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What’s up with cans of fizzy pop these days? Over the last few weeks I don’t think I’ve been able to open one can without it splashing everything nearby. I don’t think I’ve lost the ability to open the can right, so what gives Coca Cola Co?

Well, one of them anyway… brash consumerism. When I was a kid, heck when I was a salary-earning adult, Dad got a tie for Father’s day, or maybe a tape or CD that he liked. So wtf do I see ads on TV telling me to buy Dad a plasma TV, or a $500 camera?? Kids are being told that they don’t really love their dad if they buy him a cheap shirt?? What a crock.

Oh, anothing that sucks about the USA? Their football team heh heh.

I’ve had my little Mac Mini for a couple of months now and whilst I love its slender form, its quiet sound and glorious OS X, I am struggling not to throw it in the trash. Why would I do such a thing? Its too damn slow.
Having used high-spec PCs all the time I was prepared to trade some difference in performance for the joy of returning to OS X, and all the other Mac goodness. But its hard to enjoy when it taks so long to get to it. I have Thunderbird and Firefox running all the time, switching from one to the other takes 20 to 90 seconds, just to bring the window to focus. Lord help me if I have anything else running at the same time

I had some photos to resize yesterday. It was such an ordeal waiting for the photo editing software to launch that it was quickler to email me the pictures, start my business PC, get the mail, edit them in Photoshop Elements, upload them to the walmart photo centre for printing and shut the PC down. When the photo software finally loaded, it didn’t even have a resize option(!). I thought the Mac was supposed to be good for media manipulation.

I shall try upgrading the memory to a Gb and see how much that helps. If I don’t see much improvement I may be going back to Windoze for my daily chores.

So, the Portuguese coach says he definitely isn’t going to be the next England coach; apparantly he doesn’t like being hounded by the press. Go figure. But it seems to me that the England football coach should be an Englishman, not some bloody foreigner. Can you imagine the French or German teams hiring someone from another country? Now, it may be that we don’t have any decent coaches (unlikely) but even if true, the England coach should be like the England players: English.

Here’s a few things that wind me up even though I know there’s no good reason for it.

• people using ‘toilet seat protectors’
• people who use chopsticks at chinese fast food places
• people who order ‘to go’ and then eat in

Hmm… thought I had a lot more but now I can’t think of them.

So today we have snot-nose students protesting the latest plans for immigration reform. Now, students will protest anything of course – I remember being part of a sit-in at UEA when some ‘facist’ speaker came to visit – but I become increasingly fed up with the “illegals are not criminals” mantra.

Of course the very term illegal immigrant is now supposedly racist but, by definition, if you do something illegal then you are a criminal. If I burgle your house I am not an undocumented visitor, even if I am desperate and only trying to better myself and my family.

At work today one of my new colleagues has been waiting 3 years to make progress on his Green Card application; $000s have been spent on his behalf to prove his value to the country. Why then should someone who has no interest in paying taxes or contributing to our society get a free pass? Make the process easier for all (note I said all, not just Mexicans) so that those who genuinely wish to belong can come; punish those who wish not to go through the process to the maximum.

Something that always amuses me – we all know that when people talk about illegal imigrants they really only mean Mexicans (and maybe Europeans). If the government was to propose real reform, say invite 75,000 Iranians and Syrians (I bet many of them are as desperate to live here as the Mexicans) I bet today’s protestors would be out again saying how the country is letting too many people in. Finally, let all the illegals who want to stay, stay, but they have to live in the same neighbourhoods as the protestors, paying no taxes but using all social services, refusing to speak English in schools…. Whats that I hear? Oh yeah, silence.

So I was watching CNN this morning and saw this article about giving men parental choice, like women ‘currently do’. In essence these guys want the right to say “you have the choice to have or not to have the baby, and I have the right to say that if you have it I will not be responsible”. The guy bringing the lawsuit said he told the girl he didn’t want to be a father but they got pregnant anyway – why should he have to pay anything towards it, she knew his wishes. What an idiot. We don’t need a law to ‘protect’ men from being fathers, we have things called condoms, maybe next time this guy should try one. Read more about these halfwits at the National Center For Men.
Is it me or are we becoming a nation of people who won’t take responsibiity for anything. I got you pregnant – not my deal! I spilled hot coffee on my lap whilst driving – not my fault! Come on people, be adults, not children.

I get an email today advertising a brand new service for pilots, tells me to go to leftse.at. I scratch my head thinking what a bizarre URL and then it hits me – take out the dot and you get leftseat which is where the pilot in command sits. But its hideous; leftseat.com is taken so I am sure they couldn’t decide what to do but I really hate what they came up with.

So you didn’t listen to me on Thursday, or perhaps you voted for Jerry just out of spite? Dancing With the Stars has problems with its final show – Jerry is almost guaranteed to win as he clearly has the popular vote. But anyone with one half-working eye knows that his dancing is not on a par with the others, and the articles are no doubt already being written about what a sham the show is. Because of the ranking system used, about the only way Jerry can lose is if the judges tie Drew and Stacey for first place. If that happens then Jerry can only come second no matter the viewer vote. But if there’s a tie, we’ll all know that the ‘fix’ is in. Like I said, the final is damned no matter what.

We all know reality shows are little to do with reality but in most cases the person who goes further than they should is usually gone when it comes down to the trophy, and the winner is usually deserved. But here that person is likely going to win if the show doesn’t get rigged against him, and I’m not sure that’s happened in a reality show before.

So recently I’ve been printing out a lot of job descriptions, emails etc and almost every time I get one extra page than I expect, containing just a couple of lines of copyright or other irrelevant text. Why does this happen almost every time ? I ordered a new cell phone at the weekend, printed the receipt and there’s one line on the second page. I’m tired of wasting all this paper.