Ancient Geek

Photo: The HP Computer Museum

I thought I’d indulge myself and treat you to a short series of old geeky technology posts. Complain as much as you like, I just need to get this stuff out of my system.

I am constantly to be found staring open-mouthed at technology these days. Sometimes it is because I’m an old man and I no longer find myself in a state of instant empathy with it all, sometimes it’s because it’s stopped working or is doing something unutterably dumb. More often, though, it is because I’ve been stopped in my tracks at the wonder of it all – remembering how it used to be, I’m sometimes amazed at how it is now.


You see, the first computer I programmed was an HP mainframe, back in the mid-1970s. I rather fancy it must have been an HP 2116B. It was programmed using punched cards which we had to mark with pencil, a little like filling out lottery tickets. My first ever program?

10 Print ‘Hello’
20 goto 10

How’s that for a slice of brilliance? Move over, Gates!

I didn’t get to use the computer at school very much because I wasn’t any good at maths and only kids that were good at maths or that the maths teacher ‘liked’ were allowed to use the computer. One kid was so good he could make pictures of Snoopy on printouts. The teletype terminal for punching programs into the paper tape puncher was a later addition and then, finally, VDUs. That's what we used to call screens, kids. Visual Display Units. You can stop laughing now.

They don’t seem quite to have known how things were going to go – I remember clearly being taught a number of looney number bases, including binary, octal and duodecimal. I used to cry in rage and frustration over duodecimal, sitting up late at night struggling with it as the rest of my nightly three hours of homework sat undone. Of course, these were all totally useless and it was years after I left school that I taught myself hexadecimal – the actual number system that we all ended up using with computers.

It’s worth remembering that at the time most academic institutions outside of major universities used to ‘time share’ computer time on commercial systems. I recall the school's HP was supposed to cost the equivalent of a detached house at the time. And apart from flashing reassuring lights across its front panel, it wasn’t very good for much. History tells us that it had a magnetic core memory that could store, as standard, (*gasp*) 4096 16-bit words.

That’s a good deal less than a talking greeting card stores today...

Basterds

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Thanks to my decision to start using some of the more advanced features of the *ahem* Nokia Platform, I'd sort of made up my mind that NufNuf would be my SatNav of choice in the UK. She actually works quite well, too. Even in solving questions like the best way to get to Pelcombe from Wolfscastle via Camrose.

But there's a fly in every ointment. I kept wondering about the cost of Internet access whilst roaming. When your mobile keeps telling you that this might be expensive, you start to wonder whether or not there's something to be truly concerned about here.

Five days into our UK sojourn, I get a text from everyone's favourite telco, Etisalat (ah, you use your own version of their name - Itisalot, Itsashite, whatever) that gleefully tells me I can call +9718002300 and ask all those questions not answered by their damn website - like what cost Internet roaming?

The answer, in the UK, is Dhs2.5 per 30kb.

Yup. 30 kilobytes. 30,000 bytes. An average screen of mobile data costs Dhs 2.5 or about £0.50.

When NufNuf gets heavy with the terrain maps, we're looking at chunks of 750Kb and more. When we manage data going into GIGS, let alone megs, 30kb is sort of anachronistic at best. If you want to be less than charitable, 30kb is totally useless.

Yet more circuit-switched thinking from stupid telcos that is helping to strangle advanced technology adoption at birth. Out with the (haha) 'Mubashir' SIM, in with Virgin UK's. Roaming in the Internet age?

Stuff it! Telcos are, yet again, thinking the 'two yoghurt-pot and a piece of string' business model. And it's going to kill 'em.

At least, I fervently hope so...

(BTW, when you DO call the damn number, expect to be stuck holding for 20 mins in a foreign country listening to how important your call is but we're busy helping other customers and then get connected to a total moron. Just in case you thought something had changed around here...)

Victorian

Image by King Dumb via Flickr

As the recession bit hard around the world, timed somewhat propitiously for Dubai’s already-tanking real-estate market, a new trend appeared to emerge in the world’s favourite ‘laissez-faire’ economy.

Takeaway sandwiches appeared to be getting thinner. Spot On’s eagle-eyed lunchers caught a definite thinning of Zaater ‘w Zeit’s turkey-cheese furn’s, a more niggardly hand at work in Byblos’ daily specials and a certain lack of care in Circle’s salads. All has not been well in lunch-land. At the same time, prices went up – that Olive House Rosto Sandwich (a culinary treat by any standards) not only seemed to consist of less Rosto and more sorndweech, but also kicked up Dhs10 somewhere along the way, too.

