The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
There’s something that I know is not unique to me, but sometimes it really annoys the crap out of me. I’ll be listening to music (usually my ipod set to shuffle across a few thousand tracks) and, all of a sudden when a really emotionally-charged track comes on, I’ll choke up and be close to tears.
I feel fine, I really do, but I have the damnedest time explaining that to my co-workers who ask me what the problem is.
Microsoft finally agrees that it screwed up with Vista, but doesn’t say it in those words:
Microsoft grants XP new lifeline
Microsoft has given another lease of life to Windows XP only days before PC makers have to stop selling it. Windows XP reaches its end of life on 30 June but Microsoft has now said it can continue being sold until June 2010 but only on cheap desktops.
The decision follows one made in April to extend the life of XP on low cost laptops until the same date. It comes as Dell, HP and Lenovo exploit loopholes in Microsoft’s licensing terms to keep putting XP on machines.
In an announcement at the Computex trade show in Taiwan, Microsoft said the decision was prompted by customers asking for the software to be put on low cost desktops. Industry experts believe the decision is also motivated by the fact that low cost machines cannot run Windows Vista – the newest version of the operating system. They also say that many of the low cost laptops run Linux – an open source rival to Microsoft’s operating system.
Low cost laptops, such as the Asus Eee PC, have proved hugely popular. Research firm IDC predicts that sales of ultra low-cost notebooks, will reach nine million units in 2012. The extension Microsoft granted to XP for these low cost laptops, or netbooks, covered machines that have no more than 1GB of RAM; a hard drive up to 80GB in size; a processor running no faster than 1GHz; a screen no larger than 10.2in (25cm) and no touch screen.
The terms of Microsoft’s licensing arrangements with PC makers dictate that they must stop offering XP as an option on new machines after 30 June. Many PC makers have flouted this cut off by shipping machines running certain versions of Vista with a “downgrade license” that lets customers revert to the older operating system.
Source: BBC
Guy Ritchie is to take a look at an older style of crime movie with a new Sherlock Holmes adaptation
The Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels director has been contracted by Warner Bros Studios to helm a film based on an upcoming comic book about the detective.
Sherlock Holmes, set for a 2010 release, will be based on an as-yet-unpublished graphic novel take on the Arthur Conan Doyle creation by former Warner Bros creative executive Lionel Wigram, who will also produce the film alongside Dan Lin.
Though the plot of Wigram’s approach to the 19th century detective remains a secret, it is believed it reimagines Holmes as a more adventurous character, who exploits his pugilistic talents and swordsmanship, according to Variety. Warner Bros has been considering a new cinematic approach to the Baker Street resident for a number of years, with The Descent director Neil Marshall at one point attached to direct.
Ritchie will now rewrite a script penned by Michael Johnson and based on Wigram’s comic.
Our pictures from Canada are online at http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/bobbles_canada_may2008/.
You’ll notice a recurrent theme. As we were packing our bags prior to leaving, we realized that a small plush Bobble the little blue owl had been living in my backpack for close to a year now. How could we be so cruel as to evict him from his home? We couldn’t, so we took him with us and cataloged his many adventures.
It was quite astonishing to see where we managed to make him end up. He was an instant hit with everybody that interacted with him. I was shameless in trying to get him anywhere I could (Katy was mortified on more than one occasion). My motto was if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Because of this, we managed to get him:
Never underestimate the power of the owl! We got some pictures that still manage to crack us up! All in all, Bobble had a great trip, ate waaaaay too much for such a little blue owl that he is and tried to kill himself with chocolate on more than one occasion.
Having said that though, he was very tired at the end of the trip and was glad to be back home.
ORANGE COUNTy, Fla. — A 13-year-old girl’s sexual shenanigans have put a second man behind bars. Morris Williams, 22, told the judge he thought the girl was 18-years-old, but he found out Tuesday that ignorance is not a defense.
Morris Williams’ mother wailed as he went off to jail. The judge asked for media not to show 13-year-old Alisha Dean’s face in court, but her pictures are all over her MySpace page and they portray a sexy, 19-year-old divorced woman.
“She told me she had just turned 18,” Williams said.
Williams said Dean picked him up on the street and after a few conversations they had sex. When he heard she was not 18, he went to her father.
