Mantis

Re: The cranky thread Offspring update (non-cranky): My wife had spoken to a Vice-Principal about our son, and the VP sounded like a piece of work from my wife's description of the meeting and her point-blank refusal to assist in any way. I suggested she seek an appointment with the Principal instead. She saw him today and he didn't offer any specific assistance, but did accept that the school needed to make some effort and offered to do all that he could to help. That at least stopped my wife talking so adamantly about changing schools, which I felt was the worse thing we could do.

Re: Xenovores *Possible Spoilers*

Re: Musings on Random Musings Went through to the keeper, I'm afraid.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Actually, quite the opposite - one of the umpires in that particular game was a Lutheran (IIRR) minister.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I don't know. I. Just. Don't. Know.

Re: Musings on Random Musings A few years ago, the Australian Football League had the Melbourne "Demons" play the St Kilda "Saints" on Easter Monday. The Saints won in an upset. EDIT: Just realised these two teams played again today, the closest possible game day to 6/6/06.... and the Demons won.

Re: The cranky thread Thanks for the tips, folks.

Re: The cranky thread Me again. My son has had some learning difficulties at school so we had him formally assessed the other day. As we suspected, he is dyslexic. So my wife goes to the school and asks the Deputy Principal what they can do to help him. The answer? They aren't willing to do a damn thing. Why are we paying them their F$@&g school fees then? Now my wife and I are fighting over what's the best thing to do about it. Work is still craptastic (see previous posts in this thread) and so is Uni (see previous posts in this thread). On top of this, I had an informal job interview this morning which didn't go as well as I'd have liked.

Re: Need a name for.. Special Tactical Response Force, or "STaR Force". It's actually the name for the local version of SWAT.

Re: The cranky thread I think the pressure is getting to me. I didn't get to sleep until 4 am. I have a job interview first thing tomorrow. I am about to get hit with a *heap* of work. I have an assignment and a bunch of tutorials due Friday week, then my exams after that. I just don't know when I'm going to get it all done.

Re: Xenovores *Possible Spoilers* I agree. When I saw the origin... man, I felt ripped off. My back-of-the-envelope modified re-write is: Many generations ago, the Xenovore homeworld was devastated by a nuclear holocaust. Fortunately for their race, they already had stardrive, albeit a slow, primitive version, and had small colonies around other stars. When the holocaust occured, only the strongest and most aggressive members of their race survived the collapse of their otherwise advanced civilization to be rescued, a process that took time due to the small number of ships and their slow interstellar speed. The colonists had been specially selected for their superior intellect, independent nature, and physical hardiness - the deep end of the gene pool. Mixed with the strength and aggression of the holocaust survivors (who had all absorbed a smidge more radiation than normal), the nature of the race evolved dramatically. Further, the dramatic lesson of the loss of their "home" created a sense of co-operation amongst all the colonies regardless of their prior allegiances - something that would have been impossible before. It took dozens of generations to recover from the loss of the resources of the homeworld, but once the colonies began to thrive, and indeed surpass their previous level of technology and produce an improved, fast stardrive, they embarked on a program of territorial expansion. Although this effort was co-operative between all their worlds, all members of a colony were loyal to their own world first, and to the greater hegemony second - the old seeds of mistrust of others were not dead, merely dormant. Each colony attempted to out-do their "rivals" in speed and scope of their conquests. Their aims were simple acquisition of land and resources to make their colony the dominant one. Their methods were no different than those of Hitler's Germany - take possession by force, and enslave the native population. Mankind were just another slave race to the Xenovores, who acquired the name after a report of the new race eating human flesh turned into a major propaganda campaign to inspire resistance amongst front-line troops. Even when the report was proved to be false and it became clear the Xenovores were mere space-Nazis, the name stuck. Ulimately, the Xenovores were defeated because of their "colony-first" mindset. If an area controlled by one colony was attacked, neighbouring colonies were slow to provide assistance, if they helped at all (imagine the Civil War being fought with the armies of the South refusing to leave their state borders, while the North hurled the bulk of their force against each in turn). I've also replaced all their bio-tech with regular, albeit alien, technology. I did keep the concept of Genotypes, although as a result of evolution rather than design.

Re: What would be a good example of... That's where I live (in fact, a bit further up the hill, and I could see the sea from here). What sort of terrain do you want pictures of - beaches, hills, farmland, scrub, bushland...? BTW, I currently work for the state Department of the Environment & Heritage, who look after all the National Parks and such in the State, which covers a variety of terrain. I'm sure someone in the office has pictures of our parks!

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I was so unpopular as a child, I didn't have imaginary friends, I had imaginary enemies.

Re: The cranky thread I can't believe my two managers (now there's a phrase to strike fear into the heart of any worker) have nothing else to do than issue out-of-date updates to the project plan on a daily basis.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Had to take a half-day off work (at my own expense) to finish my stupid Assignment. At least it's done. Now I can get on with an Assignment for a real subject, which I now have only 2 weeks to do because I wasted all last week and all last weekend doing this pointless subject.

Re: The cranky thread I have an Assignment due Monday requiring 2,000 words +/- 10% but I have said all I want or need to say in 1,358. Luckily these words are only worth 50% of the mark. And I still have the Network Diagram to do yet, I might be able to add words to explain the design to boost the total. Why the word count? Because our lecturer is incompetent. This assignment is supposed to prepare us for the 'Real World' of writing reports for managers. I have never been asked for a report by a manager with a word count in 20 years. Just write the report, make your recommendation. This subject is not teaching me anything. In fact the response from a tutor to a question on the subject discussion board about NAT was "Type 'IP addressing using NAT' into Google" which is pretty sad. And yes I learnt more from that suggestion than from the lecture notes and text book combined. Worse thing: I don't need to know any of this. I don't want to know any of this. It is not relevant to my career plans.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Now roll for Knockback.

Re: Musings on Random Musings It took me a while to work out what these were. Then I worked it out - I have one in the shed. We call them "whipper-snippers". And yeah, they're loud!

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread "Buy more Post-It notes"

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread

Re: Musings on Random Musings Ah! That's right. I wondered why I couldn't remember the instrument - there wasn't one!

Re: Musings on Random Musings It wasn't stolen, it was traded, for a musical instrument IIRR. I'm sure someone here knows exactly what type.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I just saw them on the news - they're stealing my schtick!

Re: Area of a hexagon

Re: The cranky thread I'm a contractor and get no vacation days or sick days. No workee, no payee. I've been in this job over a year now and have had three days "holidays" between Xmas and New Year (enforced - they shut down the office) and two sick days. I've also come in on the weekend twice which balances the sick days.