TPN’s latest podcast is Take Two – interviews with Australian business leaders by Leon Gettler, management and economics commentator for The Age newspaper in Melbourne Australia, and technology editor Garry Barker. Check out their interview with Justin Milne, CEO of Telstra BigPond.
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Ah… the clean country air of Bundaberg….
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David Chappelle is Black Bush. Classic.
Neet and I went to see KNOCKED UP last night in Brissy. I loved it. Terrific little film. Lots of laughs, the premise, script and cast are all first rate.
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Russell Buckley sent me a link to this video that is like an ad for atheism. Nicely done.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdVucvo-kDU]
Sitting in Brisbane with nothing much to do…
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Saw a great 2006 German film earlier at the Dendy in George Street called “Vier Minuten” or “Four Minutes”. It’s the story of an elderly lesbian piano teacher who works at a women’s prison and accepts a violent young student with massive natural talent to deal with her guilt from allowing her young female lover to be murdered by the Nazi’s 60 years earlier. Despite the negative review on IMDB, I really enjoyed it. Watch the trailer.
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Nick Hodge sent me this article by William Lobdell who for many years has written a column on religion for the L.A. Times. When he started, he was a “serious Christian”. However, by the end of his journey covering the crimes and perversities committed, endorsed and protected by Christians in the USA, he seems to have lost his faith. It seems that, even for “serious Christians”, the more you learn about Christianity, the less there is to like about it.
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Bundaberg. Cold. Slow. No 3G. Using my mum’s PC. She’s on some bullshit BigPond DSL plan where she only gets 400Mb a month for $40!! And it’s nearly used up, so I’m moving her to Dodo this morning. Screw Telstra BigPond and their bullshit data plans. Everyone – make sure your parents are getting screwed by their ISP. Have spent the last day cleaning up mum’s PC – swapping out Norton for AVG Free, moving her data over to an external drive, implementing a backup system, installing a new DVD drive, etc. Other sons mow the lawn. Just call us the Tech Support Generation.
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 Have to drive five minutes down to Bargara Beach to find a semi-decent coffee. Ugh.
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 According to some larrikin editing my Wikipedia entry:
“Some times uses the alias “Tony Harris” to backup his own arguements.” (sic)
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Love this story on BoingBoing:
Four federal inmates were indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without authorization.The inmates sent demand notices for payment to the warden of the El Reno federal prison and filed liens against his property. They then hired someone to seize his vehicles, freeze his bank accounts and change the locks on his house. Unfortunately, the person they hired turned out to be an FBI agent.
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I have been reading up on Bush’s new Executive Order where he “directed the Treasury Department to block the U.S.-based financial assets of anyone deemed to have threatened “the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq” or who “undermin(e) efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq.” The order also enables Treasury to target those individuals who prevent “humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people”. As Bush and Friends have been responsible for 700,000+ civilian deaths in Iraq, I’m wondering if this EO means Treasury will block HIS assets.
Read the Executive Order or read an analysis of it by some experts.
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Neet and I cracked up this morning over this clip of prisoners in the Phillipines performing “Thriller”.
Geez louise.
If you must… you can register for MODM 4 on Upcoming.
Oh but wait – what about all the people who said for the last couple of month… “oh I don’t want to register on Yahoo just to come to your smelly function!”???
Then go away and leave me alone. Go back to the crochet club or whatever you normally do on a Saturday night.
About 5 weeks ago I ordered some products from an Australia site called Direct Discount. I paid via Paypal. I got a confirmation email. Everything looked legit. But it’s been five weeks and still no product. I’ve tried emailing their sales support line but the emails bounce. They have a fax number on the site but no telephone number. I can’t find a listing for them in the Aussie WhitePages. Any ideas on how I track these folks down to see if I’ve done my $100 or not? They also have a US site.
UPDATE 29 July 2007: Well I took Fi’s advice (thanks Fi!) and made a complaint via Paypal. The process took a couple of minutes and, a couple of days later, the company refunded my money, claiming they were out of stock with the product. A good outcomes from Paypal! Obviously the company (DirectDiscount.us) takes Paypal’s emails more seriously than they do mine. A lesson for anyone out there who gets ripped off in a Paypal transaction – make a complaint.