The Sony Also Rises

At the moment, there’s a lot of running around changing passwords, cutting up credit cards and calling Sony the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.

In case you haven’t caught the news, the network that lets your Playstation hook up with other gamers and spend lots of money buying stuff online, has been down for about a week because of a security breach.

A good proportion of the people getting hysterical are young men. You see, they had to go through Easter without online gaming, so the criticism of Sony has had the testosterone fuelled intelligence of a teenage boy who’s been denied something he knows he deserves, i.e. none.

The security breach is bad - there’s no denying that - and Sony have not behaved well by leaving it as long as they did to tell the punters. But all the blame has been laid at their door which does not seem sensible.

The network was hacked. Sony was attacked in a criminal way. I have seen absolutely no news time devoted to, “We are going to find the guys who did this and prosecute them.” I mean, Sony might have left the front door open, but that doesn’t mean that passersby have the right to go in and ransack the house.

And strictly speaking, that analogy is unfair to Sony. They didn’t actually leave the front door open. They had 128 bit encryption and firewalls and bear-baits and all sorts of stuff that, while not the absolute tip-top example of indestructible IT security, they weren’t just leaving customer details in plastic bags on train seats. It took a concerted attack by people who are good at it. It was a bank-job. 

It is going to cost Sony an absolute sack-load of fun coupons in lost days of trade and rebuilding. The damage to the brandname is going to be harder to measure but it won't be inconsequential, either.

I say, smack a hacker... then sue Sony.

Washing Machine

Emergency Contact and I were recently given a washing machine. The one we had was working ok-ish but the gift one was considerably newer and is a dryer as well. Dryer and washer all in one means one less white-good in a small flat. Front-loader means space to put your washing basket on top. Given means we don’t pay any money. Win win win.

(For those about to warn me about dryers - yeah I know. Sydney electricity prices are about to go up by 1000 per cent and they use more power than a fun park and wear out your clothes and will give your cat fleas and will attempt to annex the neighbour’s laundry and are the root of all evil. We use it six times a year at most and usually because we have no dry sheets and it’s bedtime… in winter.)

It has not been plain sailing though, getting, and getting used to, a new washing machine. If Blonde Powerpuff Girl happens to read this, don’t worry, I love having it… now… and am deeply grateful, but that doesn’t make for a blog.

I could carry our last washing machine by myself. It was a mid-sized Fisher & Paykel of 5.5 kg washing capacity and was largely motor and drum. Lifting it wasn’t the easiest job in the world, but I could get it in and out without help and I reasoned that, with the advancement in tech, this new jobby would be lighter again.

I was basing this on my experience with fridges. Our 30-year-old Kelvinator (built to work for at least 30 years) weighed as much as the moon, and the modern Electrolux replacement is twice the size but less than half the weight. (I’ll be interested to see how long it lasts though.)

I was warned that my homespun theories on weight were not entirely accurate, and these days I listen to people when they warn me about things being heavy. I’m not as bullet-proof as I once was so I enlisted the aid of Gooby for added brawn.

With complicated post-work travelling arrangements in place, I met Gooby and we bolted over to grab the machine. But the first attempt didn’t work because of a crossed wire in communications. The owner wasn’t in. That forced Gooby and me to go home and play video games and eat Toobs. Not a total loss.

Second attempt was the next day, but Gooby couldn’t be there, so I went back to my original position of “how hard can it be?”

I’ll tell you. The new washer-dryers are as heavy as a bad acid trip and twice as difficult to keep a grip on. You see, it was raining and I was wet which meant that every time I came into contact with a bit of detergent, it got slipperier and slipperier and it was a shiny metal white-good with no handles to start with. The original owner couldn’t help because he had a broken knee and EC had decided the appropriate removalist outfit was thick soled wedges and a low cut, long dress. Nothing for it but to quickly enlist the help of a mate, Mr Who, who happens to live around the corner.

Mr Who appeared in 30 seconds which was good as there was a time element to all of this. The original owner was also moving out of the place while we were standing there, and was not going to take the machine with him. A fairly new washer-dryer left on the side of the road in Glebe was going to last as long as it takes two uni-students to say, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Mr Who was very helpful at the pick up end, but he had places to be immediately after and couldn’t come to the loading-in end. I had to re-enlist the help of Gooby to help carry it into the flat, but at least the machine was in our possession and it could happen at our convenience.

