Time & Distance Make A Great Lens
August 3, 2008 (One Response)
IT’S BEEN almost two years since the Year Of Debauchery, which peaked with a month in Japan where I felt completely lost in an alien landscape. 2 years and several thousand miles later I finally understand why I need to go back there. Read more
The Kindness Of Strangers… Alive And Well In Dublin!
May 20, 2007 (4 Responses)
WE DECIDED TO DRAG the girls out for a walk this afternoon, up the hill of Howth and then down to the harbour for some seafront fresh fish and chips - a great way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately bad luck decided to come along and try to fuck things up for us, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the sheer kindness of complete strangers today. We live in such a cynical world that sometimes it’s easy to forget it’s the simple things that make a difference, something as simple as a trust between complete strangers.
That wee beastie in the photo was the nearest in complexion that I could find for “Snot”. You see “Snot” is what SusiQ calls her smart car, mostly because of the snot green/black colour scheme (I didn’t have a real photo handy so here’s a showroom version). SusiQ decided to drive today and so we bundled the girls into the back and had a great afternoon in Howth, right up to the point that a complete stranger knocked on the window as we were about to drive home and informed us that we had a flat, rear passanger side.
Completely flat. Out of commission. Buggered.
That’s the exact moment when I discovered that the rear of a smart car contains exactly two things - except for the girls of course. Firstly there is a less than useless triangle thingy for breakdowns and then of course when you lift up the matting to get out the spare wheel you discover…. the engine instead. That’s it. No wheel, no jack… nothing of any use whatsoever. Read more
Expensive Typo Costs Japanese Broker €190m
December 10, 2005 (No Responses)
THIS HAS TO BE one of those “Oh Fuck!” moments. You know the story well; we all do. You do something so incredibly stupid, so galactically incompetent that you wish you could just turn back time for a few seconds to undo it.. but then reality hits and all hell breaks loose. This is one of those moments!
This story concerns the plight of an unfortunate Japanese brokerage firm who basically had a bad case of finger trouble which lead to Japan’s government rebuking the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the country’s biggest brokerage firm after a typing error caused Mizuho Securities to lose at least 27 billion yen (€190m) on a stock trade. The trouble began when Mizuho Securities tried to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen (0.007c) apiece in a job recruiting firm called J-Com, which was having its public debut on the exchange.
It had actually intended to sell 1 share at 610,000 yen (€4,300). You can imagine the chaos that ensued. Worse still, the number of shares in Mizuho’s order was 41 times than J-Com’s true outstanding amount, but the Tokyo Stock Exchange processed the order anyway. Oh well - easy come, easy go 
Great Moments: The Birth Of The Internet
November 25, 2005 (One Response)
Newsman Wolf Blitzer: “Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn’t necessarily bring to this process?”Vice President Al Gore: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
- CNN Interview, March 9th, 1999
A Typically Microsoft Moment
May 30, 2005 (2 Responses)
I’ve created another new category here at Howl @ The Moon! called Moments… for those special moments that only ever come along every now and then which deserve to be captured for posterity 
I’m kicking this section off with a lovely transcript from the Microsoft Antitrust Trial. I know I’ve been guilty of referring to some of the Microsoft stormtroopers as ‘drones’ before, but this transcript kind of reinforces that position I reckon. It’s not doctored, edited or changed in any way… what you are about to read is an excerpt from the Trial and records an actual interchange between Bill Gates and the Government Attorney. Bill was being his usual helpful self. Enjoy
