Is it wrong
to be sitting in the toilet and then hearing your boss going into the cubicle next to you?

I felt a little dirty, I don't need to know the ID of my Trap neighbors
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Tue 19 Aug 2008, 9:50, 11 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Old QOTW answers
As this week's QOTW is unfunny with depressing regularity, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on past QOTW answers.

So what are your favourite answers from questions past?

Mine? At the top of Best on "Have you ever been rude to a celebrity?" The image of Stephen Hawking showing off his mad chair skills gives me the lols.

Bring on the sunshine!
( Noeli overtheshoulderboulderholderthingstraplatchboobs, Tue 19 Aug 2008, 9:27, 17 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Tuesday Morning
In a hot, wet Hong Kong with me sitting in my supercool (not because the office is cool but because I've got the aircon cranked right down to the minimum - 30 degrees outside, 12 degrees in my office) office.

No ranting today you'll be pleased to hear, other than the slightly wry smile on hearing of the injury to Liu Xiang in the Birds Nest stadium. Obviously, there's the fear of what the Chinese authorities will do to him - but if he disappears in the style of a Soviet athlete who'd failed to perform in the Olympics, remember - you heard it hear first.

Sinister? Not at all, I'm just saying ...

Anyway.

In the interests of making today go as swimmingly as possible (did I mention that I'm flying home Friday?) please add your comments below.

PS: what's wrong with this picture, see if you can work it out?






(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Tue 19 Aug 2008, 4:59, 159 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

The Olympics is a sport right?
And sport isn't news it's sport. So why are the BBC using sooo much news time to tell us about sport, a bunch of minority sports at that, when any other sporting news would never regularly make it into the news segment of the half hour and would be put into the 'sport' section?

Is it just me or is anyone else getting annoyed about the Olympics being basically plastered onto the insides of our eyelids, it's impossible to not see it somehow.

[/rant]

[rant]

And another thing! Why is it so much of an accomplishment to get all these gold medals? As I've seen on the news (which I didn't really want to see 'cos it's sport) we've spent about £20million on a number of sports to get these gold medals and even if we sold all of our medals we'd still be looking at a loss of a few million.

I just don't see the point in throwing so much cash at this thing just so we can say we came xxth in the medals table. It's not like the public ever care about these sports in the 3 year period when there aren't Olympics happening so why do we give it so much attention when it comes on?

[/rant]

[rant]

No wait and another thing...Oh no I don't have another thing...

[/rant]
(RDFCRob Please God let Obama win!, Tue 19 Aug 2008, 1:53, 10 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

What no evening thread?

( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 18 Aug 2008, 20:30, 96 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Any suggestions?
How can I hide a large dog in my house without housemates or landlord seeing it?

I was thinking of wallpapering it and getting it to sit very still.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:41, 18 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

How
do I find out about the B3ta bashes?

Are there regional ones?
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:21, 7 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Tell me something interesting
Go on, I dare you
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 14:18, 103 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

monday blues
just got back to work after a really nice holiday.

left everyone else on the beach sunning themselves as i had to come into work.

to find 137,000,000 files on my desk and a friendly warning from a colleague that my boss was really pissed off about something on fri. however, i wasn't here to sort it out, so a tiny mountain is now a giant pustulating molehill. help!

how's everyone been??
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 12:12, 7 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

TGB's Monday Morning Moment
After feeling quite smug about remembering how to use a manual choke on my Marina, remembering that opening the petrol cap is more complex than cracking a safe, remembering you have to put the petrol in sloowwwlly because of the angle of the pipe, remembering the indicators are on the other side and that reverse is lift and down and having a jolly drive to the garage to get her tuned up and waving at the guy in the Austin 7 - imagine how utterly stupid I felt when I got to the end of the half mile road from the garage and had to phone up the nice mechanic to ask him to turn the lights off because I forgot.

