2014 — 14 October: Tuesday
Happy birthday to me.1 Had I not retired from good ol' IBM Hursley under my own steam (as it were) a mere 2,902 days ago — blimey — then today would have been the latest they escorted me out of their hallowed halls.
One of my better decisions. Not as smart as marrying Christa — see bullet #3 here — obviously, but well up the list in my opinion :-)
I was wondering...
... how long it would take for a comment about Arthur C Clarke's 1950 story "Silence, please!" to appear. (Link.)
Sudden (minor) nasty thought: when does my car insurance run out? Answer, not until the end of the month. I don't really understand how it became unsynchronised from the anniversary2 of the initial purchase and/or registration but there are, after all, increasing numbers of things I don't understand. David Attenborough only just realising that factual TV has dumbed down, for example.
Pah!
Guess which Modern App has locked itself down to the point where it won't let me use the Win8 Snipping Tool just to capture an image of my current ebook title for me to show niece #1 in NZ without locking up this joke of a Finite State Machine? That's right. Step forward and take a shameful bow, Mr Kindle-on-a-PC. [Pause] Still, there's usually more than one way to defur a feline, is there not?
Admittedly, taking a screenshot of the same book cover on the SHIELD Tablet PC isn't quite as direct a route3 as I'd hoped for, but it seems the most recent set of Amazon Kindle purchases have even obfuscated their cover artwork in the (already hidden) AppData directory tucked deep within the belly of the BlackBeast, dagnabbit. It's not as if I haven't paid for this book, either.
Ought I...
... mention this chap...
... to my neighbour, do you think?
Hah!
Lunch having been gobbled, time (it turns out) to renew that car insurance after all. It now carries a protected 9-year No Claims discount (or is that 'bonus'?) that still strikes me as a tad surreal. Still, 93p per day doesn't quite break the bank.
And I can now replace...
... the 4:3 aspect ratio NTSC DVD I cut from my August 1990 LaserDisc of Bob Rafelson's 1987 film "Black Widow" by the widescreen PAL DVD version that's just arrived from sunny Denmark. This is the film I mentioned in January — an unacknowledged, and gender-twisted, third filmed variant of Marc Behm's novel "Eye of the Beholder"...
I suppose I'd better save the postage stamps for Big Bro, too, despite his faintly insulting card. Given his advanced years, I don't think he should be too quick to be calling me "old".
Mr Bezos...
... has just sent me a one penny refund for the price drop that "Edge of Tomorrow" underwent since I pre-ordered it back in early July. Wow. I shall divert it towards the car's insurance.