2009 — 16 March: Monday
Again, it seems to be pretty cold (3C) out there right now. Having watched Good Will Hunting1 I'm lazily contemplating leaving the tiny handful of dishes unwashed until after a smidgen of sleep. What a slob, heh? Time for my next picture of Christa, in dear Mama's driveway back in April 2006:
Christa, Claire, and Lis, April 2006
As I told Carol by email at the time, "NZ sister-in-law shows up in a couple of weeks for her Mum's 90th ... and to return with daughter #3 who is ending her career as a London nanny and turning instead to NZ nannying for child of daughter #2 who can then go back to what she does best, viz. flying helicopters for the Air Force down there. This will all entail another trip to the Midlands, en somewhat masse, as Big Bro is quite keen on hearing a first hand report of state of the Aged P (let alone the Aged P-in-law)."
We duly made the 320-mile round trip on 2nd April, taking Lis up there with us, and swapping her over to Claire to drive her back in the borrowed BMW.
Later today will be plenty soon enough to contend with the credit card bill (sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof). G'night, at 01:35.
Shame on me!
The only Margaret Atwood work I know is The Handmaid's Tale.2 My NZ chum tells me the snippets from her on YouTube are so good he could stay up all night watching and listening. Life is just too short sometimes. Good morning, Ian!
The sun is shining again, by the way. There are a few bits here that made my lips twitch. Particularly this inner dialogue...
As a lifelong nerd, I often forget this myself, and will excitingly ("excitedly"? — Ed.) hand over a gamepad to a greenhorn visitor, encouraging them to "have a quick go" on some new release with the promise that it's "easy" and "intuitive", only to spend the next half-hour trying to explain that "you have to press X to open the door ... press X ... that's the blue button with an X on it ... no, you can't climb that tree in the background, it's just a bit of decoration — look, you just can't, so stop trying — oh ... you've accessed the inventory now ... the inventory, that's what you're carrying ... no, you've gone back to the menu now ... oh for Christ's sake, just give it here. Just get out and leave me alone ... "
Time already for the second cuppa. It's a long time since I've listened to Harry Shearer's "Le Show" but I enjoyed it this morning.
In afternoon news...
Pah! Now that Mr Postie's been, make that credit card bills. Still, I bumped into young Rod Patterson in Waitrose earlier; he was able to tip me the wink that the IBM UK pension is being increased by 0.1% — he was always such a joker! I also discovered that my latest 4-pint plastic bottle of cow juice from Sainsbury's wasn't too well fastened when it tipped over in the boot of the car. Lucky I had tucked it into one corner with a plastic sheet under it. The damage took only about five minutes to deal with and it was about time I washed the Waitrose shopping bag in any case.
Just one minor-league goodie today:
I was amused to note that the editor estimates his reader takes five hours to work through each issue from cover to cover. I managed the trick rather more quickly, while also confirming that the Blu-ray player does a fine job on CDs.
Later
Quite a lot later, actually. It's 22:45 and I earlier hosted another demo of the new screen. Tim seemed impressed. And Brian kindly fixed the lack of digital audio output from the little Linux PC and also set me on the path towards more efficient downloading of MP3s from the BBC to that particular PC. I await his detailed cheat sheet. So, a late evening meal, followed by some web-based homework on a chum's ever-developing web site. Since he seems to be working on it while I browse, however, I shall hold off for a while.
I have a couple of tasks that will take me out and about tomorrow — my cousin's birthday demands a visit to the Post Office, for example. And Brian left behind his "man bag", with rather a cute banana-shaped sandwich box in it. Progress continues on the relocation of "molehole" to its new server. Indeed, it's all done bar the DNS fiddling, but there's no great rush. I'm still predicting another walk on Wednesday, and the dishy man comes to do his satellite dish fiddling on Thursday. There's now a neat hole in my bank account, of roughly the size and shape of the three new items of kit. Good job it's only money...