if you’re a friend of mine (or extremely bored): http://millaruk.wordpress.com

and in the old pantheons people got to sleep with gods and beget hybrid children.
how awsome must sex with a god be?
“did the earth move for you too honey?”
“yes dear… i’m the goddess of earthquakes and disasters!”
“oh… right… wanna go again?”

whereas the sandwich god is a cold fish. even his son was immaculate conception.
jeez… way to show a woman a good time there.

and the stories…
pantheons had great tales of heros and villans, cyclops’ and dragons, muses and mysteries.
what does combo-god number 5 have? the da vinci code… and they don’t even accept that.
man. which is more impressive to you: a god that has a champion who’s 1/2 man, 1/2 god. a veritible titan, impervious to damage except for his weak spot.
or a god that has a champion that got nailed to a cross, died, came back and then ran away?

they don’t make religion like they used to.
it’s a lost art.

i’d like to see a religion created by true masters:
a conglomerate of stephen king, william gibson, stan lee, terry pratchet, and warren ellis.
not that would be a religion i’d like to read about!

fortunately the lecture was most amusing. it was on quantum computers and related.

basically there’s a mad mathematician out there called David Deutsch (mad in the good old, traditional Oxford, crazy proffessor kinda way) with a multiverse theory. basically, whenever a quantum thingy can be doing one of a multiple of things, the universe “splits” into parallel universes where the quantum thingy does every option: one in each parallel universe. somehow there is communication across the parallels and we end up with a result that would be expected from something that did multiple things when it could only have done one. he expounds more on this and other things (like turing machines and quantum mechanics) in his book “the fabric of reality.”

quantum mechanics seems to be all fun and games (especially when the lecturer explains it in only 7 minutes). the interesting thing with a quantum computer is that its version of a register of bits can hold more bits than a standard computer, and it may be able to compute multiple paths at the same time by farming out a path to each parallel universe (basically superpositioning). imagine harnessing the power of a universe to make the graphics in quake 6 look more impressive. i like that idea.

these quantum bits are called qubits. at which point i asked the lecturer if the cpu would be called an ark. i had to explain the joke. *sigh* so difficult to be brilliant and funny nowdays.

go read more about quantum mechanics and quantum computing. its all cutting edge and theoretical at the moment. it makes me want to read “the quark and the jaguar“. i must talk to moonflake when i get home.

anyway… the lecture finished with an interesting theory from mr deutsch. it goes a little something like this: only 1 of the following 3 statements is true:

1. mankind will never progress any further (re: computing)
2. mankind doesn’t care about it’s ancestors
3. mankind will progress and cares about it’s ancestors

now (sans real proof… go buy his book for the real thing), 1 is obviously false as we are continuously improving, 2 is also obviously false (count the number of historians in the world / number of historic documentaries) so 3 must be true. in which case we will (at some future point) have extremely powerful machines and (since we’re interested in our ancestors) will be running complex simulations of the past on them.

since you only live once, but many many many simulations will be run, the probability that you are actually part of a simulation is extremely high (tending to 1). so, in a very matrix kinda way, david tells us that we are all constructs in a simulation. of course there is more to it than that. for example: people from the future wandering around our simulation, etc…

that made up for a really wet walk to varsity, and has interested me in quantum mechanics enough to go out and read about it… i guess that’s good lecturing.

no matter how ass 56k dialup is, sometimes its better than the varsity connection… and now they’ve made it worse….

not content having a slow connection that often leaves me waiting for 10 minutes while it logs onto gmail, uct has now switched the proxy on us. trying to open a page using the old cache results in an “access denied” message telling us to use some automatic configuration script. if we don’t: we can’t access any webpages.

ok… so the senior labs have shitty computers with shitty OS’s installed, and the other labs have ok computers (with shitty OS’s installed) but are filled with loud, annoying bastards. well… the senior labs are just filled with fewer loud, annoying bastards.

now that state of affairs combined with stupid downtimes, authentication server problems happening sporadically, and useless sysadmins is not the best, but at least the web surfing was rated at average (when you could log onto a machine and the bandwidth wasn’t being sucked into the nether). incompetent lab administration but ok internet… not “good”, but not “fucking terrible” either.

but uct always manages to take something and bastardize it / corrupt it into a hated, unwanted thing to scorn at beat and chase out the house while spitting. and they finally got around to the internet.

not content in screwing around in a month’s time when all the current students will be away on study leave, they decide that now is the time to switch proxy on us. doesn’t sound that bad does it? so you use a different proxy, big deal. what’s the worst that can happen? the cache is small and it takes a little longer to open every page?

