rwrylsin

I'm transplanting this from Twitter, and will probably digress.

For context, the question is: People keep v. different schedules; how do you know when's safe to sms them?
One possible response: if you don't want to be disturbed, turn your phone off.

( Got long. )


And get off my lawn.

The Aussie government is gearing up to say sorry next month. I thought I'd post about it, mostly because my opinions on these issues have changed a lot over the last decade or so and I'd like to note down what I think now. Partly also because I know that even on my friends list there will be some people a little surprised to hear I approve of the move, and I think it deserves explanation.
Or alternatively, I'm just trying to sort my brain out in public. It's long, and possibly annoying morality-via-navel-gazing so... you've been warned.

( Rationalisation Ahoy )

This rant comes with no warranty, express or implied, and no apology. It should be in no way construed as representing the views of the Australian public, or as a personal apology. 'Cause let's face it, apologising to a bunch of non-aboriginals reading my live-journal would be pointless grandstanding at best.

Now if only I could get this opinionated about fencing again, I could finish that damn fanzine.

Reading around, I'm a little perplexed at how het up some people are about the privilege meme. (And thus do I stumble upon my assumptions.) I need to rant a little.

( So, a slightly long rant )

Edit: Oh, and I guess this may upset some people if they read it and perceive it as a personal attack. It's not, but obviously you are supposed to think about this stuff personally, it's kind of the point. To save myself from flames I can only reiterate that privilege is not necessarily bad, unless you're trying to deny it to other people, or deny that it exists (which can amount to the same thing).

Saturday was fairly quiet. David was off fencing (hence I could make a complete mess of the kitchen with impunity), so mostly just caught up on the washing and fiddled with the computer a little.

On Sunday it was my turn to tootle up to Grangemouth for the ( Scottish Champs )

( Vaguely Related Rant )

One thing I'll say for UK radio, it provokes more thought in the morning that anything I ever encountered on Australian breakfast radio. I'll also give it points for the fact that it is the callers and 'experts' that make me turn it off in disgust rather than the presenters - who appear to be rational human beings if you can believe such a thing.

Anyway, apparently I need to purge morning radio out of my system, so bear with me while I rant.

( So, based on 60 seconds of radio-as-alarm listening while in London )

Godsdammit it should not be so hard to replace a battery! I can't even find the damn thing!

Ahem.
Previously on LJ, I related the strange temporal misplacement being experience by my iMac. Nudged by morniendil I finally investigated the battery option, and it does indeed appear that the battery is the problem.
Googling started well with a step by step guide to replacing the battery. I then went looking for the battery. The backup battery is, as it turns out, a standard CR2032. So if you ever need one pop out to your local electronics store and get one for less than £2. This will save you £25 on the standard price for an apple part-number labeled battery, or £40 off the most extortionately priced one I saw. This took quite a lot of surfing to find out.
During that surfing, I discovered that there also seemed to be another battery, the PRAM/clock battery. This of course is the one I actually need to replace. It is also a fairly standard 3.6v lithium battery available for less than £6, do not pay £50+ for one.
You're not supposed to replace this one yourself, so there are no official instructions. There are also no unofficial instructions that I can find but how hard can it be to replace a battery? Apparently there is some danger of explosions, according to one website, but another asserts that the process is easy.
But where is this PRAM battery? I've found it for the previous generation of iMacs, for the Powermac, and for the G4s, but not my 20" G5 iMac. Many people talk about replacing it, but no one speaks of its location.
Still, how hard can it be to find it? It's not a small battery relative to the size of my case.

Ha.
Opened up Fafnir, a painless and easy task. Located the backup battery easily and replaced it just to be sure. Then proceeded to peer into every nook and cranny, removing protective cases that used multiple different security screws in an attempt to thwart me, but all to no avail. Where the hell is it? Unless it's snuggled under the CPU heat sink or inside the power supply I just can't see another battery in there anywhere.