This is the way that a truly ‘laissez faire’ economy reacts to inflation plus recession. First we get less for our money, then less for more money. Without pissy regulators to intervene, annoying ombudsmen or consumer-centric media snooping around, you can systemically ride some of the worst belly-punches that a recession is going to deal out by sharing the shock to the system around the system.

Neat, huh? It’s Victorian England all over again – if the price of flour goes up, cut the flour with chalk dust and charge more for the bread. Well, why not? Nobody’s looking, are they?

We resisted Sharjah’s cunningly worded invitation to enjoy piped gas (“You take gas, pay Dhs1,000 for yellow tube, after install, you our bitch too much!”) and stayed with the bottled stuff. But FastFastGas used to get a call from us every six months. Then it seemed to be more frequent. For a while we’ve wondered whether they’re not quite, well, ‘filling’ the cylinders. Now we know. Last night, our gas gave out after a month’s usage. One month. We have changed no habits at all – what used to take 6 months to consume now takes a single month to burn through. And, worse, what used to cost us Dhs40 now costs Dhs85.

1/12 the gas for double the price. In a country where the stuff comes out of the ground.

Grief.

If anyone has noticed a grumpier tone creeping into the blog, be assured that normal cheery service will be resumed when I return from my impending leave. I thank you. Posting might be a little erratic for the coming couple of weeks. No marmosets were harmed in the composition of this public service announcement.

Hotel Internet Charges Are Iniquitous

Image by Moha' Al-Bastaki via Flickr

One thing that has long annoyed me is the widespread practice of charging hotel guests for Internet access. Apparently European hotels are starting to realise that this is not actually funny, clever or mature but here in the Middle East, every hotel I have visited so far has charged guests - typically Dhs100 per day or the equivalent. In Europe it's typically 20 Euro, in the UK £20 and even in the US up to $20.

And this despite the fact that access to the Internet is equivalent to the provision of a utility - some 47% of guests in surveys confirming that free Internet access was an influencer on their choice of hotel.

But it's not just the fact that they charge. It's how MUCH they charge.

At hotel rates, you're paying the equivalent of Dhs3,100 ($850) per month for Internet access. If you apply the common hotel markup of five times cost, you're still looking at Dhs620 ($169) a month.

To put that into perspective, Etisalat's most expensive BusinessOne Internet package, a 4Mbps access speed and unlimited usage, comes in cheaper at Dhs2795. And for one sixth of a hotel's charges for a month's worth of Internet, Etisalat will give you 4Mbps domestic Internet, telephone and television.

So here's a friendly hint for the UAE's hoteliers and, in fact, hoteliers the world over. Chaps, when Etisalat looks good in comparison to your business, it's time to rethink your business.

GeekFest 2.0

The Fear Rides Out Again

Well, GeekFest seems to have been judged pretty much a success by everyone, although by what benchmark it's hard to say as we didn't set out to achieve anything at all with the event!

That was quite refreshing - having NOT organised an event and therefore not having anything whatsoever to worry about was quite cool, given that I am often involved in organising events with objectives, benchmarks, big budgets and high expectations.

There seems to be a genuine desire for us to do it again. So why not?

Although we set out to have a totally un-organised event, something of a Montessori-style do what you want when you want to gig, there has been a general feeling of 'that was nice, but let's make it more worthwhile next time' from people. So we're adding a little bit more to GeekFest 2.0 - including a fashionably funky 2.0 tag which will excite everyone in the corporate world and make us seem 'edgy' and 'relevant'.

So what are we going to do? Well here are the main changes so far in Version 2.0. The upgrade from V 1.0 is free for registered users, BTW.

First and foremost, what will not change (now or ever if we do more) is that GeekFest is a space for people to meet and chat in a relaxed, no-hassle and resolutely un-organised and un-corporate environment. No PR, no pushing, no advertising or promotion. We have introduced technology showcases (see below) but if they result in anyone being hassled, that's it - they go. Let's see how things go this time around.

