Yuletide musings

December 31st, 2011


Merry ho ho
It's only a few hours to go before 2012 storms the ramparts, so that means I'm sitting at home on the usual Xmas break that most of New Zealand seems to have.

For you rubes, saps and rabble in North America who might only get a couple of days off over Xmas/New Years – most businesses shut down here around the 23rd of Dec., and the earliest we're expected back in offices and whatnot is January 4th (this year).

As the school year features summer break at Xmas time here, kids are on holidays until early in February – so many families extend their Xmas holiday to include much or all of January (we get minimum 4 weeks' annual leave here).

So right now .... apart from cabs, bars, retail stores and the hospital – the country is pretty much inert for two weeks or more.

It's a cool concept.

And as it's summer here we've been outside eating and imbibing ... 'al fresco' ... which includes an excellent Xmas day feast, and some general BBQing and drinking on my patio. It's my 11th such Xmas here in New Zealand, and I still revel in celebrating the holidays in summer warmth, shorts, and not much else. I have had my fill of snow after many years in Canada ... all the frozen H2O  I'll ever want to encounter now is in my freezer, in cubic form, awaiting addition to a festive cocktail.

The campfire rule
As mentioned in another post, apply the firewood rule of camping to booze acquisition for holidays: get what you THINK might be enough to last for a session, then DOUBLE that amount. Because it will all get consumed.

And if it somehow miraculously doesn't, before the holidays are over? Protip: Booze doesn't go bad. It'll be there for when your massive Yule hangover finally subsides.

Optimum performance art venues
People starved for attention (or just outright lunatics) will always find a way to demonstrate their loopy needs and twisted thoughts in public places. Xmas is an excellent time for your bog-standard nutbar to get out there and really perform.

Why? Because there are large crowds everywhere, in most stores, just waiting to be entertained. The world is your oyster if you're insane ... at Xmas time, there's a big audience close by, no matter which way you turn!

I encountered the most obvious specimen of batshit-crazy fuckwit this year in a grocery store. For reasons that will likely never be known, a woman suddenly launched into a loud tirade of utter gibberish while in the checkout line. We could hear her hollering from our coordinates down in the wine aisle ... but nothing of what she was saying (yelling) could be made sense of. She eventually got her point across (to her satisfaction, I guess) and wandered off.

Deliverance
There is some absurdity in the Kiwi mindset where folks abhor getting food delivered to their homes. This has boggled my mind since I first got here.

I have no idea why, but most Kiwis would rather drive to the places (pizza and Chinese food, but NOT fish and chips ... they don't deliver this at ALL for some reason ...) and stand around waiting for the stuff to be made ... then, drive it home.

People of New Zealand, take heed: you work hard for a living. At day's end, why would you subject yourself to this needless wait and pointless bit of extra driving around picking up fast food, when a highly skilled young driver will gladly whisk it to your home in minutes?

Once you're home from work, the heaviest thing you should be lifting (when considering ordering food) is the telephone, and money/your credit card. You've put in 8+ hours on the toil for the day already ... now it's time to play King For An Hour, and get people to do your bidding.


Get the damn food delivered! Then while you're waiting, spend quality time with the kids or pets. Or start drinking. Or both.

This is 'sound' time management that I'm talking about right here ... and, you're also ensuring the delivery kids keep their jobs. You don't want to be contributing to the unemployment situation here, now do you – for the sake of saving a couple of bucks?

8 versions later, and they still don't have it right ...
Yep, it's Microsoft Windows bashing time again.

I washed my hands of this atrocity many years ago, and went Apple ... and yet, friends keep insisting on "saving money" and getting computers with this shit installed on it. Ha ha.

I cannot for the life of me understand how Microsoft can continually front up with this absolute rubbish for an operating system time after time ... EIGHT TIMES now (or more, if you count the specialised "versions" of things like XP and Vista and 7) .... especially since Apple and Linux have demonstrated – years ago – you CAN make an operating system that doesn't require assloads of time fixing, tweaking, restarting, and adding all sorts of workarounds and extra programs just to make the fucking thing WORK.

My friend just got a brand new laptop, with the much-vaunted (by Windows sheep) Windows 7. Except it's not the full, complete version (or as they laughingly call it, "Professional"). It's one of the other lesser ones.

Which begs the first question: Why? 

Why in the FUCK would you make (more than one!) lesser versions of this stinking operating system which only partially works? (When the actual full one is also a piece of shit to begin with?)

So here's the rumpus about this issue.

My friend bought this brand new Toshiba laptop, very nice looking ... with a lesser-than-pro version of Windows 7 installed.

Except ... it wasn't.

