Electric Quaker II

I should’ve gone to bed (but the whisky isn’t gone)*

Easter
‘s been a good Easter, so I’ll start with that. Food & company and a surfeit of neither which gave me some space for a bit of Quiet, which is always a worthwhile use of time, especially around now.

Also, we went out to Cwm Rheidol and hunted Easter eggs. (Our own, of course; we didn’t just show up expecting them to be there already). Slight issue with swathes of the countryside having been inexplicably closed, but we found a space in the end, and it was really quite fun.

Birthdays & Purchases
I’ve turned 24. Which isn’t an especially exciting sentence, let’s be honest. I don’t think I’m due another birthday that feels like it might be important for at least six years, and possibly not for another eighteen; my 43^rd will feel creepy, I’m pretty sure, but other than that each year kinda feels the same as every other. I’ve probably said that before; it’s a perennial complaint. (Pause for laugh)

Still, people have been very nice and given me everything from beer to periodicals subscriptions, and Ruth has very kindly chucked me a small pile of cash, with which I’ve bought a microcomputer. Well… yeah, OK, so I’ve technically owned very-very-late-era Microcomputers for years, but I can’t keep track, these days, of what’s a Laptop, what’s a Netbook and what’s a Small One Of The Above, so I’m going with Microcomputer because I know what one of those is.

Anyway, I had been going to get an S101 on the grounds that it’s called an S101, which is Teh Awesome. (Because – as if anyone needs telling – S101 was the directory name for Spellcasting 101: Sorcerors Get All the Girls, the precursor to the fab S201 & S301 by Steve Meretzky. All, quite literally, Legend-ary.)

So, yeah, the S101: it’s woefully underspecced for modern games (but would play old DOS stuff fine; see what I did there?) and I liked the fact it got essentially decentdecent reviews (for something built for battery life rather than speed) and I knew what I’d call it even before it turns up, which saves all that tedious umm-ing and ahh-ing.

Anyway, I’m not getting one of those. I’m getting an NC10 which has better battery life, costs less money, exists in a spiffy blue colour and gets even better reviews.

I’m still going to call it Ernie, mind.

The point to this, however, is pretty much that it can’t do very much, but is small and handy for carting about. Also, the NC10 comes with a closer-to-normal-size keyboard & a small hard-drive which puts it ahead of the rest of the minilapbook genre which seem reluctant to give you space to install anything very much. So it’s portable, won’t do [as much in the way of ] games to distract me [compared to a proper tower] and is easy to type on. If you didn’t know me better you might think I intended to get some actual proper work done next year, no?

If the machine has a downside I’ve not already factored in, it’s that it doesn’t come with 3G, which means if I need Internets on the go, I’ll have to create an unwieldy lash-up from my phone, Nokia PC Suite and a short length of USB cable, but I think I’ll be able to cope. Ruth proposes to teach me SVN-ing, so that’s promising.

I’m looking forward to the Masters, but I’m a little worried about the state of the profession – we had a meeting on Spy Weds. wherein it was revealed that we’ve not got a bean. This was pretty much the case at my previous place of work (although, in fact, their defecit appeared to be even larger), so I’m a little concerned that there may be employers out there who won’t be able to pay me.

But I figure I’m awesome, so they’ll find the money somewhere.

Tech Generally
Went back to Newport on Saturday, and miserably failed to fix the computer there – something very strange seems to have happened to it; it’s in need of a full-re-install, I think. In a bid to save myself an extra trip, I’m going to attempt to guide people there through a re-install. Worst case, I have to go back (which I would anyway, if I didn’t attempt this first), so I figure it’s worth a shot.

Work
I move to SSEL on Monday. Fewer Readers to deal with, more Spreadsheets. At present I’m not really sure how that balances out, but we’ll see how it goes. I have to say I rather enjoyed quite a lot of being in Lending; the Thin Red Line stunt got a bit dull the fifth time it was myself & one other person (normally Annette) holding the fort, but only a little.

Had to work Maundy Thursday, which was shoddy since it was my Birthday, which is shoddy, but I ended up glad I did, as we had a vagueish academic come in and start asking me questions, who turned out to be a Bodley reader, so that was nice. I do miss the old place, strangely. (That is, strangely if you only recall my experience of the place before they got my eyes tested, when I appeared to be of the Fail for no reason I could work out. After I could actually read what I was typing I really enjoyed it.)

Wow, I’ve rambled all over the place again. And Storm Front just looped round, Tell you what: I’ll throw in a few semi-themed headers and push off to bed, how’s that sound?

*Sounds like a song title, dunnit? Well, it would if it started with ‘you’ rather than ‘I’. Something melancholic and slow, I think. Or something very bouncy and fast and miserable as sin. Both good.

I love the smell of coaligned opinions in the morning!*

Just to point out that if you don’t already follow Shamus Young‘s stuff, you really should.

*I think something like this got said in some sort of war film, or something, at some point. But you’re more than welcome to not cite it, this time.

Awesome!

Ruth’s Christmas present has arrived!

bLOG YE NOT WHILESTDRUNK

aS THE NEW SAYING GOES.

However, while I know I am drnuk (The reason being 1. I feel goodwill towards all my fellow man instead of 2. loathing thereunto) and 2. my brain appears to be on the fritz on a whole bundle of fronts, which is somewhat of a pain, but never mind because I figure I can cope with such given a nice cup of coffee and an FPS or two to take my brain of the subject while I rehydrate it and flush out the poison ampersand afformentioned blown fuses/.

However while the above all is good, and I am pleased for everybody.

And I know this’ll kill me in’t morning, but ‘s all good, and I’m cheerful, drunk and short-circuiting in what’s not the worst possible way, so there we go.

‘s all. G’night. O, anmd since my carefuul finger-picking of the keys is probably a little bit to the left or right or something, apologies for the typos. Whoof.

Tea praps not cofffee or I’ll be up all night witch would be of the craxy.

G’night, presenmtyl/

Four One More Years!

Now with semi-random emboldening, to clarify what’s important in amongst all these words…

Well, since I’ve not yet had any frantic e-mails or letters or ‘phone calls of retraction, I guess now is as reasonable a time as any to leak some breaking news out into the public domain: UWA Aberystwyth would like to offer me a place on the Library and Information Studies course as a Masters student, starting on the 28th of September, 2009. Plus, on the basis of my having started as an undergraduate around the 28th of September 2003, and having graduated from UWA three years later, they’d like to give me 10% off my tuition fees, which is very nice of them!

All things considered, this is a Good Thing, since it means I’ll get not only a professional qualification that (as I understand it) will allow me to get membership of CILIP – dead handy, that is – but also a spiffy new degree, which will not only make me look like a well-rounded, clever sort of person, but which should also net me a little more cash, long-term.

Not only that, but in the event that I actually finish and get the thing, I’ll be one of a comparatively small number of people who hold not only a degree from UWA, but also a degree from AU. Yes, I think that is a really interesting fact. I’ll wheel it out at parties in the event people look like they’re getting bored of hearing about the development of MARC formatting*.

Jen is currently in town, which is awesome. Brief trip to pub yesterday, which included entertaining reminiscences about Apocalypse Wow! and other ghosts. Since I’m about to be returning to studenthood [terrifying thought, except I’ll be able to stop paying tax and that], I find this heartening – I think Jen is the first person I met during my Fresher’s Week that I’m still in any kind of contact with outside of Facecoke, and that dun’t really count as contact. It was good, because the thought of going back to University as a student type was making me feel properly old, and while talking about t’Old Days didn’t exactly stop me feeling old, it at least made me more cheerful about the whole thing.

