Far from being the nerve-tingling multi-orgasmic television climax it was billed as, Big Brothel 2006 has quickly proven itself just as predictable and boring as 2005. It’s only been a couple of days, and I can already say I won’t be watching it on purpose anymore.

To give you an idea of how stupid these people are, one of the smartest people in the house, who happens to be a woman, was educating the other housemates about menstruation, insisting repeatedly that the average blood-loss each month was a Litre (roughly a quart, for you yanks) of blood. “yeah, so it’s no wonder it makes you cranky” she says. No doubt she’s also one of those people who is occasionally shocked when a sexual partner knows where her clitoris is.

One of the ’surprises’ leaked ahead of time, was that a gay bloke would be ‘coming out’ in the house, on national television. When I first heard this, my comment was something like “yeah, OK but unless they show his parents reacting to the news live on ParentCam - who gives a shit?”

The actual events and chatter surrounding it were in fact even more boring than I predicted. Gay people ‘coming out’ just doesn’t matter, unless you can actually see the moment when their parents’ hearts break. That is good television, this shit is just another poof engaging in self-therapy. Nobody really cares.

The only saving grace for the whole situation is that David also happens to be a country-boy, who rides horses (in a very gay way actually, as seen in his promo package). So now at the very least we get to chuckle about him being Big Brokeback Butt-Brother.

I’ve messed my seat with excitement and anticipation.

Network Ten executives expected us all to die in our lounge chairs of shock once we discovered the amazing Big Ballsup world-first. Australia can be proud to announce that we’re the first on the planet to have a mother-daughter team in the house. From now on, when I travel internationally, and someone asks me where I’m from I’ll answer “Australia, you know, where Big Brother first had…” — no I won’t.

Good for us. We managed to grow a mother-daughter cock-sucking team. What a shame it’s not a Commonwealth Games event. Instead of the ‘proud’ mothers on the outside being interviewed about their children’s bad behavior, we’ve got one in there, setting a fine example for her daughter. Awww, how sweet.

Mommy dearest looks like a crack-whore, with dry skin, colour-damaged hair and eyes that have clearly looked down the barrel of far FAR too many dirty penises. However ‘Krystal’ her daughter, stripper-name and all, is a little hottie.

At age 19 with breast implants, having reportedly posed in Ralph Magazine and now featured on Big Bitchfest with her marvelous role-model of a mother… Krystal is pretty well poised to end up with the same shining relationship history, closely followed by the same flaky skin and used-up expression.

Given this, I think it’s every single-man’s sworn duty to get her to that state as quickly as possible. After all, she has her mother’s records to break. For my part I’d bang her into a coma, or at least until she reached for a puncture kit for her new titties.

In summary, we have…

• Camilla - Knows nothing of her own biology.

• Gaelan - The dubiously straight self-proclaimed Adonis.

• David - The Big Brokeback Butt-Brother who should be called Gaelan.

• Karen - The crack-whore mother.

• Krystal - The crack-whore ‘before’ picture.

• Elise - The hyperactive super-annoying Asian chick everyone on the bus wants to punch.

• Claire - The disturbing, obsessive, moralising Fatal Attraction type, who just might kill you in your sleep if you don’t like fuzzy animals.

• Jamie - One of those fucking annoying people who laugh profusely at your stupid jokes, and over-articulate their ‘L’s.

• Michael - Your local weak-willed girlfriend who listens to women moan about their asshole boyfriends, while never quite successfully schmoozing his way into their pants.

… and nobody else of consequence.

I think this satisfies the pop-culture requirement of having a post on Brain-dead Brother. Thank you for indulging me.

You know, Big Brother would be a watchable show, if they locked all these people in a round room, with a glass cabinet in the middle containing a 20″ chef’s knife. No food, no darkness, and nothing but extremely loud Barry Manilow music.

Globalisation is great. I think it’s awesome that the whole world is given the opportunity to compete for my business.

The trouble is that engineers write the documentation… or worse, the promotional material. :)

The RS485 has an outstanding characteristic of intelligent directing control which eliminates the extra control signal like RTS. With this feature you can develop your program as you are using a normal RS232 without special control routine. This is especially important in Windows programming switch do not allow the program to catch the control pin at your wish.

It’s bad enough when English-speaking engineers write docs, but does anyone at all expect the Chinese engie to communicate complex concepts simply, in English?

NOTE: If English document needs fashioned, may require experiencing linguist!

I’ve had a lot of tool boxes, and bits-boxes over the years, but I’ve recently picked one up which to my mind is the most awesome combination of both -- especially if your tools are a little more sophisticated and precise than a hammer or hacksaw.

Screw drivers, the multimeter, perhaps the Dremel, the network test equipment and maybe a crimper or two, some plugs, a little heat-shrink, and most importantly: cable ties. If this sort of stuff is your bag, then this just might be your box.

After dremeling out a couple of the fixed compartments so I could fit one or two of my larger items into the “tools” side, I’m thoroughly in love with it. Stanley make some awesome stuff, and a lot of thought has gone into the shape and design of this thing.

Once closed, its roughly the shape and size of a turn-of-the-century medical bag, and will fit just about anywhere, as well as being a dozen times more portable than your average tool box.

I still have my old tool box, which contains my more low-brow equipment now, but this thing has allowed me to merge 4 cases worth of crap into one, and with me, the only way to stay organised is to keep things simple. I love it.

