Bitsa_me

Facebook | Spam

Today I had an email from Facebook, I don’t want emails from Facebook, I closed my Facebook account 3 hours after I opened it and that’s how it should stay, until of my own free will and a frontal lobotomy I choose to reopen it.

There must be an ex Microsoft employee drafting these form letters, it was just like dealing with their software, gratuitous language offering to guide me through the delights of membership and show me where I’d erred in my decision making process.

I had entered no information on my page or anywhere else on the site for that matter, apart from my Gmail address. How can you pretend any kind of relationship based on this amount of data?

This is SPAM straight and fucking simple. Spam’s illegal isn’t it?

It’s not like their short on numbers, why do they need me? I’m quite happy for others to use it, if it suits their needs, just don’t send me suck up emails, you’re only reinforcing my suspicions that the application is not much more than a data mine.

If I make a purchase, or interact with a site on a regular basis, I expect to receive follow up, or some promotional mail, that’s acceptable business practice but when I clearly cancel a registration after no use the message should be clear.

The ‘delete permanently’ button’s firmly pressed, as is the ‘report as spam button’, now I wait to see how straight Google is in it’s filtering policy.

5.45 AM

Text message.

Stay in bed, will see what’s happening with the weather later.

Supposed to be helping a mate on a construction site today, I still occasionally pull the tools out and do some real work.

Keeps some fat off the ribs, puts a dollar or two in the bank and I stay in touch with the world outside my enclosure.

The young guy’s in the crew must be starting to feel some cash flow strain, there’s been more lost time this summer than the whole of winter and spring. One of the great joys of the construction industry is no production, no money.

The radar looks like shit, wasn’t really looking forward to another day getting wet anyway.

4.30 AM

Can’t sleep, humidity is too high. It’s pissing down rain again and the wind’s starting to blow hard from the North.

Crazy, crazy, weather.

Bushfire’s, not flood, is the norm for January in southern Australia.

Heat I can handle, you can’t live in Australia without heat but the humidity makes it feel like everything’s about to start rotting, even the toilet paper is damp.

Feeling for the poor bastards in Queensland, loss of life, humidity, mud, sewerage, snakes, nowhere to live and no way to pay.

Low life and sharks in Ipswich, Queensland.

There are reports of looters and a bull shark in the flooded Ipswich suburb of Goodna, west of Brisbane.

Local Councillor Paul Tully says the main street of the Ipswich suburb is four to six metres under water.

He says residents have reported seeing two boats of people breaking into homes along Brisbane Terrace.

“The people who do that in the time of a disaster are despicable - they’re the scum of the Earth”, he said.

“They deserve nothing less than a jail sentence for preying on people who are caught in one of the worst crises of their life.

“I just find it absolutely appalling what these people are doing.”

He has also warned Ipswich residents to stay out of floodwaters after a bull shark was spotted in the main street of Goodna.

He says sharks are common in the Goodna stretch of the Brisbane river and residents should take care.

“Stay out of the water - you’ve got the problem of the sanitation of the water, but also the possibility of bull sharks and being eaten,” he said.

“I never would have thought I would ever have seen a bull shark in the main street of Goodna.”

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/12/3111441.htm

The ants are worried

The ant’s are shifting house and heading to higher ground, streams of them.

I’m wondering whether they’ve sussed something I haven’t, perhaps I should start building a raft.

There’s a dual lane carriage way across the yard headed for the house.

At first I thought they had found something edible on the old trestle table under the verandah, where I leave all sorts of stuff from the garden but no, they’re carrying eggs up, not food down.

We’ve had two inches of rain over 24 hours and the humidity is high, very unusual for this part of the country, especially the humidity.

It must be almost intolerable in the sub tropical north, where they’re being hit by inland tsunami’s causing death and destruction over an area bigger than most countries.

North West of me, they’re getting their second round of flooding since spring, in an area thats had no regular rainfall for ten years.

Australia is a land of climate extremes but this is getting ridiculous.

Perhaps these worldwide weather events are still within long term historical patterns but the boundaries seem to be getting pushed more frequently than I’m comfortable with.

Personally, I’ve stopped believing politicians but I’ll keep an eye on the ants.

First Tomatoes

Sunday in the garden, finally I have Tomatoes, five weeks late but always worth the wait. With a  bit of decent weather they’ll catch up quickly.

Can’t have Tomatoes without Basil, this years crop is looking good.

Seedlings I planted last week aren’t looking too good though , two days of strong hot winds have pretty much destroyed them.