2008 — 14 July: Monday
As I mentioned, Christa's friend Ute very kindly sent me over a couple of pictures of Christa from her schooldays in the 1960s. Like most people in long-term relationships, I expect, I used to wonder from time to time about Christa's life before we met. Tonight's picture of Christa is from a field trip she made to Berlin in 1965. She seems to be sharing a joke with one of the teachers accompanying her on this trip. Ute (seated on the far right) tells me "The teacher was our sports teacher Ellen Duis". I know it had been Christa's ambition to go in for sports teaching though her tricky shoulder put paid to that ambition. (I won't say "Alas", selfishly, because it occurs to me that had any of the myriad life choices she made before we met taken a different path we probably would never have met. And that thought is simply unbearable.)
Christa on a field trip to Berlin, 1965
My first trip to the great "abroad" was also in 1965, to Northern Italy. I was a mere lad of (nearly) 14. Christa was clearly a personable young woman at the time, relatively recently back from a year in Nebraska on a High School exchange programme. What different courses our lives were following at that time. Enough! G'night at 00:02 or so.
Is bigger better?
Having sunk the first cuppa, and accepted the parcel from UPS, and noted the shiny sun and the high barometer, I've just (10:02) learned that the mere prospect of my bank's takeover by a Spanish one (the one that owns the Abbey) has sent its shares up by 50%. Irrationality exemplified, if you ask me. I'm sure very very few mergers and acquisitions have ever resulted in half the outcomes promised; I regard them in the same way I regard political party manifestos, and that's not a high regard.
Where do all the Time bits go?
It's 14:46 and I'm just back from a spot of hedonistic hunter-gathering. Setting off in brilliant time, I promptly hit a "debris on road" three-lane go-slow on the M27. Arriving cool, calm, and collected by my leisurely driving at the Currys in Hedge End, I promptly (nearly) hit an uncouth youth who tried to sell me what I didn't want because what I did want was out-of-stock. So I drove back via West End (passing the hospice) and Swaythling and so to the giant funhouse that is John Lewis in Southampton — admittedly after a diversionary swoop into Borders first. I dined well on a bowl of chicken broth and a chunk of herb bread1 on the top floor, wandered down to the TV department, found and bought what I was after, then watched Christa's name and details come up on their sales system as I paid for it.
Then, as I passed the incoming hordes at the foot of the lift shaft (I'd taken the stairs, naturally) who should I see but a former IBM manageress of mine, Chala Fiske? Sadly, she wasn't able to master the lift door or other controls quickly enough to prevent her ascent. No matter. (Though if anyone knows her email, do let me know.)
Now all I have to do is wait another 90 minutes or so, and I can go and get whatever it is Mr Postie decided was too big for my letterbox. It's all go, the hectic whirl that is the life of a pensioner on what was, just a few seconds ago, a Monday morning, I tell you. Still, I have a Friday lunch date to anticipate. Thanks, Lesley.
Expensive EPG
My new little toy confirms that I can make no real progress in this brave new hdmi world without an hdcp-compliant display. (Which in my case, I 'ave not got, to quote from Henry Reed's wonderful poem.) I have been stopped at every border crossing, as it were.
The dinky little Humax Fox HD Freesat box (which runs amazingly hot, by the way) actually enables you to enable or disable hdcp protection (the default is enabled, of course) but the only HD channel of any current interest to me (namely BBC) has (according to the Humax) started "restricting" (that is, protecting) even the "rolling preview" (unless the Humax is telling porkies). So two things happen: 1) the analogue HD component output from the Humax is disabled, which means I can only use its hdmi output, and 2) because my scaler is hdcp-aware, the digital video delivered by my hdmi-to-DVI cable to the scaler tells the scaler "Hello, I'm hdcp-protected" and (because I don't have a digital video input on my plasma screen) when the scaler consequently disables its own analogue output, my screen goes blank. All I can do is use the good old standard definition RGB analogue video via the TV SCART on the back of the Humax.
Not so much "back to square 1" as back to about square minus 10 or so. The picture and sound are perfectly OK for standard definition, and at 576i play nicely through my scaler. But really, all I've got with this new box is the Freesat EPG — and I lose the BBC HD channel except as standard definition. Do you wonder why I get fed up with the technology sometimes?
Time to go see a Postie depot about an undelivered parcel.
Slash fiction
My eyes were first opened to this by "NASA / Trek" by Constance Penley a decade or so ago. Check out this link from Canada, however, wherein I learned a new acronym "PWP"! Made me smile. This IP stuff will get us all in the end, as it were. (Pause, to wipe eyes.) Time (17:23) to unpack two parcels. Crikey! Time to grab a bite to eat, too. And a(nother) phone call from a confused dear Mama to cogitate upon.
Nice review here on the new jokes book by Jim Holt. Example of his selection:
What's the difference between a Hungarian and a Rumanian? Each, of course, will sell you his grandmother, but the Rumanian won't deliver.
Ouch. Though the factoid that Damien Hirst is now worth more than Dali, Picasso and Warhol at the same age put together says a lot. (Source.) I never knew rabbits carried Cryptosporidium, but Anglian Water is blaming the outbreak on a bunny "gaining access to the treatment process" (and, presumably, getting into hot water). (Source.)
Unsuspicious death
I had no idea you could cut your own head completely off with a chainsaw. Crikey! (The source says three times that there are no suspicious circumstances, so it must be true!)