2014 — 8 August: Friday
And another week is on the point of biting the dust.1 I have a lunch date, some supplies shopping to be done lest I starve this weekend, and a Hampshire local road and transport survey to be posted before the day gets too much older. It's already just a minute short of 09:06 too.
In a former life...
... my job at one point entailed attending a lot of meetings. This made me smile. Source and snippet:
The department's skirmishes — including an hours-long meeting about the punctuation of the mission statement that ends in tears and rehab — are only slightly exaggerated depictions of the actual inner workings of American academe. "I've been keeping a log," Fitger writes to his department's interim chair (an outside professor from sociology), "of department meetings ranked according to the level of trauma, with a 1 indicating mild contentiousness, a 3 signifying uncontrolled shouting, and a 5 leading to at least one nervous breakdown and/or immediate referral to the crisis center run by the Office of Mental Health."
I remember contentious mission statements :-)
[Pause]
With missions #2 and #3 accomplished, I think I now have time for another cuppa before lunch. It's warm and humid out there with, if the Met Office can be believed, rain of sub "Noah's Flood" proportions heading our way from the tail end of Hurricane Bertha. Sunday being our day of reckoning.
Bets nicely hedged. Throw another Raspberry Pi into the computing matrix, lad.
This interview...
... gives me cause to hope that I shall soon (futurologically speaking) be able to add a DVD of this film alongside my (enjoyable) Max Richter soundtrack CD. (Link.)
As teatime rapidly...
... approaches (not that the Fisher's Pond lunch of bangers and mash has left much room for it in the ol' tum) the rain has begun, a homebrew chemical experiment is bubbling gently on the kitchen windowsill (from where any noxious fumes can more easily make their getaway), and I actually remembered to snaffle Episode #6 of "The Honourable Woman". I've also been browsing this list of the 10 best Dystopias. Personally, I thought a Dystopia would be better described as "worst" but that's the 'Observer' for you. I was aware of 7 of them. I agree with only 3 of those.
The chemical experiment? My own stupid fault. A year or so before she died, Christa bought me one of those nice gadgets from Tchibo. In this case, a magnifying glass with eight LEDs spaced around the edges of one side. Powered by a pair of 'AA' batteries in a detachable machined aluminium tube that screws on to the base of the lens. I overlooked, until a couple of days ago, the fact that I'd left this toy untouched... but still with its batteries inside. Say 'hello' to our friend corrosion. So far, I've only been able to exhume the upper of the two dead bodies. The other has formed a deep affinity, probably on some molecular level, with the interior of the metal tube and has so far proved impossible to budge.
I've tried boiling the whole thing, freezing it, screwing a large screw down into the top of the dead cell and exerting considerable force. All to no avail. So now I'm leaving it to soak for a while in dilute hydrochloric acid. That would certainly prompt me to get up and go...
I wonder if John "Acid Bath" Haigh had these sort of problems?
As bedtime rapidly...
... approaches I find I'm now the proud owner of my first-ever colour (inkjet) printer. I've also (whisper it quietly) watched a YouTube video of David Pogue parodying one of the old Mac v PC ads (taking both rôles) while extolling the (in his opinion) considerable virtues of the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 v an iPad and/or MacBook Air. Mr Pogue it was, of course, whose "Missing Manual" books on OS X I slogged through in early 2007 while still vainly trying to convince myself that I had done a Smart Thing by buying an iMac.
I don't remember hearing any previous Prom featuring a battle of the (jazz) bands. Good stuff.