Living experiment #8

Scroop and I have found a place to put our stuff. Centrally located (Leederville), I expect this new house to quickly become the cultural Mecca for the city's alcoholics. I anticipate getting straight to work on my main goal - to have my likeness on the wall of every local pub and cafe. I'm looking forward to living but a short walk to the Re-Store, Luna cinemas, the Oxford and the Paddington Ale House.

Since I left my parent's house in 1996 I've lived in seven separate housing arrangements, with over fifty different people (Guild House and Erica Underwood housing providing a high turnover of flatmates.) Throughout my adventures I've lived with abusive spouses (not mine), sexual extroverts, substance abusers, people less tidy than myself, obsessive compulsives, thieves, Young Liberals, and any mixture of unpleasant, rude, selfish and two-faced people,[1] but until now I've never lived with a Scroop. Or a cat.

Paul's self-help guide to living with people
In spite of the above list of adjectives, on the whole I've immensely enjoyed each shared living experience. In the interest of refreshing my memory before entering what will probably be one of the most trying periods of my life, I now present a list of ways to stop the bad mojo drowning out the good mojo. I'm not going to talk here about cleaning rosters, shopping lists and cooking regimes - these have been different in every house in which I've lived. But I've found there are things you just gotta do when you live with people. I can't vouch that these techniques will make coping with me any easier, but it's up to each person to find their comfortable place - I can only do so much.

1. Girls shouldn't live together.[2] Sorry, but this is a truism. In fact, anybody - irrespective of gender - who puts themselves in a living arrangement with more than one girl deserves everything they get. I've also discovered that if girls have pillow fights in their knickers, they don't do it when guys are around.


2. Flatmate relationships are different. Because you have to spend a certain portion of your life with these people, you must treat them differently to your friends and workmates. Your house is like a social magnifying glass - small shit looks like big shit if you gotta put up with it daily. The rules for interacting with ordinary people are intuitive; special care must be taken to minimise friction when interacting with flatmates.


3. You can't live with serious problems. I don't mean dishes, dirty toilets or loud music. By serious problems I'm talking about mental disequilibrium, physically or emotionally abusive tendencies or serious drug problems. Some people carry an anti-social bubble around them and you don't want to get involved with that shit.


4. Don't argue about useless crap. I like to think I've developed a philosophy of tolerance, and learned to avoid ego clashes. Before having a stab at someone it's best to decide whether it's actually worth it, and what you hope to achieve. If you don't have an actual point, or you're repeating the same thing over and over, it's just your treacherous ego whispering spiteful propaganda to your mind and thus precipitating the downward spiral of knee-jerk reactions.


5. Develop a healthy memory problem. Nature, and probably alcohol, has helped me here. Not being able to recall facts encourages an environment where issues either get sorted out on the spot or fall by the wayside.


6. Don't be a total tight-ass. Accept that money issues won't always get sorted to your liking. People rarely go out of their way to cheat you, so unless you are absolutely certain that you are getting gypped it's sometimes prudent to give the other people the benefit of the doubt.


7. A big ego makes you look like an ass. It's easy to see dominance challenges where there are none - Is my flatmate using my stuff when I'm not there? Why should he get the top shelf on the fridge? Did he just piss against the wall I similarly claimed when we first moved in? A person can be measured by how they deal with these perceived problems (even if they are real.)


8. Learn to argue amicably. Don't be a baby and let unnecessarily heated polemic and accusations dictate the course of an argument. Did you manage to pay that bill? When's the power likely to get cut then? is far better than I told you to pay that bill a week ago... Prepare for a face full of knuckles, bitch. Similarly, maybe we should establish a beer-purchasing roster should be preferred over next time you drink my beer you'll be paying for it in kidneys. In the same vein, leaving little notes on the fridge as a means of avoiding direct confrontation will breed contempt and is dumb.


9. Don't ever live with Scroop. I really dropped the ball on this one, I'm afraid. I've just listed it here so others don't make the same mistake I have.