Upon opening the thing and turning it on the first time, we were greeted with a large alarming message proclaiming that Windows had suffered unrepairable errors and must now be totally reinstalled.

Let me repeat that.

Upon ... OPENING ... a brand new, out of the box, computer ... it announces Windows has shit itself and must be reinstalled.

Yeah. Still the same steaming pile of FAIL it's been since version 3.1, and 95, and on up ...

And the tragedy continued. We waited for a solid 2+ hours for the thing to reinstall and set up. Then finally, away it went! I reckoned maybe the huge problems would be over ...

Ha ha. Always the silly optimist!

In three days it has crashed no less than 7 times. For no reason other than a browser was open and surfing the net. Yep, that's a big drain on the memory and circuitry and capacity of a computer ... or it was, in 1993.

And so I initiate a full Disk Check, which of course takes about 3 times as long as the install did.

And then we get to the constant Windows updates. Which we are alerted to hourly ... and when we click "Update Now", does it update? No! Of course not! ERROR ... ERROR ...

An attempt to use Windows Media Player to organise some music and videos proved futile, as it too needed to be updated, but then the update was denied ... and so now we have iTunes (an Apple product that WORKS) managing all that, to great success.

Ah yes ... more good news ... Windows 7 no longer features Spell Check. Nor will it allow Microsoft Word to deploy it. Or, FireFox.

We had to download a special program just to have Spell Check work on Firefox (because the one that usually comes with – and works with – Firefox, won't work on Windows 7 either). Still no clue on how to get it to work with Word.

I'll take this moment now that we're bollicking Microsoft roundly ...  to mock Gates' Folly (or Travesty if you will) for insisting you BUY MS Office as well ... its own software ... without which, you can't do anything with a Windows computer other than surf and email. (But of course, you can't even do THAT until you download and enable firewall, antivirus and spyware programs!)

When compared to all the amazing standard software you get on every Mac (everything you need to actually do things, like write letters, look at/create slide shows, do spreadsheets, open and edit photos, graphics and PDFs, and much much more ... such as create and edit movies, and DVDs ...)

You have to buy software to do any of these things on a Windows machine. Or you "save money" and go for a free program that works like ... well, you know the expression, "there are no free lunches?"

Yeah. You will eventually end up paying to get something that sort of works properly. Maybe.

Suddenly the "cheaper" Windows machine ain't so cheap. And, it's a gigantic big sitting-duck of a virus and spyware target. Plus you haven't even been able to use it yet ... you're still fixing and tweaking and downloading and updating stuff.

Get that credit card out ... it's about to get a really good workout!

As it's only been a week since my friend bought the machine, I'm sure there'll be lots more joyous little mysteries and puzzles to try and solve ... because, as the Japanese say, there are no problems. Only challenges!

Open for business ... but not for you!
What could be finer than living in a First World country where you can choose to just order food instead of cooking ... especially two days after spending an entire day creating an Xmas feast.

Scenario: You've had a guts-full of cooking, after Xmas dinner ate one or possibly two days of your time.

Now wouldn't it be nice to snag a fish & chips meal (but of course, these are NEVER delivered here ... just pizza and Chinese food) and just chill out on the patio and not worry about cooking for a day?

Not in Kelburn (Wellington suburb). We attempted to pick up some fish & chips at the unholy hour of 5 pm on the sacrosanct day of December 29th. Nope, closed.

That's some sound business sense you have going there, guys.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
January 1, 2012


Bit of a pause for the cause there, as a trip out to the shops to re-stock for NY Eve was necessary (broke my own campfire rule! Or ... did I? I seemed to have gone  'hair straight back' and drank everything anyway ... no amount of extra stocking would have prevented that, it seems ...)

Everyone, their dog and Aunt Betty was out doing exactly the same thing yesterday. Every one of them a Gold Medal winner at the Bad Planning Olympics. Including, sadly, us.

Which meant a grocery store FULL of stressed looking shoppers ... and families all in there together.

And in many cases, 12 or possibly 18 people on one shopping mission, with one cart, and just one person actually doing the shopping ...

While this sort of thing might be fun to do on a lazy normal Sunday, come on folks – is it necessary to have 10 extra meandering, staggering, getting-in-my-goddamn-way family members with you in the store on such a day (December 31) when you KNOW it's going to be jointed, chockers, and sardined?

Wine was obtained there, and then thankfully, vodka at the NOT busy bottle shop. And soon, we were home with enough food to feed a lot more merry drunks than us ... and booze to fuel the NY Eve fire!

Anyway, merry ho ho and new year and all that.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few other absurd observances over the holiday season, but for now, I'll post this.

Yours truly, from the future ...