Alli’s Blog
asks the question “Where does jet fuel go when it’s dumped?”

The answer is, downwards as gravity takes it. There’s fairly well documented cases of this landing in non-ideal places. Best efforts are (supposed) to be made to not to do this in non-ideal places (i.e. over where people are) but it does happen.

The idea is that fuel needs to be dumped in an emergency before a safe landing can be made. (see something like the Aircraft Incidents section on San Francisco airport wikipedia page)

The F-111 is nice as it dumps fuel at the rear of the aircraft between two jets. This has the rather spectacular effect of a “dump and burn”. Arguably a much better thing than spraying fuel onto (land|people|ocean).

I should also point out that yes, it’s a known carcinogen

Instead of writing my own entry, i’m just going to link to somebody elses. yes, that’s right kids, I’m lazy.

Why I hate Flash? – Diary of a CrazyFrench

Boycott Lexmark

Rik van Riel calls for a boycott of Lexmark – I’m joining him on this call. The behaviour of Lexmark with this is just crack-smoking crazy talk.

I have never bought a Lexmark and never will. I will also strongly recommend against anyone I know every buying one.

Screw you Lexmark – you suck.

stillhq.com – Let the Apple service ranting continue

(with link to APC mag)

These seem to be more extreme than what I’ve experienced.

I should say, that when I have had service done (when there’s not parts coming from sydney or general slowness) it’s been a seemless 1-day affair with the service people not panicing when I say “It doesn’t run MacOS X” when they ask for a password.

Although why anybody would hand over their password to joe-random is beyond me.

There’s these great things called Boot CDs – it seems as if most apple service technicians know how to use them at least.

I would much prefer it though if the HD was easy to pop out so I didn’t have to wipe important data before taking it into service (luckily I’ve never had a totally dead machine with important confidential data stuck on it).

stillhq.com – Did I mention that Apple service sucks?

I totally empathise with Mikal on this one. My adventures with Apple service has been interesting. Although I’ve usually gotten better result out of being persistent and a giant pain in the arse (I honestly feel sorry for anyone who gets me on the other end of the phone or across the desk at a service center).

I refuse to buy a Dell due to the general crappiness of their laptop hardware – although their service seems to be pretty good, which almost makes up for it…. almost…

The problem I have with the IBMs is that it seems difficult to get a high resolution screen while staying afordable and not weighing a ton (this goes for most PC laptop manufacturers).

At the moment I’m looking at an Asus. I just want to find somewhere that’ll sell it to me with enough (1.5GB+) RAM without me having to dispose of a 512MB stick that I didn’t want in the first place. Ideally, it’d come with a 1GB stick and a free slot (and take the same memory as my current PowerBook so i could swap my existing 1GB stick in).

Oh, and avoiding the MS tax would be nice.

Anyone have any experience with Asus service?

Oh, and Mikal – ring them every day (at least) to check out how it’s going and complain at them. Be annoying. Make them hate you – point out that the easy way to make you happy is to swap it for a functioning one. Ring Apple as well. Oh, and only ever talk to the manager – or the highest person available at the time.

good luck.

Sandra Mansell talks about the (not so joy) of ant bites but the real joy of cheap icey poles.

They are good – like, really. Why is it that the ones you buy in a huge box for next to nothing are the best ones? Maybe it’s because they are just sugar and water – a winning combination by any standards.

Now I can’t wait for summer, where there’s an excuse to have icey poles. Melbourne winter (still winter in my book – it’s cold) just doesn’t put you in the icey pole mood.

Flying Spaghetti Monster – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You should also check out http://www.venganza.org/ for the letter.

We’re now having to put up with people pressing for the teaching of religion in the Science classroom in .au as well.

Honestly – religion in a religion class and science class. Is it that hard for people to get that into their heads?

Although the 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense should probably be examined by students.

If people don’t come out of school having learnt how to think then there really was no point to them going there in the first place. We will not progress as a species without understanding and thought.

(this isn’t to say that many core ideals of at least several religions are not a good thing. The idea of being nice to each other for a change is an old one that’s preached by many a religion. I just wish people followed it instead of pretending to.)

(16:08:05) afcowie@jabber.org: http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2
(16:09:16) MacPlusG3: my theory is that it must be because god already has enough stuff.

Shipping Policy

(Due to customer’s feedback: DHL will not be our shipping option any more, no matter what how cheap it is)

Incidently, i’m looking at an ASUS A6U – trying to find out more about it though.