This Geek

Attention Edcon Customers,
originally uploaded by This Geek.

This flyer was being handed out at one of the clothing stores we were at today.

The full text says:

Dear Edcon Customer

Regarding the anticipated nationwide mass action in our stores in June 2005, our responsibility is to inform you as fully as possible.

Cosatu and SACTWU are demanding that local retailers agree to buy 75% of their product in South Africa as they belive that this will stop job losses in the local clothing and textile industry.

An enforced 75% quota will not create jobs or sustain the industry. It will only force retailers to limit customer’s choice of goods while pushing up the price.

Edcon’s commitment to South African consumers is: CHOICE OF BEST PRODUCT AT BEST PRICE. Therefore, we will not sign any agreement that restricts our consitutional right to trade freely in world markets.

Edcon is committed and ready to work with all stakeholders to help identify real solutions to the problem.

Edcon is not responsible for job losses - in 2004, the group created 2651 jobs in the retail sector alone.

For the past five years, Edcon has increased the amount of money it spends on local product, and the majority of our products are made locally. In 2005 Edcon bought more than 200 million items from South African textile and clothing manufacturers. Our employees enjoy the right to engage in collective bargaining and peaceful mass action, and many are members of Cosatu and affilliated unions. We apologise for any inconvenience and assure you that we have taken every measure possible to ensure that you continue to enjoy your shopping experience with us.

Steve Ross CEO: Edcon

I was getting really bored with cleaning and topping up my fish tank for one lonely catfish. I got the bright idea to remove all the gravel, and get rid of the nasty under-gravel filters. After thinking about it for awhile, I came to the conclusion that dumping the catfish into a bucket for the duration was not the answer. I needed another tank.

I went to the local pet market and bought a cheap startup kit. I cleaned it, and then filled it with water from my existing tank. I realised that the kit did not come with a heater, so I had to go back to the pet market the next day to get one. I also bought another thermometer, and 2 new filtration units, because I hate the piece of shit that was supplied with the kit. I also wanted to replace my current filtration unit, because it was getting expensive to replace filter cartridges all the time, and it is a notorious small fish killer — it had an annoying habit of sucking small fish up against the inlet pipe. Either that, or those fish were amazingly stupid.

I installed the heater into the new tank, and gave it enough time to get the water up to the correct temperature.

I bought some aquarium plants, and bunged them into the temporary tank, and then moved my lonely catfish to it.

Removing the gravel from the big tank was quite time consuming, and made one hell of a mess of the water. Good thing I relocated the catfish, or the poor thing would have died of fright.

The water was so murky after removing the under-gravel filters, that you could barely see 2cm into the tank. I plugged the old fitration unit back into the tank, and within 2 hours the tank water was sparkly clean again.

The next day, I transferred some of the plants and the rocks back to the big tank, and moved the ol’ catfish back. He seemed quite happy to be back in his big home again.

A few days later, I bought 20 cheap ass gold fish, and dumped them into the tank, so now I’ve got a lively tank again.

My only problem is that the damn aquarium plants tend to move around in their pots without any gravel to hold them in place. I need to come up with a plan for that.

I woke up a few Sundays ago with a bee in my bonnet. I was tired of our fridge sitting in the middle of nowhere, because the designated space for it in the kitchen was too small. So I pulled my thumb out my bum, and got around to doing the necessary to make the darned thing fit.

This meant I had to relocate an upper cabinet that was above the stove, demolish the lower cabinet, and cut the stove counter top to size.

It took quite awhile to complete, and I had to call in reinforcements, in the form of my father-in-law. He brought along his trusty jigsaw, and we had the counter top cut to size in short order. Fortunately I found some matching veneer lying in the garage, so I was able to restore the cut edge to its original glory.

We decided to convert the demolished lower cupboard into an open area for storing trays etc. It was a bit silly to have this large open section below the counter top.

All in all, I’m very happy with the way it turned out. At least that Sunday didn’t go to waste.

My favourite movie genre is the horror movie. Specifically movies relating to vampires. Don’t ask me why… perhaps I have an unconcious desire to be a blood sucking fiend. Oh well, whatever.

Werewolf movies are also up near the top of the list, while the gory splatter movie (ala Texas Chainsaw Massacre) finds itself at the very bottom of my list. I don’t particularly care for gratutious violence of that nature.

I see that IMDB now requires you to login to view the message boards. Fuckheads. Please remember BugMeNot!

When viewing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre page on IMDB, I saw a thread entitled “5 movies you wish you never seen” (remember to use BugMeNot if it asks you to login). Man, the people are really whiny little bitches with no taste. Sure, a couple of people had valid lists, but the majority of the whiners listed GREAT movies! Shame.

I’m quite disappointed. I don’t know if it’s Spam Karma or Bad Behaviour that’s keeping all the spammers away. There doesn’t appear to have been any spam attempts in over a week. I was getting a cheap thrill out of updating the Spam Karma blacklists.

I was looking around on the GIMP site, and came across a howto to enable the use of a MIDI controller within the program.