2010 — 17 June: Thursday

An evening of indulgence: watching the remaining episodes of True Blood season #2. Pretty cool. It was either that or go quietly mad contemplating either (or both) the mess in the Midlands and the mess here in my house. I expect I'll hear something about the assessment of dear Mama later today. But since there's nothing of significance I can do about it, I refuse to worry about it.

It's 00:11 and I'm off to bed. G'night.

Well, that's a surprise... dept.

Looking into public sector pay:

Hutton is also expected to try to look into claims that senior managers will leave for jobs in other industries if they are not paid the most competitive rates. There is mounting evidence in the US that managerial skills are no longer regarded as transferable between one sector and another.

Patrick Wintour in The Guardian


Were they ever? Though I never met a manager who would admit he/she didn't think so. Meanwhile IBM (bless its little pension fund) has produced an application helping us to visualise data, such as "Top 10 UK civil servants who have accepted hospitality". Round up twice the usual number of suspects! (Source.)

Time (08:23) for a nibble of brekkie before plumbing resumes, methinks. It's a bright, sunny morning so far. [Pause] Let plumbing commence. There are sounds of rushing water from upstairs, plus his radio. [Pause] Yep, I've now got a functional bathroom back, as it were, onstream. Where's that breakfast got to?

Well who'da thunk it?

Spending £12,000,000,000 upgrading the NHS computing infrastructure, only to discover that not only were the benefits limited, but that "Transferring data had also proved problematic because of incompatible computer systems". I wonder if that's ever happened before?1

It's 10:17 but, being a thinking-ahead sort of chap, and seeing how nice the weather is, I've arranged to go out for lunch despite having stuffed a few goodies into the fridge just yesterday. What is Life if not a series of little assaults against solitude and boredom? Besides, I can scarcely even begin to think about any meaningful tidying-up while floorboards and carpets are up hither and yon in chaotic disarray. In fact, apart from this front patch of the living room, the interior mostly resembles something left behind after a whirlwind. Not a pretty sight, Christa! All in a good cause, though.

Another sister-in-law

Of course Lis, down in distant New Zealandland, is not the only sister-in-law Christa had. I unearthed this photographic remnant from her study during the recent massive clearing-the-house exercise. It shows Christa (a mere 35 years ago, in what we laughingly referred to as the sunlounge of our ramshackle rented flat in Old Windsor) with her elder brother Karl's wife, Linda:

Christa and Linda, in Old Windsor, 1975

Gosh, weren't they young? Linda was very good at cooking plum pies, I remember. [Pause] Right! Time to set off for a spot of lunch. It's 11:27 already. And some miles to go... But the weather is glorious.

Washing machine traps...

... need replacing unless you ungunge them from time to time. Who knew? Since "Comfort" (fabric conditioner) does them no good at all, and since the condensate from the new condensing boiler now needs to share this "exhaust pipe" out to the outside drain, that's another new bit of plastic pipework needed. It's only money.

Speaking of which, I need to go and talk nicely2 to Peter Green to get one of their vinyl fitters to come in and re-do the bathroom floor now that there's a neat layer of hardboard fitted. This needs to be fairly high on the priority sequence of tasks to be done next. [Pause] Well, that was quite painless. My new chum Keith is coming round for black coffee (one sugar — he'll be lucky) with his ruler in a couple of hours to measure all the rooms deemed in need of a new floor covering (which is a very high percentage of all the rooms in my house).

For my future reference, a 3 meter x 4 meter room currently costs about £330 for carpet, underlay and gripper and about £520 for vinyl laid on top of plywood, with silicone sealant around the edges. I also need to think about the stairs, hallway, and landing...

Lunch? that was in the Hill Top Diner (as it now calls itself, using the same font used by James Cameron for his N'avi subtitles in "Avatar"). A very pleasant 54-mile round trip in lovely sunshine.

Rotten Apples?

From some of the pain on open display here, I shall not be in a tearing hurry to upgrade my current level of OS X in my giant iPod. "Industrial strength software", that nice Mr Jobs keeps telling me. Mutter, mutter.

I am being measured; it remains to be seen whether I am found wanting. It's 18:25 and my coffee has been spurned. [Pause] OK, I'm going for wood-effect vinyl running from the front door and hallway through into the kitchen. Living room carpet is untouched. Cloakroom vinyl is untouched. Stairs, landing, and three "bedrooms" upstairs will be a matching, hard-wearing carpet. Bathroom will be the vinyl I've already chosen in the showroom this afternoon. My (main) bedroom vinyl is untouched. Timing is not an issue; all I have to do now is select the vinyl and carpet and find the necessary pennies. Such good fun.

If Christa were here, it would be rather more fun. I'm sure she'd approve, however. Junior had better! (The carpet in "his" room is beyond any possibility of salvage. And [oh, the horror!] there's an ancient trodden-in lump of chewing gum in the middle of what was Christa's study...) Come to think of it, there's a small wine stain in the living room from an incident involving my favourite, but now late, aunt. A worthy memorial in my opinion.

Time for something to eat, methinks. It's 18:46 and I've been told to expect rain tomorrow.

Later

Another round tuit has matured — I've been catching up with Pushing Daisies Season #1. Pleasantly quirky. Created by the same guy (Bryan Fuller) who worked on "Dead like me" and "Wonderfalls". Nuff said.

  

Footnotes

1  Possibly! I first read about some similar issues in 1974, shortly after entering the IT industry. I recommend the book Travels in Computerland or, Incompatibilities and Interfaces by Ben Ross Schneider, Jr.
2  Last time Christa and I were in that fine establishment, it was to have a flaming row with a manageress about the bed we'd bought in the wake (good term) of waterbed disaster #2 which was some three inches shorter in the "long" department than advertised in the brochure. I hope they've forgotten that.