“He was like ‘well, she’s 13,'” Williams said of a conversation with Dean’s father.
Williams said he never did it again, but Dean has done it before with 24-year-old Darwin Mills. Mills was sentenced to five years in prison. Dean’s father wanted Williams to join Mills there. Williams will serve six years probation with the first year in jail. The other five years he will have to wear an ankle monitor. His attorney says he will come back to court to ask again for a shorter sentence.
“One of the reasons for the law is the fact that minors have poor judgment,” said Jerry Dean, the girl’s father.
Williams’ father believes the jail sentence sends the wrong message to Alisha.
“I guess we just sit back and count how many after this,” Henry Smith asked after his step-son was sentenced to jail.
Alisha’s public Myspace is now down, but it wasn’t, even when the case went to court yesterday. The suggestive material was enough to make grown women blush. A couple of her videos show the minor child shaking her womanly booty like she’s working the pole. It’s totally believable to me that young men might not realize the girl’s age if she lied about it. Furthermore, Jerry Dean openly admitted that Alisha continues to stay out late and hadn’t deleted the Myspace that listed her as an adult. Even now, her private page says she’s 16 – three years older than she really is.
This is the Peanut.
If all goes according to plan, the Peanut will be with us by the end of November.
So far, things are going well (touch wood). Katy hasn’t had any morning sickness (though she does have afternoon queasiness and killer heartburn) and the only really annoying thing she has is the need to go pee every two hours.
We’re in the process of discovering just how little we know about baby stuff and just how expensive everything is. Besides being scared shitless at the prospect of becoming parents, we’re looking forward to it†.
Katy would prefer it be a girl (because she says that everybody she knows is having boys and is upsetting the population balance). I won’t comment on what sex I’d like the Peanut to be (and don’t ask me why I won’t comment because I won’t comment on that either). I’m just hoping that all the right pieces are in the right places. That’s always a good start.
We’ll keep the readership informed with pertinent details when we get them.
† Even though I’ll never publicly admit it
Katy and I are back from Canada. The bags are mostly unpacked, the laundry mostly done, the cats are back home with us.
Trip was good. Lots of pictures.
News to come.
Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired.
We cut the grass this weekend.
We had to.
It was becoming shameful.
I’ve seen hay fields that has shorter grasses. Katy has seen meadows that were less densely packed.
If you left the lawnmower in the middle of the grass, you could only see the top of the handlebar. It took about two hours to get everything done and even then, I stopped counting the number of times I had to restart the engine because it cut out.
And as such, it is the worst thing that can happen to me, oh woe is me. I stayed home yesterday and felt sorry for myself. I couldn’t justify it two days running and went to work today (having said that, I can actually swallow today – something I couldn’t really do without being in pain yesterday).
Seriously though, I hope I get rid of whatever bug I have before we leave for Canada. What’s even more important is that I hope Katy doesn’t get it while we’re in Canada. I want us to have a nice, event-free holiday for once.
Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired.
We went to Leics this weekend to see Katy’s parents. Donna and Will came up on Saturday to collect the fish from Mel’s pond (he wanted to get rid of it and they bagged all the fish, plants and rocks for their own pond). Katy had a nice chat with Rita and we all enjoyed Pam’s curries on Saturday night (though we suffered the following days – gotta love those chillies).
We came back to Cambs Sunday evening after depriving Mel of even more fish – the aquarium ones this time. We got half a dozen plants and about a dozen fish for ours, which finally make it seem nice and populated now. Best news is that none of them were floating upside-down this morning. See how the next few days go.
The weather is really starting to heat up hereabouts. They’re forecasting 24 today. I already miss winter.
Plans are going forward for our trip to Canada at the end of the month. We have the hotels booked for Montreal and Quebec. We only need to book the Hilton and arrange transportation across all the cities. This should get done this week.
We need to get the tires looked at on the car. It would seem that the alignment or the tracking is off because the wear pattern is off and they seem to be balding on one side more than the other. This is going to prove fun to do because of English law – if the tires are deemed unsafe, we can’t drive it off the lot but at the same time this is our only car and Katy needs it to drive to work. Fun.
Did I mention that we’re both tired?
We are.
I can only hope that the coming weeks don’t kill us for the vacation and that the time we spend in Canada is fun and uneventful.
