When I got my new Mac Pro recently, I got a wireless Mighty Mouse to go with it.

(If Em were around, he'd no doubt gloat at my son's choice of ball club.)

Criticizing people for not wearing lapel pins is character assassination.

That does it, no more jokes for you!

The US health care system now ranks dead last among 19 industrialized countries in a Commonwealth Fund survey of preventable deaths and timely health care. (To my surprise, Germany only ranks only eighth.) In the late 1990s it still was 13th on the list, but has failed to improve as quickly as the other countries.

Even the UK ranks higher. (And that, dear friends, is saying something.)

Ye gods.

And my lungs, too.

Had a nasty cold the past week that just won't go away. Probably got a nasty case of bronchitis. Feel like total donkeybongles, too. Keep getting migraines on top of it all, just to make things interesting.

Bleah.

Great thing about having kids in kindergarden: all the interesting bugs that they bring back home with them. :-p

So even though my parents arrived yesterday, I mainly am lying around in bed feeling miserable. Sigh. (Have to drag myself to the doctor this afternoon. Not looking forward to the trip.)

That goes for every one of you!

Holy hell, what a waste of celluloid. I bet the acting in this version (link probably NSFW) is at least as good.

At least I can plead that it was on cable TV and thus I didn't pay to watch it (aside from the subscriber fee, of course).

'Twas a case of "300 channels and nothin' on". Bleah.

...I mean, it's UNIX, right?

So why is it that I have to restart the damned thing after most updates, like a QuickTime update? As an example, since QuickTime is not in the kernel, there is no reason I can think of to restart the freakin' computer when QuickTime is updated. And indeed, on Windows XP, when QuickTime is updated, you don't have to restart the PC.

Yet for system updates on the Mac, I'm surprised at how often I have to restart it. Not "log out and log back in", but actually reboot.

THAT ANNOYS ME. BRING ME STEVE JOB'S HEAD.

Telephone
*RING* Caller ID with country code for Sri Lanka)

Ethelred
Hello.

Telemarketer (in heavily accented English)
Hello, my name is Ted Johnson (or some other implausibly butch American-sounding name evoking wood chopping and gun racks and not hot curries with chai). I would like to ask you some questions about your personal opeeeeeen-yon as a perfessonal worker. I preee-soom you speak Eeeen-glish?

Ethelred
I should bally-o say so, my good man.

Telemarketer (audible pause)
...Ah. So can I ask you some qvesteeeons about your personal opeeeen-yon?

Ethelred
No, I don't participate in surveys out of principle, sorry.

Telemarketer
Ah. But can I ask you some qvesteeeons about your personal opeeeen-yon?

Ethelred
No, I'm sorry, I do not participate in surveys.

Telemarketer
But it's just qvesteeeons about your personal opeeeen-yon. It only take two meeenuts.

Ethelred
My personal opinion is that this is a survey. I'm not interested. Good-bye.

---

I mean seriously, what the double-you-tee-eff?

I was rough on Iamthefallen yesterday, and today in the local newspaper I have the explanation as to why.

It reports that there was a Lionel Richie concert in Hannover last night. The vibes must have made me severely aggressive.

I'm sure Fallen will understand and forgive me.

The US State Department issued an urgent warning to US citizens abroad, with a link to the State Department website. (See the image at right.)

It must be super-secret or something, like in invisible ink. Whoa. This must be important.

It's even for Internet Explorer only! Your taxpayer dollars at work!

The following is partly a response to a post by Bethanie and partly a response-to-be to RevMike that I decided to turn into a blog entry.

...

Standing in line is a social skill that isn't necessarily ingrained at an early age. Children do pick it up along the way.

The reason I mention that is that this is one of my pet peeves in Germany.

You would think that the Germans, with their penchant for Ordnung and "solidarity", would be different. But no, they are about as chaotic and me-first as any when it comes to queueing.

Jumping the queue in America is usually considered rude. In Britain it may be the last thing still punished with the death penalty. In Germany it's anything goes and seems to have always been that way -- even in the instances they manage to line up and not just mob whatever it is they should be lining up for, invariably someone will try to jump the queue, either by sneaky tactics, or by sliming up to someone, or by just plain barging.

