As of Tuesday of this week, 24 April 2007, I am officially working for myself and not the tax man. The Centre for Independent Studies has calculated that, on average, the money earned by Australians up to that day is sufficient to satisfy the average amount of tax paid for the calendar year. So for the rest of the year the money is all mine.
Tax freedom day for the US will be 30 April and for the UK it will be 1 June.
Not that it probably means too much but noticed today that cantcoachthat has made it into the top 100,000 blogs at technorati. I guess the technorati favourites exchange achieved something. 
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Today, 25 April, is ANZAC day. We pause to remember those who have given their lives in all wars.
“Lest We Forget”
Wanted - One Blog Assistant.
Duties include reading dozens of interesting blogs, summarising the interesting and informative articles and drafting a series of witty and topical comments for my perusal and final approval. Suggestions for equally informative and interesting articles will also be expected.
The successful applicant will have the following qualities:
Physical characteristics are not important, however should you be interviewed on a day my wife is out of town, blonde hair, blue eyes and large breasts will be all that I will notice.
Renumeration will be based on a percentage of the advertising revenue generated here so it would be helpful if you were financially secure.
EDIT: Duties will include keeping up to date with numerous Technorati Favourite exchange programs 
I have been surprised by the number of blogs that I have chanced upon and then later found they are written by Aussies. I’ve added two of these to my friends list:
Cruftbucket and
Like all in the list they are well worth a read.
“You can’t coach that”
This thing has grown legs big time. I think the blogs that already have a good readership already might be the big beneficiaries but I have no evidence for this, purely a gut feeling.
Staying up to date with the favouriting is taking quite a bit of effort. I am staying up to date with people who comment under my previous entry and in a day or so will post with a link back to the blogs I know are doing similar exchange programs.
Is all this worthwhile - buggered if I know.
“You can’t coach that”
As an occasional listener of net radio through Pandora I note with interest the recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington to increase the royalties paid by Internet radio stations. An email I received from the Pandora founder claims that this will force internet radio off the air. The story has been getting a lot of exposure so doesn’t need me to add to it. The story has been dugg and I headed over to read what people were saying about it. One particular comment caught my attention:
This is why I pirate all my music now, I will not give money to the industry.
If I could give money direct to the artist I would, but most don’t have that option.
What a load of bullshit! Don’t make me laugh, pirates pirate music because they don’t want to pay for it - end of story.
If you are in the US and want to have a say you can head on over to savenetradio.org to sign the petition.
I have intentionally not commented on the right or wrong of the increase in the royalties or whether signing the petition will make any difference. If you would like to educate me feel free in the comments.
“You can’t coach that”
Dan at The Wrong Advices recently posted about “How much time do you spend on your blog” and I have been thinking about it ever since. After all, time is something most of appear to have in short supply (oh dear what a cliche). I include time reading other blogs as well as that is part of the overall appeal for me.
I have come around to thinking about this question from another angle - what do I give up for the blog? This for me is a more relevant question considering my lifestyle and the stage I am up to in my life. The answer to the original question is probably too much, however, I think that as long as I am not prioritizing blogging over more important activities then I can justify the time spent doing it. This justification is of course to myself but more importantly to my family.
So what am I giving up? The main thing is watching TV. I love nothing better than to sit in front of the idiot box and not contemplate the problems of the world. The trouble is that this is a very non-productive activity. At least with blogging it forces me to think a little bit occasionally (perhaps not always evident from my posts). Unfortunately, I also on occasion blog instead of doing the work that I bring home that I actually get paid for so I will have to watch this so that it doesn’t become an issue. Finally, I am trying to get a sports related blog up and running and writing this post is keeping me from doing some design work on the templates so I am going to stop waffling.
What are you not doing?
Sometime in the not too distant future I hope to successfully lobby the Minister for Finance to make the appropriate funds available for the acquisition of a new PC. That new PC is more than likely going to Windows Vista running the show. I have therefore started to consider what flavour of Vista to select.
All the computer magazines I have been reading lately have included stories on Vista and the April issue of PC Authority included a nice brief table on some of the key differences.
I was quite annoyed to see that Remote Desktop is not included in the Home version. Do the Microsoft decision makers think that home users would have no use for this tool? I for one make regular use of it to control my Media PC on another room. I am admittedly using XP Pro.
Oh well, I guess I will be spending a little more on the business edition of Vista as well.
Ah the never ending quest for blog numbers and statistics. Can’t hurt I suppose and if it means a few more webosapiens make their way here to read my rantings and ramblings that would be just fine.
Where did this one start? Have a look at Dosh Dosh
Where did I see it? Have a look at Blog-Op
What do you do? Favourite this blog on technorati. Leave a comment saying that you did the favourite thing with a link to the favourite page for your blog. Favourite as many commentors as you can. Do a post like this one if you want.
Is it worth it? We’ll see but who am to suggest it won’t.
So jump on this if you like - not as many people will see this as on the above named sites but every little bit helps I suppose.
“You can’t coach that”
There has been much swearing and gnashing of teeth in the locker room that’s serves as the Coach’s study over the last few days. The technology fairy paid a visit and she sprinkled her magic sh#t fairy dust bloody everywhere.
You see I decided that a brand new modem was just what the doctor ordered to take advantage of the full bandwidth my relatively new ADSL2+ connection provides. Since my wireless router is a Netgear WPN 824, which up to this point had been working flawlessly with my ancient D-Link modem (how old was it I hear you ask - well there is a sticker underneath it reading “made in The People’s Republic of Bedrock”) I decided to get the Netgear DMP111P modem.
If you are thinking “oh no not Netgear” I don’t want to hear it. Where were you when I was asking everyone with ears what I should buy? If you are thinking that Netgear is a good choice and should work seamlessly with the aforementioned router then read on.
