Userpics

Apologies for the recent hiatus in my userpics - I was uploading a couple of pictures and must have buggered it up. They're back (fingers crossed), with the exception that my old default picture has mysteriously vanished. Oh, well, I'm not bothered; in fact, I felt a little uncomfortable about having it as the default picture. My userpics are taken from various phases of my life, the one of my explaining something in front of a computer being the most recent, but after a few people I know in the material world said "Oh, you look much younger in that picture" (tactless gits) it occurred to me that some people might think I was posting ten-year-old pictures so I would look younger and get to pull birds (that's "chicks" or "babes" for American readers). Apart from the fact that no hot babes would have gone for that hair, this was not my intention (if it had been my intention, I would have taken a recent photograph, put it through the GIMP to add a few more grey hairs, and put more Britishisms into my writing).

In contrast, I visited my sister-in-law's soon-to-be-ex-husband's Yahoo page (no evil intent, just larking around). The guy is listed as single, with a couple of years knocked off his age, and his motto (or whatever they call it in Yahoo) is - wait for it - "I know what it is to be young."

I'd like to think of a pithy way to express my reaction to this, but all I can think of at the moment is:

(a) ROTFLMAO
(b) Bwahahahahaaa!!!

More MS English

After Bill Gates' mangling of the English language mentioned earlier, I have found another example of MS English ®. This time it comes from Steve Ballmer, attempting to put a shine on Microsoft's abysmal security record: "It's not like horseshoes -- we can't just come close. We have our best brains on it. The issue of customer satisfaction can slow down progress for the whole industry and can help us differentiate ourselves from the competition. It's a defining-moment issue for us."

If Microsoft write software the way they speak, it should be some time before they patch those security holes.