Plus, y’know, Jen’s awesome, so it’s nice to have her back in town :-)

Good news all round, pretty much!

Have fun!

You really don’t have to read this bit if you don’t want to. I can’t think why you’d not want to, but if you really don’t, you can shove off now.

*this is, in fact, really interesting. See, back in the 1960s electronic data storage was really expensive and any computerised library records had to be stored in fixed-length fields, which not only limited search capabilities, but also caused costly wastage when you had an author with a four-character surname being stored in a fixed-length ten-character field. So, on the one hand, you had some fields that, for certain items, weren’t long enough, but couldn’t be extended, and on the other hand, you had some that were too long, but couldn’t be shortened.

Sometimes this would happen within one record, and it really crippled the potential value of the emerging computer as an alternative method of record management (the standard at the time, of course, being the traditional 3×5 inch catalogue card, which also had limited capacity and couldn’t be relied upon to get regular updates unless someone remembered to check all the cross-references from one card to another – which was time consuming even for small collections.

The problem they had was that there wasn’t any way to vary the length of a data field, because you had to tell the computer that the Author Surname field started at character #20, and ended at character #30 – it was the only way the machine knew what order the data lived in, and nobody could think of a way round that (of course, the majority of librarians had little understanding of computers, and the computer engineers rarely thought of libraries as being a market for computers, since the established members of each profession looked on the other as the very anathema of what they stood for – a view which remains surprisingly common to this day, in spite of all the advances made in the past twenty-odd years).

Now about this time the Library of Congress had appointed a new committee which was supposed to be looking at their surplus of 3×5 cards. (Especially in the US, these cards were still pretty cutting edge – as late as 1900 most American libraries still had their catalogues printed in book form only, which made them amazingly hard to update – by comparison, the index cards were a dream come true, except that they took up too much room.

The committee, therefore, was looking at two solutions to the card storage problem: 1) Rent a big warehouse to store some of the cards, or 2) Rent a floor in a big warehouse to store some of the cards**. The LC was feeling pretty good about itself, around this time, because of course it wasn’t long since the 1956 Committee on Catalogue Code Revision had presented its findings (themselves a revision of the fairly shoddy 1946 rules), so they weren’t in the market to change the way cataloguing was done. However, it was at about this time that — Oi! You little bugger, I saw you open that new tab! Hey! O, now you come back here! Honestly, I was right in the middle of my story!***

*sigh* Bye, then…

**Some things change very, very slowly, it appears…

***Cite me!

[All humour aside, that is honestly a really interesting story. I’d be happy to finish it sometime. And kudos to Keith Trickey for clueing me in on it.

Still no post!

Bloody GPO. I was holding off posting myself until my letter arrived, but still no dice. Updates as and when, I suppose, but don’t hold your breath – I’m still waiting for something I ordered as a Christmas gift to turn up, four months later…

Still, never mind. I remain totally exhausted, but I think I’ve worked out why: it takes until 20:00 for me to actually wake up.

Lately, for one reason or another, I’ve not been getting enough sleep, and I’ve been getting progressively tired. No real change there, I guess, I tend to default to a pattern of going to sleep with the World Service around 01:00 and waking to Today at a quarter to eightish. Naturally that leaves me pretty wrecked, so I sleep in on Saturdays.

Since Christmas I’ve spent a lot of Saturdays busy, so I’m not catching up on as much sleep as I’d like and, thinking logically, I keep determining to Get An Early Night. Indeed I’ve spent whole days just barely keeping my eyes open and thinking fondly of how I’ll bundle myself up under the duvet, turn the radio on really quietly and be asleep by 10.

I think this all through the day, and when I get home and sit down I can barely muster the energy to keep awake until the tea’s brewed and the internet connection’s woken up. ‘Never mind 10,’ I think to myself ‘I’ll go to bed in a minute and be crashed out well before 9.’

Trouble is as soon as it gets to 20:00 or so, I wake right up and find it really hard to get to sleep until about 01:00. It’s vexing, but it has led me to develop an unhappy ability to force myself out of bed more or less regardless of how tired I am, at the point when the alarm goes off.

Last night this morning I was finally asleep somewhere after two, so I’ll admit to going through my usual swearing-at-the-alarm-clock routine with slightly more volume than usual, before I chucked off the duvet & walked the two paces to my phone in order to turn it off.

Or, I would have done. Somehow I’d managed to stand without my legs actually being awake, because they just folded up under me and dumped me on the floor. It’s a really weird sensation, I’ve never had it before. My brain, though muzzy, was functioning fine, but I couldn’t get my legs to respond for an alarming five seconds.

The moral of the story? I should get a teasmade. However, I want one of those rather less than I’d like anything on my Amazon Wishlist, what I am patiently (and, I’ll admit, somewhat haphazardly) constructing ahead of my birthday in a couple of week’s time…

In other news, while I’m in no way a Playstation fan (because, one: games work o dear God so, so much better on PCs than on grotty little consoles with their stupidly limited button supply, and, two: the best console I’ve run into thus far was the Gamecube, because all bar one of my favourite console games were built for that alone), there’s a really interesting analysis of what Sony did & didn’t screw up with the beleaguered PS3 over at Downwards Compatible, what I’ve been picking up by RSS since Shamus Young mentioned it. Both nice interestin’ sites, although, of course, you all know Shamus from his awesome D&D Campaign and the webcomic that Started It All, DM of the Rings.

Incidentally, I went home this lunchtime, in between starting to draft this post, and finishing it up. Still no bloody post. Gah.

(Because I’m a human, and there’s nothing humans like better than to spread their downers through the medium of technology)

OK, here’s the deal: I don’t ask you to agree with me, and all I ask in exchange is that you offer me the same courtesy.

I’m happy to go to the wall to defend your right to not agree with me, and all I ask in exchange for that is that you don’t put the boot in on the assumption I’m retarded.

I’m happy to talk things through with people in a rational, open discussion (although I’ve yet to have such a discussion that changes anything for anyone involved), but I’m not happy to sit there and be made to feel got at.

This has come up before, although I’ve not mentioned it on the blog, because I really don’t like to be showy about this stuff, it does nobody any good, but come on people. You’re a mix of avowed atheists and agnostics, and I believe in God. The rest of the time I can believe that you like me, so I don’t see why this has to be such a big deal.

[Religion, they say, causes wars, but we all know that’s not true: what causes wars is having two or more groups who refuse to show respect to beliefs contrary to their own.]

I’m not really trying to get into a “Why You Should Prove Everything Scientifically” debate, because that’s the same problem from a different side, it’s not about what you can prove, but about what you believe (and, again, I’m quite happy for you to believe you shouldn’t think anything unless you can prove it and peer review it, as long as you’ll just let me think something different).

I just wanted to explain that I don’t like it when people have a go at who I am, and it really feels like that’s what you’re doing, not by targetting me specifically, but by dismissing anyone you can pattern-match to be like me as being idiots, alongside us all.

[I think this was particuarly starkly illustrated this evening, when everyone was more than willing to lay into Film #1 as being stupidly and deliberately couched in one-sidedness, but shut up as soon as Film #3 arrived and said things they agreed with. That’s kinda scary.]

Some of them really are idiots, I’ll agree with you on that. But mostly I don’t agree with them, and I keep my thoughts to myself and while they affect how I treat people and how I act, I don’t try and shove them down your throat.

It works for me. I don’t believe I hurt anybody by my beliefs (in fact, they pretty much proscribe it), so this kind of blind attack puts the boot in; I’m not up for an evening of careful edits designed to show what a thickwitted twat everyone like me is, thanks.

