2008 — 25 Mar: Tuesday — shopping and...?
It's 01:02 and I'm fast falling asleep. I've just wheeled out the "green" bin so I can report it's jolly cold outside, and the sky is clear. I've made a good start on some of my image galleries, though they'll only be on the internal network, not out on the Web. I've also ordered a better screen to go with the new toy downstairs. I'll then move my old 18" LG screen back upstairs and re-attach it to what was Christa's PC. (Junior somehow managed to lay his hands on the newer 19" screen I bought for her a year or so back — she was never over-bothered about such things.)
More after a few hours of sleep. Anyone who's still awake can study this listing of European HD satellite transmissions.
I sometimes wonder...
.. why I continue to examine the weather forecast for my post code on the BBC's web site when it so rarely seems to reflect either what is happening or (more to the point) what turns out to have happened when looking back on the day. Brekkie is on its way down, and then I shall have to roust the car out and hit my increasingly well-trodden (ridden?) supplies trail. But I'd rather like to catch Mr or Ms Postie first, of course. As it's 11:01 I'm guessing it won't be long to wait.
Reading about Tory demands for an "inquiry" into the Iraq war, I also wonder how much longer that war is going to continue. Neologisms and euphemisms are no real comfort.
I even wonder how much larger the Java Runtime footprint will become. I can remember, back in 1996, we worried about the 4 or 5 MB it had reached, as we also worried about our ability to deliver such a large file safely over "the net". My system here (well, one of them) has just unfussily installed 143MB of updates. I didn't permit it to add all the European language support, either.
How am I doing?... dept.
Well, in response to a kindly enquiry along those lines from my chum Gill, I've just had this to say:
I'm doing OK-ish, but I miss Christa more than I can say, and I still weep daily as the grim reality of life without her continues to sink in... I'm no longer keeping quite so frantically busy. Mileage is only a little over 6,000 for example. I'm starting to read again, and catching up on some DVDs. Walking has of necessity been curtailed by the lousy weather as much as anything. The garden is beginning to nag me. I've even done some basic house cleaning. I tend to get to bed around 1 or 2 am and sleep six hours or so.
I could add, by the way, that I've bought my first copy of Radio Times in what used to be acceptable1 to describe as a coon's age.
Tea time already?
How did it get to be after 18:00? Blondie's "Atomic" is blasting away, and I'm contemplating the last — "dose" isn't quite le mot juste — of the recent crockpottery. I have an entirely different mixture in mind for the next batch. What you might describe as beefy back to basics. Sadly, Sainsbury's was unable to satiate my desire for a well-fired loaf, so I'm down to the last two living in the freezer. Lidl could do with letting more of their staff work on the tills at busy times (something that always bugged Christa, who hated being forced to hang around as she dashed hither and yon in between her various lumps of patent work). I see now, more clearly than ever, just how good she was at Time management. But I'm getting there, my love.
What clock? Such clock!
A favourite little bit of dialogue from one of our Top 10 films (Casablanca, of course). Point being, it's now 21:45 and I'm once again bemused at the slipperiness of Time. Mind you, I've phoned dear Mama, parcelled up three items of snail mail for Junior, written long emails to a couple of folk, heated and eaten my last "dose", enjoyed at least one cuppa, and am naughtily contemplating a chocolate Crunchie bar as a minor-league reward. Time to fire up the scanner for another little session of pixelating. At this rate, I'll even get a round tuit and finish ripping those four remaining cartons of my CDs. I need to as, I deduce, they have all my King Crimson albums in them.
Glyn Moody
Who he? A classy writer who hosts a classy blog about Open Source, inter alia. His current piece is well-put:
So there we have it: Microsoft's world, there is no such thing as disinterested generosity, no such thing as altruism. Which means, of course, that Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Tim Berners-Lee — to name but a few of those so-called "altruists" — are, in Microsoft's opinion, nothing but liars or utterly self-deluded....
What a sad, cold, lonely little circle of hell Microsoft inhabits.