The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

I am such a David Rowe junkie. I have been collecting political cartoons since the 1980s. In those days I had to rely on cutting them out of papers that my parents bought. If I could remember where I put them, I would probably find that they are all yellow and crumbling to pieces by now. The Internet makes it so much easier to get lots of pictures in excellent condition looking just as crisp as on the first day they were published.
Most of the pictures are now on the Tweet Stone because I noticed quite a while ago that nothing is more likely to make the Big Mac crash than to try resurrect an image that I have downloaded. (The above image is hot linked)

But it took me a good 10 minutes just to load a picture in a tab that was already open. So not a good omen for any attempt at squiggling.


I finally manage to slink upstairs after at least a week procrastinating, only to find the spinning beachball of Doom and assorted other obstacles.

It was already a nightmare waiting for a stupid online course to load but Dreamwidth is just as bad. I guess the Big Mac is over 12 years old now so the self destruct button is long overdue to go off any day now.

So I am still pretty much in Read Only mode.  Looking at my DW friends pages but rarely ever commenting much lately.
I just cannot get  back into the habit of squiggling. It is strange to think that I used to post and comment a lot more when I didn't even have a computer or Tweet Stone. I used to go down to a local netcafe mainly devoted to pimple faced teens playing World of Warcraft.
Netcafes have pretty much gone the way of the video and record store.

I have also been busy reading the newspapers keeping up with all the election gossip as well as a certain "Special Military Operation".
Who would have ever imagined that the Ukrainians would be still holding out some 8 weeks on? I am sure that Putin certainly didn't.
The Ukraine post office even found time to release a set of stamps commemorating Snake Island. Soon they will need a new set featuring the latest instalment - the Russian warship that fucked itself.

I wonder if the Moskva will become the new Kursk. I have just got to that chapter in the Anna Politkovskaya book from 2005 "Putin's Russia"

There are also a lot of really good podcasts on BBC Radio 4. One series about Putin, another about Covid Conspiracies, the War on Truth and the current one that I am addicted to - The Coming Storm - about the back story of Q Anon. One early episode was a very informative 4Chan 101.  I had heard so many horror stories about that hell hole but never quite knew what it was about. I definitely get the vibe of an army of incels lurking in their parents' basement feeling resentful that the world is not devoted to making them happy.
I had no idea that 4Chan and friends were the source of Anonymous, Q Anon and Pizzagate.

You know you are getting old when events that you remember as if they were yesterday have somehow become ancient history.

After many weeks of procrastination, the deed is finally done.
The evil green Zombie - courtesy of the Cyberian Cat has commenced sentry duty and the bright shiny new Big Mac has finally got the green lightseses

And like anything delayed for so long, the anticipation and fear of disaster was way out of proportion to the reality. The map is indeed most definitely not the territory
It was exactly two years ago that the serpent signed up to the 3 mobile broadband 24 month plan which at that time was half price - 1gb for $14.95 per month instead of the usual $29.95
That was very cheap by the uber low Oz ISP standards in those dark days

The Izzie memories were that it was an absolute nightmare trying to activate the usb dongle portkey thing. Windoze users could apparently just plug and play but Mad Macs had to use some CD and follow some seriously complicated instructions
The computer kept refusing to recognize the usb dongle and it took several visits to 3 shops and online support to finally get online. Part of the problem was that nowhere was it written that it was necessary to wait for the green lights to change to blue at each stage of the process
Less than a week after finally finding our way to the center of the labyrinth, the old laptop froze and had to not just reinstall the operating system but zap the whole hard disk and start from scratch. Having to endure the whole Portkey ritual again was just too awful to contemplate but it worked surprisingly fast. It turned out to be all a matter of timing - the green and blue lights and stuff

But those memories still lingered along with the fear that maybe Izzie would not succeed connecting the usb dongle to the Big Mac but would also then render it useless for its previous partner
Then there was also the numerous distractions caused by the dramas at the day job - a lot of them strategically and bitchily timed on Wednesdays - the start of the serpent weekend - designed specifically to ruin them

So it was quite surprising that it was so straightforward after all. Unlike two year ago, the Big Mac recognized the new Huwei usb dongle straight away so that was the biggest hurdle out of the way.
Was not able to invoke the proper page for filling in the 3 phone number and stuff in spite of numerous attempts so just pressed 'connect' anyway and was amazed to see the scrolling change from connecting to authenticating and then the time instead of the previous experience of 'no device detected' 'this modem does not exist' or some other mean nasty variant of 'portkey status failed'

And it wasn't just a fluke. This is the third time connected with no problems
But it is strange navigating this huge screen - especially with a very cranky mouse and having to constantly check on the old Precioussss - having forgotten half of the serpent passwords

