2009 — 2 February: Monday
I spent some of the evening watching the David Attenborough "Tree of Life" programme on the HD channel followed, curiously, by 30 minutes or so of the "Parliament" channel, which captured three members of the Equitable Life Action Group arguing for Parliament to listen to its ombudsman rather than appointing yet another committee to sort out the tangled mess of the Equitable black hole. Strangely compelling viewing, although my own involvement with Equitable was a relatively small amount in an AVC some years back.
Right, time for the last of the two-week sequence of my antibiotics1 — and (of course) another picture of Christa:
Christa delivering the gravy, Old Windsor
I'd like to pretend the shot was angled for artistic reasons, but the truth is I didn't have much time to compose it! G'night, ahead of promised snow, it seems. Brr! As of 01:40 there's a light dusting, but it's about minus 5C. Horrid weather.
Snow White? Snow what!
When last I looked, just a sprinkling. Now (though with SSH currently failed on my web server again I can't publish this yet) there's over an inch of the stuff. My main co-pilot has saved me from the effort of toddling over the road...
It's 10:40 and the sun is now actually shining behind what seem to be quite thin clouds. Time for breakfast and a warming cuppa.
I know Christa studied English literature (and geography) at university for six years or so (in between some political activism), and her first job in the UK was at Royal Holloway College helping students of German literature to do better. But when I read this article, I felt relieved that I stayed away from a formal study of the subject. And I recall that, for many years, Christa had a recurring bad dream about lack of preparation for a set of exams. Even though she aced them all. Snippet and source:
I did a very foolhardy thing this fall. I retook the Graduate Record Examination in English literature, 25 years after I entered graduate school at the University of Virginia... The potential for embarrassment, I thought, was enormous — and, therefore, so was the perverse attraction. It seemed like a stunt out of a David Lodge novel. What if an English professor got a lower GRE score than some of the applicants who had been rejected from his own graduate program? It's not inconceivable...
I had to smile when I read this: a consultant is a man who borrows your watch to tell you the time, and then charges you for it. You don't always get the watch back, either. Great Scott, it's already 12:45 and my tum is suggesting a spot of input. Wonder if SSH is back up and running yet?
Nope. This is very irritating. Still, if I'd driven into London today at least I wouldn't have had to pay any congestion charge! (Don't ask me why, but I find it very difficult to take seriously the idea that Boris J is the mayor of our capital city — whatever the weather.) Katharine Whitehorn has just told us she gets her best ideas "after my second gin". So that's where I've been going wrong.
Spot the flaw in this logic...
Mr Amazon and his amazing Marketing Department emailed me a few minutes ago (it's 15:17 and still no sign of SSH resuming on my web server):
It's snowing cats and dogs, as it were, dammit!
Alas!
I cannot raise a support ticket, but I rather hope my son can, when he gets home fairly soon. I rather wish the boss of any organisation would try the experiment of contacting her organisation via its support interface. I guarantee most would find it a depressing and confusing business. Recall that film in which William Hurt played a doctor who developed cancer and had to work his way through the American medical system from an unfamiliar angle.
This is funny. Right? And the ever-reliable Ansible tells us: Heart-warming public safety news from a writer who worked on a UK patient information leaflet for oxygen, as supplied in cylinders to hospitals: the regulator insisted that he include the words 'Do not use if you are allergic to oxygen.' Meanwhile, it seems the Torygraph (I missed this) offered another list of 100 novels everyone should read. At #100 was JRR Tolkein (sic) with LotR (summarised by WH Auden, it seems, as a "tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery").
Pah!
Next time I look, it's not just SSH that is now in castors-up mode... I think the term for this is "full house". It's 19:47 and my thoughts are turning in the direction of hosting my own server again. Not a happy direction, that one.
The system got itself sorted out at about 20:20 — let's see how long it stays up this time.
Meanwhile, I've been watching, in grim fascination, some episodes from the first series of that family tree tracing programme "Who do you think you are?" Crikey, what interestingly screwed-up families there seem to be around. Makes my lot seem a good deal more normal!