Stuzb

time for my two-penneth worth methinks. It had occurred to me that people with such privileges had maybe stickied their own posts because they could, a psychologist may look into it a bit more, but for now, enough said. ) Well, I'm back off under my rock...

well... since you ask, for the past year-or-so I've been the Financial Controller for a group with a combined turnover of £6m. I'll spare all the boring details but suffice it say that I'm the only one in the accounts 'department' so I'm responsible for everything from basic sales invoicing to preparation of full accounts in preperation for audit. On top of that, because 12+ hrs a day just isn't enough work, ;) I also administer the computer network at work consisting of 12 computers running various versions of Windows from routine maintenance and updating to adding new users and workstations/printers etc. And to top it all off I'm also studying for my CIMA exams and also A+ and network+ certifications. ...which is nice . Far more detail than anyone else but you did ask. :)

Country Joe McDonald - I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die-Rag My own edit, as the only version I have is of the performance at Woodstock, anyway, here it is as best as I can manage. Gimme an F! F! Gimme an U! U! Gimme an C! C! Gimme an K! K! What's that spell ? FUCK! What's that spell ? FUCK! What's that spell ? FUCK! What's that spell ? FUCK! What's that spell ? FUCK! Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again. He's got himself in a terrible jam Way down yonder in Vietnam So put down your books and pick up a gun, We're gonna have a whole lotta fun. And it's one, two, three, What are we fighting for ? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, Next stop is Vietnam; And it's five, six, seven, Open up the pearly gates, Well there ain't no time to wonder why, Whoopee! we're all gonna die. Now come on Wall Street, don't be slow, Why man, this is war au-go-go. There's plenty good money to be made By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade, Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb, They drop it on the Viet Cong. And it's one, two, three, What are we fighting for ? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, Next stop is Vietnam. And it's five, six, seven, Open up the pearly gates, Well there ain't no time to wonder why Whoopee! we're all gonna die. Now come on generals, let's move fast; Your big chance is here at last. Now you can go out and get those reds — The only good commie is the one that's dead And you know that peace can only be won When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come. Sing it! One, two, three, What are we fighting for ? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, "Louder!" Next stop is Vietnam; And it's five, six, seven, Open up the pearly gates, Well there ain't no time to wonder why Whoopee! we're all gonna die. "Listen people, I don't know how you expect to ever stop the war if you can't sing any better than that; there's about three hundred thousand of you fuckers out there. I want you to start singin'!" Come on. And it's one, two, three, What are we fighting for ? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, Next stop is Vietnam; And it's five, six, seven, Open up the pearly gates, Well there ain't no time to wonder why Whoopee! we're all gonna die. Now come on mothers throughout the land, Pack your boys off to Vietnam. Come on fathers, don't hesitate, Send your sons off before it's too late. Be the first one on your block To have your boy come home in a box. Alright! ...one, two, three What are we fighting for ? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, Next stop is Vietnam. And it's five, six, seven, Open up the pearly gates, Well there ain't no time to wonder why, Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Another that's just occurred: Johnny Cash - Singin' in Vietnam Talkin' Blues One mornin' at breakfast, I said to my wife, We been everywhere once and some places twice, As I had another helping of country ham, She said "We ain't never been to Vietnam, "And there's a bunch of our boys over there." So we went - to the Orient: Saigon. Well we got a big welcome when we drove in, Through the gates of a place that they call Long Vinh. We checked in and everything got kinda quiet, But a soldier boy said: "Just wait 'til tonight, "Things get noisy. Things start happenin'. "Big bad firecrackers." Well that night we did about four shows for the boys, And they were livin' it up with a whole lot of noise. We did our last song for the night, And we crawled into bed for some peace and quiet, But things weren't peaceful. And things weren't quiet. Things were scary. Well for a few minutes June never said one word, And I thought at first that she hadn't heard. Then a shell exploded not two miles away, She sat up in bed and I heard her say: "What was that?" I said: "That was a shell, or a bomb." She said: "I'm scared." I said "Me too." Well all night long that noise kept on, And the sound would chill you right to the bone. The bullets and the bombs, and the mortar shells, Shook our bed every time one fell, And it never let up; it was gonna get worse, Before it got any better. Well when the sun came up, the noise died down, We got a few minutes sleep, an' we were sleepin' sound, When a soldier knocked on our door and said: "Last night they brought in seven dead, and 14 wounded." And would we come down to the base hospital, and see the boys. "Yes!" So we went to the hospital ward by day, And every night we were singin' away. Then the shells and the bombs was goin' again. And the helicopters brought in the wounded men. Night after night; day after day. Comin' and a goin'. So we sadly sang for them our last song, And reluctantly we said: "So long." We did our best to let 'em know that we care, For every last one of 'em that's over there. Whether we belong over there or not. Somebody over here love's 'em, and needs 'em Well now that's about all that there is to tell, About that little trip into livin' hell. And if I ever go back over there any more, I hope there's none of our boys there for me to sing for; I hope that war is over with, And they all come back home, To stay. In peace.

