[via DPF]

A well-known and inspirational speaker, Mike Tamaki, has unwittingly been caught up in the latest tertiary education funding scam says Nationals Education spokesman, Bill English.

I have been advised that people who attended a business lunch in Timaru earlier this year were told that they could stay and hear Mr Tamaki speak if they filled out a form enrolling them at this course at Aoraki Polytechnic.

This form made their attendance at the lunch an official community education enrollment, says Mr English.

This stuff drives me insane! Half of these provincial Politechs couldn't educate a cow in a bloody milking shed. As an employer and taxpayer it makes my blood boil seeing this sort of crap masquerading as education.

P.S. New category added - Taxpayer Ripoffs

The UPS guy delivered my Sinulator the morning of the day I was giving a party. I signed, sent him on his way and returned to my preparations. It wasn't until hours later, draped around the room with about 20 friends, that I remembered my new toy.

The Sinulator is a device that lets you connect a sex toy to your computer so that other people can control it for you over the internet. After announcing to the room that I had one of these, I really had no choice but to open the box and pass the thing around.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65064,00.html

That's right. Kognition has shifted offices... again.

We shifted into the Centre for Innovation at Otago University.

We've pimp'd up the office pretty nicely (see photos below).

One is of the area we call the Glasshouse- it's got two all glass walls looking out onto the University and we've got nice leather couches, cacti and an air hockey table in there.

The other half of the room is where we work- though it also has our DJ Setup. It'll also be where our big ass server rack is gonna go when it arrives- servers have arrived, just no rack yet.

Anyway- check the photos.... Bill, come visit, Casey, export yaself here

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OK... so some Density Raver has come back and posted some Jesus Speak in my comments...

Herewith some reply... theirs in blue.... mine in black.

God made the world. The world did not 'just happen'.

Science and Mathematics would tell you that there is a pretty good statistical chance that the world did just happen and then evolve- well some of us evolved....

God is the most powerful thing that exists.

OK... let me just run off and prepare a suppository form Atomic Weapon.... and we'll see who or what really holds the power around here.

It's up to us weather we choose to love him or not, but there are consequences to what we choose.

And I guess it's also up to him as to weather [sic] he grants us each some basic literacy skills....

There is good and evil, God and the devil, and there is heaven and hell.

Oh ... Can I be evil...  Evil is so much more fun than good.

The devil HATES you - he wants ... to kill your joy and ruin your future.

So basically the Devil wants me to become a Destiny Church Parishoner...

Hell is a horrifying place, where there is the worse torment and agony - and it ever ends. If you go there you will stay there for eternity.

Worse than what? Listening to an hour of Brian Tamaki every morning?

In Matthew 5:17-18 Jesus upheld the commandments in the Old Testament saying he had come to fulfil, and not abolish those laws. One law is Leviticus 18:22 where God commands do not have sex with a man as with a woman, that is detestable.

You can't 'have sex with a man as with a woman'... it's physically impossible.... Oh... unless the woman is super kinky... but I guess that's detestable too?

So the Jews needed little convincing.

Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.  Jesus through Paul therefore calls homosexuality a perversion.

Perverse or otherwise, some people seem to find it jolly good fun.... so who am I to intrude... More importantly what entitles you and your god to intrude given that many of them think religion to be little more than a self perpetuating fairy tale..

http://www.techpaq.co.nz/techbyte/2004_September/TP_IngramMicro_Acquisition.pdf

We are pleased to announce that Ingram Micro Inc. (NYSE: IM), the worlds largest technology distributor, has entered into an agreement to acquire Tech Pacific and combine our companies to better serve you and the Asia Pacific region.

Kirk posted something titled 

They don't talk politics on ESPN or The Weather Channel

Bill and Casey are quick off the mark on this one and given my propensity to rant and rave on everything from politics to religion I'm gonna pop my two cents in as well.

I have the advantage that I'm not beholden to anybody when it comes to blogging. I'm my own boss, host my blog on my own server and as such tend to blog about what I feel like. I feel absolutely no obligation to people who read this blog other than to try my darnedest to be accurate and substantial in the things that I post. If you don't like my politics (devout libertarianism) then don't go near my politics category. If you don't like my religious views (devout atheism) then avoid my sacreligion category.... simple huh! Oh, and if you don't like my spelling, typos and grammar... bugger off right now!

I'm no 'self proclaimed expert', but, I take an active interest in politics and in my wonderful democracy that's a darn site better than many useless inert nothings manage. Kirks post almost infers that ones aptitude or capability in different pursuits are wholly unrelated. I think quite the contrary is true- from what i have observed if someone is a clued up cookie in one aspect of life (say technology) then chances are they'll be pretty smart in other areas as well. It's my submission that if your technical content is sufficiently useful to warrant someone like Kirk subscribing then you are most unlikely to be the sort of person who would make 'vote for X' or 'Y is a moron' posts. Rather, you are probably likely to be the sort of person who will at least have something useful, thought provoking and insightful to say on politics- whichever side you happen to say it about.

