2011 — 26 January: Wednesday
Well, I think iTunes did very well1 but I am once again using Winamp as my music player. I don't think I ask too much of a music player and media library, but I do expect it to import all my music files, and I don't expect it to duplicate a random subset of them.
It's a little after midnight and even though I'm now listening to the wonderful selection of stuff on one of my "Northern Exposure" TV show compilation CDs, I'm going to call it a day for now. G'night.
The time has come...
... as the walrus said, to finish shovelling in my belated breakfast and get out for some supplies before the remarkably rain-filled clouds do their usual "let's dump on David" trick. It's 09:57 and I've just sent Big Bro a virtual birthday present. [Pause] Right. The rain can droppeth as, erm, the gentle rain, or not, as it chooseth. What's next, Mrs Landingham? Well, remember to avoid the junction and motorway entrance down by the ambulance and fire station for the next several days. The slip road will be closed and all the traffic lights are (yet again) being reworked.
Photoshopping
I admit I've seen "photoshop" used as a verb before, but not quite this amusingly. Source and snippet:
And the SAT, having once upon a time, for all its bias and flaws, compelled the recognition that the inheritance of brains and dollars are independent variables, has been bent to different purposes by the private tutoring that rich families use to Photoshop the cognitive portraits of their ADD offspring.
And here's an excellent summary of the reasons I, too, have given up on precisely the URC model identified therein as a potential panacea. Not for want of trying, I might add. Plus something else rather more serious to worry about!
Catch-22 condensed
I'm not certain this is a faithful condensation. (Link.)
Speaking of condensation, I've just had my next water bill. I stand charged (as it were) of soaking my way recklessly through 26.00 m3 of the wet stuff in the past 185 days. The £105 they want for this is almost exactly in line with the original £200 estimated annual bill when I first had the brilliant idea of having a meter fitted just over a thousand days ago, so that's cool. I shall celebrate with a cuppa and some lunch — it's 13:16 and hasn't started raining yet.
Inadvertently interesting afternoon...
... as I lost my car accident virginity — for the second2 time :-) — this time while visiting dear Mama. I was just settling in for a nice, soothing repetitive chat with added cuppa when I was summoned down to reception for some "bad news" regarding my little blue car. Since nobody was hurt, the details scarcely interested me, but a gentleman visiting his own elderly relative, and driving a large, black Mercedes, had managed to dent both the driver's door and the sill of my car3 and was standing in reception waiting to hand over all his insurance details. So I gave dear M a rain cheque (not that she had a clue what was going on), skipped out on the cuppa, and drove straight down to meet'n'greet my little (donated) simian family in the Soton dealer's showroom and see what the more advanced primates could do to arrange a repair.
Back at Technology Towers, and several phone calls later, it seems none of this will cost me a bean, the no-claims will be unaffected, a replacement car will be supplied if needed, and I can finally (at 17:39) rendezvous with a very overdue cuppa. However, since I've just been warned the actual repair could take several days, it looks as if I will need a replacement car, which I'm assured will be an identical model. That will be the first time I've ever driven another car since passing my driving test!
Nerves suitably soothed, it's time now for something to eat. It's 19:01 and raining out there. Yuk. Still, I have a lunch rendezvous in the vicinity of Hurstborne Priors tomorrow. A little dent isn't going to derail that. Must remember to take along a USB stick.
Later
It's still just "this" side of midnight here, but Big Bro is now officially in the land of the State Pension recipients. Tee-hee :-)
Happy birthday, ol' chap. And g'night.