2015 — 25 January: Sunday
I've been pleasantly surprised twice1 so far this morning. The more trivial surprise was an email telling me of a pending delivery "today" (and there's me thinking it was a day of rest). The other was a nice, long email from that man-of-few-words, my Big Bro. If he can be believed, NZ is a lot warmer than the UK right now. (Some slight compensation, I suppose, for having to walk around upside down.)
I was also pleasantly surprised by last night's Tom Robinson show, which featured a lovely extended chat with Steve Reich. But I'm not pleased by the way the BBC has changed the format of the 6Music files one can download of such things. Those available from Radio 3 are of much higher quality and still generally2 easier to get hold of.
After scanning through...
... the 24 pages of the sort of detailed gorp — or, as some commentators describe it: "sneaky, proposed amendments to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill that were tabled by four peers in Parliament this week" — our Lords and Masters are currently considering3 here...
... it's a positive relief to turn to, and scan, the cover art from this morning's four promised arrivals:
The "viewing notes" that accompany the sumptuous BD release of "The Last Seduction" are from Herr Professor Doktor Mrs Mark Kermode's book "The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema", though gawd alone knows where my copy is currently hiding — it's had a decade to disappear. When I first saw the lovely Ms Fiorentino (in Scorsese's "After Hours") I remember thinking "Blimey!" — but I'm just a simple chap, after all. Alastair Reid (the director of "Baby Love" which, an earlier [and less hi-tech] diary reminds me I watched on 24 April 1969, but haven't seen since) went on to direct the sublime first TV series of Maupin's "Tales of the City" (so can, of course, do no wrong in my book). I've never seen Art Garfunkel quite so sleazy as in Roeg's "Bad Timing". And the trailer for "Holiday" cracked me up... so I'll probably discover it contained all the best bits.
My delicious...
... if unaesthetic late light lunch — an open sandwich (bread, butter, cheese, Marmite, marmalade, honey, tomato) — went down a treat. It lacked only the ham and pickle for it to have been a full-blown feast of the sort I used to assemble for IBM packed lunches and for our regular picnic-trips to the bat cave in the Midlands. I seem to have given up both ham and bacon for the last couple of years. One doesn't wish to make a pig of oneself. [Pause] Right, I'm off out on a file-seeking mission. TTFN
Next time...
... I do something as crass as enumerating the number of pleasant surprises in any one day... just take me out behind one of my sheds and shoot me. Recall (a while back) my being quite taken by an Apple Mac Pro with a 30" screen? (Christa was a lot less enthusiastic when seeing its price tag and rather put her foot down. Sensible woman.)
Having confirmed in the early afternoon that my super-spiffy fanless graphics card is actually spiffy enough to drive a 4K screen at its native resolution,4 I promptly revisited the supplier who (last time I looked) had no stock of the tasty Philips 40" 4K monitor. Today? Ten of them in stock at a fair price in a one-week-only deal. The fun didn't really get going until (having spotted the option to use "Amazon Payments", which I'd never previously heard of — I lead a sheltered life, far from the mainstream of e-commerce) I registered, logged in, plumbed in the necessary data extracts from my digital financial profile, and pressed 'Enter'.
Mere seconds later I got an email "thank you", followed by an email "You've made an Amazon Payments" transaction, followed by an email apology for a refusal, on the part of Amazon, to accept the payment card5 I'd proffered. "Go here" says the apology "and amend your Amazon Payments card data". I went there, looked it over, saw that it was good, clicked on "Use this", looked at a large green 'tick' symbol, and assumed that (in due course) the transaction would be automatically re-submitted.
It was. I got another payment declined. But I didn't know that because, having in the meantime shut down BlackBeast to detach the second screen in readiness for hooking up the new one, the b****y thing wouldn't reboot. WTF? Getting over the hurdle of a non-bootable BlackBeast occupied me (and later Len) for the next 90 minutes or so, after which Phase II of the 4K fun began.
Discovering the latest payment failure, I decided I'd better dig out another card. Register it. Plumb in its data. Re-order. And this time simply ignore the "Amazon Payments" option, but just dive straight in with a simple credit card transaction. What could possibly go wrong? Payment declined. Now WTF? Ooh, some small print. Ring this number and quote this code. Did that. "You've just missed the Fraud Team. They go home at 7 p.m. on a Sunday. I can (and will) unblock the transaction for you (now that you've told me everything but your inside leg measurement), but it won't go through until tomorrow morning." And why did you block it? "Oh, you don't use the card much, so it raised an alert."
Not being one for...
... deferred gratification, I decided to transfer some pennies across from what's laughingly called my savings account to shore up my current account, and then try all over again, but this time with a simple debit card transaction that should (in theory) have instant access to my cash. Although stopped briefly6 my order went through, and precisely the correct amount is now shown by my bank as being on the point of vanishing. I even have a new, different, order number.
I wonder what, if anything, will turn up. Two screens, I'm betting, unless I manage to get through on the phone fast enough tomorrow morning. Len says he'll buy the other one off me to save me sending it back :-)
[Pause]
Gosh. Another longish email from Big Bro, though technically I suppose he sent it the following day (from his warped perspective). I shall tease him if this goes on.