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As an antidote to all the ranting I’ve done this week, here’s something to laugh at/with.

Its one year from my mother’s death; sometimes it feels like yesterday, sometimes it feels like a long time ago, yet other times I don’t actually believe any of it happened. But, without reason or justice, it did and our lives are the poorer for it. I don’t know how the rest of my family will choose to recognise the date, but I know I’ll be raising a glass in her memory, and to the celebration of being her son.

Sad news today of the death of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter.

I’ve had the Mac Mini for a few months and continually complain about how slow it is. So, before it goes in the trash I thought I’d give a memory upgrade a try. The standard 512MB really isn’t much these days and I read that the video card takes almost half of that so the apps don’t stand much of a chance.

I ordered 2GB of RAM off ebay for $160 and researched how to do the install. Its actually pretty easy if you follow the great instructions found at this link. It is hard to get the case off, no doubt but a good putty knife will see to it just fine. Also, a tiny Philips head screwdriver is required and make sure its magnetic, getting the screws back in is a real pain if its not.

Too early to say what kind of difference it has made but I think it will be obviously better. A couple of pictures on my flickr site.

Its not really a secret, but at the same time its not well known, that when I came to the US and embarked on what I thought would be a great dance career I was persuaded to “wear hair” to cover up my lack thereof. The argument is easy to make, there are few bald(ing) latin dancers and one must do what one must (fake tan, jet black hair dye etc) to compete with everyone else. But I forgot that whats really important is to have a good dance partner and my two partners could barely walk in heels, let alone dance. Oh, and then those damn Russian teens showed up, which didn’t help.

Anywhoo, since I stopped dancing a few years ago there really was no reason not to go back to au naturel, other than the inevitable ribbing I would have to suffer. And so, last night, I got a little medieval on my head and am now a paid up member of the Yul Brynner club. Its going to take a little getting used to but so far I’ve not had any small children run away from me, or animals recoil in fear, so although to me I look like an end-stage cancer patient, perhaps everything will be ok.

At some point I will dig out some before and after, and after again, pictures.

Get thee to Woot! for the woot off; deals are flying fast and furious. Already gone (and its only 8am):

• Bluetooth ipod headphones
• 250Gb Hard Drive(s)
• HP Photo Studio
• iRobot Roomba
• and much much more

Oh, can’t decide between a PS3 and a Wii? This video might help….

Went out last night for a couple of beers and was delighted to find that the hostelry had a trough to pee in rather than the usual single urinals. Now, I don’t ordinarily like to share my space while taking care of business but I like the trough: its large, no need to worry about where to stand, how to stand, where to aim. Just walk right up and go for it. And of course if there’s a urinal cake in there then there’s always the possibility of a little pee football if you’re with a friend.

In other news I bought a Roomba from my friend last night, one that he had spare from a Woot purchase. Its currently charging and I will post a review of its ability after its first cleanup.

[Back to our regularly scheduled programming]

Sat in the food court over looking the ice rink this evening, a family takes the table next to me, mother, father and three small kids. But before the kids can sit down, the parents bring out the wet naps and wipe down the table. Yeah, the table could do with a wipe. Next they wipe down all the chairs, including seats and frames. Well, they are all wearing shorts. Finally, more wet naps come out and they wipe down the metal railing over which you can watch the action on the ice. I suppose you can’t be too careful in these germ infested hovels.

I took this sex i.d. test from the BBC which tries to determine your brain’s gender. It takes about 15 minutes, and you’ll need a ruler but the results are somewhat interesting.

My brain came out as “50% male” which apparantly is the score that the average man gets when taking the test, and one of the tasks revealed that I strongly prefer masculine faces. No, it doesn’t say if that includes beards.

A large number of people here insist on wearing socks with their sandals. At first I thought it was just a couple of people but it seems to be a growing fashion faux-pas epidemic. And now back to our regular programming….