2011 — 20 February: Sunday
Cloudy and some drizzle1 but it seems "doable" for another spot of fresh air and mild exercise. A walk will (of course) ease the not uninconsiderable anguish of failing to receive an invite to the royal partnership ceremony :-)
No videos last night — instead, I caught up on some podcasts while pottering around. It's what I do best. Besides, I was tired.
In the post yesterday was a final statement from my former gas supplier, so that switch has indeed now gone through. This is the outfit who say "if your account is in credit, we may give you a little back". As they currently owe me £160-75 I hope they will do more than "a little". My (gas) energy use over the last quarter has dropped from 9705 kWh this time last year to 8520 kWh this year. So I declare the new CH system a success... and the house has been a toasty 20C throughout the cold snap, too.
While I've often joked...
... of being a lesbian trapped in a chap's body, I was appalled to read (in this generally rather trite piece of high quality journalism)...
Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (Glaad), points out that it is still legal to be fired from a job in 30 of the American states for being gay and there is no federal hate-crime legislation.
Though I still look forward to seeing both of the films mentioned (Black swan [spotted last September — my cousins highly recommended it] and The kids are alright [spotted last October — with two of my favourite actresses and a good director it's a no-brainer]).
It's 09:15 and somewhat brighter though there's still no sign of the sun. My walking rendezvous is at 10:00 but it will be a local loop so there's no packed lunch to prep. In fact, since the cupboard is largely bare that will have to be my afternoon task.
Ecstatic?
I don't do drugs, but have no particular wish to censure those who do. My main complaint hinges on their capricious illegality, which seems to me to cause the vast majority of the problems. I liked a couple of the comments attached to this piece, including:
If we were to ban things on the basis of their negative impact on the cognitive abilities of its users, surely we would see the end of tabloid newspapers, Sky, ITV, 90% of the internet, 95% of jobs....
Nine muddy miles later...
... I've just wrapped myself around a quick snack of salmon, pips and cheese2 before deciding whether or not I actually have to get any further supplies in this afternoon (it's now 14:41) or whether to be lazy.
I'm leaning towards laziness.
Shades of "The Prisoner"
What do you want?
Information.
You won't get it! Vagueness is apparently taking over.
Farewell to Java
Having seen the suggestion (admittedly by Microsoft) that there's currently a bigger attack surface exposed by Java even than by Adobe code, and having then studied the implications in the material here, I've now expunged Java from BlackBeast. I'd only allowed it on because I'd mistakenly assumed it was actually needed for OpenOffice (which I've replaced by LibreOffice). Nothing's broken so far.
How can it be 23:46 already? G'night.