By far the easiest people to live with are those who know how to give you space. Of course everyone is different but I find this to be a more important factor than tidiness, financial acumen or beverage stealing. I am not particularly saint-like in any of these areas myself though (except the beverage stealing), so perhaps my priorities are skewed.

Rant aside, I have to say that on the whole I've usually been pretty lucky with my flatmates. I've only ever helped precipitate two people being kicked out of their home[3], but these were extreme cases. Additionally my lifestyle leads me to often treat my house as more of a stop-over than a home, so I generally find it easy to just get out of everyone's hair (read: get flatmates out of my hair) when I have a problem. Note to any ex-flatmates that may be reading this (and I can think of a possible five): I've never been one to spend much time at home in any case, so unless you suspect that I really didn't like you, don't go thinking I had a problem with you. Otherwise, suck it up Buttercup. Life's tough - get a helmet.[4]

Footnotes:
[1] You notice this list is chock full of pejorative adjectives; my defence here is that they are the people you most remember. I lived with a lot of great people but nice people aren't good sources of humorous anecdotes. For instance I could write paragraphs about the friendly Thai girls Ming and Ting, or the Indonesian girls Lek and Thong, and how their ghostlike invisibility and formal politeness didn't exacerbate the craziness that is Guild House life, but that's hardly braggable.
[2] The 'girls not living with each other' rule used to be near the bottom of the list but I decided it deserved a ranking reflecting its importance.
[3] I helped show Obsessive-Compulsive the door after a particular nasty in-house fist-fight (not with me), and Wife Beater got the boot following a long episode involving us smuggling Mrs Beater out of the country without him knowing. Both are long stories.
[4] I can see you wondering how on Earth anybody could possibly have a problem living with me. Well, unlikely as it seems I assume it can happen, and that there's possibly even some support group for Paul's ex-flatmates.

A McDonald's Affair

Skipping through channels last night (waiting for the season finale of The Panel) I came across an A Current Affair story on McDonald's. The premise of the article centered around a doctor who undertook his own version of Morgan Spurlock's McDonald's challenge to prove that one could still lead a healthy lifestyle while only eating McDonald's.

By the end of the report the tone of the story had taken on a decidedly suspicious bent, forming blatant associations between McDonald's food and good dietary advice, with the doctor's advising doctor suggesting at the end that even he might consider taking 'the McDonald's Diet.' What the fuck??? Pick a job already, and stick to it - don't abuse the post you've chosen!

The pièce de résistance came with an interview with the smug face of McDonald's Australia, Guy Russo. Of course McDonald's has always maintained that our food can be part of a balanced diet he said, an affected look of innocent bemusement on his smirking face.

I cannot conceive of a scenario where this doctor, or indeed the reporter, could be anything less than the worst kind of shill. What doctor in his right mind would take it upon himself to even suggest that people specifically go out of their way to eat junk food (let alone McDonald's) if they want to maintain a balanced diet? And by the end of the story that is what was being suggested. Granted, most intelligent people consider A Current Affairs articles and good reporting of hard facts to be completely orthogonal, but presumably some people use it as a credible news source, so they should maintain at least some façade of accountability. I know there's a whole class of people out there that get to use this story as an excuse for their eating habits, and can sagely shake their heads and tell their concerned friends no, thats all been disproven - McDonald's is no less healthy than any other food. It's a political stunt commonly referred to as The Big Lie where you only need to suggest an argument, no matter how outrageous, and people will cling to it (I gotta be careful with Godwyn here, so I'll say no more.)

Where did this story originate? It's obvious McDonald's is still in damage control mode after Supersize Me, so it would be natural to suspect that McDonald's played a large part in the formulation of this story. I thought I'd look up the name and credentials of the 'doctor' who decided to undertake this experiment, or perhaps find some disclaimer announcing the association the relation between the story and McDonald's Australia, but to my surprise neither the show's nor McDonald Australia's websites have any record that the episode ever aired.

Ray Martin's closing line after the story elicted a chuckle from me. He said something along the lines of '...and thanks to McDonald's for their... the uhh... the part they played in that story.' He cleared his throat, tapped his papers and moved on.