If I were as cool as Oprah, I’d have a Favourite Things section.

Not long ago, the Australian Government’s much-dreaded Work Choices system came into effect. One of the more controversial changes in the new industrial relations package is the elimination of ‘unfair dismissal’ protections for the majority of employees.

This has been the primary source for unprecedented panic in the workforce, and very serious backlash toward the incumbent government, but what exactly is the problem here?

Everybody loves visiting Australia because the people here are so laid back and friendly. We are perceived fairly accurately, as having a very relaxed attitude and not a hell of a lot of regard for authority and status. Everyone’s our ‘mate’ and don’t worry about the troubles tomorrow brings, ’she’ll be right’.

We relaxed carefree Australians have enjoyed protected employment for a very long time. Regardless of whether an employer might have reasonable grounds to dismiss an employee, the burden of documentation, warnings and proof are enough to dissuade them from trying, unless the situation is just so terrible that this employee is causing more than just their own salary-worth of trouble.

Compared to other countries with merely 20 million people we earn well, we have extremely high quality of life, and we maintain this culture of a relaxed and jovial workplace. Almost uniquely, we Australians cheat the system — and we bloody-well know it.

This reaction of unbridled fear amongst all employment sectors and age groups is nothing but a clear and resounding affirmation that we know we’re screwing around and bullshitting our bosses too much. Why else would we react this way?

It makes no sense to me, that an employer who is clearly looking to serve his or her own best interests would dismiss or otherwise risk losing employees who have established themselves as valuable members of the organisation. That would be counter-productive.

Equally so, would be turning into a monster employer who breathes fire, and dismisses employees for using too many staples. There just are not that many monopolies in the Australian market. The good people will gravitate (as they do already) to the good workplace environments - ones which reward good employees.

In reality, the only people who seem to have anything to worry about with regard to ‘unfair’ dismissal, are the ones who are riding that bleeding edge between actually working, and simply showing up. Unfortunately that seems to cover a much larger percentage of the Australian workforce than I would like to admit on an international medium. We’re a lazy embarrassment and we know it. That’s why as a collective, we’re shitting ourselves over these changes.

As an owner of a small business, and as a very bloody useful employee in my day… I am actually really glad that there is now some real demand for people to step up, learn and contribute. Be useful or be gone

The closing ceremony for the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games was last Sunday. I kept my mouth shut while they were on, but I think its high time for me to say my bit.

Enjoying the well-established global benchmark of amateur athletic competition simply isn’t enough. In keeping with trademark Anglo-Saxon elitism it is simply unacceptable for the British Empire to sit idly by while a bunch of Greeks put forth something as inspiring and unifying as the Olympic Games. The Empire simply must have its own identical copy.

Reverend Astley Cooper’s proposal of a “Pan-Britannic-Pan-Anglican Contest and Festival every four years” was clearly not intended to unify the world’s nations, but rather elevate the Commonwealth to a status somehow deserving of its own games that you and your countrymen couldn’t be a part of unless you were subjugated by the Empire… at a time when the world was abuzz with excitement for a modern revival of the Olympics.

"Sure, we jowl-faced Brits can play in your games… but I’m sorry guys, our games are a closed club, and you don’t know the secret handshake. By the way, mind if we steal your format? It’s kind of cool."

In fine tradition, Australian athletes have once again absolutely dominated the Commonwealth Games. The overwhelming pride and emotion our athletes feel can only be eclipsed by the disparity between our expenditure on training and equipment as compared with the poverty-stricken nations whose arses we just whooped.

"We’ve trained very hard for this" they say as they accept their truckload of Commonwealth gold, but if you look at the official medal tally [archive] it seems obvious that our victories were just far too bloody easy.

Our closest rival England won 36 gold medals to our 84 -- 2.3 times their medal count. That’s arse-whoopingly overwhelming, which is why my father coined the term Colosseum Games. See my dad is an ill man, but not too sick to yell “throw another barefoot black child in the arena” every time he paused on the Nine Network.

It’s depressing actually, and everybody knew the outcome before it began, which is why the games suffered from both poor ratings and poor attendance, but that isn’t the biggest tragedy.

The biggest tragedy is exposed by the same people these games are supposed to benefit. A young intelligent and articulate Kenyan girl who speaks English more clearly and correctly than children educated here explained it all. In a very heartfelt interview, she told of how privileged she felt to be in Australia, and what an amazing place this is. Where she lives they build houses out of mud and she’d never seen buildings so tall.

She commented on how amazing the opening ceremony was, but with obvious emotion couldn’t help but ask why such money was being spent on these things when people in her country are starving.

I understand that one of the responsibilities of advanced society is to maintain its advancement, but the Commonwealth is in a unique position here. Unlike the Olympic Games, the vast majority of the Commonwealth’s constituent nations are underprivileged. To me it seems that inviting them here, to witness extraordinary expenditure on frivolous matters is very unkind and short-sighted.

Clearly the sport is all that matters to the athletes though, which is why 63% of the Sierra Leone team skipped-out -- some even without competing -- and sought refuge here illegally, from the horrors of their war-torn homeland. Well, that’s better than the 70% that skipped-out in Manchester in 2002.

What a feather in Melbourne’s cap that is. Great games guys, lets do it again sometime.