…And really, I don’t post this in a bid to make you feel guilty, or wrong, or like I don’t respect what you believe. But I do post it because, just sometimes, it feels like I’m the only person in the room who is OK with the idea that we can think different things without being spiteful to one another, and when I feel like that, it hurts. Because it’s becomes apparant that the consensus is anyone who thinks what I think is stupid. And that hurts, and I’d much rather I had friends who liked me, and it feels like you really never could. (I’m an antisocial bastard but I honestly like you all, and I just got burned, so I figure it (hopefully) won’t hurt if I ask you to at least tell me when you’re switching on the hob)

[Yeah, I’m fishing for some recognition that you don’t mean me. Assuming you don’t, I figure that’s allowed.]

I don’t ask you to agree with me, and all I ask in exchange is that you offer me the same courtesy.

But this is who I am, and so far neither insolvency, nor death nor lawyers has changed that. I’m pretty dug in here; don’t imagine I’m about to change just to satisfy your unwillingness to make the effort to understand.

I’m probably not being coherent, but I’m tired, and my shoulder and my elbow and my hip have been hurting me since I woke in pain at four am, and I really am feeling upset, so that’s why.

Final thing, because it made me laugh this morning, and I could really do with a pick-me-up right now:

Link, to today’s Abstruse Goose (I want that final scene on a T-Shirt)

I really thought about disabling comments on this, because amongst the things I want least is a pointless circular theological debate (closely followed by flaming trolls), but I haven’t. So play nice, alright?

(I think it was in Spanish)

Processed a book from the Bodleian today, which turned up for a member of staff at IGES, through Inter-library loans.

This makes me happy, in a nostalgia-y sort of way.

Also, at some point, I’ll write an actual blog post, rather than just gibbering vaguely.

The Moriarty of Bexleyheath

[Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, or anything, mind. I’m not even working shifts in the Law Library till after April. I speak colloquially, because I dunno what the legal definition of a tosspot is, though the colloquial one is totally this guy.]

Today on ElectricQuaker:

The Napoleon of Crime Vs. (Wellington) Boots.com in: The Wobbly-Headed Doll Caper!!

Yes, indeed, ladies & gentlemen! Today you can thrill! at the tale of a criminal!

A criminal whose dastardly plots know no restraint, whose cruel machinations know no mercy, whose fiendish mind knows no thought!

…Or, to put it another way, who’s a right pain in the arse, because I’ve had to lock down my credit card because of him. Git.

On my way home from work on Friday (I got sent home ill, which is always annoying) I checked my email & found “Paypal” had sent me an email telling me I’d added a new address. There was a second email telling me I’d authorised a payment.

‘Huh.’ I thought ‘that’s some convincing-looking phishing, there. I guess I’ll report it.’ So I did.

A bit later Paypal replied to say, basically ‘Yep, that was phishing. Good on yer for reporting it,’ and I crashed out for the rest of the day.

Being as I was ill, my sleep patterns were all to pot, so I was awake again at midnight, and took a bath (and a hot toddy made, disgracefully, with Bowmore single malt, for we had no blend in the house), and idly fired up the computer to see how the Internet had managed to cope without me for the past six hours.

Naturally, I checked my email accounts, and I was surprised to find another email from Paypal, this time saying ‘O, hai. Your payment, we haz it.’

…This one was even more convincing than the other two; no ‘Dear customer,’ here: there was my name, all correct & shipshape, and… the last four digits of my credit card number…?

So I forwarded that to Paypal as well, along with a message that said ‘This really is just some clever phishing device, right?’ and pointed a new browser window at Paypal and went and logged in.

(This is where our criminal mastermind comes in, this is)

Somehow, somebody broke into my Paypal account, added a new address (which is presumably serving as a drop; if it transpires it’s actually their home address I will actuallyLOL), and made off with a valuable consignment of, er, Boots aren’t allowed to tell me what it is because of the Data Protection Act.

Since Paypal automatically notifies me when somebody does, for example, randomly tell them that I live in London now in case it isn’t me doing it I’m not really sure why they thought this would work, but they evidently did, because otherwise I’d have an inbox slightly-less-full of emails claiming I was editing my own account. The only equivilant I can think of is trying to theive a wallet that somebody’s got chained to their own trousers; they’re likely to notice once it starts to pull, you know…

Gormless though the theft may be, I’ve still had to scramble all my passwords, boosting them up from mixed-case alphanumerics of 6-10 characters to mixed case 12 character-plus jobs, have got myself a GPG key with which I’m slowly starting to encrypt things and I’m having to do without cards because, of course, they all have to be changed now because some poxy git couldn’t be bothered to pay for his own sodding vaseline and spot cream.

And I really don’t know how they got in. Grumble. Although as far as I know, the Met., Boots, Paypal, Dyfed-Powys police & the Bank are all looking into it (which would give me more comfort if it didn’t sound just a bit like the plot synopsis for an Ealing Comedy…) Spoke to a chap from the police down in London the other day, actually, he was nice & friendly & seemed to think I was likely to get the money back, at least.

Still a pain in the arse, though.

Those of you with GPG keys, point me in the right direction & I’ll see if I can work the buggers.

and speaking of work: back to it, I suppose…

Falsehood of the Day

I’m 25! Woo, etc!

Quite possibly the oddest email I’ve recieved for years:

Happy 25th Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Normally, this is where we send you on some birthday fling. But according to our records, you’re in a happy relationship. So we’ll respect that and just send you…a giant birthday cake: Click here to find your birthday matches!

Birthday Cake!

Happy day!

Exclamation marks!

…

This, of course, is from a website that (presumably) forced me to sign up at some point, which would explain why I fed them a pile of false information (I suspect I also told them my pre-Newport address and it’s pre-millenial postcode); I worked that out after only a couple of seconds of confusion.

What really puzzles me is why I set my fake Birthday to be the 8th of January, a full month ahead of time…

Fact Of The Day

Here at work people sometimes come in to read the books.

Personally, I don’t agree with that sort of thing; having started out working at the Bod I take the Copyright Library perspective that the purpose of a library is to keep a pristine copy of every book in case somebody needs it in the future. It is therefore imperative that if anybody needs a book we do not let them have it, because then it would no longer be pristine, which is has to be in case someone needs it in the future.

Ruth, I know, somehow fails to understand this basic principle, but I don’t see why; it’s simple enough – someone might need the book one-day, so we have to keep it in mint condition to ensure it lasts forever. Obviously you can’t collapse the wave, but collapsing waves seems to be what keeps the funding coming in, these days, and without funding I don’t get paid (and without getting paid, I can’t very well attempt to get out of my overdraft and start saving money at you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me-percent, now, can I?)

So we not only allow people to read the books, but to borrow them, too.

And, periodically, they don’t bring them back, and they run up fines.

Eventually, we send them letters. (We can do that, because their addresses are on file. Usually.)

Letters go out addressed by the mailmerge system, and look like this:

GUYBRUSH THREEPWOOD
221b Baker Street
London, W1.

Today we had a letter sent back to us by the Post Office. DPA and suchlike prevents me from using the actual name off the envelope, but mailmerge had printed it up all lovely, yet what I saw was this:

Return to sender – [Postie’s squiggles]

LARGO LAGRANDE
unknown

Well if you don’t know then we don’t!!

…Made me laugh, anyway.

