The object of contention is Halva, which I recently found at Coles (one of the big supermarkets here) and simply had to buy. Looks like Conny likes it :-)

...I would rate this Brand-New and Shiny Aluminium door sign.

However, as I'm just one of those no-good overeducated academics with a profound distrust of manglement and the consequential cynical attitude, I have to make do with a heavy dose of Dilberts and some homemade jokes.

(The white felty things are the velcro where they took off our previous not-shiny-but-sufficient door signs. I'm not holding my breath waiting for this to be improved.)

Remember: Toilets are any company's most valuable asset.

(or, translated for the en-natives: we'd far rather blue bread than blue blood!) Here's our proof:
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The complex I live in has been slightly beautified over the last year or so (think property values etc.), and finally, this week, the guys doing the work on the common areas got around to redoing the flower beds in front of my place.
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...my rule is: you don't throw away good computer books, period.

Most folks at my palace de ork are...odd, to put it nicely: today I strolled over to the "Dispose Me!" desk in the hallway which is often stacked with orphaned books (today: loads of Flash, Dreamweaver and other less interesting stuff) and there I picked up this Absolute Gem: the 1977 hardcover edition of Donald Alcock's Illustrating Basic. (I very much recommend checking out the PDF excerpt. 134 pages of hand-lettered and -drawn illustrated goodness.)

Picture this: the person who dumped it, has had it since 1978 and nevertheless decided to toss out this classic.

These are people who'd throw out a full Knuth to make space for "Vista for Dummies"!

On similar occasions in the past I did inherit/adopt/reverently provide a new home to: Tanenbaum's Structured Computer Organization, Sterling+Shapiro's The Art of Prolog, one of the compiler bibles, The TCL/TK book and sundry Lesser Goodies. But enough of that; their (unfelt?) pain, my gain.

One of the cool things about the Basic book is that it's well written, and actually had enough appeal for Conny to spontaneously start learning how to program today. She did her first few experimental programs (with bwbasic and emacs on my/her Debian laptop) just this evening and so far is pretty much thrilled by what one can do. Pretty cool, and I hope she gets something of lasting value out of it.

Go Conny! :-)

Five-and-a-half months after buying it, I actually still like my Subaroo - except for the lousy excuse for a high beam (which is the nr. 2 complaint about the older Outbacks, trumped only by Hal).
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...if you like stereotypes, that is. Here goes:
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A few days ago the rearview mirror in my car parted company with the windscreen glass. Looks like it had been re-(super?)glued before.

So I read up on a number of (un)suggested glues:
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I'm just about finishing Peter Watts' book "Blindsight", which is excellent but really, really really heavy stuff. Charlie Stross described that book aptly:

"Imagine a neurobiology-obsessed version of Greg Egan writing a first contact with aliens story from the point of view of a zombie posthuman crewman aboard a starship captained by a vampire, with not dying as the boobie prize."

I'd change that to read "...version of Greg Egan, but with McNihil's B&W mods, writing...", otherwise I fully concur.

It's a bit like Linda Nagata's excellent "Vast", but loads darker and with an Egan-like hard science disposition.

I'm also inclined to say nice things about Watts' Rifters books, which I just started - but likely more interesting to you out there is this factoid: Watts has published all his books under a Creative Commies licence online on his website (and in various convenient formats). Kudos to him, and I'll certainly consider buying his books when I see them in dead tree format.