Swimming in honey

Holy crap I hate computers. I'm reminded of it every time I use Blogger. It's like a punch in the stomach every time my computer freezes. And yesterday I almost chewed my cheeks off in frustration when our provider decided to tie a knot in my Internet umbilical cord.

I found out yesterday just how much I rely on the Internet. I no longer have the capacity to sit in ignorance. I don't have the patience to go down to the library to search for facts. I use whitepages.com.au, yellowpages.com.au and the Sydney Morning Herald website infinitely more frequently than their non-virtual counterparts[1]. The Internet is my intellectual feeding trough. It's my SCUBA tank in this sea of dark ignorance[2]. I now need it to survive.

So not only was it bad enough that I spend yesterday stewing in my own sweat[3], but I spend half the day clawing my eyes out in frustration. And right when I decided to migrate cechner.com to bluehost.com as well.

:(Of course writing anything here was completely out of the question - I wasn't up to inviting Blogger to kick me in the groin while Swiftel held me down. But today - sweet relief. I forsook my trusty jeans for shorts, conscientiously uncovering the white hairy stilts I wear in place of legs. The air-conditioning in the office seems to be functioning correctly, and of course the Internet loves me again.

On a side note, I don't want the negative tone of this rant to suggest that I think the Internet is a bad thing. I really believe in the empowerment of people through information, and the Internet has proven an invaluable resource for grassroots organisations and the like, allowing them to quickly mobilise demonstrations, publish cheap worldwide newsletters (give it up for globalised Thomas Paine style pamphleteering) and garner information. I'll leave a my thoughts on democracy and information providers for another rant, but needless to say the Internet can only be a boon for global citizens wary of the crap commercial news networks offer. IF one knows where to look the Internet is so much more than a bunch of nerds calling each other ass-hats.

Footnotes
[1] I have not yet fully developed a mature online ego (as has my proto-nerd,) but I know that when that day comes my dependency will be complete. I'll be past hope of redemption by intervention or any other means.
[2] For the purposes of this metaphor, ignorance cannot be breathed, or at least one cannot be sustained on it for long.
[3] Jeans, thick socks and half-working air-conditioning.

The art of renting

Apparently a complete secondary education isn't strictly necessary in real-estate agents, either.

I've moved house many times in the last four years. Each time I get a whole lot of headaches and sore muscles, but there are some problems that are worth noting for future reference.

This time I'm looking for a place with Scroop. Fortunately he's been doing all of the initial leg work hunting-wise - for which I am eternally grateful. I am hoping against hope, and against a lot of past experience, that this hunting experience will be quick and painless.

The biggest problem I've found is separating the chaff from the grain. No place is really as good as it looks in the ad. There are certain things that look good on paper, and people building investment houses often make sure their house has them. Unfortunately it's like the hotel 'star rating' system. Sure, a hotel may have the separate bathroom, air conditioning, television, etc that qualifies it for a four-star rating. It's another thing entirely to organise the bath, toilet, sink and shower in the same room while keeping mindful of those of us with elbows. And there is a world of difference between ducted reverse-cycle remote controlled air conditioning and one of those brown boxes you just have to knock out a few bricks to install.

I remember looking at a house once where the owner obviously had some qualification, though very little skill, in the area of architectural drawing. The house looked like an Escher drawing, with the second floor being mostly balcony, from where you could look down upon the most boring part of the bottom floor (the overly wide hallway that took up way too much room). The cracks in the walls near twists in the curious design were a testament to natures own protests against this abomination to structural design. It looked good in the ad though.

To write for yourself and for everyone else

Who does one write a blog for? Or more to the point - how does one decide? Is it important?

It is. The written word can be a satisfying thing, for both the reader and the writer. I take a lot of personal pleasure in constructing simple sentences that I believe accurately convey my intended meaning. I really enjoy letting my mind run stupid with inappropriate metaphors and grotesque imagery.

