2014 — 14 February: Friday
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the soggy state of the UK made the PBS evening news. My ex-IBM friend Carol1 in mid-state New York (on the banks of the Hudson) checked in minutes ahead of her own next round of inundation:
Well, HM's watery Kingdom (Queendom?) made the PBS News Hour tonight — more unwanted fame. The aerial photos were quite astonishing, and now you write that you're in for another three-day dose. Apparently we're in for another round as well, though the exact form of precip remains to be seen. Snow is a considerable nuisance in these quantities, but hasn't nearly the potential for damage that flooding has. I hope you are safely dry chez Mounce, apart from your roof tile problem, even if you choose to walk about in running streams.
Just as I ended that sentence, the "form" above materialized — water, complete with donner and blitzen. In February, yet! I would say the weather was getting pretty weird, but fortunately, the Republicans reassure us that there is no such thing as climate change — merely a liberal conspiracy and all in our imagination.
Quite so. Those damned liberals and their over-vivid imaginations. They should cultivate a dry wit. Meanwhile, can you believe that some pensions companies are putting their own profits ahead of their clients, and that 8 out of 10 pensioners could have done better by "shopping around"? It's a bit late to tell me that, methinks, what with it being just over seven years (ye gods!) since I retired.
Now where's that soggy crust I was hoarding? It's time for breakfast.
I used to wonder...
... occasionally if Christa ever resented having been 'stolen away' by me from Germany. If she did, however, she hid it from me very well throughout her 33-year exile. There's a lovely essay "On not going home" in the London Review of Books, although this is an unrepresentative snippet from it that (also) made me smile:
Our headmaster at the Durham Chorister School, also a clergyman, told us that we should start our essays 'with a bang: Bacon began his essay on Gardens, "God Almighty first planted a Garden": try to emulate Bacon.' He had an elaborate system of mnemonics to help us with difficult Latin words. Whenever the word unde appeared in a text, he would suck on his pipe and intone, in Oxonian basso: 'Marks and Spencer, Marks and Spencer!' This was supposed to trigger, 'Where do you get your undies?' 'From Marks and Spencer.' And then lead us to the meaning of the word, which is: 'where'. As you can see, I haven't forgotten it.
I couldn't possibly comment on this, however :-)
And still it rains.
Looking back...
... I see I first mentioned Isabella Rossellini and her "Green Porno" in July 2008 when it (as it were) popped up in Scientific American. Today, the Grauniad has caught up. (Link.)
A story in El Reg took me, once again, to the Alliance@IBM union website. Nothing I read there on the Indian job cuts "slaughter" gave me any cause to regret getting out of IBM. Sad, but true. I prefer to kick back with Beethoven's 9th, even if it is still pouring with rain as I sup my 'lemonses' cup.
The little toy...
... I fleetingly mentioned yesterday has been duly delivered, unpacked, carefully shoe-horned into BlackBeast, connected up to the one spare SATA III port, initialised, formatted, and told (among other things) to get on with hosting the Windows paging file — all without any great bother. It's a pint-sized (240GB) sibling of the Crucial 480GB M500 SSD I use as my system drive. While I admit I've no immediate need for it, I can't help thinking it's a handy thing to have on tap, as it were. And (if nothing else) it will allow both the 3TB spinning rust drives to shut themselves down after periods of inactivity.
The weather remains thoroughly unenticing, but who could resist the lure of the Roger & Eileen Tea Shoppe? I shall let my lunch digest a little further first, though. Meanwhile, I note that the "completely leakproof" Anglian double glazing replacement window in the kitchen is doing its usual "let some rain in" trick, precisely as guaranteed (by the lying salesman) it was incapable of doing.
As midnight approaches...
... the Met Office 5-day forecast is curiously reluctant to load, not that there's any great doubt about the state of the weather right now.