Secondly, GeekFest is a not for profit gig. If it raises revenue, then that revenue will be put back into the event or spent in some other silly way that benefits participants. We're not pocketing any cash or planning to. If the stakes get high, of course, you can expect to see this noble princple slowly slipping into 'we never said that' obscurity.

From 8-12pm
Due to popular demand, we're running later - and because it's Ramadan, GeekFest will run through from 8 till late so people can drop by, swing through or stay all night depending on what they want to get up to.

GeekTalks
The Shelter has got a really funky private cinema, ideal for talks to small groups, sharing video and other coolness. So we've split the evening up into 15 minute slots for talks, vids, slideshows or whatever people want to grandstand, showcase, share or discuss. DM @GeekFestDubai or email me or Saadia at The Shelter - both our emails are on the GeekFestDubai Twitter page. Please note that at no stage will anyone be asked to, required to or badgered in any way to attend any of these sessions - you have to bring your own crowd if you want to fill the room.

We're rather hoping that people will want to share new technologies, services, sites, approaches, case studies and that sort of thing. And no, it's not meant to be a TEDalike, it's much smaller scale than that and probably better suited to stuff like 'how to do HDR photography' or 'How we're moving our business online'. Make sense?

TechnoCases
We've opened up GeekFest to two technology leaders to showcase product and new stuff. We're talking to two respected players who have agreed to play it our way and not go promo bonkers but have a more passive, user-focused presence that lets GeekFest visitors have access to expertise and knowledge rather than being harried by corporate stuff. We're obviously wary about this element but can see the good of it if we can approach it well. We'd appreciate your feedback on this more than anything!

F&B
Thanks to the above, we're able to open up F&B at no cost to visitors, so snacks, drinks and so on throughout the evening will be free of charge. Neat, huh?

Any other ideas, approaches or feedback would be gratefully received. Given that this whole thing has spiralled out of control (I mean, media coverage? WTF?), we might as well see where it takes us - and all get something useful out of it in the process.

Cheers!

NufNuf’s Last Freakout?

Image by K!T via Flickr

I have already told of my delight at the fact my new Nokia N86 8MP (or 8PM or whatever it is) has a built-in SatNav that can negotiate the terrifying urban-planner road grids of the desert oasis city of Al Ain but NufNuf, as we have christened her, got her acid test last Thursday.

Trouble was, I didn’t know she had been using quite such high quality acid with such gleeful abandon.

I did my usual Thursday morning slot on Dubai Eye Radio’s Business Breakfast, sharing it with special guest star Rebecca Hill, the director of the Middle East Public Relations Association or MEPRA. Presenter Brandy Scott, Rebecca and I had a happy blether about the new Middle East Public Relations Awards that MEPRA is launching for the first time this year.

A slight twist in the tale was that Rebecca and I were due in Abu Dhabi, a good 2 hour drive away, to present a MEPRA Twitter Workshop. This was to be the third of a series of MEPRA Twitshops presented by Spot On Public Relations’ MD and partner in crime Carrington Malin and yours truly. It was supposed to start at 9.30am, and the radio slot ended at 7.45am so we were already a tad tight for time. If we didn’t get lost in Abu Dhabi, the city of a Million Confusing New Roadworks, we might just get to the meeting room by the time a desperate Carrington faced down a packed room of some 40 agitated PR professionals jeering and throwing buns and stuff.

I’m not a big Abu Dhabi boy. The last time I was down there I got horribly, irrevocably lost. In fact, every time I’ve done down there I’ve got lost.

Everyone in Abu Dhabi says the same sort of thing to you: 'Oh, it’s easy, just turn right by the intersection with Sheikh Zayed 1st or 7th Street, take the second left by the Bilbalbol Sebastopol Lebanese Supermarket and we’re the building behind the purple railings you’ll see the third watertank down from the second dustbin to your left as you face the coffee pot opposite the blue mobile phone shop sign. You can’t miss us. Everyone knows it.'

The invariable result is a hot, sweaty and frustrated mess. Harried and hooted by Abu Dhabi’s aggressive and unpleasant drivers, you drive round in ever-decreasing circles until you finally explode in an act of spontaneous combustion. By some miracle of trial and error you’ll finally find your destination (in a completely different place to that described to your by your potential host and somewhere that nobody in the world has heard of) and be met with a smile and a genial, 'Did you find your way alright?'

