An Aussie geek stuck in Texas

Okay well I’m staying overnight at the five star Radisson Edwardian at Heathrow Airport and I must say I really wonder how a hotel gets a 5 star rating.

Firstly there is no bath robe in my room like advertised, sure I could call and they would get one here ASAP but that isn’t the point, in a 5 star hotel you should not have to.

Then believe it or not there is not an alarm clock on the bedisde table, WTF is up with that? The TV at the foot of the bad does have an LCD clock so hopefully that will be enough, although my windows are frosted glass and assumedly face another building so my usual trick of leaving them open to get the morning sun to wake me probably won’t work especially seeing how I am on the ground floor. Like what sort of hotel has guest rooms on the first floor?

ASO just upgraded the server I am on (Pi) to PHP 4.4 and MySQL 4.1, this should not cause any issues with my site and in fact should greatly improve performance however there could still be some breakage so if you notice anything broken can you please let me know? I’ve checked what I can and everything seems to be operational but I might have missed something.

Linkage

How does all the violence in Grand Theft Auto only deserve a Mature rating, when a hidden sex scene that sounds like it is not at all realistic and that you can’t actually see any naughty bits leads the game to have it’s rating changed to Adults Only?

The ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) have given retailers an option of either pulling the game from shelves or exchanging their copies for those with the correct rating, I’m guessing they could also just whack a sticker on there to achieve that as well.

Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., said this week the video game industry needs a good dose of government oversight and renewed a call for a law requiring the FTC to determine if the video game industry’s labeling practices are unfair or deceptive.

WTF dude? How about the government take care of issues like health care & education and stay the heck away from parenting? My parents knew full well what kind of games I was playing and thankfully they were fairly liberal so I got to play games like Leisure Suit Larry before when the government believed I was mature enough. I really hate this world where people refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, like why is there even a Parents group surrounding this? It would be different if this was a The Wiggles game that had an embedded sex scene but to complain about a sex scene in GTA is just stupid.

Breaking news from London seems to indicate there were another 3 or 4 attempted attacks today but thankfully from the sound of it their explosives guy was more than a little inept and there are only a few injuries reported at this time, lets hope there are no casualties and no serious injuries tyhis time and also that they catch the people responsible! My thoughts are with the people of London and actually within 24 hours I will be in London myself!

I have an overnight stopover in London on my way back to Sydney (yes I know London isn’t exactly on the way to Sydney from Houston but my company insists on buying round the world tickets for us so we get stuck witha rediculous amount of flying to get home) so I’ll be flying into London (Gatwick) about 10:30am tomorrow, this time however I’m not staying downtown but at a hotel near Heathrow as last time I was almost late for my flight getting to Heathrow for my flight out even though I caught the Hathrow Express. I then fly out the day after about lunch time, first heading to Singapore, then to Perth and finally to Sydney, all up it is about thirty something hours in the air!

If I hadn’t have already arranged to stay out near Heathrow then I would proudly walk around London and catch the subway again, I am not afraid and refuse to give the terrorists the satisfaction of allowing their actions to effect me. Haven’t they got it yet? The more terror acts they commit the more we will be committed in the “War against Terror” (although personally I dislike how that term is used by W., it is so sad how making war has become the mantra of US Presidents!).

Can someone please tell me what is the attraction in posting their last X played songs on a blog or forum post?

I know I have a Current Read section but a book lasts a lot longer than an average 3 minutes for a song and says a lot more about a person than the last 5 or so songs they played. My music tastes vary so much as well especially as I have my Ipod on shuffle most of the day, one moment it could be Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit, then Truly Madly Deeply by Savage Garden, then Milkshake by Kelis, then Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson and then Jump Around by House of Pain.

I think a lot more insightful thing to post would be your top X played songs, although I think my top song is Break Stuff from Limp Bizkit so that would tell people I get frustrated and angry a lot at work and that probably wouldn’t be a good thing.

As you might know I am an Australian expatriate living and working in the USA (Houston, Texas to be precise) with a fairly high paying job that has been steady for several years now but of course seeing how I only recently got that little blessed bit of paper with my Social Security Number on it my credit rating is much lower than that of people that do things like wait tables a few times a week.

I can see their point that I have no established credit rating here but still that is a big kick in the teeth! Like I continuously get offers for Platinum credit cards in the mail and I have had the approvals come back for a limit of just $200, that isn’t even enough to cover some of my bar tabs!!!

Another time I applied for credit at the Apple store as I was trying to buy a pimped out iMac, came back approved but for $500. What freakin good is that to me?

Since when did platinum become the new entry level card anyway? When did platinum stop being the best you could get usually without a set limit?

Okay end rant…

I haven’t personally received any cease & desist letters or anything of the sort but it seems a certain script and plugin based on it has annoyed Polaroid as it infringes on their trademark and as a precaution I have disabled the plugin in question.

However I can’t see how they have any problem with anything except for the name of it so a bit of searching and replacing should make the script/plugin squeaky clean or are they trying to actually enforce something about how the framed image looks?

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/living/12148577.htm

Adrianne Curry, the first winner on America’s Next Top Model, as the show’s “rack girl.” The job requires her to dress well and never get too far out of camera range. Of course, we’re talking about someone whose brief biography includes appearances on The Surreal Life and “a new series in which the focus is her real-life romance with former The Brady Bunch star Christopher Knight.”

From a modelling contract to a rack girl on a b-grade TV show based on an amateur pool and a reality TV show based on her romance with a former Brady Bunch star? How exactly does that happen?

http://nslog.com/archives/2005/07/18/one_year_of_hosting_for_9.php

How in the heck are they able to do that and still provide quality service? They have to be overselling big time to be making any money on that and plus probably counting on a lot of people having to upgrade to a different plan based on server usage.

How else could they be offering over 2GB of storage and 120GB/month of bandwidth? That is just insane!!!

Again remember my offer to provide a Wordpress install free of charge through my hosting here at ASO so if you just want to get into blogging then there are alternatives.

http://engadget.com/entry/1234000560050895/

I’m glad I’m not the only male that is left watching all those sitcom reruns.