Oct 2008
Proud American (8 year old author?)
11/10/08 09:25 Filed in: Personal
Have you ever followed a link off ITunes movie trailers, just for the hell of it?
What a mistake.
Proud American
At first I thought it was actually a comedy, a spoof.... but NO. It's the very worst trailer for what could easily be the most stomach churning sycophantic film of all time.
What a mistake.
Proud American
At first I thought it was actually a comedy, a spoof.... but NO. It's the very worst trailer for what could easily be the most stomach churning sycophantic film of all time.
EDS good again! This time it's MOD files on the loose
10/10/08 12:08 Filed in: Technology
The HP recently acquired IT services company EDS has yet again put sensitive information on the streets due to carelessness. This time it's MOD information. You might remember that prior to that they mislaid a laptop.
What really gets my goat is that EDS nearly always ends up being 'preferred' supplier despite their atrocious record of late deliveries, poorly fitting IT solutions, over charging and incompetence... and I speak as somebody who was hired in by them on two occasions and was offered a job by them.
What really gets my goat is that EDS nearly always ends up being 'preferred' supplier despite their atrocious record of late deliveries, poorly fitting IT solutions, over charging and incompetence... and I speak as somebody who was hired in by them on two occasions and was offered a job by them.
Nostalgia for a past that didn't exist
07/10/08 19:18 Filed in: Personal
Dame Helen Mirren just suggested she'd like to live in the 19th century because "It wasn't polluted".
Oh really. Perhaps Dame Helen would like to tell us all how people heated their houses or cooked their food? Solar panels? Windmill power?
No... wood. Burning HUGE amounts of wood. Or converting it to charcoal and burning that.
How much wood? Enough to nearly deforest all of England to the point that the Crown had to create designated preservation areas.
You know I'm always fascinated by this, it was better in the past mentality. It really, really wasn't. If you got ill, you could die and what's more; there was nobody to help you or who would want to. There's poverty and starvation and death. Something that we in the UK don't really have to worry about because no matter how far you fall, there are opportunities to be helped.
But not in the 19th century. You fall from grace, you die. That's how cruel life was. And their are even people on YouTube who think that returning to that would be a step in the right direction. Little do they really know.
Oh really. Perhaps Dame Helen would like to tell us all how people heated their houses or cooked their food? Solar panels? Windmill power?
No... wood. Burning HUGE amounts of wood. Or converting it to charcoal and burning that.
How much wood? Enough to nearly deforest all of England to the point that the Crown had to create designated preservation areas.
You know I'm always fascinated by this, it was better in the past mentality. It really, really wasn't. If you got ill, you could die and what's more; there was nobody to help you or who would want to. There's poverty and starvation and death. Something that we in the UK don't really have to worry about because no matter how far you fall, there are opportunities to be helped.
But not in the 19th century. You fall from grace, you die. That's how cruel life was. And their are even people on YouTube who think that returning to that would be a step in the right direction. Little do they really know.
The cats meow - count the cost
07/10/08 18:57 Filed in: Personal
Just caught another outstanding (sarcasm) story from the Look East team.
So.. woman in Northampton's cat suddenly stopped meowing and she took it to the vet. The diagnosis was a paralysed larynx that required surgery or the cat 'might' die.
Cost.... £9,000.
Let me say that again
And the cat, remember, is twelve years old.
But the icing on the cake for this stupid cat story. The owner.... Jean Kelly. How cruel were HER parents!?!
So.. woman in Northampton's cat suddenly stopped meowing and she took it to the vet. The diagnosis was a paralysed larynx that required surgery or the cat 'might' die.
Cost.... £9,000.
Let me say that again
£9,000
And the cat, remember, is twelve years old.
But the icing on the cake for this stupid cat story. The owner.... Jean Kelly. How cruel were HER parents!?!
Sell your home, rent it back schems get a slamming... WHY!?
06/10/08 18:25 Filed in: Personal
The BBC just ran a critique of companies that purchase people in serious debts and then allow them to rent them back.
"Beware", they said, "there might be serious implications ahead.".
We are then treated to the now 'terrible' domestic life of a family who subsequently "lost" their house to one such company. Now they are having "suffer" in "rented accommodation" (which happened to look nicer than their old home).
Now, given it seems pretty clear that they'd only loose the house if they didn't pay the rent I'm not sure how we are meant to feel this is terrible. Especially when we have to consider that the father of the family pointed out that they HAD paid off all their debts.