This, then, was a job for NufNuf the Nokia SatNav. Get us there first time around. And by golly, she almost did it. The trouble started when we hit the Eastern Ring Road, which NufNuf thought was still desert. She also lost the GPS signal. And she started to have a head-fit that resulted in a strange and electrifying silence. There’s nothing worse than driving with a SatNav and approaching a T-junction to the sound of silence. Whichever way you choose to go, unguided by ‘the voice’, you’ll hear ‘Route Recalculation’.

After a silent eternity and some panicky guess-work, NufNuf suddenly sprang into action again and, thanks mainly to her, we got there with half an hour to spare. Pats on the back panel for NufNuf, then.

But the journey back was a totally different affair. My first mistake was swapping Rebecca for Carrington (when offered a swap of male for female company, people, demur. That is my advice. Demur.). My second tactical error was ignoring NufNuf’s calm ‘Follow The Road For One Kilometre’ for Carrington’s snatched, ‘No, that’s crap. Turn left here.’

I mean, one of these people is a professional SatNav, after all!

That unscheduled turn started us on a nightmare, harum-scarum journey through the busy, alienating skyscraperscape of Abu Dhabi that I will not forget in a long time. Because NufNuf freaked out.

'In 300 Metres, Turn Right,' said NufNuf. And then, 'Turn Left' She added calmly in an almost reassuring voice.

'In 200 Metres, Turn Right, Then Left.' Okay. We turn right. 'Turn Right.' Umm, we just did. 'In One Kilometer, Take the U-Turn.' But what about the Left Turn? 'Turn Right here.'

What?

'Turn Slightly Right.' Umm, 'Turn Left.' Whaaat?

The car behind me is blaring its horn, the lorry to my left is cutting in to the right and there’s a LandCruiser undertaking me from behind. The ubiquitous sound of beeping is like an experiment in sensory deprivation, drowning out every other sensation but fear, an auditory waterboarding. My mouth is dry as we swerve to stay alive.

By now NufNuf has lost the plot completely. 'GPS signal lost. Route Recalculation. Turn Left Here. I Am An Armadillo. A Moose Once Bit My Sister. Please Hold, Your Call Is Important To Us. We are the Borg.'

But if NufNuf was being scary, Carrington was worse. Every time NufNuf did her next HAL9000 Goes Insane As He Starts Dying Scene impersonation, he’d talk over her with some new pronouncement of techno-doom. 'It’s gone mad. We’re going to die. Nobody will ever find us. Turn Oval here.'

Between them, they manage to dump me into an insane world of techno-fear, acid flashback surrealism mixed with real-life, heart-attack inducing danger.

We finally made it to the ring road, recognisable monuments looming into view. ‘Would you like fries with that?' said NufNuf in a reassuring voice as Carrington leaned back with a pleased sigh of ‘Told you the bloody phone was wrong!’

Next time I’m taking a taxi and leaving Carrington and NufNuf together. They’re made for each other.

For the first time, I see my own disintermediation as a positive blessing...

Tossers

Image by ronin691 via Flickr

Customer (Alexander McNabb) - 08/02/2009 05:58 PM
Once again - the email you sent to me has a link to a page on the Corel site that just displays 'null' - responses to the email bounce back. It's very, very frustrating trying to respond to you people - with the constant reminder that if I don't manage the impossible, getting through to you, you'll close the support question ticket in 72 hours and so waste all the time I have had to invest in this issue.

I fixed it in the end by myself, both the issues with Corel Photopaint and Corel Videostudio, by booting the apps while holding down the F8 key to roll back to the default user space. Both apps are now working.

All that effort reinstalling apps and deleting registry entries, when cleaning the user space did it.

Maybe a first try gambit next time around.


Response (Robby) - 08/07/2009 11:59 AM
Dear Mr McNabb,

The direct link to reply which displays Null is a known issue. You should reply by going to the support site. Other emails not coming from a support personnel is an automated one which you can just ignore.

To close this support ticket, please go to My Stuff at support.corel.com or simply do not reply to this support ticket.
Kind regards,
Corel Customer Support

"The direct link to reply which displays Null is a known issue." - Every damn email Corel Customer Support sends to its customers from one of its laughingly titled Customer Support Representatives (you'll see from the above that he was no use at all) contains a link with the words "To access your question from our support site, click the following link or paste it into your web browser.” That link is broken, forcing you to go navigating their website to track down your issue.

