The · Upper · Echelon · of · PRAEst76

Poll #1184520 Does anyone actually have a job they enjoy doing?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

Do you love your Job?

I've never had a job I really liked. I've had a few that were bearable with the occasional enjoyable day, but mainly the jobs I've had were tedious, frustrating and quite often completely soul-destroyingly pointless.

I'm having a kind of existentialist crisis at the moment, that isn't helped by many people I know being unhappy in their jobs. So basically, for my own curiosity and the databases of the faceless  multinational corporation I sell these things to...

Note: Shutdown Day inadvertently abandoned due to excessive stress.

According to Autumn:

• White Wine
• Dog food
• Pizza
• Wheaten Bread
• His own poo
• Spagetti
• Pot Noodles
• Pepsi Max
• Curry Chips
• Bran Flakes with Rice Milk
• Athlone Advertiser
• Dogs Monthly magazine
• Peter's hippy wristlette
• Peter's wrist when it smells like a hippy wristlette
• ?
• Profit

Can you survive for a day without your computer, mp3 player, TV, cellphone, or indeed any technology?

Why not try it on the 3rd of May and see.

This is what the organisers of the second annual Shutdown Day are advocating. For one day people should shut down their computers and go outside, enjoy life. Regardless of the personal reason, whether it be social, enviromental, financial...

I think it's a good idea, as many of us have become too reliant on technology and having a day a year when we spurn it should help give us some clarity on the effect computers and related tech have on our lives.

It'd be a nice day to spend with friends so it's a shame I'm so far away from any, but it's a nice idea. Organise a small party or something. Invite me. I won't be able to come but it'd be nice anyway.

I'll probably spend it reading in the sun. Unless it's raining. In which case I'll read in the rain... and drink tea.

Join me.

It isn't until you've owned a large friendly dog with no sense of personal space and a strong willed rabbit that you realise that the psycho killer bunny, Caer Bannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail isn't so much of a far fetched surreal fantasy.

As anyone who has met her knows, Tiikeri is a friendly dog, however she doesn't know when to leave people alone, whethere it's sniffing the trousers of complete strangers, climbing into visitors cars, or sitting infront of you with her head on your lap as you try to read or watch TV, whining every second you aren't stroking her nose.

This extends to the other animals in our family. Begemot, our cat, has never been particulary affectionate towards her and generally leaves the vicinity very quickly the moment she starts seeking attention from him. Since we adopted little kitten Bob, Begemot has also adopted him and spends much of his time wrestling with him, feeding him or showing him around the neighbourhood. castraiting a tomcat turns them minto an Auntie... I never realised this until now. Bob, on the otherhand is quite frighteened of Tiikeri as she chased him the first time he appeared and anytime she encounters him she's immedienately trying to seek his attention or clean him. He thinks she's trying to eat him and either cowers in fear from this dog looming over him, or runs away and hides.

Autumn, our rabbit, is similar. Tiikeri discovered that if she jumps around provocatively, slapping her paws and yelping quietly infront of autum, he gets excited and starts to "play". Like ourselves Tiikeri finds it hard to read Autumns mood. He's a rabbit, they aren't that expressive, or rather, aren't expressive in obvious ways like dogs or cats. To her, he was emulating her behaviour, "playing" in return: slapping his front paws on the ground, hopping in circles, charging at her, making little noises...

To autumn, however, a challenge has been made. He's defending himself from a perceived attack and, far from the perceived myth of the bunny as a timid little fluffy creature, he will fight the death. Launching himself like a furry rocket towards the throat of his foe.

Tiikeri only realises this when enough fur has been snipped off with those little incisors to reveal the flesh around her jugular vein and the teeth go into skin. At this point the pain tells her than the play has gone awry and she tries to escape. However her play-pal has attached himself to her neck like some small fluffy vampire and she can't shake him.

I usually intervene at this point where a snarling ball og fur has been created and remove Autumn via the scruff of his neck to to a dark bathroom for a time-out.

Sadly we only live in a small flat. It's hard to keep the two of them apart and Autumn is used to being able to run around freely (he's litter trained, it's not harder than training a cat and their poo is tidy, and in Tiikeri's opinion, quite tasty). Keeping him in a cage would be cruel. We keep him separate when we are out, but Tiikeri seems to forget his behaviour quickly and starts taunting him to play when she encounters him.

What we really need is space. Preferably in the country side, surrounding a small farm-house.

With broadband.

And a windmill.

And...

And...

Robots, and an underground club.

And stuff.

But for now I need to put reigns and a ball-gag on my pet rabbit.

ESB, irelands monopolic electricity supplier are wagging their finger at me via SMS for non-payment of my bill.