So, the machine was in the ute and it was raining. Guess what I had padding the machine? A mattress. (Yes, I’ve gone back to owning a sodden lump of mattress in the back of the ute. How I missed the good old days.)

After that it all went rather smoothly. Gooby was gettable on the way through and other than severing a couple of his fingers, the machine slotted into place with fairly little fuss.

We had a new washing-drying machine. Yay. It arrived in a bit of a panic, but as the kids say, “It’s all good.” The hoses fit, the outlet hose went nicely into the tub, the filters were clean and in good nick and the holy crap look at all those dials. How the hell do you make this thing fondle your smalls? I didn’t see a single diagram that made any sense. I bet I knew where the instruction book was, too. In a soggy box outside an empty semi in inner-west Sydney. I was going to have to use my brains. As the newly re-soaked mattress in the back of the ute demonstrated, though, my brains appear to have shrunk in the wash. Stand back.

First, to the internets. So many related models had their instructions on PDF, but not our model. I read around the subject as much as I could stand before pernicious boredom set in and I said to myself that I was pretty sure I knew what I was doing.

Three loads of ruined clothes later and I decided I didn’t entirely know what I was doing. The colours were running. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw modern clothing dye run. What was going on? Cotton setting. Middle of the range 60 minute wash. That ought to be right.

Still, faint heart never won clean undies. Again I gingerly put on a wash with identically coloured items and chose the cotton setting and decided to give them a nice long 95 minute soak and wash.

I stuck my head into the laundry about an hour into the wash and could feel the heat pouring off the machine. It was fantastic. Not only does the machine spin like it wants to grow up to be a large hadron collider, it likes to generate similar temperatures. Another load of ruined clothes. This was getting embarrassing so I decided to work a bit harder at finding the instructions. After finding out what the model was called in other countries, I finally tracked down the instruction book and downloaded it.

It made for quite interesting reading.

All those numbers at various places around the dial were not times, like I was used to with the old washer. With most old washers, the more you wound the dial around, the longer the wash.

No, no, no.

Those numbers were temperature settings. Like any good little plague-era washerwoman, I was boiling our clothes.

Once I knew that, I went back and looked at the dial and realised that those cute little symbols down there at certain intervals weren’t Galactic Empire Tie-Fighter Squadron Decals, they were snow flakes. I bet snowflakes mean a cold wash.

So, the washing machine is in, I know how to use it and everything is yay. I wonder if it should be making that noise…

Time Flies Like An Arrow, Fruit Flies Like A Banana And My Clocks Are Up To Something

My analogue watch and clocks are playing silly-buggers with me.

Whenever I glance at them, they realise they’ve been caught, stop their second hand from going backwards, and start them going around clockwise the way they should. It usually takes them one second to realise they’ve been sprung. I’ve never seen them take two, and sometimes it’s a little under a second.

What I can’t work out is how they are managing to keep the correct time at all. And don’t you go telling me it’s some optical watchimacallit. It’s real I tells ya and if you haven’t seen the effect, it only means your clocks are less rascally than mine.

Fallout (Pt 7) - You Can Check Out Any Time You Want

Dear Diary,

Tenpenny Towers is the best, chuck out the rest. I was met with a little suspicion at first, but as soon as I pressed the button on the detonator and watched the horizon back in the direction of Megaton light up like a second sun, I was welcomed with open arms.

Actually, what really let me know I was home was the fact that not only did the Property Developer give me some fun-coupons (caps) for setting the bomb off, he also gave me the deeds to a penthouse suite in the towers. That is the best thing ever. Daddy never gave me a suite. He gave me a BB-Gun that didn't last the first serious confrontation and I'm supposed to stumble around in the wasteland looking for him. All this guy asked, was for me to press a button and I got the top floor of a hotel as a thank you.

I’ve tried feeling guilty about Megaton, but by the time I left that town, there weren't many people who would've noticed the bomb going off and most of them would've been ugly, anyway.

I have a safe and a robot butler (who does haircuts!) a balcony with a view, and any time I get a bit weary or hurt - my own bed fixes everything. I’ve talked to the nice lady downstairs and she’s got lots of things to dress my room up with. I’m going to get her to decorate it in a "Pre-war Theme". Spirit Guide is less than impressed. He thinks we should be saving for more important things, but he can suck it. What’s more important than a girl having a nice room?