While the set up of the D-Link modem with the router was as simple as plugging it in and changing some IP addresses (not necessary but I like to exert a little control over the technology), the shiny new Netgear modem just didn’t want to play nice. I did everything by the book. I ran the set up program on both the router and the modem. I followed the instructions to the letter. I switched on, turned off, rebooted, sacrificed a virgin, all to appease the gods of modem/router installation. The result? - an internet connection that lasted about three minutes but sometimes a little longer. Just what I was hoping for, an intermittent computer issue, the best kind.
I sometimes think that I am a pretty smart guy. I know a fair bit about these fancy thinking boxes, at least enough enough to get myself into trouble. So I spent the next afternoon determined to solve this problem for myself. Was I successful? - not bloody likely.
So into the world of support forums we go. As it turns out the answer was quite a simple one. The modem should be in bridge mode! Thirty seconds later, modem in bridge mode, connections settings now in the router instead of the modem and we are surfing the wondrous world we call “The Internets”. If only that little gem was contained somewhere in the documentation. Hang on a minute, what documentation. All I got was the CD. Well if you dig down five directory layers on the cd there’s the documentation. Alas, no mention of bridge mode however.
Honest, I did look. I’m not game enough to look again though, just in case I find it.
“You can’t coach that”
Queensland Health has just discovered that four foreign “doctors” have been employed without any form of checks into their qualifications. It also appears that they may have been working unsupervised as interns. This comes after the recent “doctor death” scandal which has still not been resolved - ie he still has not faced charges despite allegedly being responsible for some 87 deaths of patients under his care.
This is just not good enough. While I am happy that overseas trained doctors come to practice here in Australia we must ensure that the appropriate checks are put in place to ensure that these people are appropriately qualified. Better still we should be training enough doctors locally so that we do not have to really on importing overseas medical staff. How this is done is beyond my limited intelligence but there are supposedly smart people in charge of things who can work this stuff out. We also need our government to be accountable for situations like this. I am getting a little tired of hearing government ministers saying on television that “this is not good enough” or “I am upset and frustrated about this”. How about a bit of “the buck stops with me and I got it wrong” followed rapidly by “don’t let the door hit you on the way out”.
So want to be a doctor? Come to Queensland before someone sorts this mess out - no questions asked.
“You can’t coach that”
Back in March I wrote about the the sleeping drug Stilnox and stupid criminals. As a follow up I can report the following from my local area.
Two former New South Wales policeman were recently jailed for a violent armed robbery at a Queensland tavern after using the widely publicised Stilnox as a defence. You see both these gentlemen were apparently taking this medication at the time they commited the armed robbery. It is not clear from the reports I have read whether they have claimed that they were asleep at the time but I doubt it somehow. The reports also indicate that the judge hearing the case noted that one of the men was suffering from “financial strain” at the time and the other was suffering from a major depressive order and post traumatic stress syndrome.
Suffering financial strain!? How on earth can this be mentioned by a judge when discussing a case of armed robbery. One can only assume that he has taken this into account when sentencing the pair. Come on - we all suffer financial strain to varying degrees and most people don’t resort to armed robbery.
It was also noted that the offender suffering from mental illness also was a substance abuser and this led to his impaired judgment displayed through the robbery. While I have all the sympathy in the world for anyone suffering a mental illness it is diminished somewhat when that person then abuses illegal drugs. It evaporates completely when that person then commits an armed robbery to support this habit (my interpretation).
Finally, the judge was reported as saying that the armed robbery was a serious example of it’s type. Ok, so we could expect once convicted that these individuals would be sentenced to a significant jail term. How does 12 months sound? Both were sentenced to four year terms to be suspended after 10 months and 12 months.
I feel so much better knowing that we will have two more criminals on the streets in a year ready to again commit a violent crime.
“You can’t coach that”
From Wikipedia:
Fanboy or Fanboi is a term used to describe an individual (usually male, though the feminine version fangirl may be used for females) who is utterly devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession, disregarding any factors that differ from their point of view. Fanboys are also stereotypically aggressive and hateful towards the opposing brand or competition of their obsession regardless of its merits or achievements.
I really become quite amused when I come across examples of fanboys in the wild. The obsession can be anything, Linux, Apple Macs, Windows are the ones I see on line most of all but the list can be extended to off line areas as well. Makes of car I suppose could be an example. Here is the latest example which amused me, found in comments to an article on the top 10 Linux distributions:
Microsoft’s borrowed operating system is extended after embracing any succesful (sic) project, be it active X or mysql and released by a criminal monoply (sic) . It comes with a minimal set of applications (a calculator, a few games, some networking tools, an Internet browser.. etc). Software can be obtained by users from various sources and installed on the operating system ,Usually without any interaction or knowledge of the unsuspecting user.
What is most amusing in this example is that the original article had nothing to do with Windows whatsoever. There hadn’t even been any Windows related comments to the article before this one. I could understand perhaps such a comment if the story was comparing Linux to Windows and there are plenty of those if you look for them (On second thoughts, no I couldn’t - criminal monopoly!? Please!). No, this was Linux compared to itself in its many flavours. It is also worth noting that while the article is not trying to say one distribution is better than another but rather that which one is best depends on what you need, there was still plenty of debate (to use the term loosely) about which is the best.
[Source: Overview of the 10 major linux distributions]
“You can’t coach that”
Afterthought - I use both Windows and Linux depending on what I am doing and would relish the chance to try Mac but funds do not permit.
Who is the Coach? - Self styled life coach to the masses; part time ballet critic; full time sports critic; nude twister umpire; unemployed still life model; "trust me, I'm on the internet"
A more serious look at who I am can be found on the About page.
