Intermission for McCarthy

I really intended to have a series of posts with pictures of the kids. However, I really have to have an intermission to vent about the McCarthy situation.

If you follow the English Premier League, then you will know that Wolves recently lost to Man Utd 3-0. This game was a big deal because Wolves had managed to defeat Spurs at the weekend in a great display of football but then made 10 changes to the side and effectively put out a reserve team for the game against Man Utd. Fans howled in anger! The press howled in derision. And the plonkers at the Premier League board decided to get involved.

Now, I'm not going to get involved in discussing whether McCarthy did the right thing or not. To be fair, I can understand why he did what he did. His team would have been tired after the fantastic game they had against Spurs. Realistically, asking them to put in the same level of commitment 2 days later against Man Utd which is then followed a couple of days later by a relegation clash with Burnley is a really big ask.

On the other hand, I can also understand why the fans are annoyed. They paid good money to see their club take on Man Utd and instead were treated to their teams second string players being defeated by an injury riddled Man Utd.

So as I said, I can see both sides of the story and I really don't want to get drawn into a discussion as to whether McCarthy did the right thing or not. What I did want to comment on though was - why the f&$k are the Premier League Board getting involved in this?

The manager has a squad of players for a reason - so that he doesn't have to play the same tired legs that had played just a couple of days ago (squad rotation ftw). Bear in mind that the players that were selected to play by McCarthy weren't exactly green as grass either. Other than with one exception, all of the players had played in the first team before. Furthermore, some of them were full blown internationals. Granted, they may not have been the best players in the squad, but why should that be relevant?

I mean, its not like other teams don't put our reserve sides. The obvious examples are Arsenal (who have a policy of only playing youngsters in the League Cup) and Man Utd (who only last year, fielded a team of kids at the end of the season against Hull). Quite frankly, by getting involved, the PLB are just wasting time and money.

Plonkers!

Gordon - an anagram of Damien?

You know, I realised that I haven't put up pictures of the kids in a while so I figure now is a good time to do another pic dump.

In many ways, Gordon really suffers from being the baby in the household. We kept a lot of Gerry's baby toys and let Gordon play with them. The problem is that Gerry is very jealous of his toys and always snatches Gordon's toys away from him. Often, the only real time that Gordon can play with his toys is after Gerry has gone to bed.

Here, you can see him in the rare situation where Gerry has gone to bed but Gordon is still awake and alert. I think my kids are born to be stars. Gerry is a natural born actor and Gordon seems to have been born with a mic in his hands...

As you can see, he is very happy to be able to play his toys without Gerry snatching them away.

A little too happy if you ask me. He looks just a little bit pyscho in this pic. Actually, now that I think about it, this isn't the only pic I have of him where he looks a little ... scary.


Just be glad I didn't name him Damien.

How much for that?

As many of you know, I currently use a Dell XPS 1530 laptop as my PC which I am currently very happy with. Many months ago, when I was first considering whether to buy a laptop or desktop, one of the considerations was price. Although I ultimately went for the pricier laptop, a decision which I haven't regretted (particularly as I was able to keep playing Dragon Age: Origins while on holiday in Thailand!), I still keep an eye on the desktop market.

One of the amazing things about the desktop market in recent years is how much the cost of buying a decent PC has dropped. In the past, you could forget buying anything even close to decent for anything less than HK$20,000. Nowadays, you can get decent rigs for less than HK$10,000 - particularly if you don't need to buy a new monitor.

And then there's the Alienware brand of PCs. The Area-51 ALX high end gaming computer clocks in at a minimum of HK$40,000. I'll just give you a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor. Wow. Minimum price of HK$40,000 (but hey, price of delivery is included!). Just for giggles, I decided to see how much I could push the price up by choosing all the bells and whistles that I could.

By maximising out the options, I was able to push the price up to HK$53,735. So what does that get you? Well, it gets you quad a core i7-975 processor (3.33Ghz!), 21" monitor, 6GB DDR3 SDRAM, 2 hard drives totaling 2.5TB (think of all the porn family photos I could store!), dual GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards and lots of fancy lights to spruce up your case when you turn on your PC (oooh - just think of all the nerd envy if you show up for LAN gaming with a PC case that lights up!).

Unfortunately, what it doesn't come with is an encyclopedia explaining what any of the above is or a high paying job so that you can afford to pay for it.


PS I'm not actually looking to buy a new PC - I just like to keep an eye on the market (and have wet dreams about actually being able to afford something like this).

Apple trying to put Macpro out of business

Apple as a company do a lot of things right. However, on occasion, they can also act like real dicks. Unfortunately, this is an occasion where they seem to be acting like dicks.

Brief version is that a company in Australia called Macpro have been selling Macpro branded computers since 1983 (ie before Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984 and well before they launched the Mac Pro branded computers). Apple have been trying to register the trademark Mac Pro in Australia but have so far failed because Macpro objected (naturally, they didn't want to change their company name).

IP Australia (the body handling trademark disputes) has sided with Macpro as the Australian company was able to provide evidence that it had been using the mark prior to Apple. Apple have appealed to the Federal Court as they aren't willing to take this lying down.

To a certain extent, I can kinda understand Apple's position. They have already invested lots of money in their trademark and naturally, they don't want to lose that. But on the other hand, Macpro in Australia were clearly using the mark before Apple was. Quite frankly, I think its an open and shut case. Apple have NO claim to the mark in Australia.

It seems to me that the only reasonable course of action which Apple can take is to reach a compromise with Macpro (prob involving money). Unfortunately, it appears from the article that Apple isn't even willing to discuss this and seems determined to press on with a costly legal battle which ultimately may force Macpro to fold simply due to lack of resources.

Which is a real dick move.

PS to be fair to Apple, I should also mention that the story is all written from the side of Macpro Australia and Apple haven't commented on this at all so we don't know what their story may be.