Film quotations meme

Here are some rules
1. Pick 20 of your favourite films.
2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each film.
3. Post them for passing internet traffic to guess.
4. When somebody someone guesses correctly, I’ll cross out the quote and cite the name of the guesser, and of the film.
5. No Googling, Yahooing, or (God help you) Windows Live! Searching, or otherwise using search functions for the source of the quotes; that’s cheating and it ruins what little fun can be had.

Good luck!

I reckon this is very hard, but I’ve tried to go with a range of films and a variety of quotes from the obvious to the, uh, not anyway. We’ll see how you do, shall we?

Here are some quotes from films
1. Sorry, guys. It takes more than going down to your local video store and renting ‘Easy Rider’ to be a rebel. — Flashback / Ruth

2. You’re not seriously gonna believe this man, are you? Are you? He isn’t even from round here! — Hot fuzz / Heather

3. You didn’t just call to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ did you?! Hah. You have no-one else to call! — Catch me if you can / Matt in the Hat

4. Come on you miserable fat-head, get that fat-ass truck outta my way! [I’ve made that as easy as I possibly can, btw, but it’s still a hard nut to crack…] — Duel / Ruth

5. Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good! — Wargames / Pacifist

6. It leads everywhere. Get out your notebook. There’s more.

7. Character #1: I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!
Character #2: (Calmly) You don’t really mean you’ll kill me, do you. — Twelve angry men / MitH

8. His bath was tepid? Poor [Female Lead]! I’m afraid her married life will be the same! — Mark of Zorro (1940) / Anne

9. You swine! My regimental tie!

10. Character #1: I was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.
Character #2: So was Hitler.
Character #1: Ah, not twice.
— My fellow Americans / Ruth.

11. Character #1: Just because you’re English doesn’t mean you have to hide your emotions.
Character #2: I’m Irish, we let people know how we feel. Now fuck off. — After the sunset / Pacifist

12. You call this a happy family? Why do we have to have all these kids? — It’s a wonderful life / Claire

13. Character #1: I know I gave him four THREES. He had to make a SWITCH. We can’t let him get away with that.
Character #2: What was I supposed to do – call him for cheating better than me, in front of the others? — The sting / MitH

14. The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me! — Animal house / BenL

15. Since you’re new here, I’m gonna cut you a break… today. So, why don’t you make like a tree and get outta here? — Back to the future / MitH

16. Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones! You sure you got today’s codes? — Dr. Strangelove / Statto

17. Here’s to the pencil pushers. May they all get lead poisoning.

18. (Having caused the drowning of two people): I was sorry about the girl, but found some relief in the reflection that she had presumably during the weekend already undergone a fate worse than death. — Kind hearts and coronets / Ruth

19. Character #1: I didn’t know you could fly a plane.
Character #2: Fly, yes. Land, no. — Indiana Jones and the last crusade / Anne

20. I’m afraid Communism was just a red herring — Clue / MitH

Happy Super Bonus Question!
These are the assignment desks, one for each of the lines. This is the BMT, the IRT. Here’s the IND. There’s our artist in residence. And right through here’s our operations lieutenant, Enrico Patrone, who on weekends works for the mafia. — Taking of Pelham one two three / Pacifist

‘Come to join us for the last waltz?’*

As Statto has said, the mass closing of Woolworths is something that really doesn’t come across in words, so if you still have the rapdily-dwindling chance wherever you are (Newport and Aber, I know, are now out of the running, since my watch says 17:38 [in analogue, obviously]), go have a look.

I’ve been to two branches of Woolies today; Telford and Newport, and the experience had two very different effects on me.

In Telford, I was mostly going “meh,” at both the produce and the experience in general. But I never spent much time at Woolies in Telford (I would be surprised, in fact, if even today’s mooch about brought the time I’ve ever spent there to more than forty minutes). Woolies in Newport, on the other hand, is used to be right opposite the bus station, so in the days when I was catching that Godforsaken No. 83 back to Hadley on a daily basis it was a good place to go and shelter against the wind.

In point of fact, it was just such an excursion that prompted me to buy the first ever Little Red Book, because it felt wrong to mooch about for half an hour and come away without buying anything…

I wandred into Newport branch at about 17:00, half an hour before they were due to finally close to the public. There was pretty much nothing left by then, and most of the shelves were empty, but the whole place was crammed regardless.

Disjointed impressions:

…It actually left me feeling kinda mournful. Probably some passing psychologist could give me a reason for this, but I’d advice ’em to shove off rather than trying.

I have a roll of Woolies Clearance Sale stickers. This pleases me, and probably nobody else.

That’s it, I guess. Lame.

* This one is so obvious you get no points at all. Anyway, it’d just be ghoulish.

Quick notes

1. Am leaving today. Miriam is filled up and has had her tyres re-pressured; they were all 4-5 PSI below where they wanted to be, but that was because I assumed the ‘220’ they wanted them to be was the equivilant of ’22’ on the scale Morrisons was using, and it turns out that the Morrisons pump was working in PSI and the sticker I was looking at was working in BAR.

There’s apparently some manner of significant difference between the two; I’d dismissed it as being a decimal point or, failing that, an Imperial Vs. Metric thing, but it seems to be more like the difference between feet and stone. Whoops. Fixed now, though.

2. I was described today as ‘an antisocial, dissolute, borderline-sociopathic Bob Cratchit for our times,’ which is the most Awesome since ever.

3. Played some Left 4 Dead online yesterday, with some really fairly decent players. Connection was pretty chuggy at times, though, which counted against me, and we did get repeatedly slaughtered all the time (to the extent that the Director started leaving enormous piles of explosives about in the hope we might get out of the subway and move the plot on at all).

That was kinda fun; the ability to be on Almost No Health and still use my medkit to patch up the only guy in the squad who could shoot straight and didn’t go shout “SUPRISE!” in the Witch’s ear appeals to me. (For added Win he then shouted ‘Use yer pills mate, an’ I can chuck yer mine,’ in a slightly Scouse accent, which was nice and sensible on his part). A mate of his turned up shortly after and we got considerably further on before we all died again, opening the stupid horde-summoning garage door, and shortly after that my connection fell over again, so I left ’em to it.

4. Been finishing things off at work, these last few days, to make sure I don’t get split over two sections for the sake of tidying up loose ends. Not entirely sure that it’s working, so far, but never mind, I expect it will in the end. I skipped lunch and will owe an hour and so am going to vanish away at something more like 15:00, which is much better because I’m damn tired already.

5. Got paid today, which is a) good, because it means I’ve been able to clear my credit card already, and b) bad, because it means I’m going to be in a right bind by mid January. If you’ve yet to buy me a Christmas present, a large suitcase full of used £50 Bank of England notes will do me fine.

Hokay. Final push…

*After year 10 I just stopped doing games because it made my knees hurt. And was pointless.

Decrepitude update

The doctor told me it would clear up in a bit, and gave me a prescription for some drugs.

On the plus side, he gave me some halfway decent codeine – the 30mg / 500mg paracetamol mix, which actually does something (as long as you take two tablets), rather than that gormless placebonic 8/500 mg nonsense that they put in powdered baby milk.

Got some of my old-style pink 400mg ibruprofens, as well, but I’m keeping off those as much as possible on account of how ill they (eventually) made me.

I have a mild trismus, is what is wrong with my mouth; I’ve done something to sprain a muscle in the jaw, although I can’t think of anything [Pat Woolton Quote Goes Here]. On the plus side, Easton explained all of this for free, which was damn nice of him. (And how nice, too, for me to experience free dentistry at the hands of someone competent, and without needing to lose a tooth every eightmonth and a filling each six).

