2012 — 3 September: Monday
There are mornings1 when, for no apparent reason, sleep has fled prematurely, but probably permanently. At which point there's little for it but to make and enjoy an earlier-than-usual cuppa and start the day's quota of pottering that much sooner. Given that it's now just barely past 05:09 I'm predicting a "crash and burn" dip in conscious energy level sometime late this coming afternoon. We shall see.
Right! Dear Mama's next batch of care-home fees transferred in readiness. Another online bank checked to make sure they haven't absconded with my widower's mite. Is it too early to see whether Uncle ERNIE has smiled in my direction this month? [Pause] Yes it is. They're still showing the August prize draw results.
Amusingly...
... given the fact-checking site I found only yesterday, here's a well-written piece on the very same topic. Source and deliberately-chosen snippet:
To give an example: A few weeks ago, a friend of mine — let's call him Geoff — was assigned to check a mention of two television shows that contained a sentence describing them both depicting "a stunning amount of back-entry sex." There's really no easy way to check a sentence like that. The shows hadn't aired yet, and we had already sent the promo DVDs back to the network. So you call the network's publicity rep. This is what the office heard...
There's a lot more to this incisive piece, trust me.
Having ordered a little treat, I've just noticed I have three local Amazon "storage lockers" from which I can pick up deliveries. One would have been enough, chaps!
Supplies replenished...
... following the weekend invasion — they were very good, really. They didn't snaffle the last two tomatoes. And, as I've said before, there's nowt wrong with the 'Academic Festival Overture', accompanied by some dried, sour cherries and a cuppa. Yum.
Today's snailmail gave me the final bit of a long-running jigsaw puzzle that I needed to stop dear Mama getting billed for the rental of a phone handset without a phone line, at an address she left over two years ago, which is a pretty neat trick (some might say "sharp business practice" on BT's part) a mere 16 months since I was last assured that it had indeed been cancelled. One needs to adapt to the glacial pace of Corporations above a certain critical mass, it seems. Still, the Indian lady's English was excellent, as was her eventual grasp of the situation.
Fingers, and phone lines, crossed. Is it time for lunch?
I'm slowly perfecting...
... the art of the afternoon care-home flying visit combined, of course, with a quick visual inspection of the visible extremities. The score this week is two fading bruises (one per arm) from her recent — but long-forgotten — tumble. She's also content to perch downstairs in the day lounge (partly because she fears getting lost, and partly because she forgets there's a room upstairs expensively assigned to her). But then she also forgets I've retired, forgets where I live, has long ago forgotten her grandson and, if reminded of any of these, promptly forgets2 them again.
She will by now (15:17) be drinking her cuppa, nibbling her cake, and (not) pondering the whichness of the why. That gives me an idea...
Surely Java wasn't...
... always this bad? (Link.)
While confirming the complete absence of any Java VM3 or plug-ins on BlackBeast I again stubbed my virtual toe against this little gem (I run the 64-bit version of IE9 occasionally):
But do you suppose...
... Windows 8 is any smarter? Peter has offered to obtain a perfectly legitimate licence for me if I'm interested. I am interested, but I'm not sure I'm keen. I suspect I'm the one person who actually likes the Aero UI. Besides, what's the point of having all that graphics processing power and then not bothering to use it? (I jest: I doubt BlackBeast's Radeon would digest any modern 'shoot-em-up' [or whatever fatuous crap today's "yoof" regards as essential to Life on this planet] at anything like an acceptable frame rate.)