Weeding

Was watching 'Hackers' on TV last night, and the scene when the hackers were drooling over a laptop with a 28.8kps modem really rammed home the fact that we've come a long way since 1995. The other thing is how young Angelina Jolie looks, and how much less pneumatic she looked in 1995.

Spent this morning in a reforestation plot - complusory community involvement project from work. Not too bad an experience: I learned that the vines that smother most of our forests are called Smilax. Bloody thorny things, as I recall from reservists, but at least I know what to call them now. We spent the morning clearing a small patch of jungle of as many Smilaxes as we could, armed with snippers and gloves, the logic (as the people from National Parks explained) being that this would save the newly planted saplings from being strangled. I half suspect we probably trampled and killed a few saplings as well, given that there were 20 of us in an area about the size of a tennis court, but it's the thought that counts. Really.

Comments

Tym said…
I had to use a dial-up connection at my brother's today and I felt like I'd been catapulted back to the '90s, even though I only joined the broadband world a couple of months ago. Ten years ago I was happy enough with a 2400 baud connection to the Internet, thought newsgroups and IRC were the best thing on the planet, and navigated the virgin WWW via text-based Lynx. How quickly we forget...
Benjamin Kong said…
Hey I was on a 2400 too, and always getting lagged out when trying to MUD. In fact, I still have one in my cupboard.

Good on ya, wahj! I always hated them Smilaxes - nearly ripped my uniform to shreds once when I had to bash through a bunch of them :( Perils of being recce and having to take the path less trodden.
wahj said…
yeah, I was thinking of all the times I had to walk in the middle of the night and get cut, slashed, and pricked by those damn thorns, and that really inspired me to cut into those vines with a vengeance.

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