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM:
You have 2 cows
the Government takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM:
You have 2 cows
the Government takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM:
You have 2 cows.
The Government takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM:
You have 2 cows
the Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away…

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION: (i love this one)
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows
But you don’t know where they are. You break for lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows
None of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRISH FARMER:
You have two cows.
You claim government subsidies for eight cows

Email jokes

I’ve been cleaning out my many email accounts and I’ve found a couple of jems.

The 26 Counties:

Carlow = Mad for sugar beet, can’t get enough of it. Hobbies: Growing sugar beet.

Cavan = filthy, ignorant hillbillies, tight. Hobbies: discovering IRA ammo dumps and knitting black balaclavas.

Clare = fiddle-playing charming people and, more recently, fine footballers. Hobbies: Falling into pot-holes and being never heard from ever again, setting up golf courses in their back lawns.

Cork = the loveable rogues of Ireland. Here for everyone else’s entertainment. Hobbies: Milking cows, being European capital of culture but not knowing what exactly that means or how they got it boy?

Donegal = away in their own world up there, not much known about this eccentric type. Hobbies: Stripping the Irish coast of fishies, running back up to their corner of the island and blaming the spanish….aye twas the spanish!!

Dublin North = criminals, drug dealers and factory workers, dirty women, skinheads and all-round examples of human waste. Hobbies: Heroin and watching serial numbers being filed off stolen BMW’s, joy-riding anything from a lexus to a washing machine.

Dublin South = west Brits, snobs, rich, easy glamorous women. Hobbies: talking shite and sleeping with their best friend’s spouse or mother.

Galway = sophisticated culchies, sexually adventurous, cultured and wealthy. Hobbies: Teaching sex acrobatics to foreign tourists, dropping acid, juggling with fire on the streets, paying a million pounds for a three bedroom suburban house and pretending it was a bargain.

Kerry = God’s kingdom on earth, no doubt about it. Some of the best land in Ireland but they don’t tell anyone this. Hobbies: Football, swimming with dolphins, football, seeing how many foreigners they can score each year, football, hosting a massive festival every week, football, going to the south pole and football.

Kildare = is anyone really from Kildare or are they all just from Dublin? Hobbies: Denying they have anything to do with Dublin. Spending best part of 4 hours each day travelling to and from Dublin. Using Daz for whiter than white jerseys on a summer’s day.

Kilkenny = red haired alcoholics who refuse to believe not all land in Ireland is capable of growing barley and wheat “not a bother”. Hobbies = driving massive combines, hosting comedy festivals and having red-haired babies.

Laois = harmless aul bunch of lads, hope to have the whole county by-passed at some stage by 2025 so they can get on with their own business. Hobbies: Living an honest life, collecting EU development grants, getting the piss taken out of them for being the queen’s county…haha ye plantation bastards!

Leitrim = enigmatic reclusive weirdos. Hobbies: learning about traffic lights and roundabouts in school (night school for adults that is)

Limerick = grand place, great sports people, city has bad reputation through no fault of its own. Hobbies: stabbing people, gang-land murders, drug hauls, graffiti spraying, joy-riding….

Longford = Gombeen men. Hobbies: Legalising bestiality.

Louth = IRA supporters, smugglers and bandits. Hobbies: Tearing through Cooley at 125MPH trying to stop the boxes of cheap vodka from falling out the window.

Mayo = Depressing, defeatist, negative, misery-laden losers, emigrate as soon as the umbilical cord is cut. Hobbies: roaring about how great they are, whinging about why nobody likes them.

Meath = either Dublin wannabes or mad country bucks. Hobbies: Beating Dublin at GAA and hoping that one day somebody in Dublin will actually notice, driving massive john deere’s cos they’re big, green and yellow too.

Offaly = Bog. Hobbies = exploiting bogs and later making them into tourist attractions…hats off!

Roscommon = flat county, a silage pit is a mountain. Hobbies: Sheep-stealing.

Sligo = either in their 20s and a surfer or in their 80s and a granny, no in-betweens. Hobbies: Surfing and knitting wet-suits for their grand children.

Tipperary = promiscuous girls, Tipp does not have two different Ridings for nothing! Hobbies: Getting a flat in Dublin and losing their accents and hoping their parents don’t find out.

Waterford = decent honest hard-workers generally good folks. Hobbies: Calling a strike.

Westmeath = like most midlanders, generally boring. Hobbies, much like some people up north, winning one football title and then believing they know it all about football.

Wexford = Brown earth you’d wanna take home in your pockets. Hobbies = selling their “home-grown” organic fruit (bought at supermarket that morning) at the side of the road in summer and ripping-off gullible Dubliners out for a drive in the country. .

Wicklow = either country snobs with range rovers or poor aul sheep farmers with peak caps and a small black and white sheep dog with dirt all over him. Hobbies: setting up illegal dumps in their back lawns and denying all knowledge of that 300,000 tons of asbestos, nappies and syringes. Never saw it til now your honour.

Monaghan is missing, but did anyone really notice?

Another person to swear at

After booking online for my provisional drivers license theory test (which is outsourced to the UK) I was given a test date of 05/07/06 at 9:45am. So I took the morning off to take this test and get all the necessary paper work done. (LET ME DO THIS ONLINE DAMNIT) I went into the test center at 9:07am considering I’m working on the other side of the city and have nothing better to be doing in town. The guy on reception asking for my name and considering there was no one else there, he let said we’ll start, so I confirmed my details, had a photo taken and went into the test room (after putting my phone and stuff in a locker)

Flicked through the practise test (which doesn’t actually give you any questions, just how to use the system) and started the official test. You have 40mins to do 40 questions which isn’t bad. Seven minutes later I was sitting down again waiting for the result, seeing the guy nod his head made me nervous, I was thinking how in the fuck could anyone fail this test. He waved me back in and congratulations you’ve passed 38 out of 40. So now rambled around to familar territory to find the Luas which I got onto and was in Tallaght in about 25 mins, which is pretty damn good going by anyone standards. Heading out to Vision Express to get my eyes checked again (only after three weeks) I got all the necessary paper work. Now all I have to do is queue up in the Tax Office to apply for my license and I’ll be allowed to drive! (After getting raped for insurance of course)

We still suck!

ComReg’s quarterly report came out and we are still being ripped off, and getting nowhere further, they are now just leaving out graphs that are quite important to show where we are. I’ll let Damien do the breakdown. Kudos to him and IrelandOffline for always keeping up with ComReg’s reports full of smoke and mirrors and bringing out the truth to the state telecoms in this country.