So far so good.

But then the “creator” of this little piece decided to spice it up. Some funny quotes had to be added, only this schmuck did not have anything original to add, so something was plagiarised. I know this because despite this “creator” going to the effort of changing airline names and flight numbers, possibly even <wait for it> adding  a flight number or city name, I remember most of it, except with other airline names. I can paste any sentence in Google and come up with the same list of witticisms, only with other airline names in it.

And to be fair, these reportedly true comments from all the other sites at best probably originated as one liner bar jokes. I’ll put my money of only a handful being actual comments by airline personnel. I’m sure of this because fun has long been legislated out of the workplace, and most of these comments are risque enough by today’s standards to quite possibly be the last that that person made while in the employ of said airline.

The same goes for music these days. The better you know some of the older tunes the less likely you are to hear a “new” one.

I’ve often wondered who these people are, these people that purposely dilute original creations. The ones who insist on telling you where <wait for it> the punchline in the joke is. The ones who <this is the best part> would not allow you to decide for yourself which is the best part of the joke is without first letting you which part they think it is. The ones who subtly changes original jokes to make it “new”, as if it’s like recycling raw materials. Except it’s not like that, not at all.

Somewhere the line Originality is dying, subdued by laziness and slowly being beaten to death by mediocrity. Eventually it will lie in an unmarked grave where the sun probably does not shine.

Hmmmm. Don’t really have much to say, a bit of a bummer update.

Did the Boven weekend, arrived Friday mid morning and had a lovely day. Was pretty useless on Saturday, but the highlight was definitely “Little Bonsai” (16). A really nice climb of about 25m. Dinner was fabulous: Fillet with ostrich wors and braai samies. Later that night another group borrowed our fire to make espetada’s, and insisted I have a taste – divine!! Apart from some other secret herbs & spices, they stuck the meat on bay leaf sticks and threw bay leaves on the fire to further flavour the meat. Quite a treat, I must say.

But then Sunday turned out a disaster. While making breakfast, news came in of an accident close to the campsite. From Climb.co.za:
“Heinrich Kahl passed away this Sunday at Waterval Boven. He was 27.

Heinrich was well known as a top level sport climber (competed in a couple of Roc & Road’s) and was fast becoming one of SA’s hardest trad climbers.

He and his wife Carlien prepared to climb All’s Bells (19 trad) at Tranquilitas. At the base of the climb was a refrigerator sized boulder which one has to scramble up on to get onto the climb; as Heinrich mantled onto the boulder it came lose and toppled over on top of him. Heinrich sustained serious internal injuries and died on the scene. Carlien broke her hand and got bruised badly but is otherwise okay.”

News24 article here.

Did not know him personally, but did chat to him once or twice. Good guy, very easy to get along with and had a lekker conversation with him.

No more climbing for me that day.

Farewell…

Last week, we took some friends to a new restaurant, ‘Steve’s Place,’ and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange.

When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I observed that he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I inquired, ‘Why the spoon?’ ‘Well, ‘he explained, ‘the restaurant’s owner hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all of our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.’

As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he replaced it with his spare. ‘I’ll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.’ I was impressed.

I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter’s fly. Looking around, I saw that all of the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So, before he walked off, I asked the waiter, ‘Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?’ ‘Oh, certainly!’ Then he lowered his voice. ‘Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also learned that we can save time in the restroom. By tying this string to the tip of our you-know-what, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39%.

I asked quietly, ‘After you get it out, how do you put it back?’ ‘Well,’ he whispered, ‘I don’t know about the others, but I use the spoon.

Where do they come up with these people?!

From IOL:

“Sunday Times journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika has been arrested by the Hawks only days after his controversial article about National Police Commissioner General Bheki Cele.

Sunday Times editor Ray Hartley, who attended the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) meeting, said the paper’s lawyers had been unable to get a clear answer from the police on the charges against him and where he was being held.

“I am deeply concerned at the fact that a journalist can be arrested and held at an undisclosed location in a country where the rule of law ought to apply,” Hartley said in a statement posted on TheTimesLive website.

“He was arrested by a large number of policemen in an operation which was clearly designed to intimidate and I can only conclude that this was the true motive for what took place today.”

Hartley said Wa Afrika was one of the authors of a story published on Sunday about the rental of new police headquarters at the cost of R500-million, allegedly without following the correct tender proceedings.

“I hope, for the sake of our country, that he was not arrested on spurious charges in order to punish him for what he wrote,” said Hartley.”

Here’s how the scam works:

Two nice-looking, college-aged girls will come over to your car or truck as you are packing your purchases into your vehicle. They both start wiping your windshield with a rag and Windowlene, with their breasts almost falling out of their skimpy T-shirts. (It’s impossible not to look). When you thank them and offer them a tip, they say ‘No’ but instead ask for a ride to McDonald’s.

You agree and they climb into the vehicle. On the way, they start undressing. Then one of them starts crawling all over you, while the other one steals your wallet.

I had my wallet stolen Mar. 4th, 9th, 10th, twice on the 15th, 17th, 20th, 24th, & 29th. Also Apr. 1st & 4th, twice on the 8th, 16th, 23rd, 26th & 27th, and very likely again this upcoming weekend.

So tell your friends to be careful. What a horrible way to take advantage of us men. Warn your friends to be vigilant.

Wal-Mart has wallets on sale for R2.99 each. I found even cheaper ones for R1.99 at the R5 store and bought them out in three of their stores.

Also, you never get to eat at McDonald’s. I’ve already lost 11 pounds just running back and forth from Checkers, to P&P, to Liquor Town, Etc. And keep in mind, I have only been on pension for a very short time.

So please, send this on to all the men that you know and warn them to be on the lookout for this scam. (The best times are just before lunch and around 4:30 in the afternoon.)

That leaves 4 songs to go….

In other news, there’s a Boven trip coming up next weekend, remember you may not ever get another chance!  

I’ve added a page for all things green, and kicked it off with some info on where you can drop off plastic to get it recycled. Hope to expand it with some more hard-to-find goodies.

And then some bad news: Woolworths did not keep to their promise – here an email from Mark who drives the campaign:

“Woolworths claims that the premium on free-range eggs has nearly tripled since June and this has prevented them from delivering on their promise to switch to free-range eggs.

Their first official commitment to us (in writing) was for the first 70 products to be rolled out in April 2010, a second wave to be announced in June 2010, and a new liquid egg factory to be built as a matter of top priority – so that they could expedite the complete changeover within 2 years. They’ve sent lists and plans, yet nothing has materialised.

We are going to meet Woolworths in August to find out more about this delay and report back to you.

Mark Fox (mark@activist.co.za)”

And that’s all the laundry, some clean and some not so clean.

And they did.

“Well done, son! Now we swim around them a few times with all of our fins showing.” And they did. “Now we eat everybody.”

And they did.

When they were both gorged, the son asked: “Dad, why didn’t we just eat them all at first? Why did we swim around and around them?”

His wise father replied: “Because they taste better without the shit inside!”

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.

Linux is only free if your time has no value.

It works on my machine.

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it’s too late.

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

With regard to adding more programmers to get a project done faster…Nine people can’t make a baby in a month.

A programmer started to cuss
Because getting to sleep was a fuss
As he lay there in bed
Looping ’round in his head
was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;

Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning.

You can stand on the shoulders of giants OR a big enough pile of dwarfs, works either way.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

An idiot with a computer is a faster, better idiot

We better hurry up and start coding, there are going to be a lot of bugs to fix.

A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.

Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren’t doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they’re sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.