Still got the same primitive 3 Portkey but it is seriously speedy now compared to the old snails pace - still not one single spinning beachball.
Downloading the bright and shiny new Firefox took less than 6 minutes. Next stop is Google chrome although the froggies have warned the serpent that Google chrome just eats memory
well - with 4gb instead of a pissy 256, there's plenty to spare
Wonders if it would be a silly idea to see what it takes to invoke a bunch of spinning beach balls

At the moment, it's still the mouse that's the big obstacle. Resorted to using the old half chewed up microsoft version rather than the bright and shiny sleek Mac mouse. Izzie needs her fix of right clicks.

Still got to work out how to get all the old pictures and iTunes music onto this new toy before venturing over to collect the juiciest morsel of all - the half price copy of Scrivener software
And then there'll be no more excuses for procrastination on the squiggling front

Now there's no more excuse for postponing posts about the Howlers from the evil blond blue eyed aryan and her minions at work
Should be tomorrow since then we will be conspiring with witnesses and fellow rebels

The new year got off to a reasonable start - no work for the first two days. But the same old same old has soon returned.
Sunday was a good day at work due in no small part to the absence of the idiots in the office. But the weather was not playing nice at all. A sizzling 39 something - just short of 40 celsius actually
That's been followed by two 38s and more of the same tomorrow. Enough to knock the stuffing out of a serpent and to convert all those good intentions into snoozes

Still no luck on the gas front. The gas man came on Monday when the serpent was still at work. The froggies were there and said that it's turning out to be all more complicated than originally expected. There's more than just the gas flow magnet bit buggered up but the whole dial.
Rang both today and yesterday but either no one was at the office or those who were there knew nothing

Just as well it's in the middle of summer that the hot water is gone. In sizzling 39 degrees even the cold water is too hot

So there's bugger all getting done on the grand January 31 day decluttering project. But will have to tackle this particular desk tomorrow because that's where the new Big Mac is going to lurk. Was using the bait of the Big Mac as a lure to doing stuff but the weather put an end to that. It's just still too hot upstairs even with the fans on.
Will just have to make do with doing a bit of tidying on the old Preciousss - just been clearing the desk top and sorting out photos and podcasts.
Today is the big day for doing one last back up and hoping that all the old stuff transfers properly onto the new computer. Will have it on an external hard drive just in case

At least doing regular back ups should be a piece of piss on the new Big Mac thanks to Time Machine. It just copies over stuff that has changed since last time instead of having to copy the whole damned thing every time.
Now the old iPod is all corrupted, doing baby back ups isn't as easy as it used to be. Here's hoping it might come back to life hooked up to a prettier and bigger Mothership

It's kind of spooky to think that the Big Mac cost less than the iBook from nearly 5 years ago with the education discount and all. Can't begin to imagine what computers will look like in 2015 if the same rate of change applies. Here's hoping that a 4gb memory will have a rather longer shelf life than the pissy old 256mb which was beginning to look seriously outdated and inadequate after less than two years
Only managed to fill over just half of the present 60gb hard drive space so a big fat juicy 640gb should be more than adequate for a serpent's needs
And buying the beast was a far more civilized experience. Possessing the plastic fantastic makes all the difference. Also was the excellent suggestion to use a courier instead of lugging a big clunker on the bus. The box was just so so much bigger than expected. And it only cost $$20 extra and well worth it
But what was truly amazing, paid for the Precioussss just before 4pm and they organized the courier saying that they would be turning up some time between 9 and 12am next day. But on getting back to the Lair around 7pm that evening, found the big bad box sitting at the bottom of the stairs
They had turned up around 4.30 or so when Stefan (the resident froggie) was getting ready to go to work and he signed for it and brought it inside
That's the sort of service that Izzie's gotten used to from Amazon but never thought it would ever happen in Australia. Seriously impressed and sent them a thank you card to let them know
This is not the sort of service you would ever get from those awful fast talking warehouse computer stores like Harvey Norman, JB Hifi or Dick Smith.

But it's the bright shiny new Safari browser, Skype and Garage Band toys that Izzie is most looking forward to playing with and of course - Scrivener
Will finally be able to dust off Dolores and attack her with a scissors and red pen.

Did end up going to the shops today and cheated by buying some potato chips. Supposed to be buying no munchies except milk, fruit and vegies for all of January. Eating out at Juicy Beetroot and coffee crawls do not count of course - it's all about using up stuff in the pantry and not wasting food bought but not eaten

It's supposed to be cooling down from Thursday. Here's hoping that is so. So much to be done and so little time.