2013 — 26 April: Friday
Contrast this morning's "undersleep" with yesterday's "oversleep"1 but if I'm required to be "in" to sign for today's courier delivery of my fancy new keyboard, what matters a few hours of shut-eye? Last time I checked, the parcel was in a "Sortation Hub" in Birmingham (while I was watching some of the extras on the Conan Blu-ray2 a few hours ago) having travelled down from Ayr to Glasgow yesterday afternoon and evening.
My Spanish Bank...
... invited me to return today to finish closing my account after yesterday's protracted failures on their part. I think I can let them wait. Mañana, anyone?
Another cuppa? Yes, why not? [Pause] Blimey! My courier driver's name is Leigh, and the one-hour delivery window I've just received is 11:56 to 12:56. I think that calls for a spot of celebratory breakfast.
Velcro
Seeing Len's cable bundling, and this site, has given me some ideas.3
We mere "users" must be a terrible disappointment to the mega-brains of Microsoft:
In the Windows 8.1 update, the company is rumoured to be considering an option to let users boot to the old layout, with its onscreen start button, and bypass the new app-heavy layout that makes computers look more like tablets or smartphones. Windows 8 is designed for touchscreens, clearly the future of computing.
Nice touch, making the apostrophe (of "Maclean's") a maple leaf. But how can anyone who's used hand-held touch screen devices for any length of time possibly think them a Good Thing for a desktop PC?
Having just...
... demolished a slightly too ripe fresh mango for my "lemonses" it occurs to me that — were I a member of a debating society — I wouldn't relish the idea of trying to carry the motion that "the Intelligent Designer made his mango pip too small".
Now that's what I call a keyboard! Excellent. You know what? IBM got some things right. "Insert both of the keyboard's USB connectors into two USB ports on your computer (erm, where else would I insert them?). After the boot process has completed, wait a few seconds for the keyboard to be recognised. Note: The included USB-to-PS/2 (who remembers them?) adapter must be used to enable full n-key rollover."
And it's clean.
The thick, dark clouds...
... that are now gathering are discouraging a visit in search of Velcro (or its generic equivalent). We even had a brief shower of hail. I shall simmer gently here in Technology Towers instead and, with luck, remember to catch the Kermode and Mayo film review programme.
[Pause]
Since I don't wish to be charged an "under funding" fee for having failed to top up my account by the minimum level4 this month, I called in at the Spanish bank once the sun seemed likely to be shining for a bit. I explained myself to the under-manager who, after counting out Monday to Friday on his fingers agreed that — come next Monday — there was quite likely to be a fighting chance that the ERNIEs I paid in last Monday morning would have finally finished clearing their way into the account from which I've already removed them. I didn't bother to ask how a full week equated to four working days because Life is too short to argue with a banker. He also promised to deal with any "under-funding" fee charged.
Since I'm not going to be banking with the blighters for much longer, why should I care? It amuses me that their business model has no difficulty whatsoever with the concept of charging a recent customer money for the privilege of emptying his account prior to closing it. Why am I not surprised? By contrast, Christa's old outfit (the HSBC) seems perfectly happy to have left me unbothered and uncharged from one non-topping-up month to the next for over five years now.
Having touched on...
... my (continuing) OCR, erm, misadventures a couple of days ago — largely due to over-enthusiastic graphics artists and their zany typography styles — I've stumbled across a well-nigh perfect example this evening. Here it is, life-size:
It's a glorious 1998 Herbie Hancock album of Gershwin music with an interesting array of guest artists. But the artwork is a mess! an interesting challenge!