Flashback

For some reason, I suddenly remembered the scene about 12 years ago when I was a student (ah, those carefree years!) and was reading the World Almanac with a friend looking up factoids.  Man, how times have changed.  I think I haven't touched a book like that ever since cause now I only use Google and save a tree at the same time.

Cancer cell 'executioner' found

BBC NEWS

Wow, this is mind-blowing! If you have a minute to spare, and somebody you care about has ever been hit with cancer, you should definitely read this article.

Belgian waffles anyone?

I've noticed that recently some new kiosks have installed near the ticket gates at the train station, both near my home and near my workplace.  They sell freshly cooked Belgian waffles, and man, these really smell like heaven!  I'm sure the smell must be some compound that's 100% artificial cause I can feel it so strong even though the place is so windy. But still, it makes me lust for those treats.  Gotta resist the temptation if I really want to lose weight.

And I'm not kidding the aroma can be 100% artificial.  I think it was in the book titled "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schloesser that I read it's possible to replicate with pure chemicals even the smell of freshly grilled hamburgers!  He said that if you closed your eyes, you could swear there's a grill in the room!

Cravings

I just came back from buying groceries.  Today I even bought some snacks.  But strangely enough, now I'm cravin for snacks I didn't buy but I did see in the store a while ago.  This gotta stop.  That must be why I always gain weight "unexpectedly".

Glutony

A couple of hours ago I was craving for a snack.  I could've either gone to the nearest convenience store to get some potato chips or fry some french fries I have in the freezer.  Somehow I was too lazy for either, plus I know I shouldn't be snacking so much if I really want to lose weight.  Now I'm not really much hungrier than before, but much happier I didn't indulge.  How many calories must there be in a dishful of french fires with mayo?

Dead bat on my balcony

Every morning one of the first things I do after waking up is to open the windows and the glass door to the balcony.  I don't leave them open through the night cause I'm afraid mosquitoes and cockroaches might invade.

Today when I opened the balcony's door, I found a bat laying on the floor.  It was laying face down, but grabbing with his feet the squiggy I use to clean the balcony.  I thought it was strange that a bat would be in that position, but soon I realized that it was dead!

I'm surprised to find this dead bat in my balcony.  I didn't even know that we have bats in this city!  I wasn't disgusted because it was a bat, I was disgusted to find a dead animal in my home.  I wonder what was the cause of death?  Can it eat cockroaches and mosquitoes?  I wish it were still around to catch those undesirables.

Delete your cookies!

Last night I was reading at home some news on the Internet, and then I noticed that suddenly my Yahoo! Messenger had been knocked offline.  A little while later, my Skype went offline too.  And sure enough, when I tried to load another page in my Firefox, it just gave me an error message as if I weren't connected to the Internet.  Even if I restart my ADSL modem, the problem is still there.  Exact same situation as the day before at the office.

So I called the ISP help desk, and instead of finding the monkey posing as customer servicewoman, I only got a recorded message.

A-ha!!!  Was it telling the people to mechanically delete ALL of their cookies?  No, of course not!  The recorded message was saying that the company is aware of these service disturbances, that they were due to equipment malfunction (of course it's malfunctioning!), and they were already working on it.

I left them my mobile phone number, and like 30 minutes later they sent me an SMS saying that service had been re-established and offered their apologies.

Actually, monkeys should either go back to their trees or be kept in zoos.  They shouldn't let them operate delicate electronic equipment.

Disappearing postings

This is really strange.  As soon as I finished publishing my rant about the ISP help desk, I went to check this blog.  Since that rant hadn't appeared yet, I refreshed several times that screen, and instead of finally seeing that latest entry appear, the previous one about the tiny flies disappeared!

I hate the help desk bitches

This afternoon I've been doing a lot of web browsing.  At some point I noticed that the pages would take a very long time to load.  I also saw that my Yahoo! Messenger got disconnected and reconnected without problems, but this is odd in itself.

Then while I was reading some article I noticed that the icon for my Yahoo! Messenger went offline and stayed offline.  The same with the icon for my Skype.  Shit, the next time I try to open a new page with my Firefox, it just doesn't load; it shows the error message you get when you've got no Internet connection.

I really dislike talking with those morons at the help desk, but what else can I do?  So I call them and the girl who answers asks me what's wrong.  I'm like:  dude, I called your help desk number and followed the recorded intructions and arrived to your extension number, which is supposed to be the special line for high speed Internet connection problems.

Then she proceeds to instruct me to click here and there to delete the cookies.  Mother fucker, she didn't even bother asking me what software configuration I'm using!  She was just assuming I'm using MS Internet Explorer and was instructing me accordingly.  I got angry.  Then when I ask her exactly which cookie she wants me to delete, she indicates a folder name as if it were one specific cookie name.