Current status: I no longer get pre-1970 date warnings on start-up, so apparently the back-up battery handles something. I'm still getting random time shift during sleep though.
If the PRAM battery exists in my iMac, it is confoundedly well hidden. If it doesn't, then why the hell is the clock still playing up?
I do not want to pay £60 in labour just to have someone replace a battery for me!

Edit: And for anyone wondering what it looks like:

An SMS from work at 6am is a hell of a way to start a day.
It wasn't even important.

I'm going to take a nice long walk and hopefully the sunshine will convince me that the day can be salvaged.

New standard settings mean I can't customise my desktop background!

Partly this annoys me because the insipid blue background they've provided doesn't give me the contrast I need to manage oodles of windows on a small monitor - my eyes have trouble picking out window edges if I don't have either a strong contrast or plenty of space to see the pattern change.
Mostly this annoys me because I've had my robot fencing picture on my work desktop for 10 years and I like it that way!
It is impervious even to my illicit Admin priviliges!

Happily I have found that they are using a 3rd party app BGinfo to put stats on the screen, and it is customisable. After logging out it defaults back, not sure where it's reading it from, probably something over the network since it comes as a package deal with my internet access, but as long as I don't log out too often I can subvert their standard desktop.

So it is once again a nice contrasting BLACK, with my robots at the center. And my Admin rights are at least good for upping the dpi setting so I can have both reasonable screen resolution and readable text.
I think my computer is finally ready to use. Must be home time.

It's probably just me, but something seems wrong when the beverage machine at the fitness centre offers you a choice of three different types of hot chocolate.

Yesterday we went hunting for some of the DVDs that went missing during the move. Fortunately most are old enough to pick up at sane prices, even over here. At the counter, there was a pile of leaflets explaining that if you bought a pirated DVD it would probably be filmed from the back of the cinema and be crap quality, and was very bad so don't do it. Oh, and report pirates if you saw them. I am now keeping my eyes peeled for people with eye-patches or peg-legs.
Later we went to a movie, I Robot. Quite enjoyable, although I wonder how much the shoe company paid for their product placement. Preceding it was a short piece instructing us to love movies, but hate pirates.
As we left the building we noticed a sign in the foyer we missed earlier. It explained in large letters that terrorists sell pirated DVDs. Probably just as well the place was mostly deserted as we fell out the doors trying valiantly to stifle the laughter. Surely, we thought, everyone knows that terrorists run cake stalls and sell cookies door to door to make their money?

Ok, maybe terrorists do sell pirate DVD's to fund their activities, how would I know. They probably have better margins than lammingtons. I probably shouldn't make fun of it, but my sense of humour doesn't always stay within the bounds of good taste. It leaves me wondering how many DVDs you have to sell to kit out a suicide bomber. Do the pirates receive instructional videos explaining that for every 500 DVD's sold they can provide another AK-47 to a disadvantaged youth?
If this were taking place in a movie, David and I would be making use of the Troweling motion we recently added to our gesture vocabulary while watching Stargate-SG1. That it's happening in the real world is kind of sad-scary.
I also wonder if the people who have just handed over money for a cinema ticket or a legit DVD are really the people they need to be aiming these messages at.

But it's probably just me. Sometimes I don't see things from quite the right angle. Bad twisted brain, no cookie.

Argh! Blackstar changed their name to Sendit.com!

What a stupid, meaningless, dull name. What's with that?

Actually I noticed this a week ago and meant to make this post then, but forgot all about it, and just had my second nasty shock from the same event. :-(
A sure sign that I'm too busy at the moment...

And they changed their site too, so now they look just like all the other online video stores out there. But the one thing that need fixing - the search bar that chops the text off at the knees, is still there.

I mean, I didn't complain when they ditched the free international shipping, but this is too much. My loyalty has it's limits. I don't think that I want to shop at a place called sendit.com.

I'm such an elitist snob...