It’s an old joke, but frequently true. The Irish Internet Association are electing a new board at the moment and each of the nominees get a quick paragraph about themselves on the site. There are twelve nominees but only Trinity College alumni Clare Dillon and Catrina Sheridan see fit to tell everyone about their degrees and diplomas.

IT staff, no matter how good, will never be CEOs of major corporations. The one exception, John Reid of Citicorp, just proves the point, because he got fired too. Therefore IT staff are useless employees and no good at being managers.

A friend of his gets paid way more than you’d expect for someone with no responsibilities, and reports direct to the CEO. Why? Because from time to time he saves the company from ruin. This is Cringely’s Door Number Three. The natural position for the IT personality in an organisation.

He sees this as a precursor of tomorrows corporate structure. IT staff are used to coming up with quick “good enough” solutions to rapidly evolving technical situations. The pace of change in the wider world is speeding up to match, so business structures need to change, with today’s IT departments, with their loose quasi-meritocracy structures being a possible solution.

From I, Cringely

One of our favourites is Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. It’s a strategy game set in the distant future. You build and control an army and battle another army controlled by the computer or another player somewhere on the internet. It was fun until last Monday, when his Necron army so totally humiliated my Space Marine one that I gave up and ran away before he could wipe my army out. 

Fox News were interviewing a PR flunkey for Washington DC’s Union Station, and the PR guy was making a great attempt at persuading the interviewer until….. a security guard tried to stop them from filming!

via

Jazz Biscuit: » Seize drunk drivers cars

Many of the old timers still called it ARPANET and begrudged the intrusion of undergrads into what was supposed to be a serious academic and scientific tool. We were the kind of people who would post requests for budgie roasting recipes to the rec.pets.birds Usenet group just to see how many people we could upset.

Boredom, thy name is whatever this game is called « Why, That’s Delightful!

The UK were looking at deploying them but the Institute of Advanced Motorists, who were originally lobbying for them (probably because they were better than nothing) are now coming out against them. Maybe someone should have a word with the RSA here in Ireland before someone here is killed or maimed…

UK motorcyclists saved from being sliced in two by wire rope barriers – Autoblog

Dudley Moore was right in Crazy People.  Why not just say that it helps you go to the toilet!!!!!

I’m starting to use my Laser debit card more and more. Virtually everywhere that takes credit cards will take a debit card too. I frequently leave my Visa and MasterCard at home. The sole wrinkle is that laser payments can only be made in Euros. That’s a non-issue with retailer’s point of sale terminals and 99% of websites, but Aer Lingus are the exception. Regardless of what country you select on the front page, it will insist on using the currency of the country of departure when booking, so I ended up having to call the Irish sales phone line to book, and pay an extra ???15 handling fee for the privilege!!!!!

A birth defect left him missing his shin bones, so the two options open to his parents were a lifetime in a wheelchair or amputation. He used to play water polo (where no legs isn’t a huge handicap) and rugby (???) at school, but a knee injury pushed him into athletics in 2004. The following year he was running the 400m in the South African able-bodied championships. Tom Hanks is looking to make a movie about his life.

His purpose built legs, designed by a Finnish company called Ossur not only enable him to run as fast as single leg amputees, but even reach the speed of professionals with both legs. The fun will start when the IOC need to decide if his legs are the amputee equivalent of running shoes or are they “performance enhancing”?

My old Ford Focus, that has carried my fat ass up and down to Dublin for the last 3 years is being put out to pasture. It’ll be spending the rest of it’s days doing school runs and trips to the shops with the missus. I need something with a bit of comfort, so I’ve found a Volvo S80 for myself. It’s bigger (a lot bigger!) and more comfortable, and it doesn’t start to wheeze going up steep hills.

It looks like a bit of an old man’s car, but it’s 2 litre turbo’ed engine will leave a lot of the boy racers in their Honda Civics behind. The top end stereo and heated leather seats mean I’ll be comfortable doing it.

Modafinil, a drug initially created to combat narcolepsy (where you spontaneously fall asleep during the day, often at inappropriate times), is promising 36+ hours of wakefulness followed by 8 hours of sleep, or the ability to function long term on 5 hours a night. Could we soon end up only sleeping on the weekends? I can see college students loving this when exam time looms!