![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Website Hosting, CCNA, Refugees, Factional News, Free Trade and Numbers!
As well as my numerous sysadmin and coding tasks this week has seen me take up the new roles for organizing webhosting and domain registration. Three clients so far - not bad for something I started on Friday! Email me if you want an inexpensive website/domain which comes with plenty of decent services - if you really know me, you'd also know I wouldn't be suggesting this if I didn't think it was a good deal.
Took my first CCNA class at RMIT on Saturday. Made a cross-over cable (because I needed one), set up a LAN with a Cisco router and switch and played around with some basic TCP/IP connectivity tools. Not exactly complex stuff, but they assure me that eventually the course has a 65%+ fail rate.
Have been to two refugee related functions this week. The St Kilda branch of the ALP hosted a community event with the Brigidine nuns working with refugees and the Federal member for Melbourne, Lindsay Tanner. I took the opportunity to remind the meeting that once upon a time a person was required to sit a test in Scots Gaelic in order to enter Australia and John Howard has in the past opposed immigration in general and "Asian" immigration in particular (see his comments from August 1988. The second event was a the guest speaker at the Coburg branch meeting last night. I was introduced by the chair as the reason that he didn't resign from the ALP at the last Federal election. That statement was embarrassingly kind.
In related news, the Socialist Left in an attempt to avoid having to hold an election for the executive has requested that I withdraw my executive nomination and instead go on their selection committee, an act I'm quite happy with. I must say I'm impressed by the fact that Frans, with half of the former Pledge (i.e., about 5% of the SL) has managed to pick up two out of fifteen SL executive positions (himself and Jenny). He does do the numbers very well - but then again, he also has a degree in mathematics ;-)
Sunday's presentation at the Unitarians was from Dr. Tim Woodruff, National President of the Doctors' Reform Society. He highlighted on the main negatives of the so-called Free Trade Agreement, that of the threat to the Pharmaceuticaal Benefits Scheme which has been an enormous success story for Australia. His conclusion was very strongly worded: "The changes in the Free Trade Agreement are going to kill people" and in doing so he highlights two Achilles Heels in the FTA - health and intellectual property. Not surprisingly these are directly related to a proiri, axiomatic conditions to economic logic and therefore cannot be subject to the same logic as economic science itself (I wish more people understood Godel's theorom and applied to economics).
Tonight there's a Free Trade Question and Answer night at Trades Hall (7.30pm) organized by "Public First". It's chaired by Marcus Clayton (Public Interest Lawyer, Slater & Gordon) and speakers include David Ristrom (Greens), Senator Lyn Allison (Democrats), Senator Gavin Marshall (ALP), and Alan Moran (Institute of Public Affairs). The Liberals and Nationals declined an invitation (they really suck, don't they?).
Pythagoras would be proud. I have never been antithetical to the claim that all reality consists of numbers and as part of that process I consider myself someone who can budget better than a Scottish Calvinist. However, this week has finally seen me shake up my sedentary lifestyle and start a serious regime of physical activity in an effort to make my kilojoule output greater than my kilojoule input. You know what I mean. Let's see how I'm coping after a month.
It just gets worse. Four new "extremely critical" IE vulnerabilities found..Stop using it.
Brain breaker for the week is from, dammit, someone on my friends list posted this... Who was it? Anyway... Doom for sysadmins!
Took my first CCNA class at RMIT on Saturday. Made a cross-over cable (because I needed one), set up a LAN with a Cisco router and switch and played around with some basic TCP/IP connectivity tools. Not exactly complex stuff, but they assure me that eventually the course has a 65%+ fail rate.
Have been to two refugee related functions this week. The St Kilda branch of the ALP hosted a community event with the Brigidine nuns working with refugees and the Federal member for Melbourne, Lindsay Tanner. I took the opportunity to remind the meeting that once upon a time a person was required to sit a test in Scots Gaelic in order to enter Australia and John Howard has in the past opposed immigration in general and "Asian" immigration in particular (see his comments from August 1988. The second event was a the guest speaker at the Coburg branch meeting last night. I was introduced by the chair as the reason that he didn't resign from the ALP at the last Federal election. That statement was embarrassingly kind.
In related news, the Socialist Left in an attempt to avoid having to hold an election for the executive has requested that I withdraw my executive nomination and instead go on their selection committee, an act I'm quite happy with. I must say I'm impressed by the fact that Frans, with half of the former Pledge (i.e., about 5% of the SL) has managed to pick up two out of fifteen SL executive positions (himself and Jenny). He does do the numbers very well - but then again, he also has a degree in mathematics ;-)
Sunday's presentation at the Unitarians was from Dr. Tim Woodruff, National President of the Doctors' Reform Society. He highlighted on the main negatives of the so-called Free Trade Agreement, that of the threat to the Pharmaceuticaal Benefits Scheme which has been an enormous success story for Australia. His conclusion was very strongly worded: "The changes in the Free Trade Agreement are going to kill people" and in doing so he highlights two Achilles Heels in the FTA - health and intellectual property. Not surprisingly these are directly related to a proiri, axiomatic conditions to economic logic and therefore cannot be subject to the same logic as economic science itself (I wish more people understood Godel's theorom and applied to economics).
Tonight there's a Free Trade Question and Answer night at Trades Hall (7.30pm) organized by "Public First". It's chaired by Marcus Clayton (Public Interest Lawyer, Slater & Gordon) and speakers include David Ristrom (Greens), Senator Lyn Allison (Democrats), Senator Gavin Marshall (ALP), and Alan Moran (Institute of Public Affairs). The Liberals and Nationals declined an invitation (they really suck, don't they?).
Pythagoras would be proud. I have never been antithetical to the claim that all reality consists of numbers and as part of that process I consider myself someone who can budget better than a Scottish Calvinist. However, this week has finally seen me shake up my sedentary lifestyle and start a serious regime of physical activity in an effort to make my kilojoule output greater than my kilojoule input. You know what I mean. Let's see how I'm coping after a month.
It just gets worse. Four new "extremely critical" IE vulnerabilities found..Stop using it.
Brain breaker for the week is from, dammit, someone on my friends list posted this... Who was it? Anyway... Doom for sysadmins!
no subject
Ahh, now the penny drops... Marcus Clayton defender of the Rabelias editors and who won the payout for the Richmond School protestors against excessive force by the coppers...
no subject
no subject
no subject
State and federal political leaders came out on television saying the protestors have won day one (implying the police have lost), and that the police should have done more. The next day, it's mounted and batons wielding police at dawn, and no mind to protocols, (hell, no warnings).
A friend of mine at the time was a senior prison warden, one of his jobs was to review tape of wardens conducts in riot situations, and his opinion was that what he saw on tv, if it had of been wardens in a riot against actively violent prisoners, would have required him to suspend the wardens. Instead the police were praised.
The stories are just crazy, the memory fades after a time, and the only answer I have sometimes is a little mantra: it's on video, the police doctors took thorough photos, there are x-rays.
It was crazy, and they won: I haven't really done anything active since then.
no subject
Can I dare say that there's a book in this - and perhaps you're just the person to write it?
One of the things that I have always taken to heart was the number of high school students that were present at the protest. Having experienced what the the police did that day - and the reports in the Herald-Sun afterwards - I am sure that they will never believe a single thing written subsequently in that trashy rag...
no subject
(Trots off singing 'it's a small world, after all')
no subject
Are they at all politically active these days? Or has their troublemaking been directed elsewhere?
Speaking of which, have you joined a union yet (before getting sacked for having RSI on your hand)?