It seems to be normal in Ireland for official information to be sent my text messaging. Possibly not unusual for a country with approximately 1.2 cellular phones to every person, however I find it irritating and unprofessional. There is too much danger of it getting lost amongst the spam from pizza parlours, daft work collegues and general wrong numbers. I'd prefer them to send me a letter, or just phone me; I probably won't answer but it's always worth a try.

Beyond this annoyance there is the one where my bill is unpaid, despite me arranging with them to pay my bill via direct debit. a service I actually rang up a few months ago specifically to confirm... just so I would prevent this kind of scenario.

Sadly the staff at ESB have proven to be as reliable as everything else in this pantomime of a country and I'm now expected to get time off work so I can queue at the post office with all the other plebs.

What happened to the direct debit I set up I don't know. Perhaps I merely dreamt about it.

On a related note I was told that some independant fast food outlets only charge the listed price to immigrants, tourists and people they don't like, Everyone else gets "extra change" back. I'm never sure whether to believe these stories or not. Anywhere else I'd dismiss it either as leg-pull or someone's paranoiac groundless conspiracy-theory, but here... I dunno. It wouldn't surprise me. Even with the majority of staff in these places being "immigrants" or from a non-irish background (the Irish often consider themselves too good for this kind of work, though not too good to sit on welfare). Most foreigners who come to Ireland for an extended period and manage to survive the first few years eventually go native: developing a bizarre hybrid accent, the same relaxed attitude to society and a casual arrogant ignorance.

I love how the modern concept of making friends means adding someone to a list on some poxy website.

Last week some stranger was railing at me because I removed him/her from my "friends" list on a popular website. I had confirmed their request to add me a week previously because when they requested my friendship I'd confused them with someone I already knew, whom I assumed had lost access to their account or had to change it because they'd attracted some lame stalker due to adding random people to their profiles as "friends". This person then sat silently on my friends list until I noticed they weren't who I thought they were and removed them. No contact. No "Hi, thanks for adding me." No attempt at trying to actually make "friends". Yet on removal they adopt this offended act.

So this is what passes for "friendship" these days? No wonder the suicide rate has shot up. These people must be incredibly loney, but then aren't we all? Since adding some of my long.term friends to Facebook they have withdrawn all other contact with me. I've since removed a few as they ignored my personal messages despite bombarding me on a daily basis with notifications and application requests. This phenomena is worse, I feel, than those "friends" who used to send you nothing but lame email forwards of unfunny funnies, vomit inducing prayers and "Bill Gates will give $1 to Tiny Tim for every friend you forward this to" voluntary spam.

I realise now that for me the novelty of Facebook ended quite some time ago and I continue to use it as it seems to be the only way to keep in contact with some of my so-called friends.

Should these people really matter? Normally I'd say no. Get some new friends, better friends. However online social networking sites are such a ingrained part of modern society that it's hard to find people who have slid into this mire. Modern life is so full of tacky gimmicks and manipulative devices designed to sedate and homogenise the populace that it's so easy to just let yourself be lead into these pens for the sake of an easy life. Though I'm not sure life gets any easy and it's certainly not very rewarding.

I'm not going to do what I would have done in the past and remove myself from all these offending situations, avoiding and scorning the people I know within and hidng in a self-made cave for a few months feeling sorry for myself and hating the world. I just alienate people who probably don't deserve it, make myself bitter and put on weight from comfort-eating mushrooms. However I'm getting very tired of these places and the shallow commercial relationships built there. I need to talk with people face-to face. Share blood, sweat and tears with people (HIV test results pending), go to the pub for a laugh, go for walks etc etc. Exclusively online friendships are shite. Especially if conducted solely through the medium of the social networking site. It's not right, don't you people see? This is no friendship and calling it such is insulting to the whole concept, not to mention unhealthy.

Phone your friends on those sites, or if you don't like phones then save up and go and visit them. If you can't step up their friendship level with them in this manner then perhaps you need to ask yourself if they are really friends? If you were in dire staits would they lend you a tenner 'til pay day? Would they come see you if you were grieving? Would they send a gift to your wedding? Would they show up to your funeral?

Talk to them, like real people talk. Find out who they really are. What they really like,  what scares them. If they aren't up to their level of conversation with you or ignore you... remove them. Having three great friends on your 'friends list' is better than 350 shallow morons you don't even know.

There are guides giving you tips on "How to Double Your Friends List". I've just told you how to halve yours. It's better in the long run.

Friendship is important. Don't turn it into another shallow commercial concept.

"As Miss Lancaster kneeled down, cradling her boyfriend's head on her lap and calling for help, the accused and the then 15-year-old youth who has already pleaded guilty to murder, turned on her.
The second boy kicked her in the head, with the accused joining in, the court heard.
Paramedics found the couple lying side by side, covered in blood and unconscious.

