Arcoarena

From the Debate section of the times website

Fox hunting, smacking, smoking. What next? a ban on …… Four wheel drives?……. Martin Treanor, Hadleigh

Now there’s a good idea! Or maybe a licencing, you’re only allowed a 4×4 if you actually do spend atleast 50% of your working day knee deep in excrement.

This is a very petty thing but…

Guys, don’t put the ‘Default Setup’ button otherwise known as the ‘Let’s put everything (e.g. thresholds, labels, triggers any other changable thing) back to the factory default without asking if that’s what you really want’ button next to the ‘Clear Display’ button, one which I use a fair amount.

I’m off home now, mainly because I can’t be bothered setting the scope up again. Damn you Agilent.

I have one more thing to say.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

A few things:

Firstly: “The Darkness (supported by Ash)”. Why? For a start I believe (and I’m sure I’ll get flamed for saying this) that the Darkness are a short-term novelty act. Much like Electric Six but without the good tunes. Ash are a long standing and quite good band who have been around for ever (generally meaning they must be ok). I’d rather go and see Ash supported by ….well not the Darkness to be honest.

Secondly: Fathers 4 Justice – every bloody saturday some prat with a megaphone dressed in a Batman outfit disturbs my Saturday’s. What do they think they’re doing? Does dressing up as Batman and spending every Saturday morning looking for people to sign their silly petition prove they are capable fathers. Fathers 4 Justice may have a point but the tactics used by some members (nasty ones if the Sunday Times, 21st Nov are anything to go by) undermine their point. I don’t think anyone that scales national monuments dressed as a superhero is capable of suitably looking after himself let alone anyone under the age of 16.

Thirdly: Why the hell am I ranting for no reason? I don’t know. I think I’m in a bit of a funny mood today. Hey ho. I’m getting a TV tuner card for my PC so I don’t have to turn into a safe cracker every time I want to watch TV (I may explain all this later otherwise I’m sure I’ll look back in a few years time and wonder what on Earth I am on about).

Which has just triggered a thought – This whole blog thing has lasted a long time. I’m surprised I haven’t removed it by now. I guess lack of anything useful to replace it with is one factor. There may be a few others though. I could always replace it with this.

Or rather, non-lab based fun. I’ve now got a new Agilent scope to play with and the best thing about it is that it has VNC so I can remotely log in to the scope and use it like that, along with telnet-ing into the board I’m testing I can now do some of my testing from the comfort of my own desk away from all those noisy fans (that the spinning kind not the groupie kind…they have to wait at the entrance).

This is of course all pointless as the response over VNC is sluggish to say the least so I’ll have to return to the lab to nurse my board which is now sprouting wires everywhere and has so many probes attached it looks like it’s in intensive care.

From the Cake website:

Left Brain/Right Brain Trick

While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make
clockwise circles.

Now, while doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right
hand.

Your foot will change direction and there’s nothing you can do about
it.

This appear to be my favourite subject recently.

From the BBC News Discussion on a possible smoking ban

“I sympathise with all the non-smokers who don’t wish to be forced to breathe second hand smoke, but by the same token I don’t want to be attacked by an aggressive drunk when I’m on a night out, so will drinking in public places also be banned?”
Ian, Stoke on Trent, England

Drinking isn’t being drunk and abusive is, infact it’s a criminal offence known as being drunk and disorderly. Also many councils don’t allow drinking on the streets (I’m a little unsure about this but I believe it’s true in Portsmouth atleast). I’m pretty sure that there are several laws that protect against actual violence and many more against other antisocial behaviour. So that’s that point done away with.

” No, I don’t believe smoking should be banned in public places. Isn’t this a form of discrimination?…..As more and more people give up smoking, the government collects less tax from it. This shortfall must be collected elsewhere, i.e. out of the pockets of non-smokers”
Jay, Wigan

Ok then if it’s a form of discrimination how about I sue smokers for some form of abuse?

The bits I chopped out talked about driving smoking underground. A little far fetched as you’ll be able to smoke in your own home. Maybe there would be ‘private’ pubs for smokers or maybe they’d just go outside like they have to in the office or many other places already.

And taxes. Well smoking isn’t being banned outright so the taxes will keep on rolling in whilst people are addicted. Maybe more people will smoke less or give it up so yes taxes may decrease in the long term but that will hopefully be countered by the reduction in smoking related illnesses and hence the cost to the NHS which I suspect is more than then revenue raised from taxing tobacco.

“I am a smoker, enjoy nights out and because I am a smoker pay more tax than non-smokers. Why should I be shoved onto the street to enjoy a cigarette?”
Lisa, UK

And as a smoker you will put a greater burden on the NHS in the future. In my opinion you should be forced to smoke in separate rooms to cause yourself harm. I hate people smoking anywhere even if it isn’t as bad on the street it’s still unpleasant.

“Whatever happened to freedom of choice in this country? It’s ok to gamble and drink all night but not ok to smoke in a pub?”
Jason, Dudley, England

I’ve mentioned freedom of choice before. Gambling and Drinking don’t directly cause harm to others and there are laws to control them already. Infact that point was made by the next person on the page

“Ban smoking in restaurants. Whilst you’re there, ban alcohol as that is dangerous. Ban high fat content in food, ban E numbers, ban petrol so we can’t go out in the first place. Sick to death of this nanny state.”
Paul Gatsby, Newcastle, UK

All those sound reasonable to me. Except the fact that it is possible to go out without petrol, we have these things called legs, that is if you can see past your big fat cholesterol filled stomach to see them.

Do I sound a bit harsh? Smoking pisses me off. I don’t like people doing it, it serves no purpose and it does harm to me and others. Someone give me a good reason for it and I will accept the point but to be fair if you were God and you could go back and decide whether or not to create tobacco or not you’d be hard-pushed to find a reason to create it.

So to Ian, Jay, Lisa, Jason and Paul, you can all f**k off and damage your own lungs and no-one elses and don’t come crying to me when you want a new pair

They have finally given me my money back. Yay. It actually happened a while back but I just haven’t got round to mentioning it yet. It appears they found it too hard and just gave me most of my money back so I think I’m actually up on the electricity bills compared to what I used. It seemed a bit pushy to ask for ‘compensation’ considering I got back about £100 more than I thought I would

I’m going to be back at ICU on Thursday. Why? Well I’m going to the careers fair for the second year in a row. I’ll be the other side of the stands this time though

Well I’m sat in labs (not as painful as the 1st and 2nd year labs of elec eng. it’s surprisingly enjoyable actually). I’ve got a shiny new ’scope (one of these).
I am also surrounded by fans. Because the drives get hot, they need fans. The fans are designed to work in thier cases so we need more fans to compensate for the fact I’m testing them outside of the case.
Also, Johannes is testing a file server with some of the most whiny fans in the world, it sounds as if it’s about to take off.