It is more personal than that though - as I've mentioned in the past, and as anyone who knows me will attest, my memory is a thing of legend[1]. Much of my primary school years are lost to me because I have always gone through life in a fuzzy, book-reading, introspective daze. The only reason I recall much of my University years is because of the hundreds of anecdotes that I've carefully constructed and endlessly recount[2]. It's kinda like the Guy Pearce's character from Memento's Sammy Jenkis story. So I feel that I really need a written record of my past, or I'll end up a billionaire playboy who cannot pass on the pearls of wisdom that led to his good fortune (is there any sadder person? No.)

So why is it important to decide on an audience, or a topic? Here's why: without direction I know I'll lose interest. If I put any random crap up that I feel merits documenting there will be no intrinsic value in the blog, because I won't be able to imagine it being interesting to myself or anyone else. It'll be like the big fat notebook I have sitting near my keyboard at work - I jot down everything in it, so if I ever need anything it's practically useless.

This is why every time I read an interesting technical article or a good book I have to resist the urge to plonk a steaming pile of analysis in this here blog. Because there's a time and place, and I've decided that this is not to be the place for serious technical analysis.

So what constitutes a useful entry? I don't really know yet, but after writing what became a Firefox etymology I decided news articles just won't cut it. I don't mind a little news parody but thats what The Onion is for. Meta rants get old fast, and aren't really that interesting.

On the other hand if I only put up personal shit about how I hate this or that, or which foods I enjoy, or personal aspirations and the like, I'll have to start kicking my own ass, because I quickly find that boring to read. In the end I believe one must have a point, and if possible, a conclusion.

So it'll be a mix of things[3], but probably no news-like stories. Not focusing on any particular facet, but broadly canvasing the things on which I muse in daily life. I also want to create another page just for technical (computer programming) rants, because I don't want those to drown out all the non-technical stuff on this page.

I'll probably start putting more half-baked rants up as well. I have a few draft rants that probably won't ever see the light of day because I didn't publish them when I wrote them, and now can't be bothered finishing them off.

---

Footnotes
[1] Legendary, if things that truly suck can be said to be legendary.
[2] Schmee has recently had the tenacity to challenge many of these anecdotes I so dearly cling to. Perhaps the Sammy Jenkis analogy is more apt than I dare realise...
[3] Nothing too risque - my girlfriend's parents (and perhaps even my own) have been know to read this site.

Christmas spending cheer

Oftentimes I'll hang up my top-hat and sit back in front of the fireplace with a glass of Hennessy's X.O cognac as I polish my monocle. I have on occasion whiled away many hours in this fashion musing on priorities. Not just mine, but people's priorities in the big-picture sense. And as most people who know me understand, it's subjects like this I don't mind reflecting on vocally and at great length.

I'll try to keep this part of the rant from becoming too holier-than-thou because it's something I could really get carried away with, but it seems our priorities are too heavily aligned with our passionate consumerism (why do I pick on you so?). The same mechanism that leads us to believe that a person who doesn't work for half of their waking life has less intrinsic worth than someone who does also engenders the idea that the affection we feel for each other is most properly expressed through the purchasing and administering of consumer items.

Coles/Myer tell me What My Family Will Love For Christmas and Hallmark tells me How To Say What I Feel. How lucky to be living in a world where things are made so easy! By following these simple formulae how can I not be happy?

Every year I worry that my cynical attitude will cast a pall over this most holy of Christian holidays. It's exceedingly difficult to churn up a great deal of cheer when you can walk into David Jones in the middle of October to the slightly disturbing specter of a mechanical Santa Clause (with one malfunctioning eyelid stuck half open) gyrating his hips to the tinny carols playing over the store stereo system. Forgive me for groaning as I'm reminded of what we let TV commercials convince us we need.

So I'd like to clarify here: I'm not anti-Christmas. On the contrary, I spend half the year looking forward to the coming Christmas - spending time with my family and friends, eating lots of ham and potato salad and taking heaps of time off work in the middle of summer. I just really hate everything about shopping centres. Shops, and the companies that own them, seem to radiate a smug sense of self-importance. We are dependant on them and they take full advantage, at no time more so than Christmas. Sometimes it seems as though Christmas is more about them than us.