Feel free to make me feel better by posting your stupid moments :)
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 10:34, 17 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

A bit of help please!
Someone out there must have read, understood and inwardly digested all the Schroedinger's Cat stuff about quantum physics and alternative dimensions/universes.

Can anyone outline it in really simple terms for me please?

I'm writing a short story which is using the whole theory of many worlds/parallel universes and I want a bit more background on how it might (or does) work.

I'm aware of quarks(?) vibrating in two places simultaneously - hence the cat being both dead and alive.

I'd like the whole thing explained again so hopefully it'll trigger off another plot development.

Ta.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 10:13, 16 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Monday - and a rant (sorry)
Good morning, one and all and as happy a Monday as can be imagined.

This is my last Monday in the former colony of the indescribables that is Hong Kong (at least for a couple of weeks) and I can't wait to get home to work in London again.

Much is made by certain right-wing organisations of how multi-culturalism is a bad thing in the world in general and in the UK in particular; I've always disagreed with that - surely multi-culturalism gives us a new series of openings on our view of the world.

Having spent time here with the new Chinese hegemony of the world for a fair part of this year I have seen the future and - if I may be forgiven for such a random generalisation - it is yellow (some of whom are so yellow I'm sorely tempted to ask for a liver biopsy), and it has domestic staff who are, in essence, indentured slaves. If the world is serious about ending poverty and slavery, if the world is serious about the right of self-determination for all people on the planet then the vastly overpreened, overcosseted and overwhelmingly rude and undignified Hong Kong Chinese should be second against the wall when the revolution comes.

In the same way that the North Vietnamese beat the US (or, as Kevin Klines' character in A Fish Called Wanda said "That was a draw!") in their conflict - by simply having more bodies to throw at the problem the Chinese have the same. Almost everyone here has a job and whilst there's an official 3.9% jobless rate, this is mainly accounted for by the long-term ill or those who are in pre-retirement. The simplest task - of doing laundry, for example - here would make Adam Smith cringe and quake that after all of these years his study of pin manufacture has been thrown away like so much bad thinking.

Humour me, for a moment, whilst I prepare for you an example of this. My company designs and builds software that is implemented by banks and asset management companies to be able to predict into the future with an element of accuracy. It normally takes one person to maintain post-implementation and the most I've seen elsewhere in the world was (for a much larger institution than the one I'm working for here) was a team of three people who were going to maintain it (to enable redundancy of coverage). Here, in Hong Kong, I'm training twenty people to do it and I've been asked to split the training into five sections, with four people each learning it.

In addition to this, IP-holders of the world, prepare to defend yourselves and your rights. I have evidence from here of my clients' making attempts to both directly access the IP in the device (including brazenly making the statement "We need the formulae to be able to prove it for our regulator" (they don't, I checked - and boy were they pissed off when I told them that I'd done it)) and to reverse engineer from the limited information that I was prepared to give them. If you have IP for goodness sakes keep it to yourselves; if you don't but your device / code / whatever is unique, seek patent protection before you come here and ensure that your contract enables you to sue should you have evidence of copyright infringement.

And ... breathe ...

Anyway - happy Monday, y'all.




(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 4:53, 185 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Let's have a Sunday thread...


( thealternativefact, Sun 17 Aug 2008, 10:17, 78 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Awake?
Am trollied, awake, bored, anyone as sad and awake as me right now.?
(weekirst23 Is broken! Silly ice. Silly High heels!, Sun 17 Aug 2008, 4:20, 13 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Gosh it's quiet
This morning. Was everyone mullered last night, or do B3tans have real lives and stuff to do on a Saturday?

Or is it a plot? Did the CIA spray chloroform up my snoozing nostrils to allow Tom Cruise to be winched down out of the loft, hover over my laptop and adjust it so it appears B3ta has been silenced and any second it'll exploooooode?

Ahem.

Weather forecast poo, no money, but I will be going to see some film or other called The Dark Knight tonight: can't say I'd really heard of it but apparently its about people dressing up.

