2010 — 25 February: Thursday
It's 02:21 and I've been back from a meal (and two DVDs1) with Mike for about half an hour. Next task: some sleep. Then, before I know it, I'll be in the IBM Clubhouse for lunch and trying hard to look as if I miss working there :-)
(I don't.) G'night.
Bloody Microsoft!
There I was, trying to shut down the system, and here's the "Install updates" as part of the shutdown2 routine. No thanks; I like to see what gorp I'm getting. So I go through the Windows Update rigmarole manually. Three critical updates. One of them a "Web browser choice screen" that is selected, but cannot be removed once installed. This is about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. It's also known, in the trade, as piss poor programming. Still, I click cancel on it before it can slurp its way on to my system. So now (of course) I have to shutdown and restart just to make sure I defeated it.
Grrr. It's just reappeared on the system tray and will, once again, doubtless try to install itself on shutdown. So I've now gone "fully manual" to get to the screen I want where I can say "Don't install this, and don't tell me about it again". G'night (take 2).
Unintended consequences
I've occasionally been called "cynical". Some among my acquaintance still try to persuade me that (for example) Thatcher was our greatest living Prime Minister, or that sweeping away financial regulation or unleashing privatisation of state-owned enterprise and infrastructure was a smart, cool thing to do. Or "crushing the unions". Or permitting greed to rule. Or that removing mortgages from the official cost of living inflation indexes was sensible. "Not so" say I. Heck, even the BBC bangs on about religion in the face of, shall we say, some signs that it is a malign delusion from time to time.
But I never knew that the guvmint of our friends across the Pond, having once attempted to prohibit alcohol (technically, its manufacture, sale, or transport but — bizarrely — not its consumption) set about poisoning its tippling citizens. The comments attracted by Deborah Blum's recent article here are equally revealing, though in all sorts of different ways. Land of the (hic) free, indeed.
Must be time for a cuppa and some breakfast. It's 09:48 and seems fairly unwet out there.
It would appear...
... that I'm in some considerable danger of being reunited, in the vicinity of lunch, with a couple of DVDs that have been missing for (whisper it) nearly three years. With luck, and if she doesn't forget, they will be brought to me by the mystery guest I've invited to join a small gang at said lunch. Breakfast, meanwhile, is only just going in as it struck me that (if I wanted a nice, hot, meat-and-multi-veg evening meal) I'd better get on and stuff the next crockpot first. (That was done to the accompaniment of "Woman's Hour", which tends not to raise the blood pressure quite as much as news and current affairs.) The new scraper / peeler device works a lot better than the one we've had since 1974, and which in all probability belonged to Mutti before Christa exported it to the UK.
Tick tock, David. How (to paraphrase Pink Floyd) can you have any lunch if you don't eat your breakfast? It's 11:04 already.
[Pause]
Back, in the pouring rain, and now (at 15:03) digesting a late, light snack. (I'd left breakfast so late that lunch was unnecessary.) Nice to see, and chatter with, some of the gang. I also gave mystery guest (Brynja) a few of my painful-experience-derived tips on slide scanning, retrieved the two lost sheep ("101 Reykjavik" and "Japanese story") from her, and refilled the Yaris in readiness for tomorrow's expedition to chum Christopher's retirement "do".
I would love to know...
... how compassion can be assessed. Still, as long as it doesn't involve any popes, bishops, shamans (shamen?), politicians, judges, medical folk with a religious "bent", or Percy the Plod... In passing (pun unintentional) I'm amused to note that the Director of Public Prosecutions asserts that "The law applies absolutely to everyone" when that is observably untrue. (Source.)
Incredibly, it's nearly two years since Simon Singh's article about, shall we say(?), some of the claims made (without undue reliance on evidence) about chiropractic's ability to cure some childhood conditions. Such as ear infections. Still the libel case rumbles on. There is a mind-blowing3 report here (PDF file) on the varying costs of defamation proceedings across Europe.
I obviously haven't been watching enough commercial TV. Though I'm irresistibly reminded of the lovely little limerick Basil Ransome-Davis once wrote for a New Statesman competition.
As for the lead story on this evening's 6 o'clock news. Words utterly fail me. Neither compassion nor a mercy killing...
Tonight's video relaxation...
... has been the 1999 film The five senses. Look it up: I admit I had to. A slow-burn, but a rewarding experience. Jeremy Podeswa has done some interesting stuff.