IT Craziness, Other News Summary

Whilst it may well be impossible to match Slin's magnificant contribution to the O RLY meme, I have made my own modest contribution. Our Business Development Manager is recommending names for our "self deployed software as a service covering four key elements", namely Contacts, Documents, Projects, Support and has suggested the loriidae as a mascot. Slightly tongue-in-cheek, I recommended changing the mascot to the Australian Masked Owl (Tyto novaehollandiae) and renaming the contacts to Omnibus, Relationships, License, and Yearnings, thus providing a delightful acronym, "well known in Internet parlanace" and one which would bring the company "instant global recognition". The best part is that the Technical Director, who is well aware of the owl-based motif, quite likes the idea.

Obviously in a mood of sorts, I have also composed a wiki entry on our work intranet entitled "Putting Squirrels Into Roundcubes", which includes such informative headings like "Tar that there squirrel up", "Get those nuts!" etc. More sensibly, last Tuesday I gave a presentation at Linux Users Victoria, entitle a "Gentle Introduction to Xen" (paravirtualisation). Slides of my presentation are available (in ODP format), as are notes (in plain text). On a related topic Microsoft has released tools to help people downgrade from Vista to XP.

In other news, Rogue has fully recovered, however poor Scoundrel is suffering from head-tilt. caseopaya alerts me to heroic rats who find landmines. In gaming news, recently played and reviewed (coming soon) original Harnmaster; on our Friday night group just started Ars Magica during the period of the Cathar heresy. Have been speculating on a Middle-Earth Fourth Age story where Gollum gets the ring and Saruman becomes the major power (nice, eh?). In Unitarian news, fundraiser for East Timor last Sunday included lessons in Tetum along with the concert; have also completed my four-part "introduction to philosophy" series (philosophy, logic, epistemology, ontology) at the Unitarian Philosophy Forum and am wondering where to take it next; I suspect it will be historical themes, although I confess a strong preference to a formal approach.