There is a limit to how fun funerals can be, but it was good enough, and I’ve been to worse (or, rather, I have been to funerals at which I felt worse).

O, hey. Time I got back to work. I’m less informative than I used to be, I fear. I put it down to lack of sleep, but I’ll fix that after the, uh, New Year…

Arrguffgh.

If this damn doctor doesn’t give me some proper bloody painkillers that actually do something, I’m going to swing a punch at him.

And then collapse in agony because I can’t bend that way, either.

I don’t know why people bother making Codine at 500/8 mgs, they might as well give me a sherbert dip for all the effect they have, and appartently Anadin Ultra need to be done under the Trade Descriptions Act.

Slept awfully. Kindly add Nytol to the list of medicinal products which Do Naff All.

Ow.

Blimey.

This isn’t shaping up to be such a good week, I think.

I was on my way down the hill at lunch, to fork over £410 for the poxy Council Tax.

Then my back went. Quite how it went, I don’t know, but it did something, and now standing up hurts like blazes and sitting isn’t much of an improvement. Ow.

On Wednesday, I’m going to a funeral.

Then I’m going to the dentist, to see if he knows why it hurts if I open my mouth more than half an inch.

And now it looks like I might be going to the doctors tomorrow in a bid to get my back kicked about a bit, although they’ll probably just tell me to take two asprin.

Nuts.

Good timing that bottle!

So it’s been an up-and-downy sort of fortnight, full of peaks, troughs and, apparently, feathers brought on by the failure of my keyboard to hyphenate on cue.

I’ve been ill, which was horrible, since I was actually asleep for the whole time (I’m really bad at being ill; after the first couple of hours I get fed up of lying down and want to get up and do things, which tends to leave me being more ill than I was to begin with, but never mind). Still not sure I’m entirely fixed, to be honest, but never mind.

Drove to Shrewsbury for a dentists appointment, which was much better than taking the train. It used up half a tank of petrol, which means I spent about £5 more by driving than I would have spent on a train ticket, but on the other hand, I was able to arrive at the actual dentists, ten minutes before my appointment, have the appointment, and then leave again immediately, so I spent an entire three hours less time hanging about waiting for the trains to get their collective DEMU arses in gear.

Well worth a fiver. Encountered ice on Plynlymon, by the effective, though inadvisable, method of discovering my left wheels had gone crazy while skirting a hairpin a mile or two past the George Borrow hotel, and again in the valley of the Elvis Rock.

Came home via Mach. A pigawful road, but with less chance of finding a ton or two of expensive metal slip[ping] below me… and then drop[ping] with an almighty smash fifty feet to the bed of the stream…*

Shared whisky with Matt at the weekend, over House of Cards. Rather enjoyable, and there was splendidly good timing on the part of the bottles of alcohol various, because they contrived to get opened about twenty minutes after I found out that Peter, an old family friend, had died.

Currently awaiting information on the date of the funeral, so I can book time off to get back for it.

As I say, a pair of weeks with ups and downs. And now, apparently, I have to go show a work experience girl the cataloguing program. She wants to know about LC Classification, apparently, which I’ve never been called on to do, and it seems odd for me to be the one explaining actual cataloguing procedures, too (especially since I’m only upgrading very basic old records that got stranded by a system change in the late ’80s) but there you go.

I just wish I wasn’t obliged to miss out on my tea break for the sake of it…

*A tricky one. A full pint (or bottle) of beer in it this time.

Ow!

I have just fallen over.

This is a surprise to me, because I honestly can’t remember when I last did that. But we’re talking a seriously long while ago. A proper fall, as well; I was trotting down some steps towards the Thos. Parry library and the toe of my right shoe caught on the edge of the last step, and I went right down on the floor. Gravel rash on my hand, and everything.

The jolt surprised me, and then there was the ‘I just punched tarmac’ feeling of warmth, and I seem to have twisted my back and my knee out of joint. All very exciting, but I’d rather not make too much of a habit of it, if I can.

It really has been forever since I fell over, though*, (I’ve tripped, a few times, but always caught myself again) so mainly I’m just going ‘Hey, that was novel!’

I’ve left my phone in the Uberflat. I’d go back for it, but have decided not to. Kindly communicate with me by e-mail until 19-00ish; I’ll probably have it back by then.

I wonder if I can have a cup of tea before I go to count shelves…

*Skiing doesn’t count, on account of I was on two planks of wood in ice and snow and the middle of Europe, so it’s not like falling was a surprise, or anything…

Update, in the manner of an unhelpfully-titled pile of generic.

Been listening to a lot more Billy Joel lately, especially at work (not least because I keep forgetting to take my MP3 player to work, so I’m using the N95 instead.).

I do concentrate better with music in the background, as long as I know it relatively well (otherwise I have to keep breaking concentration to listen to the words!), so it’s nice to have an office where nobody minds on the grounds that ‘it does help you concentrate, especially when you’re doing something repetative.’ Colleagues WIN, I think…

…On the other hand, there’s something very, very wrong-feeling about playing Red Alert 3 while a background copy of Winamp belts out, uh, Leningrad.

On the plus side, every faction in RA3 seems to have adopted the traditionally Soviet policy of only employing women with tight-fitting costumes as their chosen military liason to the Completely Untested Commander With No Experience Of The Week…

Back still hurts. Knees still hurt. Left elbow seems to be setting up to hurt on a regular basis, the bastard. If I’m snappish that’s possibly why. The backache is a sod because I don’t know what will set it off, and the elbow is making me really irritable because it’s never happened before, so I’m not used to it giving out knee-style pain, which is making it much harder to ignore the damn thing than it would be if it was just a knee, and only doing what I expect of it. /whinge

Upside: field trip to the archives today, I’m looking forward to that!

I think that’s everything, for now, though.

A word of advice…

…to those who have leather jackets, shaved heads, and ‘L-O-V-E’ and ‘H-A-T-E’ tattooed over their knuckles:

Don’t wear chunky gold-coloured signet rings on your little finger.

A pair of fists that proclaim ‘LOVE’ and ‘HAT’ are never going to look cool.

Just a thought…

‘If Tyler Durden knew how to change a tap, he wouldn’t have to punch people in the face.’

Today’s blog post title comes from a nice little essay by Ferrett, whose LiveJournal I read.

Since it’s less than a fortnight since I was spectacularly failing at changing the washer in a tap (although, to be fair, a plumber had previously said the whole thing was seized; I was mainly there as a checking-he-isn’t-a-lying-git capacity), that one struck a chord.

I’m feeling fairly cheerful, at the moment. I expect it’ll wear off presently, when I finally come to my senses, but I’m doing OK. I was a bit worried when I went to bed yesterday, because I’d developed a splitting headache behind my eye, and I thought it could be caused by the mixing of wine and whisky last night, but I’m fine this morning, so I was probably just tired. Still am, actually.

(I think work ought to give me an incentive to get out of bed in the morning*; we only have a single storage heater, so getting out from under the covers means making my knees start to hurt unless I immediately get some trousers on, except that [because we only have one storage heater] any trousers I can find are also really cold, and turn out to speed the chill into my bones. Plus, y’know, it’s a bed. Nobody likes getting out of one of those, even to make their phone stop playing ‘They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard, when it’s nice and warm and cosy.’)

I have spent most of the last few days having meetings. The first one was with Hugh Preston, who is the Admissions Dude** out at what I think of as DILS, but which now seems to be simply DIS; the Department of Information Studies. It is looking increasingly like doing a Masters is a sensible thing to do; not only do I get the M out of it, but (because of the way the course is carefully set up) it’ll qualify me for membership of CILIP, too. Both of these things seem to have a fairly immediate impact on the kind of jobs one can get, so it’s looking like a good plan.