Couldn't believe no one's posted this yet... ...Guns 'N' Roses - Civil War: "What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach... So, you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it! Well, he gets it! N' I don't like it any more than you men." Look at your young men fighting Look at your women crying Look at your young men dying The way they've always done before Look at the hate we're breeding Look at the fear we're feeding Look at the lives we're leading The way we've always done before My hands are tied The billions shift from side to side And the wars go on with brainwashed pride For the love of God and our human rights And all these things are swept aside By bloody hands time can't deny And are washed away by your genocide And history hides the lies of our civil wars D'you wear a black armband When they shot the man Who said "Peace could last forever" And in my first memories They shot Kennedy I went numb when I learned to see So I never fell for Vietnam We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all That you can't trust freedom When it's not in your hands When everybody's fightin' For their promised land And I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war Look at the shoes your filling Look at the blood we're spilling Look at the world we're killing The way we've always done before Look in the doubt we've wallowed Look at the leaders we've followed Look at the lies we've swallowed And I don't want to hear no more My hands are tied For all I've seen has changed my mind But still the wars go on as the years go by With no love of God or human rights 'Cause all these dreams are swept aside By bloody hands of the hypnotized Who carry the cross of homicide And history bears the scars of our civil wars "We practice selective annihilation of mayors And government officials For example to create a vacuum Then we fill that vacuum As popular war advances Peace is closer" ** I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh And I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war I don't need one more war I don't need one more war Whaz so civil 'bout war anyway

...Or perhaps she just wants you to 'go down' at the slightest oppurtunity? ;) :P

I wonder how the trapped nerve thing came about? 'Music legend David Bowie is recovering at home in New York after emergency heart surgery. 'Bowie, 57, had an operation last month in Germany - where he was on tour - to treat "an acutely blocked artery", his spokesman said. Source

A difference between the US and UK perhaps. Let me explain... At about the age of 9 I played violin for about two years, though my age and immaturity went against me as I never really bothered with it - lack of practice coupled with apathy makes an instrument very hard to learn. Shortly afterwards I picked up the accoustic guitar and swiftly moved onto the electric guitar; about 3 yrs later my brother picked up the guitar and was evidently much more talented so I bowed to sibling pressure and avoided any potential rivalry by quickly switching to the Clarinet and completed grade 8 within 5 years (dunno US equivalent, but it's a very high standard in UK), all the while I used the keyboard for composition and transposition of performance pieces. Given all this I've still never performed anywhere more glamourous than pubs and a couple of local theatres. Mind you, at least the rental of the otherwise prohibitively-expensive instruments was covered by the state, otherwise I would never know the true beauty of music. I s'pose I should be grateful for that at least :)

Well, thanks to a very kind person from another forum I once frequented, I have the following suggestions: Firstly, Gillian Welch, perhaps some of her stuff is more 'folky' than country but worth a listen none-the-less (bear in mind I'm 22 and was very closed to the idea of listening to anything that even smelt like Country music let alone actually sounded like it)! Secondly, Asylum Street Spankers; some of their stuff is slightly swing-biased but some of it I would class as Country (maybe I'm being ignorant, but what the hell - after about 10 listens I've actually warmed to their album Spanks For The Memories). And thirdly, and completely unapoligetically, I would highly recommend either Last Train to Mashville or Last Train to Mashville II by Alabama 3. They (the albums) are a big departure from what most of their fans actually like about them (including me, and I'll let Slum Goddess add her own thoughts) but the albums seem decent enough efforts into the world of Country-inspired music. I hasten to add none of the above are all-out bluegrass efforts (which is my presumption/interpretation of "old country") but perhaps less extreme examples of country-esque (if I can put it that way) music. Anyways, it's all out there for next-to-nothing if you know where to look ;) which can't be bad.

