A friend of mine had a BBQ on Saturday night, and since he lives far away, he was kind enough to let us crash there overnight. I woke up around 2am or so, really really hot. It had been a hot day, and the house was hot, and the room we were in was small. And hot. Looking up, I saw a window. In my drunken state, an idea came into my head from somewhere: “Open the window, dummy”.

So I stood up and fell over, and stood up and fell over and stood up and grabbed the window sill. After much fiddling with the lock, it finally popped out with a kind of meowing sound. I was puzzled at that. As I stood there, still grasping the ledge, trying to figure out why the lock meowed at me, it did it again. Then it knocked against the window from the outside. My confusion faded when I saw a cat outside, obviously the source of the meow noises. The cat was familiar, and she knew me too because I had fed her some spare BBQ earlier. I was her friend and she was happy to see me because I was where she wanted to be. Not drunk and in bed, but inside.

I opened the window some more. She finally ducked into the window, but was too scared to jump down into the dark room. So, gingerly letting go of the window ledge, I picked up the cat and put her down in the bed. I followed shortly thereafter. Headfirst.

She didn’t let me sleep though, because she was telling me how much she loves me – not only feeding ability but let-cat-inside ability too! I rocked. I did, actually, but that had more to do with the alcohol. Presently, she started telling me all about how wonderful the rest of the house is too. I told her I knew, but she just smiled and told me that it was a hint silly human. So I opened the bedroom door and she loved my legs a bit, then left. I fell asleep and dreamed of being a doorman.

I dunno. Go look it up.

The CBC’s Monday Report is a brilliant political and current events show. It’s a funny and intelligent weekly look at what’s going on in the world, written and hosted by Rick Mercer, alumnus of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. This is a man who is able to slice, dice and mix metaphors without blinking an eye. As you’ll see.

So anyway. I check their site every so often and watch the video clips (being halfway around the world, CBC reception really sucks). This week’s rant is brilliant. Rick rants on about censorship, the US Veteran’s Day holiday, and Saving Private Ryan. Watch it in Quicktime. (There’s a Windows Media thing on the CBC site, but you’ll have to go get it yourself).

Pardon me a moment, gentle reader, as I have a small whinge about something.

Of course I want to “paste this information into another program later”!!! That’s why I copied it to the clipboard in the first place, you fukwit! STOP ASKING ME SUCH BLOODY STUPID QUESTIONS!

Make notes, in case you’re ever in a similar situation: there is a right way and a wrong way remove cars from water.

Confirming what every Telstra customer already knows, Telstra announced that it is not required to maintain “an accurate, reliable and current account and record keeping system” able to “accurately calculate” monthly billings for its mobile telephone system.

This unsurprising revelation comes out in a story in this morning’s The Age about a lawsuit between the monopolistic telco and Crazy John’s. John alleges Telstra manufactured a bill out of thin air, to force them to re-negotiate their dealer contract. Telstra can’t back up this bill with actual figures, so they seem to be trying the bizarre legal move of saying “we never said we had accurate bills”. While Telstra customers already knew this, it’s a bit odd that the company itself would admit that. John apparently provides 20% of Telstra’s mobile business (justifying the “Crazy” moniker). If I was an account rep for Optus or Vodafone, I’d be speed dialling Crazy John right about now, funk soul brother.

Now this is interesting. Remember, gentle reader, that Sony camcorder that could use some kind of “NightShot” feature to see through people’s clothing? Well, it must have started some people thinking, because Heathrow airport is testing an x-ray machine that does just that.

The machine uses low-level radiation to see through clothing, producing an anatomically detailed black and white image of the body underneath.

The really good ones get printed out and put up in the security office – so do the really bad ones, but for different reasons (I made that up). In the article, a spokesperson said that it’s “same sex operated”, which makes me think that BAA Heathrow might see a rise in applications from gay and lesbian security guards in the next little while.

Cabel Sasser, creator of the best t-shirts at MacWorld (narrowly beating my BOPJET shirts by virtue of their silverness), has written an entertaining and insightful story about another one of his creations, Audion. It was one of the first MP3 players on the Mac, and, until iTunes happened, the most popular. They’ve officially decided to retire the application, and they’ve sent it off with a bang. It’s free. And they wrote a story.

During my time as a dotcom millionaire wannabe, I met the Panic guys briefly – congratulated them on their t-shirts, and probably said something nasty about Transmit (which a couple of weeks before had wiped out an entire FTP directory). Our companies were about the same size (although theirs was probably making money…) so I felt a certain kind of camaraderie, looking up to these guys who were doing what I wanted to do.

I still use it every so often, to play MP3-Pro files (which iTunes doesn’t support), and for listening to music in the office, where I don’t have access to my entire iTunes collection.

Anyway, I’m going to hoist a pint for Audion, and best wishes for Panic and all their other software. Congratulations for staying in the game so long.

The janitor commented to someone in the hallway that he wanted to clean the restroom but this guy’s been in there all morning.