Nice friends, that's what, and these people are my sorts of people. They want help with something nasty in the subway tunnels under the hotel. I don’t want that kind of riff-raff around my nice new hotel either, so I’m thinking about helping them out. The ladies have pretty dresses and hairstyles and the men are all really polite. There’s even a private security force and that kind of makes a girl feel special, particularly when you can trade all sorts of goodies with them like guns and ammo and medicine and ammo and cigarettes and ammo and guns.

Right now, going to look for Dad doesn't seem that important. I think I might live it up here for a bit and see about the infestation problem in the tunnels as a favour to my new neighbours. Yeah.

Overwriting data,
Jules, 
Resident of Tenpenny Towers. 

There's A Line Around Here Somewhere

If you manage people who work from home, it's important to keep a close eye on them. For the lone employee, it's easy for things to gradually spiral out of control without enough human contact. I was having my weekly meeting with Smurf, who is working solo in a box somewhere in the UK - we were rounding things up;

"So, anything else we should cover?" I asked.

"Nothing special," he answered, "but I have decided that in a life or death situation where I had to choose between eating a dog I knew, or a person I didn't know, I'd definitely eat the person. I think."

Totally under control. He's good for another four months... at least.

Transmetropolitansexualmorphosis

Last night I dreamt that the gender reassignment operation had happened in the past and I had been living semi-successfully as a woman, for years. There was a hitch, though, as there always is.

I also dreamt that I had been a heterosexual when I had been a man, and that hadn’t changed. Having come to that realisation and gathered the courage to leave my new husband (who for some reason had never twigged that I was an ex-man) I was devastated to be denied entry to the lipstick lesbian league – where I really needed to be.

As a 6’2”, broad shouldered woman with a striking bass-baritone, the beautiful gay girls weren’t having a thing to do with me.

Too many layers on… the bed, I mean.

Fallout (Pt 6) – But I Did Not Shoot No Deputy

Dear Diary,

Out of the wasteland rose the walls of Megaton like molerat poo on a brown, lumpy molerat poo backround. Not quite the shimmering city of lights I had expected. I hoped the city walls were deliberately boring to make the surprise of inside, even better. The guard robot on the city gates didn’t say anything about my shoes or my age or whether I needed a shower and let me in.

Megaton: Such a hole they named it after what made it.

With a name like Megaton I expected it to be mega-cool and tonnes of fun. For whatever reason, Spirit Guide had kept what it was actually like to himself. It was anything but. He said something about ineffable mystery. Ineffable, my gorgeous, well toned butt.

It was named after the unexploded nuclear bomb that sits in a pool of radioactive water at the bottom of the bloody big ditch made by other bombs that landed there first – right in the centre of town. I mean, what kind of Darwin-Award-Winning turkey moves closer to an unexploded atom bomb, thinking it would be a nice place to bring up the kids?

Religious types, apparently. There were people praying to the bomb and the local cult’s church was built an arm’s length away. Spirit Guide said something about this being a nice emphasis on the evolutionary disadvantage of the belief reflex. I just thought it was dumb to stand in a puddle when you could be sitting in a bar.

When I first got into town, I was met by the Sheriff who also claimed to be the Mayor. Suspicious! My last relationship with big fish in a small puddle of radioactive water didn’t go so well. One of us is going to have to watch their step.

The doctor’s a grumpy bastard. I went in to his surgery, ready for him to live up to his hippocampus oath and he charged me through the nose for some second-hand rubbish. And talk about ripe for infection. I needed a tetanus shot after just looking at the operating table.

Half the shops are closed. The residents are dags or ugly or both. I don’t see any girls my age and everything’s either really uphill, or really downhill. What’s the point of putting on a nice dress if all you’re going to do is clamber around in the mud in unflattering ways? This place sucks worse than school and that sucked hard.

Spirit Guide told me I had to go to the local bar to pick up information on Dad. While I was milling around trying to attract the right sort of attention, a well dressed guy who said he was a property developer started talking to me. I liked him immediately. He had class. Spirit Guide said I was the worst judge of character, ever, but I haven’t seen him winning any popularity contests lately so he can shut the hell up about who I hang out with.

