Archive for December, 2001

This is where I am right now. It’s very nice.

For dinner I strolled a couple of miles South along the beach to the ancient port of Jaffa, where I ate grilled sea bass on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean as the sun set, with the sound of a Mu?azzen calling the locals to evening prayer echoing across the water. As I said, very nice.

One thing I’ve noticed since I’ve been here is the number of stray cats. The fact that they all choose to live by the beach, lapping up the sun and feeding off scraps from the seafood restaurants, adds to the widely-held theory that they really are the coolest of animals. Further proof: earlier this year I was in Milan, and all the strays there live in a huge castle. Honest.

My company has done a deal with a company in Slovenia. The material is supplied by a firm in Holland. The people putting it together are based in Israel. They need all the parts tomorrow morning. So guess who gets to fly to a war-zone for 24 hours to make sure they get everything? Yep, yours truly.

In case I get car-bombed or attacked by a helicopter gun-ship while I’m away, is there anything that anybody wants left to them in my will? Any undying declarations of love I wasn’t previously aware of? Please let me know…

An e-mail from James: “The unused URLs got me thinking; ‘I bet www.ohyesitis.com is available.’ Oh no it isn’t. ‘Then surely www.ohnoitisnt.com isn’t registered.’ Oh yes it is. Worst of all they link to each other, and nothing else. Why?”

I’m sorry James, I have no idea.

What do you buy the pessimist who has everything? There’s plenty to be had at despair.com. If anyone’s buying, I’d like one of these. Or one of these. Or just about anything else from the site…

For no apparent reason, here’s blogjam’s big list of website domain names registered in Germany that begin with the letters S, E, and X, in that order, taken from November 1999. I hope it’s of use.

Two great unused URLs:

1. http://www.iusedtobeinthebeatles.com

2. http://www.theinternetisformorons.com

I expect a healthy percentage of any monies accrued by any companies using the above URLs in the future. Thanks.

Fascinating. I stumbled across some generic guidelines for US schools to use in the event of a disaster hitting — the usual fire and tornado drills, hostage situations etc, plus some more unusual events — nuclear contamination, for instance. “Once nuclear/chemical contamination has been reported to the school, the Tornado Drill Procedure should be initiated.” Ah yes, that’ll help. [pdf file]

All things must pass and, like George Harrison, it was finally time to say goodbye to Ritchie. After much discussion on various favoured methods of fish euthanasia, we settled on the freezer method.

Goodbye, little fella. You’ll be missed.