*Please note that the above applies to politics only. I shall continue to feel unrestrained in so far as calling religious people closed minded moronic idiots (in the nicest possible way). Religion being a fantasy about which nothing useful, thought provoking or insightful can ever be said.

OK... so a few weeks back I posted on a particularly brazen young Destiny Church follower who had been commenting a great deal over on DPFs blog..

A comment on that entry has kinda sparked my interest again... turns out our Destiny supporter is a Health Promoter (whatever that is) @ the Taranaki DHB. Anyway, interest rekindled, I thought I'd whiz through and see what proportion of posts looked like they were done on employers (read Taxpayer of NZ and thus me) time.

Let's be generous and assume a 12am to 1:30pm lunch window....

1. Thursday 19th August, 12:13pm - Covered by our lunch window
2. Friday 20th August 12:02pm - So far so good
3. Friday 20th August 3:50pm - OK... Friday afternoon... was it Beer O'Clock maybe? Do 'health promoters' do Beer O'Clock?
4. Firday 20th August 3:56pm - As above... now at this stage I'm worried I'll make a fool of myself because tommorow is a weekend!
5. But it's OK... because we get radio silence until... she's back @ work on Tuesday the 24th @ 3:02pm - Now please tell me it's not Beer O'Clock on Tuesdays.
6. Wednesday August 25th @ 9:06am... doing morning 'emails'?
7. Wednesday August 25th @ 10:03am... still doing morning emails?
8. Wednesday August 25th @ 10:04am... sure is a lot of emails?
9. Wednesday August 25th @ 10:08am... can you say Acceptable Use Policy?
10. Thursday 26th August @ 4:32pm... again... close enough to end of play to be a gimme.
11. Friday 27th August @ 08:46am... without seeing the IP logs you've got to let this one slip for the possiblity of it being written @ home. Do civil service types get to work before 9am?
12. Friday 27th @ 10:02am.... this one was a WHOPPER... must have been a good 20 minutes worth. Lurker even comments -  I'm guessing naki-girl doesn't hold down a full-time job at the moment... I'm guessing naki-girl doesn't hold down a full-time job at the moment... ... dunno- are 'Health Promoters' full time?
13. Friday August 27th @ 10:36am.... another biggie
14. Friday August 27th @ 10:58am.... I ain't seeing much health promoting going down....
15. Friday August 27th @ 11:35am... TGIF!
16. Friday August 27th @ 11:49am... could call it a tithe @ this rate
17. Friday August 27th @ 11:52am... thats 1 and 1/2 hours by my count.
18. Friday August 27th @ 12:01pm... LUNCH TIME
19. Friday August 27th @ 12:06 pm... still lunch...
20. Friday August 27th @ 12:18 pm... and still lunch...
21. Friday August 27th @ 12:36 pm... and still lunch... but then wasn't 10:30 till midday lunch today...
22. Friday August 27th @ 12:54 pm ... still within our lunch window
23. Friday August 27th @ 01:17pm ... Just as well we allowed for a long 'merchant bankers' lunch
24. Friday August 27th @ 01:24pm ... lunch is almost over
25. Friday August 27 @ 02:32pm ... and now lunch is indeed over.
26. Friday August 27th @ 03:01pm... another monster post this afternoon.
27. Friday August 27th @ 03:09pm ... almost Beer O'Clock.... surely
28. Friday August 27th @ 03:17pm ... it's been a long day at the coal face really hasn't it.... driving Gods Chariot...

... and that's all folks... so let's summarise.

28 posts. 9 within our lunch window, 1 that we suspect as being an early morning not @ work post. So that leaves 18 posts on work time... many of them pretty substantial. Seems god promotion won over health promotion this week.

Remember the Trance Vibrator?

Ms Behaviour, one of the Twisted Minxets, has a post on a USB powered gadget.

http://msbehaviour.blogspot.com/2004/09/geek-girls-guide-to-getting-off-do-you.html

Scoble has the details here....

Dunno why the hell they changed it in the first place....

Ok... so Rob has re-ignited the flame @ http://robertlevy.net/ and the first post back he talks about his car... and his insurance... the man is insane... let me quote a little.

Getting screwed on car insurance.  Now that I actually have my own car I gotta start paying insurance and boy does that suck.  Right now I'm paying over 250/month...

This is just mad...US$250 a month == NZ$384 a month... To put that in perspective, that is NZ$4 more than I pay to insure my Subaru GT Legacy Twin Turbo 206kw Extremely Nickable For Ram Raiding 'Space Rocket With Wheels'....

And more importantly that's NZ$380 per year, not per month.

Eee youch!.... Should I ever take the red pill I'll sure as hell be joining Ericgu @ the LBS  and buying myself a shiny new bike... can't believe Eric doesn't like the color scheme on the Litespeed..... Titanium is like... so sexy!

...wow! I was Googling my own name (to find a recent photo of myself) and found that I had been quoted in the Chapman Tripp Tech Law newsletter. This is actually kinda cool as Chapman Tripp were the only law firm I applied to after finishing law school. I think they were keen to have me but it was still going to be a HUGE drop in earning from being an IT guy...