Rest assured that I have been keeping track of Microsoft’s latest chatroom nonsense, after my entry about them changing their Messenger protocols for “security reasons”. It’s just so ridiculous and obvious, I’ve not been sure it’s worth bothering to mention. Yeah. Sure. Microsoft are closing chatrooms for the children. Nothing to do with money or kneejerk legal threats.

(I should mention at this point that I don’t really give a monkey’s about the chatrooms themselves personally. I don’t use that sort of crap. I generally hate public chatrooms, and would particularly hate ones with kids in.)

I’m somewhat disappointed that the various childrens’ charities are apparently so pleased about it, since the problem has nothing to do with chatrooms. (Quite apart from the fact that it’s yet to be indicated to me that “net enticement” is actually a significant problem, and not just a convenient way of ignoring the fact that actually, the vast majority of abused children are being abused by relatives and family friends.) If children are advertising for social contacts and engaging in social activity over the net then there will be paedophiles around, whatever the forum. They’ll hang around Livejournal, no shortage of gullible teenagers there. They’ll post on discussion boards. It won’t change anything. Moderated fora can help stop this, but there will always be private methods of communication. If parents are worried about this they need to control their children’s access to the net, full stop, there is no other way.

…but this is all so obvious, I feel like an idiot for even saying it in the first place…

I did come across this great quote from currybet.net, though. Gillian Kent, director of MSN UK, in a TV interview:

Most of the abuse has been happening in what are called free and unmoderated chat rooms

There are alternatives, much safer, such as Instant Messaging. And around the world we have 100 million people using Instant Messenger. That’s a great safe way of communicating. We encourage everybody to take up this new form rather than the older form of chats.

Well, if it’s being free and unmoderated that makes chatrooms dangerous, and MSN Messenger is safe, then what’s the difference? Could it perhaps be that MSN Messenger isn’t going to be free for too long? (It’s certainly not going to be moderated, that would be much more expensive than moderating the chatrooms, would stop everyone using it and would probably be illegal.) Or could this be yet another attempt to get everyone in the world to use MSN Messenger for all their kid-enticing needs? Are they trying to challenge Yahoo Groups’ position as Official Internet Paedophile Heaven?

I used to use several Bravenet services years ago when I had my first site. Back then I didn’t know any Perl, didn’t know much about web technologies generally and didn’t have CGI access in the first place, free webspace you know.

These days, if I want a dynamic site service I write it myself – but I saw one of their guestmaps on the NaNoWriMo site last year, thought it was cute, and a Barbelith thread about world maps reminded me of it just now. I’ve put one up.

It’s on the front page right now, near the top. The free version only has 100 spaces, 99 now that I’ve added my entry, and you know I’m not paying $9.95 a month to increase that, so stick in your pin.

Like I say in the intro, it’s hardly the most precise map in the world, so if you want to be more specific add some details in the comment box.

Yeah, I could write something more detailed myself and plot people’s positions by their longitude and latitude and so on, but I’m not that bothered. I might do a better link icon than theirs, though.

A bento box

My desk drawer

Condiment watch in full effect – I’m packing sauce sachets and saltines. I can’t leave my drawer open too long, though, in case the hummingbirds get to the contents.

I’ve commented on noisy crickets around here before, and I’m going to do so again. In the past few days I have actually seen three crickets, and they are, to be honest, rather poor excuses for animals. They must be specialised purely for noise production because I can’t see what else they are good for.

The first one was on the bus. I saw the girl opposite me suddenly jerk backwards at least a foot. There was a cricket crawling on the inside of the glass. The girl returned slowly to her original position, slightly embarrassed, but for the rest of the ride still drew back from it a little, even though the cricket was moving unthreateningly in circles and nowhere near her.

The second cricket was outside the medical centre that I went to on Saturday. The place is packed on weekdays, but almost completely empty that day – I’d arrived early and was wandering around the car park in the sun. Near the kerb was a cricket. I walked towards it and it half-jumped, half-flew about a metre further away from me, very slowly. Then it did the same thing and ended up nearer to me than it had been before. I had been considering chasing it, but after that display, I concluded that there would be no fun to be had there.