So here we have it in a nutshell. They sold their old house for an amount they agreed too. All their debts were paid off and then they failed to keep up payments to keep in their old house and get evicted. And this is the fault of the "Buy back" company in what way?
I mean if you consider that they might have been a few days late of payment, what's the excuse. Their debts were clear. But are we really meant to consider that living in a rented house is so bad? Right now the rental market is excellent for the renter. Prices are at an all time low and quality can be obtained for less than the 60% of the equivalent mortgage on the place. Examples? Well, a house that sold for £700k in Lytham WITH swimming pool was up for rental for £1,500 a month. Or perhaps a nice little Spanish style five bed detached in Telford... £950 a month. It had a HUGE garden. But I digress.
What made the report worse was the mother saying "They just kept calling and calling and 'made' us sign up". MADE THEM? HOW? At gun point? Simple advice.... PUT THE PHONE DOWN!!!!!
Phew, glad I got that of my chest. Comments anyone?
"Beware", they said, "there might be serious implications ahead.".
We are then treated to the now 'terrible' domestic life of a family who subsequently "lost" their house to one such company. Now they are having "suffer" in "rented accommodation" (which happened to look nicer than their old home).
Now, given it seems pretty clear that they'd only loose the house if they didn't pay the rent I'm not sure how we are meant to feel this is terrible. Especially when we have to consider that the father of the family pointed out that they HAD paid off all their debts.
So here we have it in a nutshell. They sold their old house for an amount they agreed too. All their debts were paid off and then they failed to keep up payments to keep in their old house and get evicted. And this is the fault of the "Buy back" company in what way?
I mean if you consider that they might have been a few days late of payment, what's the excuse. Their debts were clear. But are we really meant to consider that living in a rented house is so bad? Right now the rental market is excellent for the renter. Prices are at an all time low and quality can be obtained for less than the 60% of the equivalent mortgage on the place. Examples? Well, a house that sold for £700k in Lytham WITH swimming pool was up for rental for £1,500 a month. Or perhaps a nice little Spanish style five bed detached in Telford... £950 a month. It had a HUGE garden. But I digress.
What made the report worse was the mother saying "They just kept calling and calling and 'made' us sign up". MADE THEM? HOW? At gun point? Simple advice.... PUT THE PHONE DOWN!!!!!
Phew, glad I got that of my chest. Comments anyone?
Oh, X-Factor Off!
05/10/08 15:23 Filed in: Personal
I had the great misfortune to have to watch X-Factor the other day. I say misfortune for obvious reasons and have too, well it was my daughters 9 birthday and she 'had to have it on' for reasons that are not exactly clear.
So, what's my rant about today.
Just this. On at least three occasions the contestants claimed they had to win X-Factor because "they were working class". I'm sorry? So X-Factor is now the only escape for the poorer of our nation? Is that it?
Forget hard work or extra (and often FREE) college study.
Or applying yourself to get a job and promote yourself.
No! Forget all that! Just go on X-Factor.
I guess I take this doubly personal because I grew up in the 70's in a single parent family.
Just what exactly is X-Factor trying to tell the majority of people who watch this rubbish. You're poor and therefore your a nobody. I'm sorry, but f*%@ off!
It's both insulting and exploitative because, lets face it, the poorer of our nation have just got to be the target audience of this drivel. If I was a single parent family, working hard to improve myself, I'd be pretty gutted to hear all the contestants and their sob stories. But I'm not, I'm lucky enough to have grown up in a household where I was constantly pushed to improve myself through education.
But maybe that's the point. Because suddenly it's OK to moan about your lot and claim there is nothing you can do about it. Like all those parents who claim their kids run wild and it's not their fault.
*Phew* Rant over.
So, what's my rant about today.
Just this. On at least three occasions the contestants claimed they had to win X-Factor because "they were working class". I'm sorry? So X-Factor is now the only escape for the poorer of our nation? Is that it?
Forget hard work or extra (and often FREE) college study.
Or applying yourself to get a job and promote yourself.
No! Forget all that! Just go on X-Factor.
I guess I take this doubly personal because I grew up in the 70's in a single parent family.
Just what exactly is X-Factor trying to tell the majority of people who watch this rubbish. You're poor and therefore your a nobody. I'm sorry, but f*%@ off!
It's both insulting and exploitative because, lets face it, the poorer of our nation have just got to be the target audience of this drivel. If I was a single parent family, working hard to improve myself, I'd be pretty gutted to hear all the contestants and their sob stories. But I'm not, I'm lucky enough to have grown up in a household where I was constantly pushed to improve myself through education.