nope. the worst that can happen (that has so far been discovered by the sysadmins here) is that now you need to log on to the proxy (after having already logged onto the fucking computer with the same gaddamned username/password) when you open your browser. then you need to log onto the proxy every time it opens an https page (as opposed to http). or every time it tries to access an item (a picture, an anchor, almost every character of text) from some pages (making them impossible to open). and finally (for logging on) you need to sometimes just randomly log on for what appears to be no apparent reason whatsoever. oh, and clicking “remember this fucking password” doesn’t do shit.
and then there are the freezes. since using the new proxy the number of browser “freezes” have increased on an exponential scale (and they were pretty goddamned prevelant to begin with). opening a page with a fair amount of text or, heavens forbid, some pictures causes firefucks to freeze for a random amount of time from 3 seconds to minutes. and sometimes this affects the entire system and everything freezes except the mouse. 5 minutes of staring at a frozen screen, slowly meandering the mouse cursor around from corner to corner, is not in any way whatsoever zen! its fucking boring and fucking annoying.

in fact the freezes sometimes come “just because.” for example: while typing this text, without opening any other pages, i have experienced upward of five six browser freezes.

so we’ve gone from shitty environment with ok net access to shitty environment with shitty net access. maybe it’s for easy classification purposes. now we can just refer to everything with one word: shitty.

it’s gonna be great to finally get out into the working world, especially if hellcom has installed our adsl by then. *laughs* like they’re that efficient ever… i think they’re in competition with uct sysadmins to be the biggest pile of useless shitbags in the country.

little do they know: the government has them both beat hands-down… but that’s another argument entirely.

we all know what it is (if not then google). all international readers probably have it at home (or some other form of broadband) and would be aghast to know that, when at home, i’m still flailling aroung the internet with a 56k modem.

moonflake and i have ordered adsl, but we’ve had some problems…

you see, telcom (hereby known as “you fuckers,” “you fuckwits,” “those bastards,” “hellcom,” or “the spawn of satan’s ass-spillage.”) is the only company in this country that is allowed to lease adsl landlines (i’m not sure of the position of the SNO, but they’re not in cape town and their market penetration is currently so close to zero as to be negligible for this argument), and moonflake and i need a landline because the wirless answer doesn’t have the required latency (basically, response time) for games…

and our world of warcraft boxes are slowly being lost in the gathering dust.

this is also part of the reason why i don’t blog that often. for a partly decent access i need to stay up at varsity… working on badly configured ubuntu… painfully.

so moonflake ordered an adsl installation about 2 months ago and we were told 29 Sept would be the install date… someone would contact us closer to the time.

last month i had a week holiday, so i called those bastards to find out if they could come a week or two earlier. it turns out (or this is just their excuse to not do any work) that the exchange in our area is full and the new exchange would only be installed on the 30th of Sept, so we’d get a call after that.

Surely they could have predicted this? a quick sum will show the needed brainpower:

(number of free slots in exchange) – (number of people that have ordered adsl) = x

if x < 0 then problem… install a new echange now and tell people that they will get their install after the exchange is going in (instead of lying to them and fucking them around)

if x > 0 the do your goddamned jobs and install my goddamned adsl you fuckers.

but apparently this higher level maths is beyond them, so we wait until after 30 Sept and i called them back to find out what was going on… i spent 40 minutes on hold waiting for a non-recorded voice. by the end i would have been happy if a cat knocked the reciever off and farted into it. at least then the awful 15 seconds of hold music, interupted only by the annoying, repetative message that is completely devoid of any helpful information, would have ended.

without feline intervention i hung up in disgust. the next day it only took 20 minutes to get an answer. a hellcom employee tells me that my provisional port allocation date is the 30th of December. i ask if there is a possibility of it happening earlier: hegives the scripted response that translates to “no. we probably won’t even do it then, but i’ll say yes just to make you go away.”

person involved: i didn’t take his name, but from now on….

5 fucking months to get an adsl line? a line which we have to pay an arm and a leg for every month? you’re not doing us a favour you fuckwits, you’re preventing yourselves from making money.

i relay the message and moonflake emails them.

moonflake then tries her luck, phoning the spawn of satan’s ass-spillage at 08h00. 15 minutes before they answer at which point the story changes (are you surprised?). turns out that there is no provisional date set and she’ll put in an urgent notice and someone will phone us. wtf? then where did the other dude pull 30 Dec from??? his ass???

person involved: lorraine!

moonflake gets a response to her email saying it’s been forwarded to the adsl dept. ie: we’re just responding to tell you that your email will bounce around for infinity and never get dealt with.

no-one phones (what did you expect?)

