2011 — 29 September: Thursday

As usual¹ an early night led directly to an early morning after the apparently hard-wired total of hours downtime had elapsed, so I made myself a pre-dawn cuppa and snuggled up with Mark Kermode's entertaining multiplex grumbles.

It's now 07:59 and — having the day to myself — I may just take myself out on a little expotition. The weather is predicted to remain warm and dry. I find myself wondering if the sea is still at the seaside.

The Eye has it

My current issue of "Private Eye" takes a look at the scrutiny, by MPs, (in one of the myriad committees they have now set up) of the vexatious wish of the public (that is, their employers) to keep a gentle eye on their expenses.² There's a one-paragraph exchange that has so far defeated my age-limited ability to parse it unambiguously:

Obfuscation? Perish the thought. But here, Kennedy is actually the "good guy" and (as 'Gavel Basher' notes) "his pronouncements are almost unbearable to endure but actually rather brilliantly effective at seeing off his critics". I suspect, given enough time, I might yet agree. But not before breakfast.

You mean it wasn't...

... just IBM, then?

It has been a year since I left MSFT and it has been the best year of my life.
The lack of vision from the top, the inane HR and review policies and procedure and the obscure version of "teamwork", where people work together and against each other at the same time, drove me away.

Anonymous in Mini-Microsoft

Being Elmo

I want to see this. Now. Immediately. (Link.)

Since Soton is nearer than Bournemouth, and now has a larger number of bookshops to boot than that seaside town, I toddled gently down to the former, shoved a £1 coin in the parking meter at 'Shed City' and trotted equally gently round a well-trodden path. I arrived back here an hour or so ago, starving hungry (easily fixed) and carrying the paperback of what will, I very sadly assume, be the last book from Christopher Hitchens:

The weather is again / still glorious.

In later news...

... I've just discovered which episode of "Northern Exposure" was originally broadcast on my 40^th birthday. And here I am, two decades later, still enjoying the show. I hope this doesn't mean I'm in a rut! :-)

Footnotes

¹ For what I still think of as my new "normal". It's an odd thought. As is the thought that niece #4 is exactly half my current age, and that I've now lived in this house for exactly half my life. This Time stuff is both slippery and elusive.
² In the wake, obviously, of not terribly surprising proof that quite a few MPs turned out to be a smidgen short of the ethical and moral standards foolishly expected of them when granted a "No receipts needed" approach to the reimbursement of all those beastly costs associated with (for random example) cleaning their moats.