My ‘puter caught a virus yesterday. The combined might of our IT department and McAfee couldn’t smite it. I noted the effect (a predilection to redirecting you from Google search links to spurious sites), looked it up and discovered it to be the aptly names Google Redirection Virus. A quick download of HitMan Pro 3.5 when I got home soon dislodged it. I’m not such a technophobe at all really – well, I shouldn’t be; I was a systems analyst and IT project manager for a number of years after coming ashore and prior to going into sales and marketing.
I was listening to a rather intriguing argument the other day. Someone posited that it is more eco-friendly to drive an old banger, despite it having a higher fuel consumption and greater CO emissions, purely on the basis that the vast majority of a car’s carbon footprint arises from its manufacture and not its operation. Buy a new eco-car and you’re actually doing more harm than good.
That means I’m extremely eco-friendly by driving a car that’s 14 years old and has 200k miles on the clock (Volvo, of course). I have no intention of replacing it for at least another 50k miles, and even when I do it will be for another reliable old Volvo. Replacing your primary means of transport every 3 years in order to keep up with the Ponsonby-Smythes or to massage your ego is not in the least eco-friendly, even if you go for a so-called eco-car.
On another matter, it’s a sad fact of life that whenever the sales start to drop in a recession the useless leader will insist on micro-managing and insisting that you and your team fill in even more damned fool forms, rather than eliminating senseless bureaucracy to allow you more time to go seek new customers. Didn’t do a stroke of productive work yesterday but shuffled lots of paper. ‘Nuff said.
Talking of smoke and mirrors, 60 economists have signed a letter supporting the UK Chancellor’s decision to delay government cutbacks till 2011. On Sunday 20 economists signed a letter saying the opposite (and supporting the Conservative Party stance). Just goes to show how economics is not a science but more akin to astrology - or indeed religion. The opinions of ‘independent experts’ are only independent when you agree with them; if you don’t agree with them then they are obviously biased.
Here’s something I learned today: Alexandre Dumas’ paternal grandparents were Marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Général commissaire in the Artillery in the colony of Saint-Domingue — now Haiti — and Marie-Cesette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean Creole of mixed French/African ancestry. Apparently there’s a race row going on about the white actor Gerard Depardieu playing him in a bio-pic.
I was listening to a rather intriguing argument the other day. Someone posited that it is more eco-friendly to drive an old banger, despite it having a higher fuel consumption and greater CO emissions, purely on the basis that the vast majority of a car’s carbon footprint arises from its manufacture and not its operation. Buy a new eco-car and you’re actually doing more harm than good.
That means I’m extremely eco-friendly by driving a car that’s 14 years old and has 200k miles on the clock (Volvo, of course). I have no intention of replacing it for at least another 50k miles, and even when I do it will be for another reliable old Volvo. Replacing your primary means of transport every 3 years in order to keep up with the Ponsonby-Smythes or to massage your ego is not in the least eco-friendly, even if you go for a so-called eco-car.
On another matter, it’s a sad fact of life that whenever the sales start to drop in a recession the useless leader will insist on micro-managing and insisting that you and your team fill in even more damned fool forms, rather than eliminating senseless bureaucracy to allow you more time to go seek new customers. Didn’t do a stroke of productive work yesterday but shuffled lots of paper. ‘Nuff said.
Talking of smoke and mirrors, 60 economists have signed a letter supporting the UK Chancellor’s decision to delay government cutbacks till 2011. On Sunday 20 economists signed a letter saying the opposite (and supporting the Conservative Party stance). Just goes to show how economics is not a science but more akin to astrology - or indeed religion. The opinions of ‘independent experts’ are only independent when you agree with them; if you don’t agree with them then they are obviously biased.
Here’s something I learned today: Alexandre Dumas’ paternal grandparents were Marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Général commissaire in the Artillery in the colony of Saint-Domingue — now Haiti — and Marie-Cesette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean Creole of mixed French/African ancestry. Apparently there’s a race row going on about the white actor Gerard Depardieu playing him in a bio-pic.
Gerard Depardieu
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas
6 comments:
BUY A MAC and be done with it !
LOL.. looked at the "where I arrived from" and apparantly I am somewhere in Italy... The joys of travel !
I think you may be wrong, Bill. Not to worry! I was wrong once! It was in 1966 as I remember. Your pictures, surely, are Alexandre Depardieu and Gerard Dumas.
My vehicle is a 12 year old Audi with 104K on the clock and goes like a bird. But you know what . . if you and me want to save the planet . . it's like 2 guys reararnging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
All good wishes. Fun-soaked blog, this!
. . or even rearranging them! Blast! ANOTHER mistake!
Macs are far more eco friendly :))
Even a 'not-such-a-technophobe' ought to accede to the visitor request to switch the captions under the photographs. Go do it!
I consider myself even more 'green' than you, because I've stopped driving altogether. But sometimes circumstances dictate that we need to resort to the Wankel engine (or an alternative) when the need arises. Rising at 4 a.m. to get to the hospital in time for a 10 a.m. appointment, because the sluggardly donkey and cart can't do it any quicker, is pushing things a bit ...
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