happy halloween... or not

Went to a seminar this evening after work about legal risk, insurance and contracts. I actually found it quite interesting, and its not too often that I find anything interesting which doesn't involve anything commonly regarded amongst most as being "geeky". Anyway, I now know what to do to cover my backside in the event that I cause some catastrophic disaster if I end up with my own engineering firm. Eeeexcellent...

Kinda glad I got home late - I would have missed any trick-or-treaters who happened to come past. Halloween, what's the bloody point? I really don't get it. To me its just one of them stupid American things that people down here do just because they do it in the movies, and the TV shows. I don't know about letting my kids wander around knocking on people's doors asking them for candy. I mean come on, aren't we supposed to discourage kids from taking candy from strangers? At least its not so full-blown around here, we never really get more than 10 kids on a night, and they're usually the kids from our street that we know, so a fun-size pack does the trick, with leftovers to spare. Otherwise we just pretend that no-one is home.

Heard something on the radio during the drive to work this morning about how some American guy described test cricket as "a sport that assumes that you have nothing better to do, judging by the pace of the game". I'm a cricket fan, and personally don't mind bumming around in front of the TV if it happens to be on, but I found that amusing. Though admittedly, maybe I just don't have anything better to do. Will most probably find myself sitting in front of the tele watching the upcoming test series against Sri Lanka on the weekends coming up (may even hit up the 'Gabba and check out a day of the "action"), and even check up the score online when I'm at work.

My favourite news story of the day was about this guy who got fined $400 for throwing a bottle out his car window in anger after a woman gave him the "small penis" gesture - a raised pinky (I'm sure I don't need to go into detail describing this). This gesture was the centre of the latest RTA advertising campaign, and for those of you unfortunate enough to not get the RTA ads on TV (I do, since I get Southern Cross Ten and other "regional" channels, and hence get a lot of NSW-based ads), it basically involves young men driving and doing things they regard as cool, such as burnouts and speeding, and looking pleased with themselves, while onlookers give them a pathetic look while raising the pinky, hence implying that they were compensating for a lack of something. I thought this was an interesting move from the RTA, as I was always of the opinion that people may in fact get offended by such gestures, especially the idiots whose idea of cool is to do stupid and dangerous things in their cars, and so encouraging it probably wasn't the best idea. But hey it happened, someone got offended, but at least all that he did was throw the bottle. In my opinion, the outcome could have been worse - a lot worse...

Anyway I have a lot of annual reports to read - believe it or not, some of them are quite an interesting read, and its good to know what is happening with the companies that I am throwing money at. Until November, take it easy folks.