2012 — 23 November: Friday
A five-second blast1 was quite enough to convince me that, no, it wasn't Saturday. I retreated hastily to Radio 3.
I've had my...
... first-ever warning about my broadband usage. My ISP (the excellent Zen) tells me:
Our statistics show that you have now used 50.07% (10.01 GB) of your total download allowance for the calendar month of November. You can view a breakdown of your usage in the Zen Customer Portal by following this secure link https://portal.zen.co.uk/
That's what happens when you download two complete Win8 Pro (sort of) images, two complete Media Center (sic) packs, and all the associated security patches from Microsoft in the space of one month, so I can't say I was particularly shocked. Except, perhaps, by exactly how closely they keep an eye on the limit (the lowest and cheapest tier, I believe). I was a little ticked that I had to perform the second download as the DVD I ordered back on 4th November has yet to show up2 despite the "5 to 7 business days" that was predicted by a Microsoft delivery centre in Germany. All I would have needed for the laptop installation was that and the second Product Key.
I know I...
... shouldn't be scornful of that which I don't understand, but, really...?
Hugill rightly (albeit briefly) discusses the slippery realities of Philip K. Dick, but fails to note that the work of horror master H.P. Lovecraft is also quite pataphysical. The "Cthulu mythos" coursing through his tales construes a "universe supplementary to this one," with the "Cyclopean" architecture, based on non-Euclidian geometry, of the Old Ones' dwellings being particularly Jarryesque. "Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large," Lovecraft once wrote to his editor at Weird Tales, a sentence that could have come from Jarry's pen.
Mind you, I agree that the "cosmos-at-large" shows no sign of any interest in our little patch of dirt. And I have precisely one piece by Alfred Jarry still in the house: "How to construct a Time Machine". Michael Moorcock's brief introduction to the 1968 anthology The Traps of Time — in which this whimsical essay appears — implicitly defines it as a cerebral entertainment. I profoundly disagree. Perhaps it lost more than a little something in translation?
25 years?!
This brought back amusing memories. Random snippet:
We, on the other hand, were regarded as hopelessly bureaucratic. After Microsoft lost the source code for the actual build of OS/2 we shipped, I reported a bug triggered when you double-clicked on Chkdsk twice: the program would fire up twice and both would try to fix the disk at the same time, causing corruption. I noted that this "may not be consistent with the user's goals as he sees them at this time". This was labelled a user error, and some guy called Ballmer questioned why I had this "obsession" with perfect code.
I'd rather not comment on what he says about IBM Hursley's HR department :-)
While my lunch...
... digests, I can note the four books I picked up during my little expotition earlier — in what is being forecast as the pause before the next storm.
I also note the German Xmas market is up and running already. Christa had ambivalent feelings towards this temporary display of aspects of her culture. She certainly didn't regard it as particularly authentic, or even representative.
And while my evening meal...
... preparations are getting under way, I can further note that turning down the thermostat while I was out of the house for a couple of further hours this afternoon may have made economic sense, but has left my little domestic nest just a bit too cool for comfort. Plus, the guvmint now apparently intends to extract a further £100 per year from me in fuel bills, it seems. Their Orwellian logic suggests this will save me money in the long term. Actually, in the long term I don't expect to be consuming any fuel, of any kind.
On with another layer, nicked from Junior. It's a fleece jacket that was probably made from old polycarbonate bottles. (Judging by the static crackles.)