We’re in full swing at the Lambie household boxing and packing and turfing, and it’s fantastic. I am tasked with cleaning out the server room/library, which makes sense. Like all of the bedrooms in our apartment it has a built in robes (something I’ll miss at our new house). The server room’s robes had a super-dodgy bookshelf jammed in there which I used as a make-shift cupboard. It used to contain a variety of computer parts, cables and that kind of thing, along with my toolboxes.

I have one tool box and one tool sack. The sack has all my spanners, screw drivers and hand tools and the box has wire, screws, tape and other consumables. Steve’s oldest brother John used to work for Telstra and he had a similar tool sack. When I saw them for $4 in an army surplus store I knew I should get one and it’s been fantastic. The box I received as a house-warming gift from Magdalena’s mum the day we moved into the apartment. She thought I should be able to fix a tap for her daughter if necessary - a mindset which I agree with. After all, I was the “man of the house” now.

I took a minute to ponder just how many times I’ve used the box, and how handy it’s been having a dedicated place for all my boy bits (not those bits). It was such a great gift, and wasn’t something I would have bought myself. It’s been through some adventures with me, like the installation of the pole, the running of CAT5 networking cable through the ceiling, hanging out the window with Steve trying to erect a wireless antenna, as well as the day-to-day maintenance on doors, ceilings, taps and anything else that needed a bashing.

I can recommend a tool box (or tool sack) as a great gift.

(Now, back to work!)

Anyone that’s studied statistics, even at a very basic level, will be able to tell you that “correlation does not equal causality.” Just because two things move in the same direction doesn’t mean they’re interacting with each other, or even influenced by each other. It’s very dangerous to draw assumptions. In statistical circles there’s even a term for a person who draws these links where the data doesn’t support it.

“Idiot.”

Unfortunately, autism traditionally strikes children between the ages of one and two. It’s around this time that a bunch of vaccinations are typically administered. For about the last decade parents that needed to blame something for their children’s illness sought refuge in attacking “big pharma.” Hopefully this will stop now that the main proponent of this disinformation has been proven completely and absolutely fraudulent.

Your mesiah is a liar.

He was taking money from lawyers to create laboratory data. The other ten researchers that formed the panel that issued the initial report indicating causality have petitioned to have their names removed from the paper. Thiomersal has been removed from vaccinations in the US since the late 90s and the rate of autism is still climbing, not that thiomersal has been ever proven to be harmful to humans. Read the article and follow the links to the other sources. Don’t use Google to reinforce your crumbling position. What’s that saying about “degree in bias reinforcement from the Google University?”

The problem with stupid people is that they’re not able to have their opinions swayed by evidence, data or new facts. They’ll hang on to their “beliefs” as though it’s their right. I love quoting Emma in this respect:

Anyone without a medical degree is not qualified to have an opinion.

This issue really gets me wound up, because parents have the “right” to reject these proven medicines because they “have a bad feeling about it.” We get outraged when Michael Jackson hangs his kid off a balcony but when some parent chooses to not have their child vaccinated we applaud their right to choose. How does that work and what does it say about us as a society? Is it just another instance of natural selection?

My Macbook Pro is going to be three years old in 4 months so it’s not exactly the best gaming rig around, and indeed you could argue that it never was. That’s not been a problem though because a) I don’t play all that many games on my computer and b) I have an Xbox 360 if I do want to play games.

A few days ago my Xbox was struck down with the dreaded Red Ring of Death which means it’s now in a well packed box on its way to New South Wales. Again. I’m not too worried. These things happen but it means I can’t get my gaming fix anymore, which I didn’t realise I needed until this morning.

The only games I’ve every really played on my PC have been the RTS (that’s “real time strategy” for those non-geek readers - the kind of games where you control armies and gather resources and build bases). I’ve especially liked the Warhammer 40K Dawn of War games as well as the Company of Heroes titles, both based on the same engine and developed by Relic.

This week the beta for Dawn of War 2 was released to the community so I thought I’d have a look, not that I expect it’ll run very well on my machine at all. This is where it got big and hard.

The last time I played a game demo would have been around the time I was in uni, so we’re talking about ten years ago. Maybe it was even in high school. The files were big enough to warrant a CD, but probably didn’t top out over 50 or 60MB. They was one EXE that you installed and ran, even if it was a Windows game; DOS games were significantly smaller.

Fast forward to today. I had to download and install the Games for Windows Live client, which is a poor knock off of Xbox Live. From within this client I then downloaded the Dawn of War 2 installer which was about 400MB. The installer then required a Steam account and client  (that’s how they deliver online game content these days, apparently) so I was stepped through that signup process. Now I’m finally ready to download what I hope is the actual game, from within the Steam client, though it’s well over 2GB. I’ve seen the figure of 5GB on some sites, so I’m expecting that there’ll be more to download when this is done. Lastly, I had to write down a 5×5 activation key (that I couldn’t copy and paste). I mean, really… is this all necessary?

Any time I’m launched back into the world of Windows I’m disappointed about the hoops I have to jump through to actually do things. Apple has a good mix between ease and sense with their application packages, but it is still harder than it needs to be. I long for:

mlambie@rumble:~$ sudo aptitude install dow2-beta