Mr Shorrock said the gang had turned on the young couple simply because they were Goths or "moshers" and dressed differently to them. "

 -- Taken from BBC News: Goth clothes 'prompted killing'

Something is very, very wrong in the UK. This is just depressing. It's fairly horrific and serves as a warning that the UK is not a nation that is friendly to 'alternative' lifestyles or selöf-expression. It's a country for conformity and blandness. Standing out will get you savagely killed and you can be ceertain that despite an outcry against this from 'decent ordinary folk' there will be many thinking that this never would have happened if they'd dressed normally. As some lame excuse.

No-one should ever be kicked to death because of the way they dress. Hell, no-one should be kicked to death ever, but kicking someone to death because they are goth is fucking ludicrous.

The fact that this thing seems to becoming even more common, and not just towards goths but pretty much anyone who isn't a member of some loosely associated gang of apathetic twats hanging around some street corner waiting for their next bit of low-brow amusement or indeed gets ever so slightly in the way of such amusement, whether by criticising the youngsters or just refusing to give up their belongings.

There is something so horribly wrong with a so-called modern enlightened 21st century society that creates such ambivalent, violence seeking thugs on such a regular basis.

These incidents are no longer isolated but an almost daily occurence and I can't help but think it's because we are breeding a culture of disinterest and shallow pursuits where the goal of celebrity is all that matters and those that can't acheive this, will either give up and become nihilistic tribal brutes or look for notoriety through violence.

the pursuit of happiness or enlightenment no longer seems to count for most people, if they can't attain fame or wealth they just give up and become selfish malignant parasites, preying on each other for dubious pleasures.

Those few who still try to live their lives in harmony with their world merely attract a form of jealous intolerance and violence.

I just don't get why. This upsets me. how come some people get pleasure out of it? Are they just that ignorant? Don't they ever doubt their lives and wonder if they can change things for the better.

Am I just a freak? A member of a dying race?

Should I just be kicked to death too?

Before you watch, be aware that some people may find this quite disturbing. It's a Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff.


http://view.break.com/463231 - Watch more free videos

The debate is to whether the puppy and it's associated sound effects are real or not. There has been an outcry at the "sickness" of this video, while others have said the puppy was dead or fake and the "yelping" was added later. whether it is or isn't fake the fact that some US Marines made a video of themselves throwing a puppy off a cliff during a time when criticism over their activities there is so high was amazingly irresponsible, but a quick google will show that this was far from the first.

The mainstream media has been avoiding this as much as possible knowing, quite rightly, that if the general public saw it the pressure to pull the troops out and prosecuite everyone one of them for raping babies or worshipping satan would be almost overwhelming... (C'mon, you can see the taboid headlines if you close your eyes.)

Making fake puppy hurling videos is no real better excuse for relieving the stress, pressure and/or boredom of serving in a hostile country than taking pot-shots at shoppers or racing tanks around school-yards when it comes to the negative publicity.

My personal belief is that the troops should be sent home as it seems the only reason not to is to save face. There seems to be no realistic goal and all that's really going to happen is that a lot of new enemies are being generated for future hostilities and an awful lot of serving men and women are going to be needing an awful lot of psychological and emotional care when they try to re-adjust to "normal" life.

If so many people weren't so afraid of being seen as a coward (or gay, or a gay coward) there wouldn't be so much to be afraid of in the world, but this is mankind: If they aren't kicking a man to death in the street because he looked at them funny, they're throwing puppies off cliffs and laughing about it.

And then they wonder why alien beings might be occasionally kidnapping selective people in secret and experimenting on them rather than trying to communicate with the human race openly...

I mean, would you try to have a dialogue with mentally diseased rats?

As a depression sufferer of long-standing it often boggles me that some people seem to actually want to spend their lives being miserable. I loathe these people with a passion and despite seeing myself as something of a moderate I wish them purged, culled or at least round up, tortured and thrown in a dark pit for the good of humanity. Their perversion is beyond anything that can be safely labelled as masochism. It's a form of deviancy that should be no more tolerated than child molestation.

I just wish these people would get some bloody perspective. I have put a lot of effort into remaining positive in my life and when I meet one of these bastards the bummer they'd drop on me is often, thankfully, deflected by they anger they stir up within me and the urge to slap them around liberally.

And some of these people actually have the gall to get visibly offended or put out if you try in some way to lighten their mood or in any way cheer them up.

I think beating them unconscious and locking them in an abandoned chest freezer is a better policy.

