2014 — 10 April: Thursday

Over my first, quite early, cup of tea on this initially misty (and rather cool) morning I've noted here in Technology Towers that BlackBeast goes chugging along1 with all current patches reporting for duty apart from the actual 'meat' of yesterday's official Update 1. Elsewhere, it's a rather different story.

El Reg has reported the first stirrings of action from Microsoft, which has suspended distribution of the Win8.1 Update 1. Sadly, this action is actually quite coincidental, being over an entirely different issue. When the troublesome Update 1 does successfully get on to a corporate PC it seems that TLS 1.2 support is not being enabled by default so when an updated PC subsequently phones home to get its future fix of corporate updates it will fail. There's probably a pleasing irony buried somewhere in that. One day soon, I hope to be able to appreciate it.

Catching up on the...

... overnight complaints streaming in from my fellow sufferers2 has so far brought lots of heat but little illumination, and certainly no fresh insight of the sort that brings new delight. Though I smiled when I saw a comment ticking off the Linux and OS X people who have been joyously piling the hate into Microsoft: the grass isn't greener; it's just that the cowpats are in different places. Quite so, in my experience. Heck, even RISC OS had a few bugs. As did OS/360, come to think of it. And that was 50 years ago.

:-)

There's nothing...

... quite like updating your will to remind you that there is a finite limit to the number of days left for further enjoyment, is there?

I long ago...

... noted ee cumming's predilection for both lower case and unusual punctuation. I even took a run at "The Enormous Room", though I recall being disappointed. I do have, however, an entire book based around a single (short, but deliciously erotic) poem of his:

ee cummings

... illustrated throughout by Marc Chagall's equally idiosyncratic paintings. I don't think I'll be bothering with this new biography, however.

Meanwhile...

... Oliver Sacks remains eminently readable. I share his fascination with tidal rock pools, too. (Is there anyone who doesn't? I hope not.)

Can you trust...

... a chap who borrows the last £20 note in your wallet, then pays it back with an out-of-date £20 note? Just askin'.
He knows who he is :-)

I found this out as I was paying (well, trying to pay) for the next batch of stamps (for the next salvo in the long-running saga of trying to get bureaucratic financial institutions to accept that snailmail they send to dear Mama must now be sent to me, dagnabbit) in the Post Office.

  

Footnotes

1  I seem to have got off lightly, being anonymously mentioned in despatches by my lunchtime companion. My own experience of applying "Update 1" to my Win8.1 Pro system (three times, twice being after trying each of Microsoft's own suggested fixes) never actually got as far as even trying to run, and therefore I presume it never got a chance to do any of the potentially-corrupting backing-out that seems to have muddied the waters for other victims of this non-conspiracy.
2  You never know. Some Microsoftie who knows what she's doing may have actually owned up to the problem, fixed it, rebuilt the Update, tested it this time, and refreshed the whole damn' enchilada in time for breakfast.