2009 — 8 December: Tuesday
What unfun. Microspit doesn't yet have its promised batch of updates for me. Oh well, a quick bite to eat and off on the supplies trail before the rain returns. It's 09:38, cloudy, quite bright, and only +4C. Brrr.
My enjoyment of the Handel last night, by the way, was oddly tempered by the knowledge that he was only 22 when he wrote it. Amazing!
I'm past the first flush of youth... dept.
Which hi-tech Lab used an Elvish font to label its offices as places from Tolkien's Middle Earth? (Answer here.) One could also add "and why?" but I can still recall being more attracted to LOTR than to my A-level chemistry revision in the late 1960s. Must have been something in the water. I still don't grok the meaning of this: "human-level A.I. might require 1.7 Einsteins, 2 Maxwells, 5 Faradays and .3 Manhattan Projects" at the end of the piece.
Today's suggestion by Adam Holloway that "intelligence" regarding Iraqi WMD capability came from a taxi driver harks back, surely, all the way to "Yes, Minister" and the sage advice (in the context of an upcoming Cabinet reshuffle) always to trust what the ministerial car drivers said? Shades of the shoe-shine lad in those "Police Squad" episodes, too.
Shopping can be fun?
Well, if I adopt Christa's immensely positive attitude to Life, just about anything can be, I suppose. Anyway, I'm now (11:23) back, and see that the barometer has shot up. Remaining vaguely chemical, I'm predicting a spot of MSG in my near future, though not before the output of John's errant scanner has been demonstrated, and possibly diagnosed.
On checking the variety of possible routes available to me to get to him, I see that Google Maps is now also offering a beta "walking" route. Trouble is, they suggest I'd need 121 minutes, which is cutting things too fine for now. Besides, how do they know my speed? Wouldn't put it past them to have salted away my inside leg measurement, average calorific input, and already made great strides in solving this Fermi problem.
Having agreed...
... the next resting place for my previous A4 flatbed scanner (which Christa had told me not to throw out as she had her beady eyes on it), and returned, in grimly grey wet weather (what a change from the gloriously sunny blue skies of the late morning), I'm now wrapping myself around a hot cuppa. For reasons I guess I don't need to explore, I must say I'd never really noticed how depressing this sort of weather can be at this end of the year. Yuk! But thanks for the lunch, John, and good to see Janet on sprightly form.
It's 16:21 — what's next, Mrs Landingham? How about all those promised security patches?
Having it both ways... dept.
To be seen on the same page, currently:
If you're in a different region I guess your mileage may vary.
Yet another strange and novel...
... evening meal is now safely under my belt — I was determined to eat the prawns before they'd swum past their "Use by" date, I wanted to use the last of one batch of spuds, and I can always manage some "petits pois". Plus some multi-grain wholemeal bread and butter. What's not to like, even if I suspect you'll not find the result in Delia? Two oranges round off the "pud" and now I can get on with whatever else it is I do of a much more interesting nature when I'm not faffing around feeding myself on such tasty trifles :-)
It's 19:05 and I've just been told Minnesota is calmly expecting a foot of snow overnight. There's a world premiere ("Minea") just started. Now, as I listened to the Stravinsky, having finished the security patching, I've been pondering on this:
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
Time (20:17) for a cuppa!