2009 — 16 February: Monday
Well, as far as my web server is concerned, this has been very much the lost weekend. I live in hope of regaining access, and I know Junior is raising problem tickets. I also know the site is up and running in its new home...
Time for another picture of Christa, from June 2007, when she was trying on the wedding dress she'd bought in 1974 to attend her brother Georg's wedding ceremony back in Germany:
Christa in "that" wedding dress, June 2007
I must say, it was good to see the BBC production of "The History Man" again earlier. It was filmed in 1980, but set in October 1972, and full of close attention to period detail. Great stuff. I remember us watching it when it was first broadcast, of course. What a long time ago it all seems.
G'night.
Season of mists and...
... frustrated apologies. I regained access to my web server some six minutes before I lost my broadband connection at midnight. This was long enough to upload the text of some diary entries but not their accompanying pictures. "Things" appear now (at 08:27) to be back to "normal" though at least one of my email correspondents runs her email on a system that is already blacklisting my "new" email server from, as it were, Day 0. <Sigh>
In other news, the next crockpot is already stuffed and will shortly start to simmer, I trust. It's sunny, seems quite mild, dry so far. The cold is on the retreat. The finger is less sore, but is obviously intent on getting better in its own good time. World news remains depressing, irritating, trivial and amusing by turns. The world wags on, I guess. Meanwhile, this made me smile (again):
Speaking as a monkey's uncle's less popular nephew, I don't mind. If I have read Darwin half-way right, employing both opposable thumbs to prop up the book, natural selection depends on a majority always missing the point. Then we kill and eat them... Metaphorically speaking, obviously. I have no wish to chew your leg. But consider things from my evolutionary point of view. Here I am on a planet upon which, reportedly, two billion beings profess a Christian outlook. By my count, thumbs included, that's two thousand million mammals who are mildly mentally ill. Or blessed.
They concede, some of them, that Darwin had a point as to the viability of species. They admit that the poetry of a six-day Big Bang tends more to the spiritual than the scientific. They are not against science, as such, and have not burned anyone alive for ages and ages. But they tell me, while approving miracles, canonising the extra-holy, opposing stem cell research, and abortion, and birth control, and gay people, and bad words, and the simple ability to think independently, that natural selection is only a theory. Only.
Good heavens! I've just seen (in a comment by "John the Geologist" to the Jesus and Mo comic strip) a reference to an old proverb that, in turn, provided the 1971 book title "A melon for ecstasy" for John Wells and John Fortune. (Mind you, they claim it is from a Turkish proverb, not Saudi Arabian.)
The book is a barking mad satire, by the way.
Guess who's just...
... got back (at 15:47) from a trip down to the seaside at Bournemouth? Definitely time for a cuppa! Still no sign of the next issue of The Word in "Borders", but that didn't stop me from snaffling a couple of contenders for the teetering bedside pile in "Waterstone's":
I've always found Rory McGrath to be amusing and quick-witted. Though I have no idea if that's really a bearded tit on the cover. It probably is. Meanwhile, those of you with memories less addled than mine may well recall I bought the first edition of the Terry Arthur book back in 1975, and learned a lot from it. How could I resist this overdue updated edition? Sadly, of course, Alan Cummings (who drew the illustrations for the first edition) died in October 1997, so this time we have an artist new to me — David Gaskill.
Big bangs... dept.
The more I read into this, the less I like it...
The Ministry of Defence needs to explain how it is possible for a submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction to collide with another submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction in the middle of the world's second-largest ocean.
Almost as sickening was what the Lib Dem chap is quoted as spouting: "Now that this incident is public knowledge, the people of Britain, France and the rest of the world need to be reassured this can never happen again and that lessons are being learned."
Are they ever? Talk about MAD. Right! Betjeman may have been summoned by bells, but I have a hot date with a steaming crockpot.
(Up-)heave-ho, (up-)heave-ho... dept.
There was a time, in the dim distant, when I'd actively considered a career as an electrical engineer.1 Somehow, I ended up on an aeronautical2 engineering course trailing, as it were, in Big Bro's slipstream. Before my five years were up, of course, I'd moved on into the rather more congenial world of digital computers (or mainframes as they were called then).
Never looked back, to be honest. Until tonight.
Having spent 40 minutes or so on the phone (while my crockpot meal cooled) to my new best friend Brad at my UK ISP discussing the tangled web3 that is my home spaghetti junction of voice and digital lines in the wake of the latest collapse of my ADSL link, I have now ripped everything apart and reconnected just one PC, one landline phone downstairs (the exercise of racing down to beat the ansaphone will do me good, until I trip over the cables and break my neck), and two (don't ask) micro-filters. Best also not to ask just how many spare cables I have left over. Time to start with a fresh setup, methinks. I have engaged the services of my good buddy Mike — if nothing else, to give him a few belly laughs as he contemplates the chaos that underpins so much of what goes on here in Technology Towers.
Now, several hours and much dust later, not only am I back online, but I've squeezed about 20% more out of my broadband speed, just as the delectable Brad hinted I might — we were on first name terms long before the end of our first chat. I must have made quite a sight: LED-lights clipped to my forehead, mobile phone clamped to one ear, fingers trying to grapple with fiddly little network connectors out of sight and almost out of reach behind various makeshift filing cabinets and worse, without exceeding the current bendability of the sore digit (which also lacks much in the way of gripping strength at the moment).
Let's see if the kettle is back online. Good grief, it's 21:25 already.
Network bliss
Right! All three current machines are back on the network, as is the connection down to the living room. It would help if I knew where the devil I'd hidden the "wall-wart" for the Roku Soundbridge, but you can't have everything in this life. I shall re-instate the Linux HP Media PC downstairs for the time being. The iMac, and the upstairs HP Media PC are both playing nice back on the network and the landline phone still works. It turned out the bulk of the tangle of wiring in Christa's study wasn't actually connected to anything. Hangovers from the days of her fax machine and Junior's first attempt at a media server. (The noisy box he intended to park at the foot of the stairs, if you please.)
I have now retired her own PC, though it will do as a spare if need be. I suspect the Linux box will end up in what was her study. Well, that or the iMac. It would be quite nice to have one end of my study free of technology...
I think it's time to treat myself to a DVD and a snack. I'm sure I spotted a grapefruit with my name on it downstairs somewhere.