And yet they continue to send the broken links out to customers!! Because, presumably, if it is a ‘known issue’ then it can’t be a ‘problem’!!!!

Gnnnnnn!!!

Scorn

It’s perhaps interesting many of the marketers who are taking social media seriously are seeing a campaign platform rather than a fundamental change in the way the business communicates and, indeed, behaves. That’s fair enough, it’s a wise person who dips a toe in the water before going for the full-on dive bomb and it doesn’t take the wildest imagination to see what’s going to happen to Young Roger as he faces the directors in the mahogany-panelled boardroom and suggests they might like to gamble the future of the company on Twitter.

But a campaign-led approach to social media really does need to be framed in the context of a wider move to adopt social platforms to transform the company’s communications, it can’t just be a tactic.

That does mean writing a new rulebook and challenging some very entrenched attitudes and procedures – it’s an early adopters game, too, requiring a willingness to take a transformational approach to aspects of the business. It can be a two-track process of gradual change, there’s no need to try and change the world overnight, but it does have to involve an element of change. Declaring that you’re cool and down with the kids then running a Twitter competition to win a super prize is not what social media’s about – and neither is tacking a Facebook page onto the tail end of that expensive regional TV and outdoor campaign.

Agencies and clients alike have to be careful of 2.0wash – the temptation to stick a blog, Facebook fan page and Twitter ID on every pitch PPT. Although that might sell to the credulous, it’s not doing the client any favours in the long run, just creating a range of disparate, off-message and wild communications with no follow-through. You wouldn’t recommend that kind of behaviour with a ‘conventional’ campaign, so why do so with social media?

Without a planned, consistent communications strategy behind it, a social media campaign as a tactic is in very real danger of making the client look flaky. And social media, incidentally, has evolved a very special way of treating such campaigns – public scorn.

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named 'A Moment with McNabb' columns in Campaign Middle East magazine, which doesn't have a website so I have to post 'em on my own blog. Ironic, I know.

Another Bunch of Total Bankers

Image via Wikipedia

I can’t say that my 15-year relationship with my bank has been a happy one. Strangely enough, things were better back in the days when they used to have Bedouin guards at the door of the Bur Dubai branch and when you had to visit the branch for every transaction. That’s perhaps because life was different then and it was expected that any transaction would necessitate your physical presence, in banking, business and government.

The advent of automation has brought an end to all that, saving us all hours of unproductive and needless hanging around and meetings – now we can buy things, process things and generally get things done online. This is particularly true of banking, where telephone banking and Internet banking both mean that contact with the bank’s staff is reduced to an absolute minimum.

I, for one, am delighted at that because every single encounter with the morons has my blood pressure in the stratosphere faster than an Apollo mission that’s late for tea.

Sadly, many banks in the UAE appear to make broadly the same mistake. These days, when people seek to escalate to a human being, it is usually because there is some exception to the normal routine, a need to talk to someone who can go beyond the ordinary and actually help to find an intelligent solution to a problem that goes beyond the 'system'. If we could sort it out using the system, we wouldn’t be on the ‘phone or, God forbid, dragging our sorry butts into the confusing and vaguely dehumanising environment of the branch. So offering customers a disempowered goon who merely looks at the same information that’s available to us all on our own screens at home and sits grinning like a mildly embarrassed macaque really isn’t going to cut the mustard.

This has always escaped banks in general and, I feel, my bank in particular. The bank makes getting through to an actual, identifiable person in the branch really quite difficult. And when you do, they are uniquely unqualified and unable to help in any way whatsoever. Their job titles are inversely linked to their capability to do anything if my Status Account Special Customer Service Miracle Worker and Glorious Helper are anything to go by. Worse, some clot in management has dictated that they should end every call with “Is there anything else I can do to help you?” Given that most of my calls are frustrating exercises in migraine-inducing head banging that do not actually offer me any solution to my initial problem, this sign-off is ever-increasingly in danger of having me committed for some awful crime of passion.

