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2010 — 12 May: Wednesday

Something rotten in the network somewhere. My backup XP box can't load Microsoft's update page to repeat the security patching I've just carried out on my main machine. Nor can it connect to the Java update page. (No bad thing?) And the main machine can't access my Texan web server. Email is still getting in. Time (09:26) for a cuppa.

Fingers crossed. It's a Good Job we don't rely on these things, isn't it? I note that yesterday's forecast rain is currently manifesting itself as bright sunshine in a blue sky. Since an email from my ISP this morning suggested they had successfully got a BT engineer to wave his magic wand in the exchange, I thought I'd repeat my broadband speed test. Today's result:

Speed

Compare and contrast: December 2008 / November 2008
Reasonably unshabby. It's 10:26, and adventures await.

In later musings...

I'm back (it's 12:58 and still fairly sunny) from a partially-successful supplies run.

Having given up on trying to find wherever it is that Christa hid household gloves I bit the bullet and bought a couple of pairs, plus some long-overdue cleaning stuff. I shall be testing one of the plumber's theories shortly. Plus another batch of storage boxes and the marker pen I should have thought of in the first place. And another wodge of motion lotion for the car. It occurs to me that pension doesn't merely evaporate, it boils off at a high rate of knots (as it were). Still, it's only money. My deadline to get the house ready for the heating system upheaval is the end of this month. As Dr Johnson said, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.

But I reckon I've earned the right to whizz off this afternoon for a cuppa somewhere salubrious with my main co-pilot. All work and no play... (And 2,500,000 unemployed — the highest since 1994!)

Have a word with "BT"

I beg leave to disagree with the headline here. Though I note the related quote here, (about "connecting through talking" and a girl's pleasure centres), by Louann Brizendine. Meanwhile, reading comments to the piece here on a long-standing but elementary error in the OED definition of how a siphon works uncovers a new quote attributed to my hero Richard Feynman, namely his definition of what science is: The belief in the ignorance of experts. A tad harsh, surely?

Which naturally takes us straight here.

Being a card-carrying...

... wishy-washy, sandals-wearing, left-of-centre, bearded ol' fuddy-duddy, I have to say I'm delighted with what I've been hearing so far on Day 1 of our brand-new coalition guvmint. I had to smile, too, when I heard Spiegel's London correspondent congratulating us on the speediness of its formation. It took the Germans 40 days to hammer out a working arrangement after their most recent elections. Cool!

Ever on the lookout...

... for high-quality video kit, my video partner-in-crime has just told me about, and we now have it mind to go to inspect, a rather tasty LCD projector.

LCD projector

There's one on demo up in Newbury, so I'm predicting an expedition to the frozen North in the very near future. Before VAT goes up. Watch this screen. I'm not in the market myself, but I must admit I'll be fascinated to assess 1080p digital material on a screen larger than my 60" Kuro plasma.

Multinational thoughts

I was tickled (it doesn't take much) to rediscover this fascinating little list a few minutes ago:

It originally appeared in Fortune magazine and lists the top 10 multinationals by sales in 1978. (It's in Axel Madsen's 1980 book Private power.) My, what a lot can change in 32 years...

Just about time (22:26) for a supper cuppa, methinks. And I now have a walk in the New Forest coming up tomorrow.

  

© David Mounce.