moonflake phones back (another 08h00 deal) and wastes another 15 minutes of her life listening to disjointed hold music. this time she gets told that while the exchange is installed, it has no ports allocated to it and will only have ports allocated on the 20th of December so nothing can happen before then. again: wtf? 20th? what happened to 30th? and how did lorraine miss all the dates altogether? also we are informed that nothing can be done to speed the process up and he will pass this up to the technical dept. someone will phone us. when moonflake asked for the number to phone them, because we’ve had the “they’ll phone you” line before, she’s told that she can’t have a number to contact them. when asked about an email adress: same story. so basically: i’m going to say that i’m doing something so that you will go away. the technical dept doesn’t exist but when you phone back the likelyhood of me answer your call again is tiny and i can always blame the ficticious technical dept again.

person involved: mdudu (i think)

so lets just have a quick summary here:

• it takes 5 months or more to get an adsl line from hellcom.
• you can’t get an adsl line that’s gameworthy from anywhere else.
• the helpdesks take an average of 20+ minutes to answer a call.
• we’ve spent almost 2 hours listening to hold music.
• there is an exchange installed that is doing nothing because hellcom won’t assign ports for 3 months.
• we have to pay an exhorbatant amount for this <massive sarcasm>”service”</massive sarcasm> <spit/><spit/>.
• as soon as a viable alternative comes along people will jump ship in a heartbeat (we certainly will)
• hellcom can go fuck themselves!

basically i’d like to say: fuck you telcom. i want my goddamn adsl now! 5 months is a fucking joke! telcom is the most unhelpful, ignorant, money-grubbing, arrogant, assfuck of a company i have ever come across. the only thing worse than them is the south african government (who just happen to own 42% of the monopoly know as telcom). fuckers!
for every month we have to wait for installation we should get 2 months free of charge. then we’d see some work being done.

and our copies of wow have been sitting there waiting for so long….
some searches since the last post:

“frott” – of course. i expect these to keep rolling in.

“ice cubes in urinals” / “gotta go drain the main vein” / “peeing large farthest” / “make your own cleaners in kitchen pee” / “woman using urinal “picture”" – besides the general pee theme, the last two are kinda disturbing.

“”sweet strings swimwear.”" – when you find the site, send me the link too ;)

there are some very odd (and scary) people out there, looking for some very odd (and scary) things. how they arrive at my blog is occasionally a mystery to me (sometimes i’m to blame, but not always).

here’s a selection of searches, and my repsonses:

• “nymphomaniacs” / “nymphomanics” / “nymphos” / “cul de sac sex”

ummm… sorry. this ain’t a porn site. my life isn’t that exciting (not in that way). these searches seem to be a recurrent theme. i’m not sure why.

• “frott” / “frottage” / “frottage bus”

ahem. *cough* one small incident on a bus and people won’t stop hounding you. if you’re looking for “how to”s : take one crowded bus, stand behind someone, grind. maybe i should introduce you to the people that made the previous searches.

• “paedophiles in South Africa” / “unconsentual story”

you two need help.

• “Who needs a cockpunch”

the two people who made the previous two searches is a good start. and maybe a good few people in SA’s government.

• “stabbed in the balls”

ouch. that’s gotta hurt. umm… i don’t have any help for you here… erm… go to a hospital? and don’t piss your girlfriend off so much next time mr bobbit.

• “DOLPH LUNGDREN TRIVIA”

wtf? you get added to the “who needs a cockpunch” list!

• “Pokemon” / “free pokemon mysterious dungeons rom” / “Pokemon Mysterious Dungeons” / “pokemon mysterious dungeons help”

i’ve never played it but here’s my advice: go buy the damn game stoopid! and as for help: collect pokemon, then use them to beat other pokemon. level up and win!

• “do obese people smell?”

sometimes. if you don’t wash them… or if you leave them out in the sun too long. i suggest keeping your obese indoors at a cool temperature at all times.

• “locked in a box”

then how’re you getting to the keyboard to type? unless you’re in a really big box with a computer and power… then you’re not in a box: you’re in a fantastic apartment in london… and you’re probably sharing it to make the rent affordable.