Every year I suggest to my family that we communicate our affection in some other way, and I think they agree. My personal favourite would be to cook for each other, because I love food. I'm sure each person can find some personalised idea. The fault is my own that I never follow through on this plan - as anyone who knows me will attest, I am not a planner.

So once again I'll trudge down to the shops, pockets jingling all the way, to fight the crowds of desperate consumers clambering to purchase items that adequately express their deep fondness for one another. My eyes will dry out as I wait for hours in air-conditioned comfort in the checkout queues under the scrutiny of little buzzing security cameras. I'll listen merrily to the stores' 5 public-domain Christmas carols album repeating ad-nauseum. I'll accept the fact that everything I'm buying will be heavily discounted in a months time.

I'll do all these things because I enjoy having a special time of year when I get together with my family and friends, and I want this time of year to be as different as possible from the rest of the year. I want to be reminded of other Christmases. And for the moment Coles/Myer offer me the path of least resistance. One day this will change though.

Edit: I altered the date on this post because I don't want the Firefox entry at the top of my page. Although I like the product, I just don't like my rant.

How to hamstring a product release

Mozilla's new flagship favourite product - the web browser Firefox - was set to be released today. Only problem is, hosting problems seem to be stabbing them in the proverbial back.

The Mozilla foundation has been building increadible impetus for the release, hoping the running start will see their darling child well on its way to challenging the Goliath of the browser market; Internet Explorer. When last I checked IE sat at around 95% market share, a position Microsoft is so comfortable with they haven't provided any significant updates to the product since Netscape was killed (before it was resurrected.) The Mozilla foundation will be hoping to take a fair chunk of that cake for themselves in the coming years, but everyone expects going to be slow. Microsoft certainly didn't get where they were without ensuring they had an illegal advantage over the rest of the market.

The strategy has been straight forward - gather as much support as possible to spread the word. The first incarnation of this came in the form of the 'Spread Firefox' campaign; an appeal for bloggers, admins and all other miscellany of geekdom to unite in evangelising the browser. Hopefully many are now familiar with the Firefox logo (pictured left) from the little ad that's become so popular.

The second element of the campaign has been a new direction for open source projects in general - get some commercial exposure in the form of actual advertising. The fund-raising drive to raise enough for a few full-paged ads in the New York Times was wildly successful, completing its objectives in just a few weeks.

But when I logged on to mozilla.org this evening, the server was down. I can only imagine the number of people reading the various news articles heralding its release, who don't really care what browser they are using but are willing to try while theres a link in front of them, who never click again after the HTTP error turns them back.

Hopefully this is actually a good thing. Perhaps the server's hosed because demand for the new browser far outstripped the Mozilla foundation's wildest expectations. On the other hand, perhaps it's just bad systems administration or management.

Update: a few minutes after composing this post mozilla.org came back online, and downloading was quite fast. Sometimes I let my language carry me away on a tide of enthusiasm. Get the browser - you know you want it.

US voters rally behind Paul

Voters turned out in record numbers on Tuesday to aid Paul in path to victory over the nefarious Scroop. The battle lines couldn't be clearer or bloodier, and the stakes couldn't be higher - a fine bottle of liquour ride on his 'Bush will win 2004' campaign that polarised the entire nation.

The end of Tuesday left Ohio as the final bastion of hope for Scroop, though many wonder why his party hadn't conceded by that point. Fox news has been reporting a clear victory for Paul for most of the day.

Defeat was conceded early this morning by the 'Liquour for Scroop' party, the death knoll announced by Scroop himself in a particularly somber declaration: 'The hack won. Kerry has conceded.'

Pundits speculate that Scroop's mistake was to appeal to the intellect and common sense of the average voter. Scroop's media people commented in a press release early this morning that 'this is not a mistake we'll be making again in 2008. Next time we'll promise a new war against a nation even poorer than Iraq, and we are already working on a slew of bills to present to congress that will reverse at least half of the amendments to the Constitution. We will present the American people with the chance to not just shoot themselves in the foot, but to blow off their whole damn leg!'

Paul could not be reached for comment, but campaign spokespeople say he could probably be found near the fridge drinking milk and eating fatty foods. 'He always likes to prime himself - or line the ol' stomach as he likes to say - before settling back into a night on the turps' one remarked.