I really got pissed off.  She was just giving me instructions without having first understood what's the problem.  I reminded this trained monkey that I'm her customer, she eats from the money I pay to her company, and she must listen to what I say.  She transferred me to some other woman (or monkey?).

The second person also bullshitted me for a while, but suddenly things started to work on my side, even though all I did was to restart the modem (I'd done that several times before calling them).  Then she told me that maybe this, maybe that.

What the fuck?  I pay them real money for this service.  I want real people serving me, not barbarians from the jungle.

What's up with these tiny flies?

Since a couple of days ago I'm finding several small, very tiny flies in my apartment.  It's not an infestation, just one in this room, another one in that other room, and so on.  But a few days ago I didn't have even one of those, so it surprises me.  Today I killed two of them, and I think there's at least one more left flying around.  WTF?  The apartment is as clean as usual, I'm not leaving food outside, and I throw away the garbage every night.  I even spray the lower edge to my door from the outside twice a week.

"Islamist fascists"

I just heard George W Bush talking live from Wisconsin.  The topic was this mess happening right now in British airports.  He said something about "Islamist fascists".  I think this is very bad, and he did it intentionally.  He's kind of trying to send some sort of subliminal message to the ignorant masses that Islam is bad by definition.  NO!!!

If I'd been in his shoes I would've said "terrorists who wrongly claim to act according to the teachings of Islam".

Bush is a Christian extremist criminal.

Christmas arrives early

Ananova

This is crazy. Those guys should be ashamed of promoting the commercial side of Xmas to this degree. Wait a sec., is the owner of Harrods even Christian? Isn't that guy the Egyptian guy whom the British government refuses to grant British citizenship?... and also the father of Lady Di's boyfriend?

Cable TV service upgrade

During the first few hours of this day, the cable TV service was unavailable due to a system upgrade.  This was something the cable company had been advertising for more than one week, and the outage lasted for five hours.

Woke up this morning, and checked all of the 99 possible channels I could receive with my cable box, but didn't find anything new worthy of mentioning... except that now the built-in clock has gone crazy!

I don't know how that clock works, but for example, when I unplug the power cable and plug it back in, the clock sets up itself back to the correct time.  But today I noticed that the clock would go several minutes forward or backward when I flip the channels.  Huh, so this is the system upgrade they were boasting about, eh?

Incredible request at upscale store

I'm going to take a taxi later, but I only have big notes in my wallet.  So this afternoon I went to a grocery store near my apartment to take a look, buy something and this way get small change.  I've never been inside that place, but from the outside looks rather nice.

Once inside, I'm surprised to find such an upscale store in a middle class neighborhood.  No wonder the store was deserted except for me and the lonely shopkeepper.  They have lots of yummy things that make my mouth water, but everything costs an arm and a leg.

Anyway, I need small notes, so I select a few things to buy.  When I go to pay, the girl sees my big denomination bank note and says she doesn't have change and asks me to go to another place to get change and come back.

Yeah, you bet I followed her orders.

White House Proposal Would Expand Authority of Military Courts

washingtonpost.com

I read the whole article and I still can't believe it. It's from The Washington Post, so it must be true. So what the Bush Administration wants is to be able to basically decide beforehand who is guilty and not leave the accused any reasonable means of defense?

If the article didn't say 'US', or Bush, or stuff like that, you'd think they're talking about Italy in the Middle Ages or the Spanish Inquisition, serious.

Shame on you George!

Fucking spammers

I don't usually do this, but tonight I entered my spam mailbox and deleted everything in there.  One hour later, six (6) new spams have arrived.  Do these morons really think that if they send me the very same Viagra advertisement three times, I'm going to feel three times as much in the mood to buy from these scumbags?  Somebody should put an end to this waste of resources.

Condi, condi, condi

I've noticed that Condoleezza Rice has changed her hairstyle recently.  I'm glad she did, the new one is far better than the other one.  The old one was really ugly.

Now, I wish changing her foreign policies as easily as her hairstyle.  I wonder if deep deep in her heart she truly believes everything she says in public, especially all of that non-sensical unconditional support for Israel.  Oh yeah, we are not interested in stopping the fire unless there's a long term solution in sight.  Translation:  I don't care if innocent people keep on getting killed in the meantime (as long as they're not American white Judeo Christians).  You Israeli guys can take your time.

Yesterday I had BBC World on when they were describing the massacre in Qana.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw in the subtitles "Condi Rice meets Israeli ministers".  Yeah, not "Dr. Rice..." or "Condoleezza Rice...", the BBC dared address her as "Condi Rice"!.  Well, for the quality of her work she might as well be called simply "That woman".