But maybe that's the point. Because suddenly it's OK to moan about your lot and claim there is nothing you can do about it. Like all those parents who claim their kids run wild and it's not their fault.
*Phew* Rant over.
When a condition isn't good enough
01/10/08 23:41 Filed in: Technology
Had a fantastic bug the other day. In fact it's still a mystery as to why this is a problem. But there you go.
Here was the original "Where" clause for an invoice report.
Where (
CASE WHEN IsDate(tblOrder.SentDate) = 0 THEN '19000101'
ELSE CONVERT(DateTime, tblOrder.SentDate, 103) END
BETWEEN CONVERT(DateTime, @FromDate, 103)
AND CONVERT(DateTime, @ToDate, 103)
)
AND ((tblCustomer.customerid = @customerID) or (@customerID is null))
We changed the billing date and ended up with this query..
Where
(
CASE WHEN IsDate(tblOrder.AvailableForBillingDate) = 0 THEN '19000101'
ELSE CONVERT(SmallDateTime, tblOrder.AvailableForBillingDate, 103) END
BETWEEN CONVERT(SmallDateTime, @FromDate, 103)
AND CONVERT(SmallDateTime, @ToDate, 103)
)
AND
(cust.customerid = @customerID) or (@customerID is null)
... only trouble is, while the CustomerID section worked fine T-SQL TOTALLY ignored the first part of the where clause. I mean, totally. At first we couldn't believe it and ran it on a number of servers. But to no affect.
The problem? Well, SentDate was declared as DateTime format while AvailableForBillingDate is defined as a SmallDateTime. But why would create a section of clause to be ignored, that's a realy mystery.
In the end, I employed a trick and included the conditions of the Where clause within the From section.
FROM
inner join ...
tblOrder as ord on ... and
ord.AvailableForBillingDate is not null and
ord.AvailableForBillingDate >= @FromDT and
ord.AvailableForBillingDate <= @ToDT inner join
.....
Where
(cust.customerid = @customerID) or (@customerID is null)
Now SQL responds to the query.
How odd is that.
Here was the original "Where" clause for an invoice report.
Where (
CASE WHEN IsDate(tblOrder.SentDate) = 0 THEN '19000101'
ELSE CONVERT(DateTime, tblOrder.SentDate, 103) END
BETWEEN CONVERT(DateTime, @FromDate, 103)
AND CONVERT(DateTime, @ToDate, 103)
)
AND ((tblCustomer.customerid = @customerID) or (@customerID is null))
We changed the billing date and ended up with this query..
Where
(
CASE WHEN IsDate(tblOrder.AvailableForBillingDate) = 0 THEN '19000101'
ELSE CONVERT(SmallDateTime, tblOrder.AvailableForBillingDate, 103) END
BETWEEN CONVERT(SmallDateTime, @FromDate, 103)
AND CONVERT(SmallDateTime, @ToDate, 103)
)
AND
(cust.customerid = @customerID) or (@customerID is null)
... only trouble is, while the CustomerID section worked fine T-SQL TOTALLY ignored the first part of the where clause. I mean, totally. At first we couldn't believe it and ran it on a number of servers. But to no affect.
The problem? Well, SentDate was declared as DateTime format while AvailableForBillingDate is defined as a SmallDateTime. But why would create a section of clause to be ignored, that's a realy mystery.
In the end, I employed a trick and included the conditions of the Where clause within the From section.
FROM
inner join ...
tblOrder as ord on ... and
ord.AvailableForBillingDate is not null and
ord.AvailableForBillingDate >= @FromDT and
ord.AvailableForBillingDate <= @ToDT inner join
.....
Where
(cust.customerid = @customerID) or (@customerID is null)
Now SQL responds to the query.
How odd is that.
Share prices fall.... and your point is?
01/10/08 23:03 Filed in: Personal
OK. I really want to spell something out here.
Shares are not real.
They are banking world equivalent of betting slips 5.15 a Claptown - Apple 4-2 etc etc. It's the way speculators value the bet on a companies performance to profit in order to attract buyers to purchase shares in that company.
The bottom line is that if enough people say a company is duff... people sell their shares, the share price drops. But here's something... the company isn't affected. Because share price and day to day trading HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER. I'll repeat that... THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER.