The property developer had a hat and nice glasses and a really nice suit. You could tell he was making his way in the wasteland. He did talk a bit, though. He was yammering on about all sorts of stuff I didn’t care about but once we got to the crunch, he wanted me to use a device he gave me to do something “de” with. Either defuse or detonate the atom bomb… I’m not sure which. I had some other stuff to do first. I told him I’d think about it.

Turned out that the guy who owned the bar was the guy I had to talk to about Dad. He was even more of a bastard than the town Doctor. I wasn’t able to convince him to just tell me, he wanted 100 caps for the info. I didn’t have a hundred and told him so. He got all, “Well come back when you do.”

So I went off to trade some gear to make the 100 caps and it’s not that easy in a town where all the damn shops are closed, but I managed with a mixture of trade and... never mind.

So I went back to the bar-owning-bastard with the cash and he said the price was now 300 caps because I was obviously willing to go a long way for the information.

As it turned out, he was right. I was willing to go quite a long way. After I’d gone through his clothes for loose change, I went through his computer and found what I needed. Then I went through the clothes of everybody else in the bar, for stuff I might need ‘just in case’. Liam Neeson always said, “Be prepared.”

The nice property developer had already left by the time the trouble started which was another sign to me of his good judgement, but I had paid attention when he told me where to meet him later. It sounded nice. He said I could meet him at Tenpenny Towers. I liked the sound of that. It’d have to be better than that dump of a town.

I realised I might’ve burnt my bridges in Megaton a bit and all I can say about that is, their loss, not mine. After taking drugs that made me smarter (don’t they all?) I attached the thing that the property dude had given me to the bomb and left the stinkin’ pile of crap in my dust.

Tenpenny Towers, here I come. I hope you have a nice lobby bar and restaurant. And a shower. Holy crap I need a shower.

Ovewriting data.

Jules.

Fallout (Pt 5) - You Might Find Yourself, Living In A Shotgun Shack

Dear Diary,

I was looking forward to dropping in on Spirit Guide’s lady friend.

You see, Mum died when I was born (I think) and I haven’t had much girl company since. It would have been nice to have a big sister to ask the stuff I can’t ask Dad. It’s always hard with him. Not just because he’s Liam Neeson pretending to be my Dad, but also because he’s a little bit of a dork and a lot absent. He’s a Deadspace Dad.

My new gal pal’s house looked fantastic compared to the other places in the street. It had walls and a roof. People in the wastelands don’t seem to have much houseproudness. Would it kill them to paint? It’d make a huge difference to the mood and I bet the mood isn’t helped by their property values.

But Spirit Guide doesn’t make it easy to meet people. What is his problem with knocking? I went up to the lady’s house, all ready to say,

“Hi, I’m Jules, you don’t know me but my Dad probably came through here and I was wondering if we couldn’t hang out a bit and I could pick your brains. I’ve got cigarettes, some strange meat that I found… don’t worry, booze, lots of ammo, cigarettes, ammo and some cigarettes.”

SG, on the other hand, likes to get doors open and enter quickly - quite often making me get down behind something as I go. It’s so unfair. He’s got shyness issues but I end up looking like the weirdo.

And, you know, because of that, I can sort of see why she got all huffy. One minute she’s seeing her last client out of the side door, giving herself an injection and having a cuppa in the kitchen; the next, there’s a grubby, heavily armed, hella-spunk-bubble (me) in her living room, going through her stuff.

She had a teensy bit of a temper on her. No excuse for such bad manners in the wasteland. I did end up picking her brains, mostly out of my clothes.

So I was off for another lonely walk. Pip-Boy’s compass let me know what direction to go and by my current standards, the walk was uneventful. I ransacked a few places and killed all of everything that I saw, but otherwise, OK.

I feel kind of bad about killing the molerats. I mean, they are as ugly as a hat full of arseholes, but there’s something a bit ‘family dog’ about them. ‘Specially the way they stand up at urinals. (What? You never seen that? Times have changed.)

What there is nothing family dog about - is the dogs. Man. The targeting system I picked up back in the vault allows for a bit of slow motion as you go into combat mode. It’s called VATS or something. All I know is, you get to see how much mange, ringworm, roundworm, flatworm, hookworm, heartworm, footworm, flukeworm and bald patches, these dogs have. Paint and flea powder. That’s what the wasteland needs. Oh, and fly-spray. The bloatflies are ridiculous.