The second meeting I had was with Mike Smith, whom I may have mentioned before, way back when I was being a Student. Essentially, he is awesome (which I’ve thought for ages, but he gets bonus Awesome because it turns out he seems to really like me, as well, which is shiny) and will give me an academic reference, which I’d need to actually get onto the aforementioned course.

I’m still a little torn between doing the course Part Time and doing the course Full Time. The main difference is that if I do it Part Time it will take 2 – 5 years, and I have to be in a Relevant Job, but I can start this April and the University will pay my tuition for me while I’m working here (until the end of June), and after that I can run off to The South, or something. With the sole exception of that last point, all of those are both Pros and Cons pretty much equally.

If I do it Full Time it will take about 12 months, I don’t need to worry about finding a Relevant Job or else in the meantime, and I have to stay in Aber for at least 9 months (although once I’m down to the actual Writing A Diss stage, I can go and do so from ‘pretty much anywhere.’ These are all relatively positive, and the only major problem is that I will magically Not Have Anything Paid For, although since the University would only be paying the first two or three months of my tuition if I went Part Time, that’s not so huge a thing as it might otherwise sound.

So… we’ll see.

And that’s all you people are getting from me, for now.

O, except I finished the Allied campaign on Red Alert 3, and I really need to write to EA at some point, to find out why they’d preffer me not to buy any of the games they’re releasing.

(Yeah, I know I keep banging on about this. It just bugs me that these people are sufficiently retarded to think that making a game with invasive anti-piracy measures which you don’t get on the inevitable pirate copies will encourage people to pay hard currency for the inferior copy-protected version, rather than pirate it for free. I just can’t help but feel that anyone incapable of spotting the FAIL inherent in that philosophy is probably someone who shouldn’t be allowed metal cutlery, never mind influence over the gaming industry…)

Anyway, I don’t mean to keep you from your surfing with an argument you all know and agree with; I just figured all of the EA executives might swing by on a Googlewhim***, realise they’re all cretins and commit seppuku in pennance…

Enjoy…

* Money doesn’t count. Or, at least, not this ammount of money.
** Actual title may vary.
*** You can use this word. I don’t mind.

Must be winter…

Every day this past fortnight that I have woken up I have done so with my left knee killing me and my back playing hob so as not to feel left out. After a remarkably mild year for that kind of thing, I’m out of practice at the whole “constant background pain” thing, which is a right bugger.

I had toothache the other week, and that hurt like crazy, as well. (Although, to be fair, I find that re-assuring, since it means I now have a dentist such that I’ve not got toothache all the time and cease to notice it.)

Next month I have a dentist’s appointment, in (of course) Shrewsbury. Very kindly they’ve given me the time off work gratis (rather than my having to book it from annual leave). Only for this one occasion, of course, but all being well I won’t need another check for at least six months, so I hope I can dodge that bullet and hang onto my leave for when I need it.

Wedding venue scouting was good. It actually did me a Hell of a lot of good to sit and re-read all the brochures everyone sent me, just so I could remember how angry they made me. I mean, seriously, who in the name of God sends out brochures that say (when you boil off the insincere congratulations) “You will give us large sums of money in used Treasury notes, and in return you will get to do exactly as we tell you, eat what we tell you to, throw yourselves out building you’ve paid to use when we tell you to, and then you can give us more money.”

…I think what baffles me more than anything about that is that it must work, or it wouldn’t be profitable to keep doing it. I just find it annoying. One of the things I like about Prospective Venue A is that it gives a firm impression of being flexible. It gives a fairly strong impression of Turquoise as well, of course, but mainly it’s an impression of flexible. And I think the turquoise will be quieter with the shutters open and the lights on.

And, finally: if you’ve not seen it already, zoom your browser* now to this beauty of a story over at El Reg, which has got me literally laughing ’till my eyes watered, and everyone looked at me funny.

*’chug’ in IE

Updates! Woo, &c.

OK, so I went all quiet again. Profuse apologies.

On the other hand, I came down with Fresher’s Flu good and hard, through my usual tactic of stressing out, sleeping badly and consequently waking up with an immune system that saw an infection and went in like the US Marshalls*. Consequently I got pretty well slaughtered within a day.

By last Wednesday, however, I was up and about a bit more, so I came into work, for which I am entirely made of grateful, since I got to attend a little lecture about the awesome books they have over at Lampeter (featuring my personal highlight: getting to touch a book printed by Wynkyn de Worde in Caxton’s workshop in 1470, also a book of hours from the 1490s) and go on a Field Trip to the town library, which was also really good fun.

A downside of that, however, was that it comprised my usual overstretching-myself-while-ill routine, with the result that by Wednesday evening I felt so lousy I couldn’t even be bothered to play CoD4 & just went to bed. On Thursday a doctor told me I was horribly infectious and banned me from work, so I went home and proved her right by infecting everyone in the Uberflat. Hm.

Finally feeling better, apart from the cough, which is still a real pain, but which I assume is going to clear itself up a bit presently.

Assuming I can be bothered I’m starting to think I may have to do a review of the re-release (basically) of Colonization. I’ll have to see if I can grab some time when Ruth isn’t using the laptop next week.

Am currently looking into the Masters-ness. Hmm. Looks expensive, but I’m booking a meeting with a chap out at DIS, so it’s possible. Although since I never even had to do an undergraduate dissertation I look at phrases like “not more than 15,000 words” and my head hurts. But, meh. Continued vague postings as events warrant.

It is getting colder and darker, once more. This means two things:
1. We need to light fires to coax the sun back to us so it doesn’t go out.
2. It is waistcoat-wearing season again, huzzah! (For, incidentally, about the 7th year in a row).

In consequence of 2 (and the addition of my Drizabone, a nice gusty wind & my hat) I got described as “Looking very steampunk,” the other day. So that was nice.

Think that’s everything. Enjoy.

*Cite the source (where, who says it, and to whom) “Go in like the US Marshalls!” for a free pint at the Ship & Castle. Jimmy, I’m particularly looking at you, here.

Well, since you’ve all stopped guessing…

Fascinating set of responses to the Name The Song meme. I will do it again, when I have a moment, but I’ll do it by Random-from-a-specific-set-of-MP3s, not Random From All, which I think is why a few got missed, because even I reckon they’re hard.

Still, for those of you who may’ve wondered, the unsolved songs are the following,with full first verses for context.

1. Veracruz / Warren Zevon:
“I heard Woodrow Wilson’s guns /
“I heard Maria cryin’ /
“Late last night, I heard the news /
“That Veracruz was dyin'”

2. Body of an American / Pogues:
“A cadillac stood by the house /
“and the Yanks they were within /
“and the tinker boys, they hissed advice /
“‘hot-wire her with a pin.'”

3. I don’t need this pressure, Ron / Billy Bragg:
“What was that bang, it was the next big thing /
“Exploding over out heads, and soon the next generation /
“Will emerge from behind the bike-sheds. What’re we going to offer ’em /
“The exact same thing as before, with a different way to hear it, and the promise of a whole lot more.”

6. Time will show the wiser / Fairport Convention:
“My mind keeps on tellin’ me that this is no good /
“And my heart is aching, and tells me I should /
“But only time will show the wiser.”

