Hoo boy, it’s been a long day. I’ve been wrestling with a single malfunctioning PC all day. It’s extremely frustrating.

Anywya, enough of that. The second long weekend was quite nice, if too short. Friday was game-playing day, followed by dinner at Mille Lire. Saturday was gym and relaxing, followed by a rather excellent evening of games at Trang’s place. We won both Pictionary and Lord of the Rings Risk. And we burned the Shire to the ground. Great fun.

Sunday was Wu Shu, which I am quite enjoying. The form I’m learning at the moment is different, but all the more interesting for it – and of course it’s a huge honour to be taught this particular form directly from Sifu, as she is very highly qualified. Sunday afternoon, Trang and I went and saw Johnny English, which was excruciating in parts, but still quite funny. We then went out to Trang’s parent’s place for dinner and had pho (apologies for missing accent marks), which is a particularly delicious Vietnamese noodle soup. Afterwards, Trang came over and we chilled for a bit.

Wow, that’s possibly the most detailed weekend wrapup I’ve ever done. Says something about my day, although I have no idea what.

I’m going to stop writing now before I get even more incoherent.

Had a lovely holiday-at-home over the long weekend. Trang and I borrowed some of Jason’s DVD collection and spent the weekend relaxing and watching DVDs. Very relaxing indeed, and lots of quality time, too. Highly recommended.

I’ve lost some of the benefit of that relaxation this morning, though. Notes for the sadistic among you: If you ever really want to torture support staff, report problems in the following way:

• Say ‘My computer’s not working’, then stop. Support people are all psychic, so you don’t need to tell them what in particular is not working, or indeed if your computer has turned into a hamster and is hiding under the desk. They’re paid enough, they should already know what the problem is.
• When asked about the error, say something along the lines of ‘%some_program% gave me an error message.’ Make sure to have clicked ‘OK’ or similar on the error message, without reading it, so that when you’re asked about it, you can say ‘I can’t remember’.
• Remember also not to make any effort to duplicate the problem. All problems are equally important, regardless of if they can be reproduced before the heat death of the universe or not.
• Most importantly, don’t reboot your computer or restart the program in question. Then complain when the support person tells you to do just that that’s all they ever tell you to do.

OK, I’ve vented, feel a bit better now.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to this weekend as well – I’m attempting to book in Friday as Computer Game day, which is going well so far. Here’s hoping I manage it.

A couple of interesting things today. Firstly, a guide to Usenet quoting, also applicable to email: http://learn.to/quote. It’s translated from German, but is still quite logical, and outlines some of the reasons why you should use particular quoting styles in email.

Far more interesting is this speech transcript, posted to the interesting-people mailing list. It’s an address to the JFK School of Government at Harvard by Adib F. Farha on how Arabs view US policy in the Middle East. He also mentions the primary problem I have with the whole shebang – the story we’re being told has changed so much that it’s hard not to think that there’s something else going on.

Well, here’s the new look. Some notable features

• No tables any more – it’s all CSS, baby! This means that you’ll still be able to read this page, even in bodgy old browsers. In browsers that support a decent level of CSS, though, it should look pretty consistent. Most of the pages validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional, with the exception of the wallpapers page, as the IMG tags don’t have ALT text.
• The move to all CSS means that the pages are a bit more flexible with respect to browser size – no more ‘this page best viewed at’ stuff.
• From my point of view, I can now change colours by editing one file, in one place. Very tidy.
• The manifest page I’ve left for the moment – I may redesign it as well, but that requires more thought, as the gallery page is reasonably heavily linked around the place.

I’m quite interested to hear if anyone has any problems or comments, so drop me a line if you have something to say.

I’m sure you’ve read about the apparent US plans to at least threaten Syria about its WMD. Thing is, it does have WMD. It’s had them since the 70s. It hasn’t used them, it hasn’t given them to terrorists. This is the Bush administration making itself look foolish. I think one of the posters on Metafilter said it pretty well:

I’ve said a number of times, that I might even be for this war, if only I knew what the real goal was. I’ve been told by the White House that it’s because Saddam supported Al Quaeda, because Saddam killed his own people, that Iraq is an immediate threat to the US, because Iraq has WMD, and a litany of other excuses. What’s clear to me is that the White House has never told us the truth, they’ve simply told us whatever might get the largest number of people on their side at that moment.

I agree – the only thing that’s been constant over the last few months is the feeling that we’re all being lied to.

Some Monday morning links:

Worried about SARS? You should be reading the WHO website. On there you can read the latest press briefing and have straight answers like:

• It has around a 4% fatality rate – to put that in context, influenza has around 5-30% fatality rate, depending on a wide range of factors.
• As far as the WHO can tell, the infection is passed through close contact only, with a possible environmental factor in Hong Kong, most likely to do with the close living conditions. In fact, it appears to be passed mainly through bodily fluid contact.
• Transmission has been highest amongst health care professionals.

It’s certainly one of those things that I would expect risk management professionals to be able to make reasonable judgements about it. That is, that quarantining people from work who do not present any symptoms and who have not come into contact with any likely cases may be slight overkill.

Also in the stupidity-of-humanity department today, we have the annual Jefferson Muzzle Awards for the suppression of free speech, and the Privacy International Stupid Security Awards. They make for truly scary reading about the paranoia raging through the US.

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention: The Australian Government got the ‘Most Egregiously Stupid’ award for the ‘alert but not alarmed’ pile of steaming crap.

Here is about the geekiest website I have ever seen: Jeff Russell’s Starship Dimensions. On it, Jeff compares the sizes of starships from various sci-fi series and movies, with accurate scaling. Good for answering geeky arguments.

Happy Birthday Astroboy!

In the spirit of today, here’s Dan’s latest review – of a kitten. (For those who don’t usually read Dan’s Data, it’s a computer hardware review site that’s famed both for the thoroughness of its reviews and the extreme amount of knowledge possessed by Dan.)

Edit:A linkup from that webpage that I know some readers will be interested in is Pawsense, software for detecting when your cat is walking on the keyboard of your PC.

Edit 2:Another linkup, this time from memepool: The Museum of Hoaxes presents The top 100 April Fool’s jokes of all time.