One Geek

I’ve been involved in a little comment debate at a friends blog. It has struck me as to how little backup most people, myself included use to support our arguments. I am sick of propaganda based statements, based loosely on facts.

Sometimes people end up being 100% wrong, when checked against the facts. I think from now on I want to debate less point but provide authoritative resources to support my claims where appropriate. Sure it will make my debate claims less outlandish, but that’s a small price for raising the tone of the debate.

Australia 14th out of 23 in humantarian aid ranking.

The countries beat us Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, European Commission, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Finland, Luxembourg, Germany.

Read morehere.

I don’t like losing to the Pom’s, or the Kiwi’s come on Rudd fix this please.

Good job to our Prime Minister elect Mr Kevin Rudd.

I look forward to a few changes round here.

Well I’ve now passed the first six months of my thesis, and am allowed to progress onto the next thesis subject, covering my final report. Pretty pleased with my supervisor’s comments on my report too.

One more semester until it’s finished.

I’m scared we are going to end up going to war with Iran. America is slowly moving towards it from what I can see and using. Where they go will we follow??

Thankfully at least Mr Rudd plans to withdraw our forces from Iraq next year.

SMH has an article on a Chinese dam project here.

Had a fun video call from three of the IT guys I worked with/and trained in India, Tushar from Dimapur, Benjy from Delhi and Malyadri from Raxaul. There all at the hospital working to get it going. It was really nice to chat with them, and so much more fun to do with video. It was good to see them, and it looks like the hospital might actually open soon.

One thing that made me laugh a lot was them talking about how I have “lots of girlfriends” in Australia. I heard it a bit whilst I was in India, and seeing as they are still saying it maybe it’s true.

If you happen to be one of my girlfriends can you let me know. I’m worried I might be neglecting you all.

UPDATE

I just remembered they were trying to tell me there were pretty girls at the training in Dimapur. I think they were implying I should come and work there, so I could marry one of them.

I’ve been following the news in the US about torture and in particular waterboarding. A number of public figures in America are supporting “enhanced interrogation techniques”, and it is believed George Bush authorised it in 2002 for use on some prisoners. For those who don’t know it is basically a way of making someone feel like they are drowning. You can read more about here.

This is scary stuff. I don’t really care if torture works for getting information, I think it is simply unacceptable. I can’t do much about it here, but I want to tell you that, if you are ever in a situation where you “need” to torture someone to save my life, don’t do it. I’d rather be dead then have you and the subject dehumanised. You may even get the information from just being nice to them, it is meant to be surprisingly effective.

Been working on my thesis today, and was driven to distraction by the tediousness of it all.
In a strange twist I found an interesting post graduate course that I liked the look of offered by Swinburne University of Technology on Emergency and Disaster Management.

I figure a disaster manager with information and communication technology qualifications might be an interesting gig. With the lack of work of the US and Australia on Climate Change, disaster management is sure to be the growth industry of the next hundred years.

Out of the 50 research papers I am currently looking at three seem to actually be relevant to my thesis. It’s amazing, I was sure none of them would be.

Today I had to go and get a 3 Mobile Data connection and USB Modem. It was as all interactions with mobile providers requiring contracts rather unpleasant. I ended up making three trips to the shop, the first I had to leave because I needed a proper purchase order with the directors signature. The second visit took forever because the guy didn’t know that he needed to use an ‘&’ like I told him not an ‘and’ like he did. This lead to a lot of stuffing around because the ACN/ABN check didn’t go through. Finally he did up a manual paper contract.

After I got the card I spent an hour trying to get it to work, before coming to the shop. I thought that the account may not have been made active yet, but by the time I got to the shop it was active. When I took out my laptop to demo my problem, it worked so I was happy. I told off the guy for not telling me that it would take some time for the account to active…

I am sometimes tempted to create my own phone shops with staff who actually know what is going on, and provide you with tea or coffee whilst you wait. If I failed though, I’d end up being hated, and hating myself.

P.S I am writing this at starbucks using the new modem. The monthly cost of the modem would pay for itself if I used Telstra WiFi for more then 3 hours a month. Sadly the modem is not for me.

It is quite wet today. I walked up to work today, and I am wondering, why oh why did I not wear my water proof steel capped boots..

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taster the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation.