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Showing posts from August 31, 2003
It's quiet - too quiet. Something is afoot. I reckon tomorrow is the day of the long knives....
Eugh - now this is a straight-from-hollywood story. A pizza delivery guy in Pennsylvania was supposed to deliver a pizza (duh) but when he turned up at the address, he was hustled inside and had a bomb attached to a collar clamped around his neck. He was given instructions to rob a bank and return. The police were called while he was in the bank and he was arrested. He pleaded with them to get the bomb squad to take the collar off, but the timer ran out and it detonated, killing him instantly. Shee-it. Now that's nasty.
Continuing to prove that the government and police have lost all sight of reality in the UK, West Midlands police today started enforcing speed limits............ On emergency vehicles. From September West Midlands fire engines en route to an incident will have to stay under 45 in 30 zones, and under 80 on the motorway. A particular irony in the situation is that over recent years many former 60mph limits have been reduced to 30. Under the new rules fire engines will have to stick to 45mph on their way to a fire, when only a few years ago they would have driven at nearly 60 on the way back. It is hard to imagine anything more stupid than training an emergency driver to drive safely and fast - and then imposing a meaningless and arbitrary speed limit for the sake of "safety". Now, as well as watching the road, the traffic, and concentrating on his life saving mission, the engine driver is expected to watch his speed too, just in case the fire chief behind him
Well that was a frantic week. FedEx are now armed with the tools they need to start giving us bug reports and grief. :-) I discovered the joys of usb drives, or thumbdrives. I got a 256Mb USB drive and it was a godsend on site, for moving stuff between non-networked machines. Plus, I managed to buy it in the one week they were having a 35 buck rebate offer at BestBuy. Suh-weet.