Ok, so perhaps this BP gas station sign isnt so amusing post the oil spill….

BP Oil and Gas spill advice

Well, this really doesn’t need too much explanation….!

Fired, Facebook Style

Well, itsNbits just received this email so its obviously started doing the rounds.

As itsNbits is at this time unable to verify the accuracy of the email and photo that were received, certain parts have been blocked out.

Begin Email Transcript:

D**** S***** ex Geelong player sent this around……

Here you go lads, read below.

Check out who sent the information, D**** S***** (ex AFL player)

Girl on the left , just before she fell pregnant to those dirty rotten sainters (A****** & G*****)

I’m friends with some young st kilda groupies on FB….that photo was taken at the st likda sydney game.. the chicks on fb know the girl..

Kind Regards,
D**** S*****
Finance Consultant
S******* F*****

End email transcript

In a stunning announcement, Subway has stated that there will be a potentially crippling change to its cheese allocation algorithm – and all cheese types are impacted: including the popular (but orange) tasty cheese in addition to cheddar and swiss. This change has the potential for upsetting the balance of Subs, and making 12″ subs unwieldy – perhaps even dangerous to yourself and those around you.

I am not alone in my concern. Russell, an important Subway customer who has asked to remain anonymous, has also provided commentary on this stunning announcement by Subway:

“I’m concerned the implementation date is July 1st however stores can choose to implement immediately. This may lead to an inconsistent sandwich experience for purchases from different stores and the resultant post traumatic stress disorder could be crippling.

I also fear for the staff with possible repetitive stress injury having to flip two cheese slices per sandwich. There’s no indication of an Occupational Health and Safety Analysis being performed which should include the additional preparation time per sandwich for this activity also increasing customer frustration with an increased delay in service further exacerbating the post traumatic stress of random process implementation.

Shareholders and franchisees should be very nervous.”

Apple iPad

1) USB – I want the freedom of being able to connect any one of the zillions of USB devices because I WANT TO.

2) High Quality Video out – It would be great if it had some kind of clever video out and a smart connector to turn that output into something common like HDMI or similar. And although it’s resolution isn’t bad, imagine if they external output could handle 1080p! That would be very cool indeed and turn your iPad into a portable HD video source.

3) Flash support – cut the crap, flash is useful on the internet. Anything that is for surfing that doesn’t support it will give you an incomplete internet experience and mean you can’t rely on your iPad for everything to do with surfing. HTML5 “aint all that” yet. NO ARGUMENTS, ITS A FACT.

4) App support – The ability to install things on it without having to use Appstore or crack it. I mean come on, it’s a computer. More importantly it’s MY computer. Let me put stuff on it. As with everything ever installed by someone, it’s at my own risk. Let me install whatever I want on it. Apple just has to try to get in the middle of everything. For them it’s all about control, as with that comes revenue opportunities. At a cost to the consumer, and I’m not just talking about money. It’s about freedom. Who wants a 3rd party deciding what you can and can’t install on a cool device? And don’t give me that lame “you don’t have to buy it” crap.

5) A video camera built in. It would be an awesome video conferencing device. I get the feeling this was one of those “we better leave something out so v2 seems attractive” sort of things as everything – including the iPhone – has video capabilities these days!

There are more, and I might expand the list later – what else do you suggest and why?

A good friend sent me this whilst we were having a discussion of Telstra shares and whats likely to happen to them.

Here are his Top 5 reasons why someone might go and buy Telstra shares right now:

1) Wanting to hedge against their lotto tickets

2) Compulsive masochistic disorder

3) Alzheimer’s onset

4) Clicked the wrong buttons on COMSEC website

5) Stupid enough to listen to their brokers suggestions without realising they’re double-dipping on the sales margins, once for buying in, then again when you wake up and SELL, SELL, SELL!

In the interests of transparency, both my friend and I must sadly declare that we own Telstra shares….

Well it was time for a change, and after reading all about the Ford FG XR6 Turbo, I thought I should try one.

It may look quite similar – similar enough so the average person couldnt pick a difference visually – but make no mistakes about it – its not the same as the BA and BF series cars.

So I dropped my 6 litre V8 Holden SS-V back and picked up an FG XR6T in the first few months of 2009.

I have had time to drive it a fair bit around the city and on country roads.

I must admit its nice having that 2000rpm jack-rabbit acceleration back! You really miss it.

The pull is amazing. This is the first stock car I have had that, in the dry on a sticky road surface and with warm tyres, will squeal/start to spin the tyres when you take off slowly in 1st, then floor it at or just below 2000rpm or around 20kmh. Amaaaaazing how much torque it has. It’s not like the BA and BF XR6Ts were lacking – but this one is a big step up again. It’s a tyre shredder.

One of the cool benefits I have noticed is MUCH less power drain on hot days – the intercooler seems to be doing a very good job indeed. In my two BA’s it used to really annoy me when it was hot – now I don’t really notice much difference at all, even on 40 degree days. The 270kW/533Nm (362hp/393 pound-feet of torque) is just there all the time.