That is, unless, you're trying to raise capital. If that's the case, then banks value your company on it's current performance on the balance sheets and a certain percentage indicator on the stock exchange.
What a examples? Well take Yahoo. When the dot com bubble burst it shares plummeted down to next to zero. But they are still in business 8 years later. Why? Because their business model of paid advertising in listings and secured listings was sound. Hell, look at Google. They stole the idea and are not cash rich. Are their shares falling, yes. Are they any less richer? Nope.
The bottom line is that every single day the media bombards with you with the shares going up and down and IT'S ALL COMPLETE SHIT.
The reality is this.
The big banks, and by which I mean the REALLY BIG banks, those that lend directly to the high street banks all decided that they were going to cut off the practically credit. Suddenly mortgage companies that had de-mutualised found themselves in the situation of not being able to quickly turn over mortgages (their main source of income) and with shortfalls on their books. Now normally that would be OK. Because if a bad debtor forcloses on the loan, hell you can get a new tenant in. But as no new credit was available and the oil price was rock high it meant that an increasing number of US lenders couldn't meet payments and nobody could replace them.
Once the housing markets starts to slump then it starts hitting all the other industries related to it and sure enough a panic hits the stock market and economy in general.
So did too many people get too greedy? Well, while it's true to say that 110% mortgages had disaster written all over them, it was the lure of cheap money and then the suddent removal of it that caught the majority out. I'm talking about the banks here, not the people. After all, if you lend money to somebody who can't afford it... who's the idiot in this equation?
Then I started to think that all this sound very familiar. Like I'd heard something like this happening before... and sure enough I had. From Social and Economic History, all those years ago in college. 1907 US Banking Panic. I'd not bother with the Wikipedia article, if I were you. Looking at the history it's been filleted.
Instead, turn to this lengthy and accurate documentary The Money Masters.
What was it Garfield once said "He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation". You bet your ass.
Shares are not real.
They are banking world equivalent of betting slips 5.15 a Claptown - Apple 4-2 etc etc. It's the way speculators value the bet on a companies performance to profit in order to attract buyers to purchase shares in that company.
The bottom line is that if enough people say a company is duff... people sell their shares, the share price drops. But here's something... the company isn't affected. Because share price and day to day trading HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER. I'll repeat that... THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER.
That is, unless, you're trying to raise capital. If that's the case, then banks value your company on it's current performance on the balance sheets and a certain percentage indicator on the stock exchange.
What a examples? Well take Yahoo. When the dot com bubble burst it shares plummeted down to next to zero. But they are still in business 8 years later. Why? Because their business model of paid advertising in listings and secured listings was sound. Hell, look at Google. They stole the idea and are not cash rich. Are their shares falling, yes. Are they any less richer? Nope.
The bottom line is that every single day the media bombards with you with the shares going up and down and IT'S ALL COMPLETE SHIT.
The reality is this.
The big banks, and by which I mean the REALLY BIG banks, those that lend directly to the high street banks all decided that they were going to cut off the practically credit. Suddenly mortgage companies that had de-mutualised found themselves in the situation of not being able to quickly turn over mortgages (their main source of income) and with shortfalls on their books. Now normally that would be OK. Because if a bad debtor forcloses on the loan, hell you can get a new tenant in. But as no new credit was available and the oil price was rock high it meant that an increasing number of US lenders couldn't meet payments and nobody could replace them.
Once the housing markets starts to slump then it starts hitting all the other industries related to it and sure enough a panic hits the stock market and economy in general.
So did too many people get too greedy? Well, while it's true to say that 110% mortgages had disaster written all over them, it was the lure of cheap money and then the suddent removal of it that caught the majority out. I'm talking about the banks here, not the people. After all, if you lend money to somebody who can't afford it... who's the idiot in this equation?
Then I started to think that all this sound very familiar. Like I'd heard something like this happening before... and sure enough I had. From Social and Economic History, all those years ago in college. 1907 US Banking Panic. I'd not bother with the Wikipedia article, if I were you. Looking at the history it's been filleted.
Instead, turn to this lengthy and accurate documentary The Money Masters.
What was it Garfield once said "He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation". You bet your ass.
Cor blimey! October
01/10/08 22:58 Filed in: Personal
Sorry.. but with the looks of things it's been over a month since I last put .. er.. finger to keyboard. Has it really passed so quickly? I guess it must have.
But to say I've nothing to talk about would be a total lie. So I'd better start tapping.
But to say I've nothing to talk about would be a total lie. So I'd better start tapping.