2012 — 19 November: Monday

I'm calling it a day1 as I'm on taxi-to-the-airport duty for Mike in a few hours. I hope it doesn't get much colder out there — it's just barely above freezing already. Part of the evening's entertainment was another Marc Laurence / Hugh Grant combo. This time it was "Two weeks notice".

Yesterday's labours weren't entirely in vain. I'm pleased to see that the Win8 laptop now takes nearly seven seconds to boot, which seems quite remarkable. I'm guessing there's one of those stonking great hibernation files involved somewhere along the line, and/or a default power plan better suited to battery-operated laptops. Mind you, it still seems to do a fair amount of further processing even after the 'Start' screen has appeared. But I now only run the local Apache web server on it by explicitly starting it, so that doesn't seem to be the reason.

Windows, heh? What can you say?

The thick, dark, heavy...

... band of cloud doing its lurking thing out there this morning looks as if it's just hanging around to test our local storm drain system later today. Clouds over Westminster too, it seems, as the boy Dave announces that what's really holding back the UK isn't a global recession, but rather all that pesky public protesting2 and consequent nitpicking judicial reviewing of the guvmint's various ambitious (some might say stupid) schemes and plots (including major road, rail, and airport projects, not to mention "defence" spending and numerous ill-advised overseas conflicts) to funnel my money as directly and quickly as possible into the pockets of his friends' and advisors' enterprises.

I feel places like Eton (and the mindset they obviously inculcate) have a lot to answer for. People with privilege, however it was acquired, are generally unenthusiastic when it comes to the prospect of losing it. As the recently re-elected chap over the Pond said in early 2007:

"those with money, those with influence, those with control over how resources are allocated in our society, are very protective of their interests, and they can rationalise infinitely the reasons why they should have more money and power than anyone else."

Barack Obama


"Greed and stupidity" everywhere I look. It's just a tad depressing, even if I should be used to it by now :-(

(Part of) a comment that many people "recommended" in response to a piece by Charlie Brooker:

Hobby?

I decanted the lad safely at the airport, drove back via Waitrose, noting distressing amounts of road work in progress, and am now supping a late lemonses cuppa as I idly contemplate the ineffable whichness of the why.

Meanwhile, this made me smile:

Male Nudity

Taken on a warm day, I hope. But what would the Daily Mail say?

Typical weather

I was just (16:33) emptying a bin outside and noted a faint hint of a suggestion of impending drizzle in the already quite dark twilight. Not my favourite time of year.

Something odd afoot

This comic reminded me that my grandfather gave me his (mechanical) pedometer, many years ago. I passed it along in due course, as one does with such things, to a member of the younger generation.

Microsoft just emailed me the second Key for the Media Centre pack for the laptop, so it's downloading as I type. (Never look a Corporate freebie in the mouth, as it were.)

(H)activation woes

My, that was very tedious! It took well over an hour, topped off by the need (on Microsoft's part, not mine) for a Freephone call for me to supply 63 digits to "the man", receive back 48 different ones, and plumb those into the brain dead activation wizard that decided — for reasons I don't even wish to contemplate — that I'd somehow exceeded the unlock limit on the laptop. I wouldn't characterise this as friendly behaviour, frankly. But then, I must admit that I was rather puzzled yesterday since at no point did I have to provide the first Key yet the system told me it was activated, and proudly displayed the last few characters of the correct Key, too. (Therein lurks the bugette, I assume.)

Still, having shut it down and fired it up again, it's rebooted successfully, in less than 10 seconds, and even managed to stop displaying the annoying "Windows 8 Pro Build 9200 with Media Pack" message in the bottom right of the screen. A result, I guess. However, I now seem to have both Win8 machines running with the same Key (the second one supplied, in each case, with the Media Pack) so I'm still confidently expecting trouble at some point. The fact that I have four separate emails from Microsoft, quoting (I only now realise) three different Keys is something I'd better keep up my sleeve.

  

Footnotes

1  Fair enough; it is after midnight, after all.
2  A "public servant" who reacts positively to criticism or questioning from Josephine Public has yet to evolve on this planet.