Diary, I can see Megaton on the horizon and I am so excited. A lonely gal is going to get a shower, a nice hotel, do some shopping, hang out and who knows, maybe even meet a nice guy.

Overwriting data

Jules.

Fallout (Pt 4) - Off To The Principal’s Office I Go

Dear Diary,

I had a real spring in my step when I set off this morning. Spirit Guide (SG) wanted me to go down to the school, near Vault 101. Apparently he has unfinished business there. I assume it’s something to do with school bullying. I understand it’s really damaging when you’re growing up. Can’t say I ever suffered from it, but from the bits of SG’s mind I see, I’d say he was a ripe candidate. Freak!

I wanted to find Dad as fast as I could and that meant I had to go to a nearby town called Megaton. Megaton - that sounds good. With a name like that, I bet it has lots of cool shops and restaurants and bars and I could meet gals of my own age and we could hang out and I could get my nails done. I really need a make-over. I feel gross with all the dried blood in my hair. Megaton sounds like a blast.

But, SG made me go to school after taking a long walk. He was very keen for me to limber up before school. More on that later, skater.

So, after taking the craziest, longest way ever, I eventually got back to the right neighbourhood. Even though the school really could have done with a bit of paint and most of the roof put back on, I could see that maybe kids would’ve had a nice time there. I was home schooled (well, duh) and it never felt special but as I walked down that road, I could see playground equipment and I imagined what it would be like to be swinging my backpack and stealing the other kid’s food.

Like every other kid who’s looked forward to going to school, the reality is a disappointment. I opened the front door and the first thing I saw was a cage, rubbish on the floor and the worst, most depressing, paint job. Oh, and a dead body hanging from some chain-hooks. The place really needed a good airing out.

And then there was the staff. I've read how kids used to play hooky or go truant or whatever it was. SG was thinking “wagging” but that sounds rude. Whatever you call it, it’s no wonder kids before the war weren’t keen on school.

I was looking through the busted lockers in the hall, wondering which one would be mine, when I heard some bone-head yell “Looks like we got a bleeder!” and he came running around the corner, waving something nasty and acting really unfriendly.

Diary, I should tell you about my long walk before school.

SG got me to go all the way up the west side of the map, across the north and diagonally back to the school. In that time, I gained a little cred, quite a few firearms and loads of ammo.

And big knives. I also found explosives and armour. Food and drugs and ciggies and money. It amazes me how I’m able to fit it all in my pockets and still change clothes at a moment’s notice.

Anyway, it’s safe to say I collected a fair bit of stuff while I was out there. Not one friend, though. In fact, the thing I collected most of was a crap reputation. Nice one, Stupid Guide.

The wildlife seems to be permanently pissed off with me as well. Cockroaches, I can understand the instant dislike, but SG is pathological about anything that can’t smoke and ride rollerskates. Anything that snuffles up to me to say hello ends up toast and it’s no wonder the word’s got around that I’m not one for pet shops.

In fact, SG was gloating about all of that. Apparently, I have limbered (or levelled) up five times and some frustrated teacher in a busted-arse school wasn’t going to ruffle my uniform.

So, Mr. Bone-Head, Principal of Angry Elementary School, started up like he was going to dish out some corporal punishment. For what, I don't know. I couldn’t have been late for classes. I’m not even enrolled.

I wasn’t sure if all the teachers were going to be on his side but once his head rolled across the floor of the staff-room, they pretty much assumed I wasn’t there for play-lunch.

While I was going through their clothes for loose change, I kept an eye out for any kids that might have been hiding, but the place was deserted... now. School’s out for summer.

That didn’t go so well. At least SG is happy to let me go to Megaton now. Oh goody – shopping. On the way, he just wants me to drop in on a lady who lives near the school. Sounds nice.

So, Dear Diary, I’m off to find Daddy and scold him for missing my graduation. Stupid absent fathers. No wonder some of my social skills are a bit blunt and rusty.

Overwriting data,

Jules*

*Well done! I guess SG stands for Super Genius, now you’ve sorted out how to do capital letters.