arbitrary user

<copy-paste>

Hi All

The “Ubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon” Cape Town Release Party has been finalised.

The venue has been set as Cantina Tequila in the Waterfront. We’ll be
outside in the sun on the benches (which are undercover and heated in
case the weather gets crap).

Be there at 2pm for 2:30pm this Sunday (21 October).

Cantina Tequila is “under” the big flagpole in the waterfront facing the water.
http://www.cantinatequila.co.za/images/map.gif

If you *still* can’t find it you can give me (Jonathan E) a call on
082 xxx xxxx.

PLEASE RSVP SO WE CAN RESERVE A TABLE!

kthxbai

j. </copy-paste>

ps. Mail me arbitraryuser at gmail dot com to rsvp.

She asked why I listed my religion as “Pastafarianism”:

Pastafarianism is the belief that the universe is controlled by a flying spaghetti monster. It is a theoretical belief closely linked to the philosophical concept of Russell’s teapot. In case you’re wondering, no, I don’t believe the universe is controlled by spaggethi, and yes, I am trying to make a point.

Do I believe in God? Who knows… Which one are you talking about? There are too many gods out there to believe in… and many, including the Christian god, have a lot of things going against them… I meet too many well meaning, well educated Christians who, despite their university educations, believe that evolution is “made up”, homosexuals are “going to hell” and George Bush is “doing what God is telling him to do”.

I don’t for a second think that any of us are just a coincidence. But I do believe it is, and excuse me if I offend you here, coincidence that you grew up in Pinelands, with Christian parents (I think?) and Christian friends, in an environment where being anything other than a Christian was a bad thing… You could have been born in outer Mongolia and believed in Baluti the Sun God.

It is however not a coincidence that, given the environment that you grew up in, you became a Christian.

I believe that we all get to make a choice for ourselves… and more importantly that nobody has the right to inflict their religion on anybody else.

I am just like you, I chose to not believe in the plethora of gods out there… we both ignore Zeus, Allah, Pulika the great, etc etc etc… except I take it one step further and feel that, given the option of thousands of gods to believe in, believing in the one I coincidentally grew up with is just too damn convenient to “surrender my life to”.

I have a friend called Steve who got called something horrible by an older, meaner, guy in school. It was something that had happened time and time again and Steve was reaching the end of his tether.

So one day, milliseconds after being called the horrible name, Steve grabbed Ian, the bad guy, by the neck and shoved him up against the wall and said something like “DON’T EVER CALL ME A FSCKING @#$@! AGAIN!”

When I heard this story I was like “Wow, dude, that’s awesome! What happened?”.

Steve’s reply was priceless “Oh, he totally fscked me up at break time”.

But the message was clear. It didn’t matter how many times he got knocked down… He had stood up for himself and he was going to do it again.

From what I understand, short of a beating at break, Ian never messed with Steve again.

The parallels here are interesting, albeit a bit far fetched, but I love telling that story.

Telkom has been walking around calling everybody names for ages. They rip us off, hurt us, drive us to levels of emotional stress that should really only ever be reserved for ex-girlfriends and they just don’t seem to care. (I broke up with Telkom a while ago and don’t let that bitch into my life anymore)

Well, the industry is starting to stand up in the hallways.

Sure, individuals in the industry are probably going to get beaten up a few times on the field at break, but maybe only once or twice… When a bully realizes that every time they cause a fight they will walk away a little ingured too, that’s when they start thinking twice.

ath.

j.

ps. The adsl line that Joe’s story refers to has actually not been set up yet. Even though they had telkom in the building. I wonder if they just sent some techies there as a delaying tactic in hope that they would call off their toyi toyi.

I just uploaded pictures from some of my recent escapades to flickr. Check my stream out here.

Of particular interest to general geeks are the pics of Lourens’ prototype arcade controller that we put together to test the hack-job we did on an old keyboard controller circuit. The wiring is messy as hell but it worked perfectly (once we’d got all the wires soldered in the right place). He’s planning on building a full cabinet soon, and soon we’ll be rocking teenage mutant ninja turtles… just like I did when I was 13! In case you’re wondering, he’s running this on MAME on Ubuntu and with a 1.8Ghz CPU. It runs flawlessly and he thinks he might even be able to get away with a 1Ghz cpu.

Next up is breakfast with Pascal Dornier, the designer of the WRAP board and now more recently the ALIX. For those of you reading this who have no idea what a WRAP board is, it’s one of the best embedded computers on the market and it’s tiny. The ALIX is slightly larger but has everything, including vga and usb. Pascal is based in Switzerland and offered to fly to South Africa and deliver my ALIX personally. He also brought me Swiss Chocolate which was almost as sweet as the ALIX.

I haven’t had a chance to get the Alix up and running yet, but this weekend will be fun!

(ok ok, he didn’t fly here just to deliver my ALIX, there was some synchronicity involved too)

You can find out more about ALIX and her friends here.

ath.