Firstly, that's part of the point of RAID and secondly... the 'Disk Management' within the 'Computer Management' applet as part of the control panel within Windows 2000 & XP allows drives to be mapped as one, and with any type of drive, ATAPI (ATA), Serial (SATA), or SCSI, and they support RAID levels 0 and 1 (both mirroring and duplexing techniques) whilst NT/2000 server editions also support RAID level 5. MS refer to this as 'Dynamic disks' and although it's software based, and probably eats into CPU overhead (though I've not noticed any CPU usage personally), I just thought it should be worth noting that Intel aren't the first to support the RAID technique without extra hardware expense - needing specific SCSI drives and a SCSI controller. It seems odd that Intel should be pushing this as some sort of technological feature, but it may be aiming from a hardware POV and in that case may be the first to offer RAID support as 'standard' as it were.

Apple Power Mac ads 'misleading' 'A complaint against Apple's claim that its Power Mac G5 was the "world's fastest personal computer" has been upheld by the UK's advertising watchdog. 'The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that the G5 was not the fastest computer "in all circumstances for all applications". 'Two other complaints about the G5 ad were rejected. 'The ruling comes as Apple rolled out a new range of G5 computers. Full story here

But Method, I think you miss the real hilarity. Firstly, there was a very expensive security system set up to prevent things like this happening in the public gallery. However, due to our completely stupid and old-fashoined reasoning that anyone with a peerage (Lord, Baroness etc) is completely trustworthy then anyone with one of those tickets (and the approval of the respective peer) is granted access to the non-public gallery where they can perfect their condom-throwing action. It should also be noted that this wasn't an anti-government protest, but a 'Fathers for Justice' protest. Also, Method, ignore our press - I do. Of course, my concern is for people who turn up to see the Olympics, but they know the security risks before they go, so they pays their money and takes their chances. From the above link: Because it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. :D

Been kinda lonely and stuck for something to do so I decided to attempt the CompTIA's A+ certification and basically, as far as hard drives go, it's something like this: A GB is indeed 1024 MB but in order to use any hard drive it needs partitioning primarily and then formatting and it is the formatting process that takes up the difference between stated capacity and actual capacity. Try formatting your drive in dfferent formats and watch the results. A large (upto 137GB) hard drive will lose a massive amount of potential storage if you try and use FAT32 as a file system compared to the new NTFS5 standard. There's a reason for it but I'll spare you the nerdy details (to do with cluster sizes and physical limits of BIOSs/OS file formats) As for partitioning, you can only have 4 primary partitions per drive, so to use more than 4 partitions you're going to need to take advantage of extended logical partitions and then you start to lose performance as the OS is making the drive actually create partitions within a partition. If you're aiming for OS performance then the general rule is to create a partition about twice as big as the size of your RAM and make that drive letter function as your swapfile (or 'virtual memory' as Windows terms it). This is exactly what Linux does and it works. As for other partitioning, well, unless you need a different file-system it won't make any difference how you partition it, except for things like specific defragmenting/virus-scanning and other drive-independant actions. Bear in mind that almost all apps use the registry to function properly - games that use DirectX, for example - so having to reformat the OS's partition will mean that anything installed on another partition will need to be re-installed to make the app work again. I appreciate that it's the same situation if you install these apps on the same partition as the OS, but it's worth noting that partitioning doesn't necessarily solve problems associated with having to re-format. ...isn't this just fascinating stuff ;)

So, with a score of 2 I'd win? :) Also, please excuse my pedantry, but since when has 123 been a prime number? ;)

For all you Yes fans in, (or willing to travel to) Britain: http://www.yesfanomenon.org, you can also download a Yes font from the site. They're also touring the US at the moment and a British leg is taking part throughout June.

