graham.reeds/

Route of all evil

The witty(?) play on words are back. I’ve replaced the shite Belkin Wireless G Plus router with a Netgear WGT624 router which is currently on special offer at PCWorld for a measly £49.99 with a free USB 2.0 adaptor.

Simply put: It hasn’t crashed. Unfortunately I did hit the bug if you try and put a legal character in title of a routing (I think it is the underscore) it wouldn’t show the entry in the table, which prevents you from editing the entry and nor would the routing work. Which meant resetting to factory defaults. Checking the forums seems it is a common fault and they (Netgear) seem unable or unwilling to fix it. Since then I’ve been stuck at 54mbps (currently registers 48mbps) and my router isn’t showing up in the list of available networks (but then again neither is any other).

The Netgear USB adaptor isn’t as good as the Belkin adaptor. The Belkin has green LED which flashes when it is transmitting data – easy to see when it has disconnected because the light stops flickering. The Netgear one has a bright blue LED which pulses rhythmically whether it is transmitting or not, but since the network has been rock solid so far this isn’t too big a deal. The speed is also similar – not broken 1.5Mb a second so I believe it has something to do with my system (an ageing 1.5GHz TBird acting as my media centre).

I will try the spare 54mbps D-Link at some point but I would like to get back to the 108mbps I had when I first installed it.

Answers on a post card…

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Perseverance (pər-sə-ˈvir-ən(t)s)

Trying to sell ice-cream during a blizzard.

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Irony (ī-rə-nē)

Having “The Sun Has Got It’s Hat On” as your ice-cream van theme tune during a blizzard.

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Congratulations

To Sam and Amy Persse who got married on Saturday at Sutton Bonnington Hall.

And then there was one – that means you Chris!!

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A passing of another legend

Another legend, and another childhood icon, Arther C Clarke, has passed away. I’ve been a big fan of him since I was young, and have a substantial proportion of his books. Like Isaac Asimov, his boots would never be filled. A sad day for all of us.

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Chairman Reeds

As I grow older the news becomes more important. I read the BBC News everyday – in fact that where most of my news comes from. However I get very angry about stuff and I believe I come up with good ideas to combat this. So I have decided to publish my ideas and if I ever become a benevolent dictator you can believe that I will try to put as much as possible into action.

Ideas in no particular order:

•  Child benefits: To prevent baby factories earning a small fortune off the backs of workers, you will only get benefits for the first 3 children. Unfortunately you can’t remove the benefits of those who already receive those benefits – because you will be penalising the children (and the bookmakers – or am I just cynical?).
• Benefits: If you can’t speak English, or read/write then you can’t get full benefits unless you go to lessons to teach you. To test you will be given a computer generated check list which will always be different, so the chance of getting the right combination to prove you can read will be very low.
• More benefits: Even if you can read and write but have been unemployed more than 6 months will be put into work groups and assigned to cleaning duties/road works – pretty much like chain gangs. If you don’t turn up and do some work then you don’t get paid.
• Also benefits are the same for everybody. Even if you were a councillor once – why do they get more benefits than everyone else?
• New jails. Also the older jails will get overhauled and the toilets placed at the end of the landing (change two cells into toilets). The cells will be double up to 4 per cell. Its a jail – not a fucking holiday camp.
• Life with no chance of parole: The tax-payer will be supporting these no-hopers for the rest of their natural life, plus they are taking up places in the over crowded jails.  Bring back capital punishment.  Death, especially for those who kill when pissed/high on drugs, will seriously reduce the populous of life’s less desirables. Who would be willing to put these crazies out of their misery? Other lifers. Give them a nice ‘house’ in the grounds, pretty much free reign as long as they keep putting the other prisoners out of their misery. Perfect job for Harold Shipman – Fred West could of done him a nice conservatory and patio.
• Voting: People are stupid. I have very little clue about the bigger issues going on, and that is mainly because unbiased information isn’t available. For any particular issue there will be a web-site/channel for the protagonist and antagonist to put there views forward. Mediators will place references for all information they put forward or call into question any bullshit they smell. People would be able to ask their own questions. Sort of like a real-time news-related wikipedia.
• Government: Less bureaucracy. Also I wonder how many people in the cabinet actually worked in the industries they occupy. What makes Alistair Darling more suited to designing the budget than the average man on the street? Has the health secretary worked in the NHS? Does (s)he go private? I wouldn’t have a cabinet but a group of people who are eminently qualified for the job – the people who actually work there.
• Tax: No more sneaky taxes. Remove all the VAT and move it into income tax. Make life simpler.
• Transport: It’s painfully apparent to anyone who uses public transport that it costs far too much. Scrap season ticket discounts and put in a single tariff for standard class. £1 will take you ~10 miles on the trains. So a 250 mile journey to London from here will cost you £25. People who want silver service can pay an arm and a leg for it, but standard class will get in cheap.
• Personal responsibility: Take some fucking responsibility. Life doesn’t owe you anything. The brightest and best will get the good jobs and some will get the shit.
• Lottery. Currently it is so diluted it’s bloody ridiculous. State will take control and get rid of everything except for the main draw and the scratch cards.
• Make more singular agencies. The internet is making the world a lot smaller place and borders are largely ineffectual. Powerful agencies are still struggling to maintain their old world (pre-2000) monopolies. It doesn’t work any more, and a lot of the laws governing this date back to middle of the last century. Patents are supposed to encourage and protect innovators but patents are so broad they are actually being used by demons to stifle competition. So first a pan-European patent facility which has been designed to stave off the ridiculous patents that have been plaguing industry in the past few years.
• Law: Law will be become more consistent. Juries will not only be a selection of peers but they will also be vetted on what they know about a particular subject. Someone who can barely add up without his fingers should not sit on a case involving the creative use of imaginary numbers and large sums of money.

I will add more as I think of them.

Will you vote for me?

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Stupid fuckwits

In the middle of the biggest storms for years a family decides that this would be a good time to visit the Holy Island. How clueless can you get? Storms, high-tides, flooding. “I know lets drive through the sea in the worst possible conditions imaginable and then put others lives at risk when they have to rescue us.” Personally I would of left them there as that would reduce the stupidity in the gene-pool and the rescue services could of helped people who really needed help.

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Obviously nothing better to do…

Woke this morning, and as I do every morning, checked my email. Waiting for me was a bunch of comments (34 of them) sat in the moderation queue for this very blog. The time they started was 20:23 and he ended at 23:54. That’s 3½ hours of his life he is never going to get back. While I am honoured he spent so long spamming it, he could of got more bang for his buck (so to speak) by spamming a more well read site – he spent longer spamming it than I have spent on writing (very) poor articles.

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Passing of a legend

Gary Gygax, the father of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away aged 69.  I played the original boxed set given to me by my Uncle aged about 12. Then migrated to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd Ed.) and never looked back. Thanks Gary, for all the good times.

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Happy Birthday Mrs Bear

Mrs Bear is 9 today.

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