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Hazing pure and simple
The day didn’t start off to well when I made that mad dash for the train, to realise I’m on a different schedule today, don’t go straight to the city, get to the coffee house first.
In some forgotten point during the age of cavemen clubbing each other on the head to make a point, some social nazi decided that it was critical for the organisation of the community that new members be introduced through stages of ‘conditioning’ into the norms of the society. In the 20th century, the induction process is variously called by the Greek Fraternities as “hazing.”
It may even be illegal in some quarters, but who is going to get in the way of social unity, and progress ?
Mr. Dave put me through Nullcube’s rigorous induction process, with the simple line.
How do you feel about walking into town?
Scum bag!!
We had our pow-wow session early Monday morning before heading into town for some real work (i.e. non-administration stuff.) “How do you feel about walking into town?” I shoulda clobbered him on the spot then.
Mr. Dave cut a quick march ‘clip’ for us from our Newtown HQ (ha ha ha, HQ is the fanciful term for where our base toilets are located 8-) and off we went. Ho K, he’s decided that we don’t need to grab a cab and then comes up with a fanciful reason for why getting a cab into town wasn’t a good idea today (the 2nd opportunity where I shoulda just clobbered him.)
He’s doing good, ‘cause he’s into this walking thing and makes the farcical attempt to get to the gymn every now and then. Mind you, I haven’t done a long walk like this for a long long time, like 1999!
The distance we’re walking here is probably akin to walking from Tofoa into town, which isn’t a bad walk, unless you have some hee bee jebee fitness fanatic pushing the pace, and you hit Broadway (less than half way to our destination) and everything’s on an incline (the wrong way.) Google Maps estimates the distance at 3 miles.
There are of course some entertaining moments on the route, like the congregation of WYSYD participants scattered all along the route. Many of the pilgrims really did look lost and in need of direction, mind you we’re probably all mindlessly lost most of the time anyway ….
It seems that there are sections of the road (especially on Broadway) where the city has found that citizens cannot be trusted to have any common-sense. So, fences are put up in the centre of the road to force people to use the traffic guidance devices (i.e. lights.) I guess after people get run over, hit, on a regular basis it becomes obvious that there’s a mild case of insanity when people are staring and speeding traffic with a big gap between them and their preferred destination.
Strange that the same “run the traffic” disease that captures people on Broadway doesn’t extend the length of the road, and I think it’s something to do with the proximity of Sydney University. There was always something suspect about people out of that skool. They don’t have the barriers over at UTS so the disease doesn’t seem to be contagious.
The iPhone craze isn’t over, we walk by “the store” (it may have lost some of the sparkle of the opening, and which building in town actually sparkles) to observe a whole heap of people queued in around inside waiting to be guided into spending their money buying an iPhone.
The iPhone price (prize) actually comes out at a very competitive price compared to similarly featured products currently available in Australia. I would hazard that the only comparable products that I’ve looked at are prizing themselves at a $200 premium of the iPhone, so if you’re a discerning customer (at least on the wannabe features) the iPhone is a better purchase than the Nokia N95/N96 or the HTC Diamond.
Diehard phonephiles will say that the Nokia and HTC Diamond are more fully featured, but how many people really need all those features? The majority of 3G customers are probably better served by the iPhone, or a Blackberry.
Anyhow, apparently you had to really want the “experience” of being clapped into Apple Stores for a phone cause you didn’t have to queue at other places for the phone. But you’re already partially insane buying the thing so why not throw more insanity like hours of your life into the mix while you’re at it.
On frameworks we generally agree they have their place, but they overextend themselves when they try to hide everything and make it difficult for programmers to more accurately reflect the system/world being modelled (whatever that sentence meant.) but I guess that’s a case for another post.
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