You Can't Coach That

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

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.

Monday, April 16, 2007

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”

Saturday, April 14, 2007

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.

Friday, April 13, 2007

I have been doing some reading lately on the brain and its development, especially how the brain changes in childhood and adolescence as part of the learning process. It is quite fascinating and I will be writing my thoughts later when I understand this area a little better.

What I do understand now is that my brain works a little differently to that of many people. I often see this as somewhat of a curse but perhaps I should be thinking of the positives - something to work on. 

Let me offer the following by way of example. I was marking exam papers yesterday at home alone. The family was out so I had the place to myself. The marking was not going particularly well and I recalled something I had read regarding the benefits of playing classical music when studying or doing similar activities. The study in question compared playing classical music while studying to playing rock music and found considerable benefits with respect to brain function and cognition when classical music was played in the background. Additionally, when rock music was played at similar levels brain function and cognition were negatively affected.

Naturally, having reflected on this I decided to conduct my own small clinical trial. While I do not as a rule listen to classical music (in fact I was recently informed by a music teacher that what
I loosely call classical music is often more accurately called something else) I do have some in my collection and played some at a background type volume. I also spent some time organising my work area in preparation for more marking and think that I successfully prepared myself to allow the soft music from the other room to have its positive impact.

You may have guessed by now, if of course you are still reading, that my experiment was not a success. The music had exactly the opposite effect that I was hoping for. I became edgy, restless and found it difficulty to concentrate. I made errors in the papers I marked and had to remark them. My solution? Guns ‘N Roses. The Use Your Illusion II Album to be precise and the volume turned up. I found this to be more conducive to concentration and I got back into the swing of things with the work I had to get done.

Now of course this is the sort of music I am more likely to listen to on a regular basis and therefore it could be argued that this familiarity was what put me in the right frame of mind to work. My unnamed study (I really should keep a record of the things I read) suggests that this shouldn’t matter. The people studied also listened to music they like and were familiar with and still performed better with the classical music.

Have you ever tried meditation or so called relaxation techniques? The sort of thing I am thinking about goes something like this.

You are walking in a field of wild flowers carrying a heavy backpack. You come to the middle of the field and find a helium balloon. You tie the backpack containing all your burdens and worries onto the balloon and let it fly away ..........

This sort of activity is designed to be relaxing and help ease stress and anxiety. For most people it has some positive impact and at worst just doesn’t work and they feel no different. Not so for me. Meditation and visualisation relaxation techniques make me feel worse. In fact just writing about it has put my pulse rate up a couple of BPM.

So what? Well nothing really but it does help me to think about the way I think. We are all different and have to acknowledge this and find what works best for us. I just hope I find something soon.

Way back on the 6 April Jen from So you wanna be a domestik goddess tagged me for Alex Shalman’s Gotta Get Goals project. As you can see by the delay in posting things have been very hectic around here lately with Easter holidays and exam marking. Therefore, while not strictly in keeping with the original rules I have decided that rather than wait until I had 5 to 10 things to share, and therefore never get around to posting, I would start off with one point to be followed later with some others.

Goal Numero Uno
My childrens’ happiness. There it is summarised into three words. If the only thing I achieve in life is that my children are happy then I will be content.

Of course I am not so self-absorbed to think that my childrens’ happiness depends on things that I do or don’t do.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Enough said really. If you have a better caption please leave a comment.

[original image: Reuters]

It has been reported that Chinese smugglers are making a fortune selling imported pianos and dodging a sizable amount in taxes at the same time. Police in Shanghai have seized 5000 illegally imported pianos and there are eight cases before the courts.

What I want to know is how do they finds condoms big enough to fit a piano inside, not to mention a “piano mule” willing to do the hard yards and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

“You can’t coach that”

[via: Reuters]

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The issue of teachers’ salaries is always near and dear to my heart so I thought I would share the following. You may have seen it before but I got a chuckle out of it when someone sent it to me recently.

I, for one, am sick and tired of those highly paid teachers. Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year!

It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do, Baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right! I would give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked, not any silly planning time. That would be $15.00 a day. Each parent should pay $15.00 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now, how many do they teach in a day? Maybe 25?

Then that’s 15 x 25 = $375.00 a day.

But remember they only work 200 days a year! I’m not going to pay them for any vacations. Let’s see? That’s 375 x 200 = $75 000.00. (Hold on, my calculator must need batteries!)

What about those Leading Teachers or the ones with Masters Degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be that fair. Let’s round it off to $6.00 an hour. That would be $6.00 times five hours times 25 children times 200 days =$150 000.00 per year.

Wait a minute, there is something wrong here!

THERE SURE IS, HUH?

My first post was a serious one concerning teacher pay and I dare say I will have more to say on the subject at a later date - bear with me.

“You can’t coach that”

Saturday, April 07, 2007

My six year old daughter has just started school at a Catholic school and has therefore been learning about the Easter story. She has had some refreshing insights into religion lately and these are some she has shared with us this Easter:

• No one liked Jesus, He had no friends because they put thorns in his head.
• They didn’t know that Jesus was so good, they killed him. I bet they are sorry now though because he is famous.
• You can’t eat meat on Good Friday because god is made of meat. He is also made of chocolate and that is why we have chocolate Easter eggs.
• We are lucky that God made Mars because soon we will run out of room in Australia and America and we will need somewhere else to live.

“You can’t coach that”

Friday, April 06, 2007

Spud Oregon at Nice4Rice has just reviewed Can’t Coach That and I thank him sincerely for going easy on a newbie blogger - Cheers Spud

For those who don’t read Engadget here are a couple of items I found interesting:

Ipod stops a bullet in Iraq - I wonder if the warranty covers this?

“A 250 horsepower workstation” by Orange County Choppers. [via engadget and The Raw Feed]

Week 2 - poltroonery

If you know the meaning of the word of the week, write a comment (no dictionary use of course)