7. 7-year bitch / Slade:
“You’re going round the circle /
“Through another phase /
“Your temperature rising /
“You’re wining and dining /
“A girl who’s half your age”

8. Low / REM:
“Dusk is dawn is day /
“Where did it go? /
“I’ve been laughing /
“Fast and slow”

Sins of the family / Oyster Band:
“She had a bad childhood while she was young /
“So don’t judge her too badly /
“Had a schizophrenic mother, who worked in the gutter /
“Woulda sold her soul to the devil gladly.”

…And that was it. You got all the others. And out of those even I doubted people would get 3, 8 & 9. Congrats!

I’ve just noticed a really weird thing. Lyrics don’t actually look as good if they’re written down than when someone says ’em. Huh. Still, if’n any of them appeal, you’re welcome to come over and have a listen. Unless I’m feeling antisocial, in which case don’t.

And now I’m going to bed.

Multiple Things.

Haircut:
Well, first up I’ve just had a haircut. Was surprisingly quick, and fairly painless. I don’t get on with haircuts, as a rule. Unless I know the barber I never have anything to say, and I just sit there gawping at my own reflection and wondering if I’m moving my head too much.

The barber in Hadley was a decent guy, once I got to know him, and Gino in Newport is the only chap I’ve met who knows what I mean when I say “Er, well, a general trim, I guess. Sort of a short-back-and-sides, but short on top as well, and I don’t want a fringe*”.

Also, of course, the hanging about while the queue depletes before your very eyes can be pretty lame, especially if you’ve not got a book. This haircut only took twenty minutes, though, thus getting me to the “really uncomfy feeling of hairs stuck down the back of my collar” even faster than I expected. Whee.

My face has mysteriously become oval**, and my eyes seem to have got bigger. Like I say, I don’t get hair.

On the plus side, I shouldn’t need it cutting again before the Spring, which means it should be able to grow to a nice warmish sort of length before the frosts come, thus providing me with further insulation. Win.

Supreme Court meme:
Sarah Palin has famously (in America, that is, over here we didn’t notice; I got this from zoethe) been asked to list some Supreme Court rulings, and came up with a grand total of One (Roe V. Wade, natch) before descending into silence. This pleases me, because that means I know more about American law than a prospective Vice President of the United States of America***. I can name two Supreme Court rulings, only one of which is Roe V. Wade.

Anyway, there’s now a meme. It goes like this:

Post info about ONE Supreme Court decision, modern or historical to your blog. Any decision, as long as it’s not Roe v. Wade.

…then there’s some stuff about spreading the fun, but you all know I’m just showing off my dubiously-aquired knowledge.

Anyway, I pick the Only Other Supreme Court Ruling I’ve ever heard of (not bad going, really; I didn’t even hear about the Supreme Court until I was 19 or so).

I pick Hustler Magazine, Inc. V. Falwell.

Background to the ruling is as follows:
– Jerry Falwell is one of those famous TV Fundies.
– Campari is an alcoholic beverage, which in the 1980s ran an ad campaign where famous people “talked about their first time” (drinking Campari. See what they did there?)
– Hustler Magazine is a porno mag, the kind men read “strictly for the photos of the naked women.”

…y’can all see where this is going already, right?

Back in the early 1980s Hustler printed a mock Campari Ad wherein Falwell “talked about his first time.” The clever twist was that it was his first time having sex. With his mother, while they were both drunk on Campari. In an outhouse.****

Falwell wasn’t too pleased about this, and sued for libel, and hurt feelings, and what have you. Very long story short: it went to the Supreme Court in 1988. The Supreme Court had a think and then, by 8 votes to 0, came up with the following ruling:

The creators of parodies of public figures are protected against civil liability by the First Amendment, unless the parody includes false statements of fact made in knowing or reckless disregard of the truth.

Since the Ad in Hustler was listed in that edition’s contents as “Fiction; Ad and Personality Parody,” and since the fake Campari ad said it was a parody, and they didn’t actually think Falwell lost it to his mother whilst drunk on Campari [I’m paraphrasing], the ad wasn’t made in knowing or reckless disregard of the truth, but more in a spirit of fun.

Basically, “It’s OK to say such things about famous people, just as long as you don’t try and pass them off as being actually true.”

Given that Sarah Palin is a prospective Vice President of the United States of America, I’m growing really fond of that ruling… I mean, dinosaurs. Ffs.

Well lunch is nearly over, and I’ve got hairs all down the back of my neck. Guess I’ll leave the post about the N95, and the Answers to the bits of the meme nobody got yet for another time, huh?

Enjoy…

Footnotes:
*I’ve never worked out what a fringe is for. It spends three months growing into my eyes, gets chopped off, and then starts all over again. Why?

** Still, pudgy, but oval. Less moon-like, anyway, which is a start.

***For a given, and mainly wrong, value of “know,” anyway.

**** I honestly don’t know which bit of that paragraph I find more disturbing.

Meanwhile…

…Fun and frolics yesterday when Orange put a bar on my phone, to prevent me from communicating with people.

A service provider that does this when I’ve not paid them for three months I can deal with. A service provider who does this when only the other day I gave them the full balance of my account is something I get stroppy about. Especially when they let me wade through their stupid automated system for ten minutes before it rings at the other end and then cuts me off because “Calls from this number are barred.”

Anger.

So I called them from Ruth’s phone, sat about for twenty minutes whilst Hold music looped at me and finally got to speak to someone who, to his credit, did a good line in apologising to the curtly civil customer who’d been, it transpired, an unfortunate victim of the automated system not picking up on the payment. Yes, they had taken the money, and they hadn’t lost it, and his colleague was removing the bar even now, sorry for the inconvenience.

…Was there anything else he could do for me?

Actually, yes, thank-you for fixing that mistake. But whilst I was there: when did my contract run out?

…pause…

I got put through to somebody. Now I was asking because I’ve not treated my N73 very well; I’ve dropped it a lot, and it’s developed some infuriating quirks. Like taking a full minute and a half to show me the contents of a newly recieved text message. Like turning itself off in my pocket. Like waiting for five rings on the other end whilst it has a think, before it actually tells me who is calling and gives me the option to pick up.

No, really. I tested it by calling myself. The landline rang five times before the N73 stopped lighting itself up to no avail and told me the Uberflat was calling. I can’t be having with that, in a phone. I get called relatively rarely but I do need to answer the blasted machine when it happens.

So I asked about getting an upgrade. The availiable upgrade phones at the minute are mostly not great – from an N73 user’s perspective they’re mostly downgrades, with an odd sidegrade thrown in for dubious measure. Except, of course, the N95 8Gb. Which I’ve faniced since El Reg talked about it.

Orange customer services have really gone up since I last checked. They’re sending me out one of them. And a new contract that kicks in on October 15th, which’ll give me 1,200 free minutes, 500 free texts (I was on 100, and I’ve taken to using all of them of late) and a choice of free landline calls, free Orange-Orange calls, unlimited texts or unlimited data. Per month. For about a tenner less than I’m spending now on my current 300 minute, 100 text, 30Mb setup.

Om nom nom*! Sure, it’s not the N96, but I’m getting it now, and it only set me back £30. Win!

I’m really quite chuffed. So much so that I didn’t even mind when the N73 turned itself off for three hours yesterday afternoon, apparently unhappy with the way I’d, uh, laid it down on the desk. I think this’ll be the first mobile phone I’ve ever thrown away; I’ve always given them to other people before but I’m not sure I’d give this raddled playmobil reject to a dog…

Still, N95. It’s meant to turn up on Tuesday. I am, for once, looking forward to the end of the weekend, and the arrival of Next Week. Although I am going to have to do the ironing, later…

The Meme seems to be causing people a strange mix of interest, ire and feelings of isolation. I think I shall do another one, presently, and break the rules by carefully tailoring the results to things I anticipate people being able to get. In my defence, I did wonder when the results started coming out of Winamp, but I figured that whoever thought up the meme might have considered such potential weak points. Remind me to have less faith in such people in the future.