An interesting site: The myth of Einstein? 'Hilbert published the field equations of general relativity five days before Einstein copied them from Hilbert 'Einstein even fudged his equations in order to achieve the results others had published long before him. 'In point of fact, therefore, Poincare was not only the first to enunciate the principle, but he also discovered in Lorentz's work the necessary mathematical formulation of the principle. All this happened before Einstein's paper appeared.' 'Einstein's explanation is a dimensional disguise for Lorentz's. . . . Thus Einstein's theory is not a denial of, nor an alternative for, that of Lorentz. It is only a duplicate and disguise for it. . . . Einstein continually maintains that the theory of Lorentz is right, only he disagrees with his 'interpretation.' Is it not clear, therefore, that in this, as in other cases, Einstein's theory is merely a disguise for Lorentz's, the apparent disagreement about 'interpretation' being a matter of words only?' 'The list of true relativists is long. To name but a few: Des Cartes, Huyghens, Locke, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, Comte, Spencer, Stallo, Hamilton, Mach, Anderssohn, Avenarius, Petzoldt, etc.. A real relativist, like Stallo, would never have embraced the absolutist "special theory of relativity", with its codified absolute space and time, and absolutist "space-time" and the ontological "universal constant" speed of light and absolute laws of Nature.' -- -------------------------------------------------- I'll leave you all to make up your own minds.

@ 'The Point,' it's hilarious. Also, 'Old saying' :rotfl: Just WTF is the bloke on, and what sort of idiot is Tony Blair to go along with him?

And I've mentioned this in another post - but hell, I'm mentioning it again - I was there. Fucking excellent gig. Mick Taylor was a bit of a dissapointment, Buddy Whittington outshone even Clapton (for my money) :strumma: Mayall was ever-present, playing the harmonica, keyboard (sometimes both at the same time!) playing guitar and singing. Also appearing was Chris Barber OBE, who is credited with having brought the big US blues artists of the 50's to Britain, and was stunning on trombone. A mention should also go out to Tom Canning, who was blinding on the organ. The funniest thing about it was being offered a programme, and the girl trying to sell them telling me that 'he [John Mayall] is 70 this year - he might be dead by Christmas' :rotfl: Well, he's still alive and touring, so she was wrong :) It should also be remembered that the gig was part of the 'Unite for Unicef' program of concerts, and that all proceeds go to Unicef. Anyways, Meehowski, have a great time if you get to see 'em - should be a great gig!

I much prefer 'The Meaning of Life' to any other Python effort, but what do I know. It's more of a sketch-based film than a flowing fully fledged film, but it's a classic AFAIC.

'They' don't need to - there are already plenty of companies more than willing to pedal the same old crap to gamers already Tomb Raider 31 anyone? What about Mario 12, or 'Sonic and Jaws' (where 'Jaws' is a chinchilla in the 18th Sonic game). How about the innapropriately named 'Final Fantasy C' (in that it's neither final, nor anything similar to any fantasy of mine ;) ) Films, games, they're all the same - if it sells, make a sequel - if the sequel fails to sell, make a prequel, it's simple really. And whilst people buy it, then that's all we'll get.

Currently in my CD player: Essential Johnny Cash - Disk 3 Sugababes - Three (don't know if the Americans have heard of these girls yet, but I think you will soon) Electric Six - Fire Alabama 3 - A self-made compilation (referring to a compilation I created myself, rather than an album title :rolleyes:) Evenescance - Fallen Rage against the Machine - RATM John Mayall's 70th Birthday gig in Liverpool feat the Bluesbreakers, Clapton, Mick Taylor & Chris Barber - a gig made all the more fantastic because I was there, I got EC's signature and to quote John Mayall 'the blues doesn't get any better.'

I'll spare ya this one

Or alternatively: 1.Shut down computer 2.Turn on computer 3.Quickly insert Linux disk 4.Install Linux (leave over an hour for RedHat9 full install) 5.When rebooted in Linux, swear at the lack of recogniniton for your Grafx card 6.Reboot again to try and get to a command prompt 7.Swear again when WinXP boots instead 8.Finally get to working, viewable version of Linux. 9.Swear again, cos your soundcard isn't recognised and nowhere has a driver for it 10 reboot to XP but promise to investigate Linux a bit more when you have more time 11.Select the 'shootthemessenger' link up there 12.Live happily for a brief while, knowing that messenger is turned off. :)

Also, for those of you wondering about SG - let me tell you, she's scarier in real life :P As for her shades, well, come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen her eyes In fact, remove the hat, and this is her: :smokin: :rotfl: And she's never gonna forgive me for that.

Me with a cheesy 'I'm really happy to work here' grin.