What's everyone else up to?

Helloooooooo
(osok Rebel without a clue, Sat 16 Aug 2008, 11:18, 43 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

nokia E51
Anyone know how to get the battery cover off? I've tried the 'press release button and slide cover off' method to no avail.

I think I may have been sold a brokened one :(
(Duckeee Is nothing special, in fact, she's a bit of a bore, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 22:58, 2 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

It's Friday night it's Norwich
It's the Home Sweet Home thread.



I'm stopping in as I have no life.
Tell me about the exciting things you're doing.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Fri 15 Aug 2008, 19:18, 44 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Financial fuckwittery
I got paid today - yay! Being the well adjusted financial man about town that I am, I thought "I'll pay off the deposit for our nuptials straight away, then it's out the way".

On line I went, and attempted to make a payment. Got so far, then was confronted by a "we are unable to complete your transaction, please try again later" message.

Hmm. Check details, and try again. Same thing. Arse.

One more try. Success! £425 leaving my current account and winging it's way to those nice Goldfish people.

Right, got another couple of moving money around the city jobs to do (really just transferring the food shopping money into my other Barclays account - I'm a bit anal like that). So I log back into my Barclays account, only to find that my balance has shrunk spectacularly to £54. WTF?

Whoa. A quick call to Barclays confirms that three transactions of £425 are floating around in cyberspace waiting to be processed. "Give Goldfish a call and ask them to cancel two of the transactions, but ring us back if they're unable to help and we'll see what we can do," they helpfully advise. So I do.

Except Goldfish haven't got a record of these transactions yet as it takes four days to hit their account. "Give Barclays a call and get them to put a stop on two of the payments, otherwise it's going to be the middle of next week before we can get it back to you".

I'm starting to hyperventilate by this point, not helped by the fact that some two weeks on our kitchen is not quite finished, the washing machine hasn't been plumbed in yet and one of the drawers doesn't open all the way as the washer juts out just slightly too far...

Back to Barclays, and a different person this time. I explain again, adding that Goldfish have advised me to call them as they are unable to help just now.

"You made the transaction on line, you say"? asks the polite but by now slightly annoying disembodied female voice.

"Yes".

"Then I'll have to put you through to our on line transactions department".

*Sigh* "OK, thanks".

Thirty seconds of musak ensues while I try to not gnaw through the phone cable in mild annoyance. There's a ringtone, followed by a friendly voice.

"I'm sorry, we are unable to provide any information regarding on line transactions as our system is currently down. Please call back in half an hour".

Click.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh"!

I need a drink.

*EDIT* Some 50 minutes of fucking about on the phone and it appears to be sorted...
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 15 Aug 2008, 19:08, 4 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

arrrgh
My computer rebooted because of that stupid live updater thing and I don't think it's saved all the work I was doing this morning! Would it have saved it anywhere else?
*cries*
*Reads Captains post below*
*laughs*
*back to crying*
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 16:43, 12 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

First class to Hull please
I find it strange that the Chinese are doing quite well in the Olympic swimming.






They weren't so good in Morecambe.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 16:25, 8 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Flapjacks
Are they cakes?

I have one in front of me, and the description is:

"Flapjack cake with a yogurt topping"

They don't go soft or hard when stale, do they?
(Ethelred is watching cheese grow, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 16:21, 2 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Quick festival question
I'm going to Leedsfest again this year and as my previous tent-buddies have partnered up I have to get a tent by myself. I don't want to spend a lot as I'm a g-string away from stripping for cash. I want the cowprint throw-it-on-the-floor-and-it-pops-up-as-if-by-magic one from Argos for £30, but it's a single skin. So basically I want to know if anyone has purchased a similar pop-up tent of joy and whether or not it's festival proof. Sorry that was so long and rambling for such a simple question. Ta
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 15:20, 7 replies, latest was 16 years ago)