* Review link included solely because spluttered tea once I got to the phrase “A definite improvement on the vanilla N95.” Because that’s how tech [and you could argue, society] works. When the N95 came out you’d’ve been laughed out of town if you called it vanilla. Hell, it did everything. the N95 8Gb does pretty much the same thing, but with a heftier battery hidden in a slinky black number. Quick way to get the older model boosted down a notch, by the looks of it.

I’ve been good and not uploaded a meme FAIL.

But, y’know. I figure this will interest / infuriate at least, er, three of you. So there we go.

It’s one of those memes that has Rules, which I’ll chuck up for your benefit at the start, so you can work out what you’re doing, even if that turns out to be “thumping PgDn good and hard.”

1. Put your music player on random. (having first loaded all your MP3s into it, I assume)
2. Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song. (Unless it’s spoken word, or entirely instrumental, or has a first line which consists entirely of the title of the song, in which case I’ve skipped it, as it’d be unfair on yez.)
3. Let everyone guess what song and artist (or musical) the lines come from. (Comments enabled. Knock yourselves out.)
4. Embolden the songs when someone guesses correctly. (Uhm. Kay.)

Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING! (In capitals, an’ everything. Must be serious…)

I’d just like to point out that 20 doesn’t seem like very many. I mean that’s, what, 1 song opening per 3 Gb of MP3s? [62Gb/20=3.1; please correct me if that doesn’t make sense.]

Still, let’s see what kind of a mood the RNG’s in, shall we? (& nuts to Popular Culture.)

1. I heard Woodrow Wilson’s guns / I heard Maria cryin’
2. A cadillac stood by the house, and the Yanks they were within
3. What was that bang? It was the next big thing / exploding over our heads
4. They passed me by / all of those great romances

–One of us / ABBA


5. I’m dancing on the White House lawn / sipping tea by the Taj Mahal at dawn

–Life is a minestrone / 10cc

6. My mind keeps on telling me that this is no good / and my heart is aching, and tells me I should
7. [large quantities of saying “Woah”] You’re going round the circle / through another phase
8. Dusk, is dawn, is day / where did it go?
9. She had a bad childhood while she was young / so don’t judge her too badly.
10. Turn away / if you could get me a drink of water / ’cause my lips are chapped and faded

–Cancer : My chemical romance My chemical romance


11. Everything has a beginning / everything comes to an end / Take it or leave it, you’d better believe it / be my lover, be my friend

–Hero (Sweden ; Eurovision, 2008) / Charlotte Perrelli


12. O is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel? / Ah, just twenty thousand people standing in a field?

–Sorted out for E’s and whizz / Pulp.


13. Michael wears his tan like a flasher wears his coat / he’s full of mad adventures, he’s full of anecdotes

–Dangerous / Fairport Convention


14. Isaac, nice chap / died of cancer / I gigged with him / many times

–Death song / PBH


15. I tried to come down from you / tried with your voice in my head, knocking me back, every inch I moved

–Curve of the Earth / Matt Nathanson


16. I still hear your voice when you sleep next to me / I still feel your touch in my dreams

–Every time we touch / Cascada


17. Papers in the morning / bowler hat on head

–Cardiac arrest / Madness.


18. A malady / has taken him over

–London lives / Blur


19. It was eyes down at the bingo / on that lucky Friday night

–Tux on / Marillion


20. Ron and Nancy got the house, but Sid and Nancy rule / I died eight years ago, I’m still a legend at my high school

–Alleluia / Dar Williams

… Hm. I’ve erred on the side of verbosity there, because I think the RNG is in an Obscure mood. Well, I say obscure. What I mean is “Things I don’t expect you people to know.”

“I’ve got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts…”*

It is currently Thursday. And I am still amazingly tired from last week. Mainly, I’m tired from last week thanks to all the driving I did, which I’m actually finding fairly tiring.

[Out of curiosity, I just ran all my destinations through Google’s patent Evil Maps Of Global Domination (beta), and it turns out I actually drove for something like 720 miles. I’ve got a map, and everything, but since putting an image of the map onto the Internet would require Technical Skill, I can’t. No, really. Hardware I can footle about with, and DOS I’m still pretty hot on, but all this Internet stuff really isn’t my line of geekage. Sorry.]

Anyway, 720 miles. Although there weren’t floods this time. There were BNP rallies, and dual carriageways with inexplicable 40 mph speed limits in the Staffordshire moorlands, and there was an Audi doing 35 mph down a hill (why even buy an Audi then, guys? Why not just get a Ford Mondeo?), but there weren’t floods, so it was a step up on my first driving experience. But it was still really quite shockingly tiring.

That got compounded by Freshers Fair on Monday (back in the Sports cage, again, I see), where I was mostly standing up and waving bowls of sweets at Freshers. And, of course, 2nd and 3rd years. And, inexplicably, students wearing Penglais School sweaters. Uh, no. Kids, if you’re going to blag your way into places you shouldn’t be, and people are going to see you doing that, at least try and dress the part. I worked this out when I was 16. What’s wrong with you people? Also not looking like a beaten rabbit might help.

I got loads of free stuff. It was great.

However, it was also pretty tiring, and every night since, um, Sunday I’ve said to myself “I must get an early night and become Rested.” And every night it hasn’t happened.

This is partly because I wake at 07:30. I suspect, although I’m always too tired to remember to check, that the very first thing I do in the morning is realise the alarm is going off, and promptly swear. I’m fairly sure my eyes keep opening in the middle of some word or other, but I never seem to catch it.

From 07:30 until 08:45ish I’m mostly running on autopilot, I think, and then, as the day goes on, I run on Autopilot but with less and less energy, and more in the way of yawning, and frightening myself when I look in the mirror.

This peaks (or troughs, I guess) in a period of utter exhaustion around half past four, when my limbs get all sluggish and don’t fancy moving much. Then, for no reason at all, it gets to about 19:00 and I wake up. At that point I become fresh as a daisy until at least 23:00, and even if I start to get tired then, it’s more of a “Huh, I should sleep at some point, because I’ll probably be a bit worn out in the morning” than the proper “Seriously, I’m turning off now. Don’t bump into anything while I’m out. Love, brain.” that normally tries to nobble me around mid afternoon.

I’m not sure why this should be the case. I think there must come a point in my sleep cycle where my body decides that since I’m obviously never going to take its advice, it may as well just go with the flow until I finally come round to the idea of bed myself.

…Why it doesn’t act like that in the mornings, when I actually need to be up and doing, I honestly don’t know. But I wish it would.

On the plus side; ’tis nearly Saturday. I’m hoping I can manage to get a lie-in, on Saturday. Probably this will mean I wake up at 8, full of beans, and go and play some Call of Duty until noon. At which point I’ll find myself not only exhausted, but also unnable to have a nap for no obvious reason.

O well. Thursday afternoon. I think that means they’ve got me searching for the finis africae counting shelves up on F. Should be fun. :-)

* This one’s a bit harder than usual. Not just beer but a rare ‘JTA is impressed’ face if you cite it properly.

Service Announcement

I would strongly reccommend that, excepting those few of you who may have reason to believe I’d go out of my way to help you, you all do the sensible thing and keep your distance.

Otherwise, I’m sorry to say, I shall be very much responsible for my actions.

That is all.