I’m even starting to get a Pavlovian reaction to the sound of tapping keyboards. I break out into a sweat, knowing what I’m about to hear: “That’s not possible, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

HSBC has recently taken to gleefully refusing to honour my cheques, for instance. Given that I have written hundreds of cheques over my fifteen long years with them, you’d think that I had been injured in my right hand or had some other major life change that would explain why my signature is suddenly so different, but no – it’s the same old signature. Adding insult to injury, it’s quite a distinctive signature, a megalomaniacal scrawl that makes scrip-writing doctors pause to admire its complete lack of similarity to anything that could approximate to a reading of my name. But I like it and it has always been so. I’d post an example for you to see, but that would be silly in these criminal times. You’ll just have to take my word for it: I have the signature of a madman and it is uniquely, utterly and compellingly distinctive.

When the bank returned my cheque to the AC maintenance company, we bit the bullet and set off for the branch, our packed lunches in little chequered cloth bundles strung on the end of beanpoles. We knew it was going to be a long haul and we were right. The solution, after much frustration, keyboard tapping and idiotic grinning, was to rescan my signature. Super. Done.

Finding that they’ve done it again, only this time to Emirates Post for the renewal of our PO Box, was mildly disconcerting. Emirates Post, of course, takes six months to process the returned cheque and tells you there is a problem by blocking the PO Box rather than actually communicating with you in any way. But I was amazed that nobody had actually told me they'd refused a cheque months ago.

I called to ask why the bank has now taken to multiply dishonouring my cheques without any reference to me. I did take the opportunity to point out that honouring a customer’s cheque was perhaps the most basic of banking services and that maybe a bank that couldn’t get that first step right shouldn’t even be trying the more complicated stuff.

“We tried to contact you,” said the gurgling nincompoop on the line.

This was an interesting tactic. I have never in my life received a missed call from the bank – and my mobile is on 24x7. What’s more, you can get in touch with me via voice, SMS, voicemail, landline, faxline, email – I access my home and work email at all times, sadly even on the mobile now - or even using the awkward and badly implemented Internet banking email box system. I roam. I’m not even going to start on the number of online tools and forums you can catch me on. Let’s just say that if you want to get in touch, I am pretty much infinitely contactable. In fact some people have complained that they can’t actually avoid me.

I asked who tried to contact me, when and through which method. “We don’t know,” said the ‘poop. So how did he know they had tried to contact me?

Silence.

I shall draw a merciful veil over the rest of the call. But I am now stuck with a bank that blocks my Visa card following everyday transactions with vendors I use frequently, fails to make transfers as instructed, charging me for the consequent exchange losses, and now dishonours my cheques without notice or reference to me.

None of that would be a problem if they had someone that could undo the damage, a sort of SuperBanker. But they don’t, they just have disempowered nincompoops who lie rather than actually go to the effort of tracking down a problem. Because customer service is the very least of the bank’s concerns – the least of its investments and the business process it gives least consideration and resource to managing. And you have to admit, when a highly profitable global organisation’s customer service is infuriatingly process driven, badly managed and inept at every level, the cause of universal howls of frustrated complaint from the vast majority of its customers, you’d be forgiven for thinking that perhaps we’ve all got it wrong. Perhaps the secret to being a great business is actually to set out to royally piss off your customers as a business strategy! Maybe McKinsey or someone has told them to do it and so that’s what they’re actually doing – actually investing in annoying customers.

If so, they’re damn good at it.

Dust

Marjorie Dawes would be happy with life in Dubai right now. There's quite a lot of dust about.

It's everywhere, a miasma of fine, irritating powder suspended in the air and reducing visibility to a few hundred yards. I'm constantly clearing my throat, my hair feels like chicken wire and the car is downstairs having a fine layer of abrasive sand ground into its paintwork by the watchman, who is a closet Green and believes in using minimal water to wash a car.

In case you're interested, it's been blown down the Gulf from Iraq, this dust. It's well-travelled dust, liberated dust. This is one of a number of stunning images of the storm from NASA's earth observatory.


It's brought the summer temperatures down by about 15-20 degrees, but we're living in a gloomy, overcast world that will have asthmatics grasping for the Ventolin. We had this last year, too, but nowhere near as bad. Usually, you get dust here when the 'Shamal' blows, the North wind. But this is no shamal, it's just a suspension.

I've never seen this before in 20 years of travelling around and living in this place. I don't know if anyone else remembers it.

Next thing we're all going to find out that it's rich in depleted uranium from US munitions deployed in Iraq. I know that's seeing the hole not the doughnut, but this is just the weather for that kind of thing, oppressive and gloomy.

Blogging about the weather... How low have I sunk, hmm?