Russian Thieves Break Into Soviet-Era Missile Silo to Find it Filled With Money Bills

A team of thieves that broke into an abandoned missile silo not far from the Russian city of Kostroma in search of nonferrous metals was shocked to find the shaft packed with Soviet money bills, Regnum news agency reported on Tuesday.

The incident would have remained secret, had the wind not blown hundreds of banknotes all over the countryside.

Four men from Nizhny Novgorod found the silo that had had missiles dismantled and put on maintenance decades ago in accordance with the Soviet disarmament program. They targeted the metals inside and said they had had no idea about the money hidden in the shaft.

Just another reason why windy weather sucks

I unearth this little gem in some code I was working on last week... Speaks for itself really (I just hope I didn't write it in the first place).

for( $i = 1; $i <= sizeof( $this->map->records); $i++ ) {
    foreach( $this->map->records as $t_key => $t_record ) {
        if ( $t_key == $i ) {
            $t_name = $t_record->name;
            $t_value = $t_record->value;
            $t_default = $t_record->default;
            break;
        }
    }
    some_generic_rendering_function( $t_name, $t_value, $t_default );
}

Under a Big Shake up at work, lots of change has been tkaing place - we've lost staff , directors & my comfort level has dropped a few notches. Thats all OK though: I seem to have surivived the redudencies, and got some direction back into the work I'm doing. The new CEO has been been busy doing whatever it is CEOs do, and consquently, wants to bring development on our website in house, and dreamt up a swag of new features he wants implemented (like a external views into the bug tracking system). Because I'm the product web GUI specialist, I get the job.

Now being as efficient (lazy) as I am, I've stumbled upon the Joomla! project. It's essentially an evolved version of the Mambo CMS project that splintered (I don't really know why - I don't care much for the rife politic bitching that can occur in open source projects).  For the sake of brevity, lets just say Joomla is kick ass: it looks good, run efficiently, handles exactly what I need it to do, and best of all is programmatically extensible.

After playing around with it for my original requirement, I started to think about other places where it might be useful... Everyone knows I've been griping about the application framework I have to use at work since I started - it's a nightmare: sluggish, buggy, painfully inflexible and near impossible to debug when problems arrise. So why not replace it with the joomla project? Aside from there being about 10 gazillion extensions available for the base packages, its actually very straight forward to develop new components, modules and plugins. Only difficulty I can foresee is compatability with our current patching system, but I already got a few ideas to get around that.

Best of all Joomla! is an exportable skillset - I've already picked up a couple of short-but-sweeet contract jobs doing Joomla customisations - so it's not something that'll go to waste when I move on.Anyway, I'll see what happens.

PC setup, software installed, adsl connection reconfigured, wireless lan configured...

Outstanding =)

Chuck Norris is one-time martial arts movie star and played the lead protagonist in "Walker Texas Ranger" (I used to love it when I was a kid, probably because it featured a gratuitious helping of flying round house kicks). He has his own web site /www.chucknorris.com and does good stuff for charity.

Chuck Norris has actually commented on the "Chuck Norris Facts" circulating on the internet officially on his web site: IN RESPONSE TO THE "RANDOM FACTS" THAT ARE BEING GENERATED ON THE INTERNET

I'm aware of the made up declarations about me that have recently begun to appear on the Internet and in emails as "Chuck Norris facts." I've seen some of them. Some are funny. Some are pretty far out. Being more a student of the Wild West than the wild world of the Internet, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's quite surprising. I do know that boys will be boys, and I neither take offense nor take these things too seriously. Who knows, maybe these made up one-liners will prompt young people to seek out the real facts as found in my recent autobiographical book, "Against All Odds?" They may even be interested enough to check out my novels set in the Old West, "The Justice Riders," released this month. I'm very proud of these literary efforts. ~ Chuck Norris

Aside from the shameless plug for his new books, I respect the guy for taking it all in such good humour.



I don't know when Chuck Norris facts started surfacing, but Wikipedia seems to have a very good knowledge of them. They're not serious, just a bit of fun - they make me laugh which is something I don't really get to do enough of.

Our mayor down here in Mexico (Mr Johnny So) is a very charismatic dude - he seems endeared to almost everyone, and has recently been enjoying a cult-like following that has relegated him to the spotlight of celebrity. However I'm not entirely sure if I agree with comments found in yesterday's "Vent Your Spleen" column in the MX:

Rhett: "John So can kick Chuck Norris' arse."

I would suggest that John So is related to Chuck Norris, or perhaps *is* actually the same  man in disuise.

I'm (finally) getting a new PC at home tomorrow - which means among other things:
* I'll be posting pics again
* I can get my ass into gear with uni (and get on with my MCSD)
* I can start work on presention topics for PHP Melb
* Jess wants me to start a blog for Bart & Dude (the hounds)
* After many months of needing to, I can organise my mp3 collection (which is currently spread over 3 machines across two states)
* I can start wasting time gaming (Woo Hoo!)

Looks like people everywhere can't get enough Chuck Norris facts...I checked www.chucknorrisfacts.com today and discovered 6 new pages of goodness added within the last month - shite!

Here are some of my favourites:-

* Chuck Norris can blow bubbles with beef jerky.
* Chuck Norris can taste lies.
* With the rising cost of gasoline, Chuck Norris is beginning to worry about his drinking habit.
* Chuck Norris uses 8'x10' sheets of plywood as toilet paper.
* Chuck Norris never has to wax his skis because they're always slick with blood.
* As an infant, Chuck Norris' parents gave him a toy hammer. He gave the world Stonehenge.
* Chuck Norris uses tabasco sauce instead of visine.
* Every time Chuck Norris smiles, someone dies. Unless he smiles while he’s roundhouse kicking someone in the face. Then two people die.
* When Chuck Norris goes to out to eat, he orders a whole chicken, but he only eats its soul.
* Chuck Norris once rode a nine foot grizzly bear through an automatic car wash, instead of taking a shower.
* Chuck Norris was the orginal sculptor of Mount Rushmore. He completed the entire project using only a bottle opener and a drywall trowel.
* Divide Chuck Norris by zero and you will in fact get one
* One time, at band camp, Chuck Norris ate a percussionist.
* Chuck Norris knows the last digit of pi.
* Chuck Norris doesn't believe in ravioli. He stuffs a live turtle with beef and smothers it in pig's blood.
* "Brokeback Mountain" is not just a movie. It's also what Chuck Norris calls the pile of dead ninjas in his front yard.
* Chuck Norris likes his ice the same way he likes his skulls: crushed.
* Chuck Norris once skewered a man with the Eiffel tower.
* People created the automobile to escape from Chuck Norris...Not to be outdone, Chuck Norris created the automobile accident.

Sergicles has uncovered another Chuck Norris gem:

Chuck Norris doesn't pay for RFID-tagged items at the supermarket. Hehas sex with the checkout operator and gets everything free.

When Chuck Norris buys clothes they don't need to remove the dye-packand RFID tag using the machine on the counter. Chuck Norris pulls itoff with his teeth and throws it at kittens.

When Chuck Norris travels on CityLink he telepathically wills the RFIDtransponder in his eTag to give the code for Vin Diesel's eTaginstead. Vin Diesel is too scared to forward his CityLink bill to Chuck Norris.