2014 — 22 October: Wednesday
Sunny, but chilly, start to the day. What adventures, I wonder, lie in wait for me this time? Better be none before a cuppa, certainly. I suppose I should start by exploring the case of the non-arrival of the auto-ripped MP3 files. The CD order I'd "one-clicked" on had yet to offer these up for download by the time I toddled off up to bed last night, many hours after the popup had purportedly given me a 30-minute window to change my mind about the order — for an album1 by Siouxsie and the Banshees, if it matters.
Back in the days...
... of the lamented Evesham Computers I had drooled (briefly) over a PC equivalent of the Mac Mini (reminder here). Ebuyer has just suggested I should consider their sub-£100 Intel NUC kit Celeron N2820 HDMI Barebone for building my own personal cloud, or Home Theatre PC. "Just add memory and OS to complete." Yeah, right. Some of the users' comments are, erm, sceptical. It's hard to get a display until you upgrade the BIOS, and (of course) hard to see what you're doing without a display...
Last night's massive SHIELD Tablet PC upgrade all went on quite happily. I'm coming to regard that sweet little device as my (eminently portable) entertainment centre, very well-suited to my unchanged myopic prescription. As long as I don't forget where I've last left it.
Shome mishtake, shurely?
You should see the comments!
Is the patient allowed to diagnose the GP? Just askin'.
I currently neither...
... claim, nor receive, any form of benefit from the State. I received a lump sum "death benefit" payment of £2,000 from that nice George Brown chap. It came in jolly handy for helping to pay for Christa's funeral. I also received a "Widower's pension" (equal to her State pension) for the 12 months immediately following her death (and on which I was taxed [incorrectly] for a couple of years after the payments had stopped, too, but that's another story). Here's what George Monbiot has to say:
Human beings — by which I mean those anthropoid creatures who do not receive social security — often live in families. But benefit claimants live in "benefit units", defined by the government as "an adult plus their spouse (if applicable) plus any dependent children living in the household." On the bright side, if you die while on a government work programme, you'll be officially declared a "completer". Which must be a relief.
I checked his references. He's not making this surreal stuff up. I also stopped being a "Human Resource" nearly eight years ago, but I like to think I'm still a human being :-)
Today's post, neatly...
... timed to arrive shortly after a bite of lunch, brought me a couple of insurance-related items and, far more enticing, the latest dollop of "The Mentalist" to tease my brain with in evenings to come:
I postponed closer inspection of the delivery, however, with a cup of coffee over in the bungalow since — after all — the world still needs setting to rights, does it not? And who better-equipped to do that than a couple of cynical, suspicious, world-weary pensioners? The cost of my dental care has barely twitched upward, while offering me a chance to win a holiday somewhere exotic (and very hot) that I wouldn't visit in my worst nightmares. And my grocer (who also handles my buildings and contents insurance) is full of ideas about draining my pipework while I'm there.
[Pause]
Gideon Coe has been doing his evening gig on BBC 6Music for precisely seven years. I've been listening to him for almost all of it. He rarely manages to play something I don't like. Quite a feat.