This morning, at work, a couple of people seemed to be trying to catch a cricket that was on the pavement in front of one of the buildings. It gets quite boring waiting for the shuttle buses. This cricket took off properly, and flew, very slowly, about a foot and a half off the ground, straight into a pillar, bouncing off and landing on its back. I can’t judge cricket expressions so I’m not sure what it thought of this, but I imagine that it was used to such things.

There was just one cricket trapped in the lift shaft in my apartment building, but it’s now been joined by one of another species that makes a different noise. There’s one in the laundry room, too.

I suppose, like locusts, crickets must just eat and breed, and the survival of the species doesn’t really rest on the ability of individuals to avoid being eaten or knocking their own stupid heads off by crashing into concrete obstacles.

Compaq FAQ2859

I’ve been having problems with email sent to fridgemagnet.org.uk all day. Useless buggers. If you want to send me any mail, send it to my Hotmail address, fr1dgemagnet, for the moment. Given that MS seem to be cutting down on all possible free web service expenditure, I don’t know how long I’ll have that address, but it should certainly be long enough for you to mail me should you desire.

In other news, I’m sure I remember going to sleep last night, yet I do not seem to have. I’m positive that I was unconscious for a seven or eight hour period, and regained consciousness in bed with no clothes on. Then again, my entire past life could be a false memory created in the last microsecond, so I’m not going to let a few hours bother me.

You know what really bugs me about this place? It’s the hummingbird problem. It’s starting to get really obvious and they are just not doing anything about it. Oh, sure, they put out a few traps, but they don’t catch many.

What’s more, they’re getting cheekier. I heard a buzzing sound just now, looked round and there was one right behind me, sticking its beak into my monarda didyma. I said “shoo!” and it gave me this sort of contemptuous look, then darted off into a gap between the ceiling tiles. I had to go and get another plant from the vending machine – I wasn’t going to get nectar from that after a hummingbird had put its beak into it, they carry all sorts of diseases. I know someone who got scrofula from a hummingbird.

All the management do is send round emails saying “do not keep nectar-bearing flowers on your desk as this will attract hummingbirds”. Talk about blaming the victim.

They really don’t take much care of this place. I’ve definitely noticed the furniture getting older in some of the rooms – where we have our fortnightly team meeting, the chairs started off being made in 2001, and now they’re from 1994. There’s obviously a leak there but do they fix it? No, they can’t be bothered, people can still sit on them, who cares about the period. (Of course, some of the furniture in the meeting rooms that the heads of department use was made next year – they’re not expected to sit on things that age faster than they do.)

Don’t tell anyone I told you this, incidentally, but the company is planning a merger next year, with a rooster co-operative in the Andes.

Why does my orange juice have added calcium? This habit of adding extra stuff to other stuff must cease immediately. I do not want my bread fortified with dandruff, or my eggs with extra heroin. I get quite enough calcium already, thank you, what with all the babies I eat – they’re packed with it.

It’s not as bad as that Danone Activ water with calcium, which just tastes like you’ve been drinking milk from the glass and forgotten to wash it out properly before putting water in. The product in front of me at the moment merely tastes like orange juice which has gone a bit eccentric.

You can also get Tropicana™ Pure Premium™ Low Acid Orange Juice, apparently, if you were wanting any more peculiar adultered juice products.

I was going to call in sick today, but I just realised that maintenance said they were going to turn off the water from 8.30am to 5pm. They did this last week, too – this time we got two whole days’ notice instead of one.

Being stuck in this apartment is not big laughs at the best of times and with no water, well, I’d rather be at work, though I would rather not be at work. I have a jug of water in the fridge but that would probably not be enough.

I got up too late to even have a shower.

Schools told the best way to prepare carrots

It’s at this time of night that I start to really consider moving back to the UK. Watching The Bachelor doesn’t help. I spend more time than you probably realise defending the USA against charges of having no culture from ignorant Old Europeans. That doesn’t counter general homesickness and a desire to live in a place that isn’t the middle of fucking nowhere, where there is actually a local environment that isn’t based around kids, SUVs, schools and Thanksgiving barbecues.

I’m bitter. Forget it. I’ve just managed to move to entirely the wrong place. Hopefully, in a month or so’s time, when I’m in a different area, I’ll have a much better attitude about the life which I’ve put myself in. To be truthful, I hated it where I was in the UK as well.