Finally, it’s time for some FOOTBALL action. After watching England manage to defeat Liechtenstein, I can only wonder if they’ll manage to get the point they need to qualify automatically for Euro 2004 when they play Turkey. The team did not play too well, and I think the Turks will win.

Anyways, it seems we are about to get Abramovich number 2. A Venezuluan billionaire called Gustavo Cisneros is trying to take over at Aston Villa. This guy is even richer than our free-spending Russian who’s spent about 111 million pounds on Chelsea’s players alone, and manged to persuade Peter Kenyon, a lifelong Man. U. fan to ditch Man. U. and become the CEO of Chelsea village. Does this mean we’ll see this, and maybe even more at Villa? Well, Doug Ellis, the Villa chairman has vowed he will not be pushed out. But this may be good for football, which has seen a serious ‘recession’ in the transfer market due to falling revenues. But I don’t think this will help everyone, just the clubs with crazy, billionaires who can afford to splash out millions of pounds for ‘fun’.

Anyway, Liverpool plays Chelsea tomorrow, and I’m gonna miss the first half, I’ll be at work. But I hope to catch the second half. Thankfully, I can monitor the game on the web using either SKy or BBC(or both) to get the latest scores.

I’ve been a fan or Barry Ferguson for a while, and he’s about to play his first game for his new club Blackburn, against my favourite club, Liverpool. The guy has something wrong with his head though. He thinks he’s gonna play in the Champions league with Blackburn. Next season. Poor chap.

I did an M.Sc project at the University of Liverpool called “Distributed Processing Using a Platform independent Language” where I used Java to implement some genetic algorithms on a heterogenous computer network. It was really tough but interesting.

Well since then, stories about distributed computing or grid computing always seem to catch my attention (thanks to all the research I had to do!). Like this one. After the SETI and Folding@Home projects, the UK Met office in conjunction with 3 universities plans to follow suit and use idle PC processing power from users on the internet to help predict world climate in 50 years. They hope that they can 2 million people to sign up on their website. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can sign up, it would be a drag on my office’s network.

More of that !!!

Some people get bored. Really bored. Now in Nigeria, this is an easy problem to solve. There are no credit cards, and no one will give a loan to ‘consolidate all you existing debts’. The very act of survival will give you something to do.

But unfortunately in the UK, it’s easy to eat everyday, or live beyond your means. Then you can turn round and blame the government for your problems. But hey, what happens when you get bored?

Take this chap. He had a debt of 15,000 pounds. He’s a student. And he’s on summer holidays. So what happens? He’s bored. And he’s broke. So he decides to ‘protest’. I was in the UK from 2001 – early 2003 and witnessed many protests for the government to bring back Student Grants. But this guy, this single bored, broke fellow decided to do something novel.

He used his nose to push a monkey nut through the streets of London. I saw this on the news and couldn’t help but wonder why this boy is not in a mental institution. Well, while I was at work, I found that he actually completed his ‘task’. He rolled that nut for 7 miles, thruogh bird poo, some people spat in front of him, dirt, oh my God. What a really jobless, misguided youth.

He had hoped that Tony Blair would wipe out his 15,000 pound debt. But Blair didn’t even greet him at Number 10. Thankfully, he was given a cup of coffee. Then he said “I’m off to have a bath”.

Good on ya Mark. Good on ya.

Someone sent me a mail in the office today that really got to me as a Liverpool fan:

“ David Blaine has given up his controversial stunt.

For Real Doe! ”

Very funny innit? Anyways, I thought he had given up for real, but now…he’s still there. How could a man do this to himself? He’s going to stay in a 7x7x4 box for 44 days with no food, just water…..why? That must be boring to watch as far as I’m concerned, but people seem to be paying attention. He’s even got a model for a girlfriend who’s actually allowing him to so this, she’s even defending him!! I trust my own girlfriend, if I ever even thought about it……………..

Anyway, my conclusion is that David Blaine is an illusionist, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s doing something to make us think he’s there for 44 days with no food. Either it’s all an elaborate trick……..or the water he’s drinking is laced with something. So my guess is, yes, he’ll make it. He’s even predicting that towards the end, he’ll go out of his mind. You’re already more than halfway there David. And I won’t be surprised if he does go out of his mind, it’s all in the script !!! Innit ?

At least, he got woken up by drummers on Sunday morning, and apparently even got ‘flashed’ by drunk women. mmmmmmmmmmm

Why o why? Every time I try to help Microsoft, they go ahead and mess themselves up. Just after the study from yesterday that claimed it was cheaper to keep existing Windows clients than migrate to Linux, I had a horrible ‘anti-Microsoft’ day!!

First of all, my computer was hit by the MSBlaster worm first thing in the morning. How can an IT guy’s system go down? Well, when the warning about MSBlaster came out, I managed to patch all the systems on my network……except mine, just a simple, but cruel oversight. So I spent an hour or so trying to figure out how to get rid of it. Luckily for me the Windows Update patch was on our network, or I’d have been in real trouble. Anyways, after doing that, I found this neat(and free!) scanning tool, that checks which systems on your network are vulnerable to infection by bugs such as MSBlaster.

So I scanned the network and found 11 PCs were still ‘unpatched’ and went through the motions of patching them all. After that it was 12 noon, time for lunch, right? No !! I get to my table and as soon as I wave my mouse, I am greeted by an email warning of a newly discovered vulnerability with Windows PCs, and the likelihood of Blaster-like worms coming up in a matter of days. This meant I had to re-“patch” every single PC on the network. So here we go again, downloaded all the relevant patches from Microsoft’s site and around 6pm, began patching all the systems again. I left the office at a few minutes to 8pm, but hey how else would people know I work in IT?

Just finished patching this morning, and guess what? September 11th (Yesterday) ‘memorial’ virus warnings!! ARGGGGHHH !!! This time, I composed a mail to all users on the network, the memory of cleaning up Sobig.F virus from a PC just yesterday fresh in my mind. Now, everyone is calling me “Mr. Virus”, but would you blame them?

Linux has none of these problems. No viruses, no worms, nothing. So what do I do award them a point in the ongoing battle? Not quite. For all these Microsoft problems, Linux has some ongoing problems of their own, in the form of the lawsuit mayhem I’m still trying to understand. So penalty points to both sides.

I’m still a little confused about the Microsft/Linux cost issue. Ernie Ball, the world’s largest maker of guitar strings (endorsed by leading musicians including Eric Clapton and Metallica) had a run-in with Microsoft and decided to switch to Linux.(In one of my previous posts) Anyway, the CEO Sterling Ball has gained some popularity after the success of this, and he’s invited to speak at Technology conferences. He claims that it’s cheaper for them to run Linux. So who do we believe? A transcript of an interview he did with CNET.com is here. So, there is life after Microsoft after all.

The score is still tied…………..Linux 1 – Windows 1. But only just.