• “elephant possesion 2006″

wtf? i have no idea. how is elephant possesion in 2006 different to elephant possesion in 2005?

yeah… that’s just a few of the odd ones… and that’s just from the last 7 days. imagine the kind of searches i’ve gotten over the last month. (imagine what i’m going to get in the future *shudder*)

a wikipedia of terrible jokes… i love it :)

for example: Two paedophiles are on the beach. One says to the other “Excuse me, you’re in my son”

or: How do you get an emo out of a tree? cut the rope

as for the what i’ve been doing recently:

schpatcon!

the long weekend was dominated by schpatcon 7. luckily i managed to finish all my varsity stuff on friday so the weekend was free of worrying about work. got to see evo.llusion and various people that i don’t see too often, ate lots of chilli and hotdogs, and lost loads of sleep.

it was fun, but i’m still catching up on lost sleep.

and there was no electricity this morning. moonflake discovered this fact this morning (she wakes up before me). it seems localised to just us which means i’ll have to try find the dude with the keys and sort out the problem when i get home. hopefully it won’t be a hassle. it looks like the geyser may have tripped the board.

we have a board in the flat, but nothing on it was actually tripped. the geyser switched looked suspiciously misaligned though, and its given us problems once before. but the mains was up and we still had no ‘lectricity. this indicates that the switch for our flat has tripped downstairs. don’t ask me why there are multiple trip switches hidden throughtout the flat. that’s just the way it is.

anyway…. that’s all that’s been going on recently.

go amuse yourself somewhere else now.

after a long, hard day of coding and database design for a group project for varsity, we were standing around when one of the group made a shocking announcement…

standing with his back facing us, looking longingly at his laptop, he sighed softly before uttering the comment: “i wish i could mount my seconday storage device.”

we laughed. he looked shamedly at the floor and requested our silence in harsher terms… we laughed even more.

for non-unix type people i will have to explain:

eunichs, and unix fans have something in common. they do not understand “mounting.”

they know it has something to do with making a connection, but they don’t really “get” it. it’s kind of like the way a guy can understand pregnancy in theory, but he’ll never really “get” it either (except for the guvinator of course).

it’s like they went to a party once and overheard a conversation from the “cool” crowd who were talking about their wildest “mounting” moments. In a sudden fit of trying to be cool, mounting was introduced into the unix world. (eunichs, being slightly wiser, simply went on guarding the harem and singing sweetly).

but, being unix fans, they didn’t understand exactly what should happen when things get mounted, but they understood that things get inserted into things. that sounds kinda like a disk drive or even a usb flash drive, so mounting was assigned the purpose of connecting drives… and data storage devices of all sorts.

but unix mounting doesn’t follow the normal rules for mounting. you stick your little 2″ flashdrive (this is probably the source of many unix-fan problems…) into the socket, ready to spew data all over the hardrive, and nothing happens…

you’re all connected, the plugging has been done, but nothing’s happening… from a unix perspective you’re not mounted yet. i bet that the original mounting plan involved plugging and unplugging your drive repetedly for 2 minutes before you could send your data across… but only after begging your computer for 4 minutes prior to let you get access to the usb slot.

but, forever allegedly efficient (in their minds they are), you can just whip it out and shove it in. then you need to tell the machine that you’re in there and ready for hot data swapping. that’s the point when you mount in unix. you tell it what you’re mounting and where, and then it looks and deals with it.

in real life, if the “target” is unaware of your mounting or which slot you’ve inserted something into either your target is a *ahem* evtreme vetran pornstar, or you should quietly slip out and cry in shame.

eunichs think you’re talking about horses, but they’ve got great sopranos.

i really don’t understand the way this varsity works. we barely start the semester and we lose 7 days because one of the lecturers claims sickness. we then switch to section 2 (because she’s still, allegedly, sick) and we burn through that section like thermite through a car’s engine block. this results in a massive tut load (mainly because the replacement lecturer is an ass) that has to be completed before holidays start so that we can be given a tutorial for holidays…

and then the “sick” lecturer returns with no missing any limbs, no limp, no open wounds, no hacking cough… it would almost seem like she didn’t need more than a week to recover from some disabilitating illness… it almost seems like she has a child (which she does) who caught chicken pox or something… hmmm…

and she wants to do all sorts of catch-up lectures because we have such little time… but she spends 70% of our time in lectures going over simple exapmles. dammit! show us a short example, put longer examples in the notes, and let the stupid people be damned! they’re 3rd year comsci now… if they can’t hack it then they don’t deserve to have the chance.

seriously: wtf? its like the comsci department has given up. “they’re in 3rd year now… we don’t need to teach them anything, they can learn by themselves.”

“so how are we going to examine them then?”

“hmm…. give them boring, long tuts that result in pointless programs that don’t actually do anything. then find the worst lecturers possible and assign them to the class. i want at least 35% death by boredom rates with a 20% suicide due to frustration with idiotic tuts rate. if they can make it through that they’ll be ready to move into the working world and re-learn everything that we never taught them .”

i guess they don’t realise that in south africa it seems to have become a tradition to physically assault a uct lecturer at least once a year…