My English genes must all kick in when they do it because I could fucking split their nostrils when it happens, but it's pretty much the national sport. The worst part is the little smile they get when they succeed. Fuckers.

Even in situations where it's rather inconvenient to jump the queue, such as at a narrow lane for a cash register, they will find a way, and will jump from queue to queue to try and "save" some time. Which of course doesn't save any time at all. (They do the same thing in traffic jams, too, which is also the source of unending annoyance and slows things down for everyone else.)

At a bus stop, for example, in America or Britain it's sort of an unspoken rule that whoever got there first gets on the bus first, even if people don't actually line up to do so, and you let the passengers get off the bus before getting on. In Germany, none of that. People crowd in front of the doors so much that the people in the bus wanting to get out have to force their way through. If you have a baby stroller, sometimes you get lucky and people let you through, maybe even lend a hand, but maddeningly often you have to manage on your own while people just stand there and stare (sometimes even with a slight smile as they watch you struggle -- there is a reason the Germans have a word for Schadenfreude). The reason they don't help? You have to ask. When you do, they'll help, but often with this smarmy "Of course" tone, as if to say, why didn't you ask earlier, you idiot?

On a similar note, it's an old joke that is all too true about how literal Germans can be. An English speaker typically asks:

Do you know what time it is?

And the German will matter-of-factly reply:

Yes.

Meanwhile bein' a good Suthrun gennlemun as Ah am, I hold the door for people, especially the lady-folk. It used to be that the Germans would take advantage of this in spades, and I'd end up standing there for God knows how long waiting until I could let go of the door, because they'd just zoom on through. Ze German way is to rush through the door and let it slam in the face of the person behind you and let out a giggle of Schadenfreude when it does. So now I hold the door for maybe one or two people to salve my conscience, then slam the door in someone's face and giggle in Schadenfreude.

This is known as "cultural integration".

There is a guy going up and down our street playing a barrel organ, apparently hoping for some cash.

Let it be known that under my regime, barrel organ players are to be classed as lower than slugs, mimes, telephone support employees and insurance salesmen, and thus eligible for spontaneous execution by any citizen of my empire for any reason whatsoever, with bonus points for using blunt instruments and for creativity.

Namely, that I'm not running it.

Parking your early 90s Opel with Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar Over Me at full volume on said Opel's cheap POS stereo system at top volume and with the windows down does not, in fact, impress the women or anyone else, except to impress upon them that you are quite possibly a waste of DNA and should have your nostrils split.

I didn't see for sure if he had a mullet, but something tells me he did.

It used to be (when we first moved here almost two years ago) that my WLAN card could only see one network -- my own.

Then various DSL providers started offering free WLAN DSL routers, and they are multiplying like rabbits.

On my Airport WLAN submenu, I now see no less than six WLANs other than my own, and I frequently only see two out of four bars on the signal strength, even though I have interference robustness activated and the Airport Express router is in the same room. The laptops we have often barely get any signal at all if they aren't in the workroom. Used to be that I could work with the laptop on the balcony; now it can't even see the router unless I'm in the hall, maybe living room at best. If I want to work on the balcony again this summer, I may have to get another Airport router to boost the signal, thus adding to the overall problem.

Sheesh.

BoE decided to take off this weekend to stay at her parents' for a couple of days to recharge, which leaves me to batch it over the weekend.

Just now I got the weekly e-mail newsletter from the multiplex cinema downtown. Since we haven't had the time to go to see a movie in eons, normally I just chuck it and don't read it. But this time I thought, hm, maybe I could look and see what's playing. Normally they have a movie in English running (I hate dubbed movies -- it's rare they're done that well and the dubbing just bugs me).

It used to be that there was a cinema -- a crappy one, but still a cinema -- that showed only English movies. They went out of business some years ago. The multiplex began dedicating one screen to non-German movies, which always meant English; their other location sometimes showed stuff in Russian or Turkish, but the multiplex stuck to English as the "special" language.

This time they have a non-German movie in the original language, all right.

In Turkish.

Well, fuck. Guess no more English movies in Hannover anymore. *sigh*