Quote by me. When someone asked once about my experience with the mothers little helpers. It was applied to both the medication and the effect they had on my sex-drive.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7263494.stm

As I've suspected for years, anti-depressants are largely a waste of time and money. Possibly in extreme cases where no form of therapy will help perhaps, but in my own personal experience they did fuck all and I fear for many people they are doled out purely as a poor substitute for better solutions that are either unavailable or deemed too expensive.

I'd go as far as to say many people on anti-depressants would have been better off without the pills giving them fall hope with little more than a placebo effect and given counselling or access to support groups like the excellent Aware in Ireland and Aware Defeat Depression in Northern Ireland where they can talk through their illness with fellow suffers including trained facilitators who will actually have first-hand experience rather than some third-person training from a journal or one-day course as many GPs probably have.

Out of all the frustrating crap that Ireland has to offer this very much takes the biscuit.



Considering this has been voted as Irelands song for Eurovision this year I can only imagine that the other nominees must have been bad beyond belief, but my gut tells me that very probably voters have ignored any elements of songwriting talent or tune in favour of an extremely tacky gimmick.

I found dustin the Turkey funny for about five minutes a decade ago. Now I seriously wish someone would take him out to the shed and put two barrels through his scraggy head. Possibly blowing off the hand of the fuckwit operating this overdone tack.

Then they should put that on YouTube.

As camp and shameless as Eurovision is this song is just taking the piss. And not in a way that's even remotely clever or funny.

If I had an irish passport I'd burn it in protest.

What I think makes a good president? Hmmm, interesting. Well I think it takes guts. And gumption. There has to be some enigmatic element too... a certain... I dunno, sexual ambiguity? Style! Prestige. Some flair and showmanship... or showwomanship, if such a thing exists. Which it almost certainly doesn't.

Charm? Or have I covered that?

Erm, I don't really know. What was the question again?

Who was a great president? Well, I'm not sure if he was a great president, but Lincoln was relatively well know. He had a beard. Does a beard make a good president? Have any of the most recent presidents had beards? Were they great? Could be something in that perhaps?

I like beards. What makes a great one? Guts I think, and gumption. The enigma too... I mean, what is behind the beard? What does it contain? The glory of god almighty (Brian Blessed)? A sinister smirk (Gerry Adams)? Or bits of old crisps (David Bellamy)? Who knows. But Style, prestige, flair and all that guff apply here too.

Beards, like presidents, can be great, mediocre, sexy or sleazy depending on how they are managed and presented. Sometimes they grab peoples attention and become icons and symbols of leadership. At other times they just frighten children, make folks feel uncomfortable and need to be removed and burnt.

So. What makes great presidents? Beards.

This is what America needs.

I've been praest76.

Flaky Net connection + Low attention span = Zero Productivity

I'll stick to my flash drive with PortableApps installed...
Oh wait. I fried it.

Arse.

praest76 goes back to dreaming about owning an Asus Eee PC

...kinda.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/02/opensource.stephenfry

I already want one, but having it given the thumbs up in an article by Stephen Fry (an incurable geek for anyone who wasn't aware of it) kinda makes the urge to buy one even more irresistable.

Only an almost total lack of free capital prevents it. Perhaps after our pilgrimage to France to see The Cure I will be free'er to contemplate such things.

Unless anyone has a spare Eee they are using as a paperweight that I could trade for a rock or dead tortoise?

I've got a cellular phone. Don't we all? Ireland has more cellular phones than people. I am also a disorganised fool with a bad memory. Aren't we all? I like to make use of the extra organiser functions on my phone, a Nokia 6070. Specifically the calendar, to-do and note functions. However updating this can be fiddly and like everything else I'd like to do this stuff on my computer and sync it with the phone. There is a sync software and cable available for this model, but as usual it is only compatable with Microsoft Outlook. This is always the way. Microsoft Outlook is the most popular PIM software in the world and reason is because everything syncs with it.

Out of desparation I have installed Outlook to set up my contacts and calendar. This isn't too bad, but I'm always baffled by the idea that people would use this software for email. It's shite. Even using Outlook Express is better, but on Windows my choice has always been Thunderbird. (I prefer to use kmail on Linux but I don't have that option at present) however the inbuilt address book in Thunderbird is shite. So I'm stuck using Outlook and trying to sync it with Thunderbird. None of these programs are able to export and import reliably. Thunderbird always imports address books in such a bizzare fashion, expecting completely unrealistic fields that I have to spend fucking ages afterwards cleaning up the imported data. This means syncing automatically is out of the question.

Anyone know of a plug-in for Thunderbird that makes the address book useful or allows you to import  reliably?

I downloaded a Thunderbird add-on called Noksync that will sync with my phone but it won't import the names correctly and I end up with an address book full of nothing but phone numbers.

This is a pain. In this day and age these things should work better.