Death and Destruction - to Hard drives!

The Register tells us of a wonderful piece of equipment from EDR which can crush over 60 HDDs an hour. It costs $11,500, and needs electricity to run...

Pshaw!

I can do double that, for waaaay less than that money.

My solution, which peaked at 120 drives an hour, albeit with me putting a sweat on, involves some really good physics, and a fairly old piece of metalworking equipment.

A fly press is all you need.



Pop the drive on to the bed, stick a section of 2" diameter mild steel pipe above the platters, and spin the motherfucker down. The platters and motor tend to pop out of the bottom of the disk chassis.

I'll tell you it's very therapeutic, and almost made me feel like I had an honest job. I reckon, if I had an assistant, we could have punched the spindles on 4 drives a minute. Although my assistant might not have any fingers left... A small price to pay though.

Trams kill decent boozer

The Evening Hootsman reports something that has been fucking obvious for weeks. (Well, to me anyway, since I used to drink there...)

The Caledonian Ale House at Haymarket has closed. Because they are going to demolish it to run the trams through there. Cunts.

It was the only half decent boozer in the area. The Haymarket is usually full of arseholes, and only has a couple of decent beers. Ryrie's reeks. The Caley had decent beer, fine fizzy lagery things, nice food, and bar staff that were pretty decent folk.The 12 staff have lost their jobs.

To say that I am not best pleased about this would be an understatement. That was my favourite post work boozer, since other folk coming in off the train could stop for a pint or two of an evening before heading our separate ways.

Who asked for these trams? How much of the city has to be destroyed? How much of our money has to be pissed up the wall on this? Why are the cunts not swinging from lampposts already?

Rail users get ‘simpler fares’

c/o the Metro

Simpler. Because the public are evidently simpletons.

Notice, we're not getting cheaper fares. We're not getting better service. We're not getting newer rolling stock. That really would be news-worthy.

Of course, the problem has a lot to do with the different companies who run services in our wonderful privatised railways system. The "fares jungle" is only one of the problems, but I think that they have their priorities wrong. Get people to use the trains by making them more reliable, and cheaper. Not by hiking the prices year in, year out!

Some meme or other

Fannybaws Grant has tagged me in a meme, and rather than telling him to Foxtrot Oscar, I thought I might as well waste your time by posting this shit.

1. The rules of the game get posted on the beginning.
2. Each player answers the rules about himself [or indeed herself].
3. At the end of the post, the player tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they’ve been tagged and asking them to read his [or her] blog.

What I was doing ten years ago:
In 1998, I was at Uni, so I was probably throwing some irritating cunt out of Teviot, probably the best students' union in the world. That and drinking heavily. No change there then.

Five things on my To-Do list today:

(Not in any particular order)
Pick up an old computer from another building at work
Eat some nice cheese my pal brought back from Amsterdam
Sort out my drinking arrangements for the weekend
Put on a washing
Write some angry emails to the Metro

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

"I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man."
Bonus points for knowing where that quote comes from.

Three of my bad habits:

Not being rude enough to people who deserve it.
Voting. It only encourages them.
Picking my nose.

Five places I’ve lived:

(Not counting where I was born, I didn't stay there for long enough to count)
Auchtermuchty
Stirling
Newington, Edinburgh
Austin
Tollcross, Edinburgh

Five jobs I’ve had:

Paperboy
Shop ASSistant, Iceland (The frozen foods place, not the country)
Mainframe Operator (On an IBM 3090-200J, ph33r)
Porter and Security chap at Pollock Halls, Edinburgh University
Systems Administrator / Systems Manager at lots of places.

Five books I’ve recently read:

Persuader (Lee Childs)
Dead Souls (Ian Rankin)
Set in Darkness (Ian Rankin)
The one that got away (Chris Ryan, of the Hereford Author's Club)
Pandemic (James Barrington)

Five people or communities I’m going to tag:

Bollocks to that. People will do it if they want to.

But I will tag Doctorvee, because he should really be studying for his exams. And J. Arthur Macnumpty, again, because I can.

I am unlikely to get any more bad luck, or other such bullshit from breaking the meme. Although as my friend Peter Salus often says, "It's usually at its darkest before it goes completely black."

Scottish Roundup - April 20th

Edited by me...

Oh, how they'll regret that!

Check it out on the Scottish Roundup site.

Passive Drinking

This mornings Metro tells me the utter bastards have come for my booze.

They can fuck right off! I am keeping my stash of fine, cask strength, single malt whiskies. (From the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, natch).

"'Passive drinking' needs to become as big an issue as passive smoking to stop alcohol abuse, health campaigners demanded yesterday."

These weary wullies need to go and take a long, hard look at themselves, then fuck off and die.

"The strongest evidence is for taxation and pricing."

Just as well I can afford decent booze then... And for those who can't, I suspect we'll go back to illicit stills, and going blind from methanol poisoning.

Can't these busybodies just fuck off and let us have some enjoyment in our otherwise miserable lives?

"Alcohol, it says, should be viewed in the same way as tobacco, which has been restricted because of its health effects on others."

You mean like restrict its sale to over 18s, and have the premises who sell it be licensed?

First they came for the smokers, now it's the drinkers... What's next? Fuck me, soon I'll need a government permit to scratch my own arse.

Count to 10

According to the Daily Record, Scots gang members are to get anger management counselling...

Awww the wee diddums.

"Knife-wielding thugs will be taught to count to 10 to cool down instead of lashing out."

I am sorry, did I just read that right...

"Gang members will be encouraged to attend classes on anger management and "territorialism issues" as part of local projects which also involve football coaching, music, drama and other activities."

They say that this works, however I can't help but feel the wee ned bastards are missing out on something with this regime of understanding and reforming - like the punishment part...

The article tells us one gang in Glasgow was responsible for 450 crimes in 1 year - to the victims of these crimes, it must look like these kids are getting off a damn sight lighter than they should.