Telling it like it is

Like most blokes I'm especially appreciative of the female form. I went to log in to PayPal this morning and noticed a new banner on their front page, and my initial reaction was "great legs!". I'm not sure quite how these legs relate to an online payment company but I'm appreciative of them being there. Here - see for yourself:

I'm pleased to see two things this week : the iPhone software unlock is now known to work in 40-plus countries with hundreds of providers, and there's a new iPod which is essentially the iPhone minus the phone. I just don't get why Apple tried to lock the iPhone to AT&T. They're not known for making bad business decisions but that was a good one. Why would you make something as (apparently) desirable as an iPhone and then slap such a stupid restriction on it? Moving the technology into the iPod touch, however - genius move. Except it'll suffer the same problem as the iPhone, which is a constantly gucked-up screen covered in smudges, scratches and grease from grubby fingers.

So it's come to this then. With the last of the British troops leaving Iraq, Bush is finally admitting defeat. He's going to announce tomorrow that he's pulling 30,000 troops out of Iraq. It's the beginning of the troop drawdown we all expected (about bloody time). It'll be interesting to see how they spin this. When non-Bushies talked of troop reductions and such, they were always accused of 'emboldening the enemy'. Now Bush is going to talk about it and actually do it, that means he too is 'emboldening the enemy'. Of course the spin will attempt to make it seem like something totally different, but the fact is this - he was wrong, he's going to eat humble pie, and he's presided over only the second US defeat in miltary history, the first being Vietnam.

I nearly got into a fight last night. As I was walking into Albertsons, our local supermarket, this guy in a huge black Chevy somethingorother drifted across in front of me and parked right across the doors to the store on the 'no parking' area. As he got out, I couldn't stop myself, and I said "which part of no parking didn't you understand?" Apparently he took offence because he then spent a considerable amount of time trying to defend himself. He told me he was just going in for a coffee, so I said "why don't you just go and park properly first then?". Then he accused me of being an SUV-hater, at which point I flipped out my keyfob and blipped the alarm on my Element to show him I had an SUV but was perfectly capable of parking it. In the end, I pointed out that not only had he blocked me going into the store, but he'd blocked two people coming out with shopping carts too, and that perhaps if he used his eyes or brain in future, he would...

This is a great article. Overprotective parents never allow their children to cross the street on their own, so the kids never learn to look out for cars, and drivers become less accustomed to seeing them in the road. When the kids then run into the road, they get run over. Now if only we could get pedestrians to understand that a red crosswalk light means keep the fuck out of the road. As a driver, motorcyclist and pedestrian, I fail to understand why it's always the driver's responsibility not to run over pedestrians who amble into the road. Why is it not the pedestrian's fault when this happens? Why are they not responsible for their actions? Frankly, if you're dumb enough to walk into traffic, and don't understand what 2 tons of metal will do to an ugly bag of mostly water, you'll get what's coming to you. Times article.

When we got back from Vegas, we discovered the power had been out at some point while we'd been away, for about 9 hours. It went again last night around 23:00 for about 7 hours this time. With winter coming, power outages in calm weather are a bad omen in this neighbourhood. I hope this doesn't mean Utah Power have fucked up the system again.