Well tomorrow is hump day thank god, I am looking forward to the weekend to say the least. My wife is finally home from the rock she had been gone for a week and it was a boring and drab existence for me to say the least. Work has been going ok so I have nothing to bitch about except some of the customers are driving me nuts but what else is new. Going to keep this short talk to you all later when I have more interesting to talk about.

A true story and its source was the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service in Adelaide.
A bloke and his family were on holidays in the United States and went to Mexico for a week. An avid cactus fan, the man bought a one-metre high, rare and expensive cactus there. On arrival back home Australian Customs said it must be quarantined for 3 months.
He finally got his cactus home. Planted it in his backyard, and over time it grew to about 2 metres. One evening while watering his garden after a warm spring day, he gave the cactus a light spray. He was amazed to see the plant shiver all over, he gave it another spray and it shivered again.
He was puzzled so he rang the council who put him on to the state gardens people.
After a few transfers he got the state's foremost cactus expert who asked him many questions. How Tall is it? Has it flowered? etc.
Finally he asked the most disturbing question. "Is your family in the house?" The bloke answered yes. The cactus expert said get out of the house NOW, get on to the front nature strip and wait for me, I will be there in 20 minutes.
Fifteen minutes later, 2 fire trucks, 2 police cars and an ambulance came screaming around the corner. A fireman got out and asked "Are you the bloke with the cactus?" I am, he said.
A guy jumped out of the fire truck wearing what looked like a space suit, a breathing cylinder and mask attached to what looked like a scuba backpack with a large hose attached.
He headed for the backyard and turned a flame-thrower on the cactus spraying it up and down.
After a few minutes the flame-thrower man stopped, the cactus stood Smoking and spitting, half the fence was burnt and parts of the gardens were well and truly scorched. Just then the cactus expert appeared and laid a calming hand on the bloke's shoulder. "What the hell's going on?" he says.
"Let me show you" says the cactus man. He went over to the cactus and picked away a crusty bit, the cactus was almost entirely hollow and filled with tiger striped bird-eating tarantula spiders, each about the size of two hand spans.
The story was that this type of spider lays eggs in this type of cactus And they hatch and live in it as they grow to full size. When full size they release themselves.
The cactus just explodes and about 150 dinner-plate-sized hairy spiders are flung from it, dispersing everywhere. They had been ready to pop.
The aftermath was that the house and the adjoining houses had to be vacated and fumigated: police tape was put up outside the whole area and no one was allowed in for two weeks

It has been a busy week for me, I only had one day off this week because on Saturday they dropped the bomb on me that I would be training on Monday. So I have training at 3:40 to 12:15 at night makes for some long nights let me tell you. Plus I have to pick a new shift tomorrow which is going to be interesting to say the least. So other than that not much is new except training which I am not allowed to talk about.

I did however install windows XP service pack 2 on my machine on Saturday and did not encounter any problems I do like the changes they made to the firewall and how you can manage the add on for internet explorer for example. Other than that this weekend my birthday is making its appearance on Sunday another year has passed by way too quickly. I have not had a smoke in 8 months give or take, a fact of which I am extremely proud pf myself. Anyway got too go it is late and I have to go to bed talk to you all later have a good one everybody

Did anybody out there notice the subtle change in the air once it starts to grow dark? Easy to tell our weather is going to start to turn cold in the next month or so, summers seem to pass by way too quickly when you have too consider how cold it usually is for most of the year. Not much going on in my life, even though there is a big up roar at work however. I heard enough people ranting and raving about it at work I am not even going to bother.
I am looking forward to the end of tonight though because it is my last 10 hour shift for this week, the 10 hours I don’t mind except the time frame in which I have to work getting off at 10:30 is a bit of a drag but I am not complaining to much I picked the shift after all. I am getting a lot of reading done at work which is all right I guess, I just finished a book called Fire and Ice which I enjoyed immensely. Next I will read a book called Blind Man’s Bluff it is about submariners and how the evolved into using them to spy on the soviets in the Barents Sea. The changes in technology are amazing to read about but the steely nerve of some of the captains who piloted the craft into these waters is astounding. Anyway I got too go and head to work talk to you all later have a good one everybody.

Before I came to work I was watching a program on Discovery channel about tigers over in India. The name of the of the park they were talking about was called Sunderbans, people who live close by have to enter the park to fish and collect honey so they can eke out an existence. The villages in this area do not have any running water or electricity so the giant mangrove forest is their main source to gather food.

There is one big problem in this area and that the tigers that live there. They do not fear man and about 80 people a year are falling victim to these beasts. The scientist have been looking at the records and from the 1800’s to the 1900’s they figure that 350,000 people have been killed by these tigers. That is an amazing number when you think of it whole villages were wiped out by tigers. Then people starting killing tigers and they stopped hunting man at that point probably because the tigers started to fear man and learned to leave us alone. However because the Sunderbans are a giant mangrove forest they could not cull the tigers there and therefore they did learn from this experience. That is the theory anyway.

The tigers swim from one small island to another in their search for food and even attack fishermen in their boats and drag them into the forest. There is one area that is off limits to everybody but government officials. They patrol the area trying to keep people out because of the large amount of tigers in that area, which makes it for a highly dangerous area. The last time a bunch of fishermen snuck in there a tiger attacked their boat and killed three people before they escaped. So much for killing people for food hunh? Killing three in one fail swoop kind of rules that out of the equation doesn’t it?

So indeed these are the last animals that actively will hunt and kill humans. Scary when you stop and think of it, seems the best idea would be to stay out of the area and let them be. I know that is not going to happen man is going to encroach on their territory and the death toll will rise until it ends with people staying out of the area or they kill off the tigers or at least figure out a way of making them wary of men. Got too go and get too work talk to you all later have a good weekend everybody!

I was reading a story on CNN yesterday about a 17 year old young man who lured his 14 year old friend into a park and proceeded to kill him with a hammer. (I think I got the ages right I was looking for the story again but cannot find it) if memory serves me correct it happened in a London park. Now his parents are saying that he was acting out the game Manhunt in real life. Because in Manhunt you get style points for killing people and the more gruesome the better the score. Rock star games made man hunt and they are the ones who made the Grand theft auto series as well, which caught a lot of flak as well.

If you are 17 years old is it really time to blame a video game for you actions? Yes I remember being 17 and I know you would not be the pinnacle of maturity but if you don’t know right from wrong there is something seriously lacking in your education. Besides that strategy is getting a bit weak when ever somebody does something wrong they tend to point the finger else where, the dog ate my home work, rap music made me do it, it was in a movie, now video games made me do it, oh yeah lest not forget the old favorite Satan commanded me to do it.

I know they are some mentally deranged people out there and yeah they probably hear voices in their head but stop with the blame game. I think the real reason they go to the extreme of blaming music or games is to give politicians credence to the censorship laws. I have played video games since the days of the commodore vic 20 and I never had any adverse effects except missing some sleep from late night gaming. Anyway got too go and head to work talk to you all later have a good one everyone.