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Showing posts from February 11, 2007

If you're going to hijack an African airliner...

...at least make sure you can speak French. That guy who hijacked an African airliner yesterday turned out to be the only person on board who didn't speak French. The hero pilot basically told the passengers the French equivalent of 'Hold my beer and watch this' and then jammed on the brakes the instant he landed. The hijacker, being the only one standing up, was thrown from his feet and promptly overpowered by the passengers. Nicely done. Story.

Amazon is broken Pt.3

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It's been a while - over a year I think - since Amazon.com's recommendation system had a brainfart, but I checked my recommended items today and lo and behold this came up. Now quite why Amazon thinks I would like a fully functioning ChouChou baby doll because I rated 100ft of bright yellow outdoor power extension cable is beyond me. She is an ugly little cow though - maybe Amazon are suggesting I throttle her with the power cable then noose her up from a tree?

Snow returns to the valley.

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This is good news for us skiers - it means the resorts are getting nicely topped up, but it's bad news for those of us who were going to be taking our motorbikes in for some work tomorrow morning. Let's hope it melts by then and they don't pour a billion tons of corrosive salt on to the roads. Speaking of bikes, as much as I love my Beemer, we went to look at the new Triumph Tiger this past weekend. I'm smitten. It's gorgeous.

Microsoft patch Vista

Oh well I suppose it couldn't last long. Vista's been out for what - a week? Two at the most. On tuesday they had to start the never-ending series of patches thus proving once again that Microsoft can't write a secure operating system. This particular flaw was off the scale on the irony-meter though, even for Microsoft. The flaw was in a "malware protection engine" that helps several Microsoft security products - including "Windows Defender" for Vista - guard against online threats. The problem could let an outsider "take complete control" of a victim's computer, according to Microsoft's security advisory. So the bit of code designed to keep people out was actually letting people in. Nice.

Serial witness

I thought another post about my peculiar ability to witness accidents was worthwhile. You can see below when accident number 12 happened. Number 11 was a couple of weeks ago on the way to lunch. The guy two cars in front indicated to turn right, then stopped part way around the corner with no warning. The guy behind him, in front of us, ran straight into the back of him. Accident number 10 was a week before that. On the way out to poker night, coming down 21st South. Two cars - one on a street to my left and one to the right, both wanting to turn out and each turn left into 2100S. There was a nice gap in the traffic in front so they both pulled out, both turned left and ran head-on into each other right in the middle of the street. Accident 9 was last year. A red pickup truck going north on Foothill drive in the left lane suddenly decided he needed to turn right at Sunnyside. So he did. He carved across four lanes of morning rush-hour traffic and drove straight into a cyclist in front

Trolley Square shooting and CCWs.

Here's the thing. According to the Deseret news, of all the people interviewed and debriefed by the police when they were evacuated from Trolley Square mall, apparently 18 of them had concealed carry permits and were carrying at the time. The NRA bangs on about the right to carry guns to defend yourself, yet here are 18 peoplewho had guns on them and didn't have the balls to try to stop the shooter. For the most part, most of the pro-gun apologists will never be presented with a situation where they actually need to use their guns. Yet right there, in Trolley Square, when the chips were down and the perfect opportunity presented itself, 18 gun-carrying chickenshits ran away. To those 18 people I ask this : where the hell was your sense of community? What is the point of carrying a weapon to defend yourself if, when needed, you won't defend yourself? You people should be ashamed. If any one of you had had the balls to exercise that permit you carry so preciously, you could

Shop shop bang bang

We've had our shooting drama tonight. Some nutjob doing a Keanu Reeves impression shot his way through Trolley Square tonight killing 5 before being shot himself. At the moment the news stations are saying "many" injured in area hospitals but we don't know how many "many" is. I guess we'll find out more tomorrow.

6820

6820 vertical feet today. 10 inches of fresh snow but really heavy, wet stuff. I found it a totally different experience to skiing on a couple of inches of powder on top of hardpack. I called it a day just after noon - I was knackered. It was creepy today - the avalanche cannons were going off all day, and on one ride up Sunrise we heard an avalanche start in the back-country to our left. There was this loud 'crack' followed by an increasing rumble that faded as the snow got further down the hill. About 20 minutes later we heard two or three other ones set off somewhere in the Canyon, followed by a positively military salvo of cannons. It was actually pretty scary. I'll have to check the news tonight and see if anyone was caught in them.