No Cutsies

Been writing this burble for a few months now and besides the occasional comment of encouragement, my inbox has hardly been straining under the weight of response.  Suddenly I comment on the unmentionable, make my anti nicotine sentiments public and WHAM!  So from time to time I guess a little rant will be in order to test the waters of public opinion.

Here is today’s.

You are approaching an on/off ramp.  Its rush hour.  You proactively get into the queue of traffic waiting to enter or exit the freeway.  You patiently wait, doing your best to ignore the banal excrement we have for radio in South Africa ( a rant for another day) when some nematode flies up on the outside lane, turns on a flicker and proceeds to push into the queue of traffic.  Doesn’t this cretin realise the bottleneck they are causing.  If the line of cars didnt have to stop to let them in there probably wouldn’t be a line, well at least not one that keeps stopping and starting.  Jasckass!

An ex-colleague was so infuriated she wrote a sign for her window saying “No Cutsies”.  Needless to say if drivers are rude enough to push in they are hardly likely to heed any notice that sounds like it comes from an episode of Scrubs.  My approach is to keep as close to the car in front of me as possible and hope everyone else in the queue does the same.  This is accompanied with wild gesticulations and expletives, the most polite being “Back of the line asshole”.  It would give me so much joy to see them held out until after the intersection.   Unfortunately, theres always one mug who lets them in.

I’m guessing these “lane cutters” are the same motorists who fly up behind you in the fast lane when you are doing the speed limit and flash their lights trying to force their way past.  I have a way of dealing with them too.  Keep them waiting for as long as possible.  Hopefully the slow lane is busy so they can’t undertake.  Watch them getting more and more incensed in your rear view mirror.  About 100m before a speed camera let them past.  They generally take off at Mach 1 and get flashed.  Oh the joy it brings!

Smokers getting double annual leave

Have been in new job for just over 2 weeks.  New desk is positioned with optimal view of the fire escape door.  This is a fitting name for it becasue it is where the hoardes of office smokers go to get cancer.

Now it would seem that the office smokers go outside, on average, 6 times a day.  Each visit takes, on average, 5 minutes.  That is half an hour a day, 2 and a half hours a week, and 130 hours a year.  If we are expected to do 7 hours work a day, that is 18.57 work days spent smoking.

Ok i am being a bit unfair.  I was working on there being 52 weeks in a year.  If we get 3 weeks off for annual leave and a further 2 weeks of public and religious holidays, then I should have calculated on there being 47 working weeks in a year.  The amount of work days then lost to smoking per smoker comes down to 16.8.

I am entitled to 15 days of annual leave a year.  That means that each smoker gets more than double my leave entitlement.  I find this grossly unfair.  Rant over.

Almost Famous

Have a look at today’s post on Gottaquirk.  Seriously gotta get a new pic taken.  Happy Puza Thurrrrrrsday everyone!

Nokia’s response to the iPhone.

The new iMGONNABLOWYOURBRAINSOUTPhone

Just stepped off the train, you’ve had no reception coz you’ve been underground.  Your message alert tone goes beserk so you take your phone out.  Suddenly a gang of hoodies arrive with knives and broken bottles.  One says “Olraait Geez giv us your phone or we’ll do ya…innit”.

But days of being mugged for your phone are over.  BLAM BLAM Blam…you have no more messages…Punk!”

Nokia are so desperate to regain market share from Apple and its dastardly iPhone that they have brought out the iMGONNABLOW YOURBRAINSOUTPhone or the N.45

Designed for the modern day hijacker, always on the move or the office exec defending his property and always in touch this nifty doodat offers not only a sense of safety but excellent reception and an unparallelled stylishness.  Integration means you can lock your keypad and turn on the safety at the same time.  A clever device to stop you making accidental international calls or shooting yourself in the foot.

For the pay as you go customers all good weapons stores will be selling airtime as well as bullets or for those who prefer monthly billing there is the contract killer option.

New Facebook design

If you haven’t already seen Facebook has had a facelift.  Log in, open a new tab and insert the URL www.new.facebook.com

The official line is that it aims to make user profiles simpler and more relevant.  However, there is a commercial reason too.  Advertising. They are trying to make more space for adverts. In my opinion the profile page is more user friendly but the overall appearance is quite messy.

Message from the Pressrrom suggests a lot of other improvements.  But just in case you are not happy there is a “back to the old facebook” link in the top right hand corner.  Happy Exploring.

Chiefs and Devils

Newlands hosted the first match of the Vodacom Challenge on Saturday. Craig and his new Vuvuzela went along to see how Kaizer Chiefs fared against champions of Europe, Manchester United. See the pics here.

A 1-1 draw was probably a fair result, as Chiefs created many chances.  They did, however have their keeper, Ithumeleng Khune to thank for keeping them in the match.  He pulled off some awesome saves, the best being, the one on one situation with Wazza (Wayne Rooney) late in the first half.

The crowd was in good spirits and very well behaved, although my concept of personal space was not shared by all.  In the end a very enjoyable afternoon.  Really looking forward to 2010 now.  Heres a small clip.

View from work

Check out the view from the office window. Pretty coool huh?

Things that make you go Wii!

Have a look at Nintendo’s new Wii “plugin”. Somewhat suspicious of the article’s authenticity and will keep a close eye on the type of people rushing to “Computermania”.  If there are a lot more middle aged men in raincoats rushing to Canal Walk then I’ll know why.  Or overweight guys with ponytails sporting novelty T shirts that say “I read your emails”.

But it sure gives new meaning to hardware or perhaps software.  Too bad stiffy disks are out of fashion.

Storming the Bastille

After 2 weeks of torrential rain the sun finally put in an appearance this weekend.  Just as well seeing that mom and dad had just returned from the Tanzanian adventure and there was a mountain of washing to dry.  Our roof also decided to sprinkg leaks in 3 places and the house smelled like a week old wet gym towel left in the boot of your car.

Drove out to Franschoek with the Milnerton gang on Sunday for Bastille Festival.  With snow on the mountains, sun in the sky and wine in my glass it was  a truly blissful occasion. Here are some pics.

Big news is I started a new job yesterday. I am now a SEO analyst.  A day and half in and I’m very excited.  This is fascintaing stuff. Beats the hell out of debt collecting.  The fact that we have spectacular views out the windows is just a bonus.  Photos to follow.  Mountain is under cloud at the moment so will bring the camera in on the next sunny day.

Its then first job I’ve had where NOT being on Facebook gets you fired.  For someone who lives on the internet this is a dream job.  Keeping my head down for a few days, allow everyone to get used to me before I start belting out the show tunes.  The sun’ll come out Tomorrow…right its out the system.

Since the last post got DSTV.  Just in Time for Tri Nations, Wimbledon and Cricket.  I’ve been whistling the theme tune from The Great escape ever since 5:50pm last night.  Thats why I love Test cricket.  I was practically suicidal for 3 days.  I now cant wait for Thursday.  Bring it on.  Freddy Flintoff you gonna wish you were still injured.