Whispered rumours indicate that Paul is already reconsidering his choice of whiskey. Chivas Regal - while a smooth drop - has been tried and tested, while Paul has been in the past known to expand his pallet by preferring experimental untried drinks. Is this reversal of election promises a sign of things to come?

The lesser of two weevils

Holy crap it's looking close. Things were looking pretty depressing before I left this morning - with Kerry and Bush sitting at 112 to 170 electors respectively. Seemingly the Washington count brought things into line, though Bush was still ahead.

The electronic voting machines have been the source of a few headaches, and it's not difficult to find reports of intimidation or intentionally misleading information (google for mailouts telling democrats to vote on Wednesday for administration purposes, or Nader featuring on ballot papers in electorates where he is not actually contending for President.)

Now with Florida out of the way (apparently firmly on Bush's side of the court) Ohio has become the king-maker; as I write the elector count sits at 242 Kerry, 249 Bush (though Faux News has once again pre-emptively both declared Bush the winner and put him at 259 - one vote away from the required 260 to become President). BBC news has an excellent election site with nifty applets showing all the information you might want on an interactive map of the US. Things became more interesting in the last half hour or so, with Bush leading at 50.9% (over Kerry's 48.6%) of the Ohio vote with only about 3% (I think this comes to over 100,000 votes) left to count. This is the first time since I've been watching Ohio's polls - a few hours now - that Bush's lead has decreased below the 51% mark.

Interestingly enough, the exit polls have proven useless in Ohio and Florida. They were accurate in every other state, but these two diverged for reasons unknown. Similarly curious is CNN's reporting of said polls - as of a few hours ago they actually changed the results in Ohio to indicate a Bush lead where previously they showed a Kerry lead. It's a good reason to prefer British broadcasting over US, even when reviewing information on the US election.

One more reason Australia's preferential voting system kicks ass. The US's Electoral College does nothing more than exacerbate the two-party system and move the voters a further step from true democratic representation.

My hopeless bet

Let it not be said that some good cannot come of George Bush winning the 2004 US election. As of a few minutes ago, half a bottle of my choice of liquour is riding on his winning. It may seem pessimistic, even - god forbid - cynical of me, but I would like to find a ray of sunshine in the event of a second disastrous election.

For the record I would like to say that I believe Kerry will win, but I also trusted my fellow Australians enough that I would have put the same bet on Howard losing, so I wouldn't expect my word to swing the odds at the TAB at all.

So to Scroop - may the best man win. I truly hope you will be toasting Kerry's good health at your place come this weekend, for I think yours will taste sweeter than mine, no matter what our choice of poison.

The race that stops a nation

As most offices do on the first Tuesday of November every year, we had a sweep. Two sweeps, in fact - a $2 and a $5 one. I bought one of each, unfortunately pulling the same horse in each one - She's Archie. Our office doesn't have a TV so we just sat around an AM radio in the lunch room eating party pies and sausage rolls till the race started.

Long story short, my horse didn't win. But our office, again like most offices in Australia, has a booby-prize - a kind of wooden spoon for the horse that comes last. I heard my horse's name announced near the end of the race, so sat in hope. Unfortunately the announcers spend all their time extolling the virtues of the three winners and none on the rest of the placings.

In desperation I turn to the Internet. The TAB racing site is under heavy load and cannot service my request, as are all the other betting sites I can think of. The SMH, The Age and The Australian all have articles up in seconds announcing the winning three horses (Makybe Diva won by the way, setting a record as the only horse to have won two consecutive Melbourne Cups) and eludicating on the owner's heart-wrenching account of the horse's recent history, but none would publish the rest of the placings.

Finally the Sydney Morning Herald came through with the results. I had indeed won last place. She's Archie had not let me down. Total outlay - $12 (I also had a $5 bet on Catchmeifyoucan, who doesn't even have it in him to lose well). Total winnings - $21. Net profit.

This is the third time, I think, where I have profited from the losing horse in the Melbourne Cup. May all my choices be the poorest.