I ran my car in hard, as normal. Once the engine is up to temperature and I have done a few steady runs up to near redline, everything is fair game.

Oil consumption has been near zero from new. VERY different from the BA’s I owned. Both of them ran through oil quickly in the first few thousand kilometres as they ran in, before settling in to almost zero oil consumption. The FG has consumed half a litre in 10,000km. Compare this to around 1 litre per 1000km in the BAs I drove the same way. But note that the BA’s ceased consuming oil after 3-5000km and settled down to a similar low consumption rate once bedded in.

I have a couple of observations though, and these are some differences/similarities I have noted since the original BA: I was lucky enough to have an early one and have crowds standing around my car ooohing and ahhing at it at shopping centres when I came back to it – ahh, those were the days!

- The driveline is still very clunky. It REALLY should have been fixed by now. No such issue in the competing Holden which has a very sweet driveline with zero slack (but then, it doesn’t have to cope with the same low down torque either). But it does still annoy me. I expected 4 or so years later and one minor upgrade and one major upgrade later it would have been fixed! I imagine it may be related to the differential?

- The standard brakes work quite well. I haven’t had an issue with them. I would put them on par with the old BA series Premium Brake option.

- Axle tramp is still appalling – actually a fair bit worse due to the extra power. This must be a fundamental suspension design fault as I can’t see why else it would not have been resolved by now – how on earth do people with modded engines cope? I can experience it in the dry quite often, not just the wet. I can’t believe it’s still like that, if not worse. It sounds like someone is in the boot belting the side of the boot with a sledge hammer. People who don’t expect it wonder what on earth is going on. So do I.

- Fuel consumption is a lot better, despite the extra power. Kudos to Ford (or is it FPV?!). My consumption has dropped from 24.5L/100km of premium to 19-20 or so. Awesome stuff and great to see. People not familiar with the cars should understand if driven more normally the BA XR6T will use 14L/100km with a normal mix of driving by the “average” driver – and the FG even less. My figures should not be taken as the norm.

- Country (read: steady 100-120kmh travelling in 6th gear) has gone up slightly. My old XR6Ts (well then 2nd one with the 6 speed) used to do an amazing 7-7.1L/100km reliably. Just amazing for a quick car and demonstrating some clever gearing versus turbo kick-in level engineering. This one seems to do maybe 7.5-7.8 or so. Still very good compared to the competing Holden SS which is closer to 10-12L/100km at those speeds – although admittedly many people say a v8 needs 50-70,000km to really loosen up. It is possible my car will improve as its only at 10,000km, however my other cars had similar low kilometres.

- Wet weather traction – appalling! There is none if you are trying to do anything other than accelerate quite slowly (compared to what the vehicle can do…everything is relative!). Apply more than 25% throttle at 2000rpm and out she slips! Forget about traction control and stability control helping you – they can’t come close to catching it if you are driving hard. This is not a car to make available to an inexperienced and over-eager driver – most especially when it is wet. You are just asking for trouble.

Novice drivers need to be very careful indeed. My SS-V got me lazy – often I could floor it all the way through 1st and 2nd in the wet and it would just hook up and take off. I’m pretty confident if I was “racing myself” in the wet in my old SS-V versus my FG XR6T, I would win in my SS-V simply as I could put the power down.

I must say though, I do miss the sound of the v8. Yes, I love the power of the XR6T, especially down low, but the predictability, power down, quick response and sound of the 6 litre was very good! It’s hard to take the sound of the XR6T engine seriously compared to the big V8 which I must admit grew on me a lot. It just sounded so serious. The FG is closer to a Dyson vacuum on steroids. Not to be taken lightly as it does its job very well, but it still sounds like a vacuum cleaner!

We have heard stories of at least one instance where a newspaper or similar found out about Tiger Woods having affairs, and traded it for an exclusive or cover story in place of publishing about the affair.

Well itnNbits has it on good authority that a whole multitude of journalists around the world knew all about many indiscretions involving Tiger for quite some time – likely years. Apparently, by unofficial pact, journalists around the globe had agreed not to make it public.

Those in the know apparently decided that Tiger was doing good overall, and a positive influence. As such, he wasn’t going to be torn down by a journalist trying to make themselves famous by publishing the big secret story.

That was until the National Enquirer broke the news, and lo and behold, Tiger became fair game.

Now it’s moved on to herds of women, Ambien-fueled sex romps and who knows what is to come? The speed at which information has come to life has been very fast – quite possibly because lots of journalists had photos and information already, and all they had to do was dig up past information they had kept.

So readers, here is a question for you: do you think it right that journalists – whose primary role is to report (hopefully in a not-too biased manner) – should actively agree to withhold something that most would consider highly news-worthy?

You can argue that it is his private life (and it sure is…or at least was), but it’s clear from the amount of coverage, coffee shop conversations and TV coverage that the public deems the story news-worthy.

So what else are the journalists choosing to hide from us?