2015 — 5 February: Thursday
I shall try to ignore the garish re-design (strongly reminiscent of the Windows 8 Start screen) of the UK Treasury-backed "National Savings and Investments" web site1
... while concentrating instead on the welcome news that unwicked Uncle ERNIE is sending me three of his minimal postal orders this month.
Ev'ry little helps :-)
Meanwhile...
... I have some weekend supplies shopping to do (I have become somewhat of a creature of habit, it seems) before today's lunch date. And I note it's exactly 0C out there on my front porch. Brrr.
Back when IBM Hursley...
... was still rich enough, and civilised enough (before, that is, the successful Invasion of the Bean Counters) to afford to produce an annual photographic calendar for its peons there was always great difficulty in portraying software products (CICS, GDDM)2 versus hardware (which at least keeps still while you photograph it). I discovered for myself just how well-nigh impossible this visualisation task is when I took the radical (and surprisingly unpopular in some quarters) step of commissioning six full-page colour photos for an edition of "my" CICS General Information manual3 in the early 1980s.
A chap called John Gerrard has apparently managed to turn one of Google's data centres into a work of art...
... but only from the outside, and with help from a helicopter.
[Pause, for lunch and a nice chatter.]
One may not...
... be able to buy a DVD of Uberto Pasolini's 2013 film "Still Life" in the UK yet as it's only just about to open in UK cinemas. Fair enough, I grudgingly concede. But, this being a globalised planet (or something) one can currently snaffle an Italian import DVD of the same film providing one browses Amazon's German site looking (of course) for "Mr. May und das Flüstern der Ewigkeit". Though, I grudgingly concede, one must first access IMDB to note this alternative title — and the fact (if the name "Pasolini" wasn't enough of a clue) that it's a joint UK / Italian production. Doubtless all part of a cunning stunt to keep UK film fans on their mettle, methinks.
Though it seems a pity that Amazon, which owns IMDB, can't (or chooses not to) go the extra kilometre and connect up this particular set of international dots for me, to save me the effort.
I remained...
... in blissful ignorance of some of the finer details of IBM's "Project Waltz" scheme in 2009 until my walking companion filled me in yesterday. Today, I've just read the 'Decision' made by Mr Justice Warren in the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, that (to cut a tediously long and detailed story very short) IBM was wrong to do what it did to its UK employees. The topic was basically one of changing the long-established terms and conditions of some pension schemes and some early retirement rules in a way that can fairly be described as forcing a segment of the workforce to make rapid and long-lasting decisions many of them found unpalatable. And which left some bitter enough to seek a ruling on the legality.
The occasional flash of humour can't get around the fact that legal prose is not, on the whole, a thing of beauty. A typical example:
One further complication should be explained: if (under Element 1) the accrual of further benefits by DB members has ceased, it might be thought that they are no longer active members and that the early retirement rules for active DB members (and the favourable ERDFs that apply to such members) are no longer relevant. However, as explained under Element 5 below, as part of Project Waltz, Holdings proposed to allow the excluded DB members to retain the favourable early retirement rules that applied to them as active members in respect of their accrued DB service (but subject to Holdings' ability to withhold consent to early retirement, where applicable). Thus the early retirement rules applicable to active members remain relevant notwithstanding the purported cessation of DB accrual under Element 1.
Once again, I remain glad to have left when I did...
If you're not...
... awestruck by this... then you have no soul. There's a neat YouTube animation of the Andromeda galaxy based on the original Hubble image.