What to do if you've nothing to say?

(It doesn't seem to stop anyone else).

Bit of a wake up call seeing the new leader of the opposition is only a year or so older than me. It shouldn't, but it's got me wondering whether I'm letting life slip away from me.  To say I'm worried about it would be going too far, but I think it's perfectly natural to compare oneself to those around you and in this age of pervasive media "those around you" is a very very wide sphere.

Instead I'm starting to come to the conclusion that happiness comes not when you've achieved all you wanted to, but when you've learned not to care about the things you've never done.

Changing tack, today I note my attempts to login to the Apple Discussion Forums are being thwarted by something called "AppleConnect Single Sign On" which is insisting that I use Safari 1.0 for some reason. Dear oh dear I hope this is a cock-up and not some new policy being imposed by The Lord Our Jobs, he who insists t'web is Open...

Frustration

File this one under "Petty annoyances".

OK so I gave in to temptation this morning, booted into Win7, started Steam and clicked on the "Purchase" button for GTA:IV. I rationalised the cost against my original stated objective which was "Wait until next full GTA comes out, Then buy PS3" which I'd abandoned in 2008 when "Get a PS3" sort of pre-req'd "Get a flat screen tv" and Management had already pre-req'd "Redecorate front room" before any new TV was purchased. But I digress...

So it's 2010, I've got a top-flight internet connection here, online purchases are the way of the future. And, don't get me wrong, I've bought the Orange Box off Steam, and I've been happy both with the games and the delivery & maintenance therein (although being *forced* to apply a patch before you can play is a little tiresome).

But in this case I've boobed. I should have left my man-cave, found a store, and BOUGHT THE DISK. Because it turns out GTA:IV is a 16GB download. And Steam's downloads are... well, let's just say they're a little inconsistent in download speeds. I started off getting 500KByte/Sec, with a "This'll take 9hrs" message. Then after a couple of hours it slowed down, to about 250KByte/Sec. It stayed that way most of the day but from about 5 o'clock onwards it's back up to 400ish. Net result is that 10 hours after starting, I'm still at least 2 1/2 hours away from playing the game. I've also severely broken my download cap for the day (although as it's a rolling cap over 30 days, I'm not too concerned).

But it's not the Instant Gratification it's sold to be, is it?

[also I should note that there's a scary set of pre-reqs for the game which are giving me The Fear too. Apparently I can blame Rockstar for those, though, not Valve. We'll see how that turns out when/if the download ever completes]

Truth

To follow up on my previous Rant, I have to say that (thanks to @ukslim for finding) I find much to agree with in this user's post.

Having watched Dawkin's Address To The Faithful from last Friday, I have to say that Mr Sharpe is on to something. When the bulk of one's attack is U! NO U!, it's of minor intellectual content, or import, and is not a great tool for advertising the benefits of rational thought and objective truths.

I mean the great benefit, the great difference between the Scientific Method (as opposed to all the others) is that it's fine to be sceptical, it's encouraged. But you attack the science, not the scientist. Work on what people are trying to tell you, not on who's doing the telling. If you focus on the people (and not the facts), you're just sinking to the lowest level. Science is supposed to be above that, above the petty egos and personalities. Above the irrational, the emotional, and on to a higher intellectual plane in search of (but not necessarily ever reaching) the great Objective Truths of the universe.


If, on the other hand, you decide you really DO want to go ad hominem, I think I prefer Armando Iannucci's approach. JP-2 and Mary Poppins will never sound the same to me again...


Anyway. Just one other thing: Stay away from twitter.com for now. Nasty little javascript bug they've got themselves there...

Delicious Cake

So after the somewhat fraught end to last week (thank you, A303, for turning a -50Min ETA into a +5Min delay) we had a quiet weekend, broken only by the pleasant arrival of a friend for dinner, not least of all because a Friend With Cakes is a Friend Indeed.


For the first time in a very long time I also have a proper job that's within a 20 minute commute of home too. It'll never last, but we'll make the most of it whilst we can.

NO U!

Reports this morning indicate that the Pope equates Atheism with Nazism:

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth
century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from
public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and
thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”

So this man, this ex-Member of the Hitler Youth, this almost-certainly-responsible-for-protecting-paedophile-priests man, who's on record as equating Homosexuality as great a risk as Global Warming, this frickin' idiot who believes condoms make HIV worse, this misogynist throwback that believes over half of the followers of his own faith are incapable of being full participants, this leader of a millennia-old organisation that's crippled entire societies, persecuted it's own members, colluded with or at best stood by whilst the Nazis performed their atrocities, is now reaching out to have a pop at Atheists?

Let's be clear: Hitler and the Nazis were dicks. So was Pol Pot. And Stalin. The 20th century was literally teeming with Class-A dicks in positions of power, and the 21st century doesn't appear to be shaping up any differently. Whenever you've got dicks in charge, Bad Stuff happens. Really bad stuff.

But it's not like Atheism makes people into dicks. Or at least, not at any rate greater than Theism makes people into dicks. And lest we forget, the great struggles of our age (and for most of recorded history) are being waged by dicks operating under the banner or at least fig-leaf of a religious alignment.  Al-Qaeda? Hardly a poster child for the atheist movement. Jihads? Fatwas against harmless writers? Again, not the work of the religiously-abstinent. And that's without even looking at the motivations or known affiliations of the major players of the toss that our side has kicked-off (but we know how much their Faith told them to go invade oil-bearing countries...)

Stuff like this...  well, it punches my buttons I'm afraid. It's the hypocrisy I can't stand. I mean, I understand the reasons for it: power's nice, the vatican must be a comfy place to live what with all that gold and all, I can see it's a good idea to keep promoting the "no no, we've got the answers, everyone else is wrong" line to keep the people hooked. But so much of this crap goes against the facts and even common sense. It's not that I don't swallow any of it, what bothers me is that I live in a world where anyone can swallow this sort of guff.

If ever you needed proof that humans aren't rational beings, just point to the nearest Pope and the number of people who buy into that whole "everything he says is absolutely true" schtick.

Oh and by the way:  Hitler almost certainly wasn't an Atheist. Go Google it. If you're hard of googling, try:

1. Wikipedia 
2. Council for Secular Humanism 
3. Some Random Dude
4. Teh Googlez
5. ScepticWiki

....Way to get the sources right, Ratzinger. Stay Classy.

Oh this will *not* end well...

So I find myself Away From Home again, and for a night longer than I expected too.

Got to the hotel last night and asked for an additional night; no problem sir but I'm afraid we'll have to move you. OK says I suits me. No no, says they: You'll be in a twin room tonight but we'll have to move you to a double room tomorrow night; we're fully booked both nights.

OK says I, do I have to checkout and check back in again? No no, says they: Just leave your things packed and we'll move them for you; collect your new room key from reception when you get back in tomorrow night.


So tomorrow is now today. I'm out of the old room. And to be honest I've got nothing better to do but chase around the hotel looking for my stuff tonight so it'll be an adventure.

And, as I sat 30 mins down the road behind a bloody great oversize load artic lorry this morning, I'm not actually sure I finished packing this morning; I think I left my washbag in the bathroom instead of putting it into my overnight bag.

Could this be the start of another wierd travel game, in the same vein as "Guess which airport my bags have ended up at"? Stay tuned...

Everything Went Better Than Expected...

Hmm. Bit of the usual minor seepage around radiator valves, but so far - fingers crossed - no disasters and no puddles. Just working-better-than-before-because-they're-not-full-of-crud radiators.

Perhaps it was worth it after all...

There is *No* way this is turning out well...

We've got a very nice man in to sort out our central heating. Yesterday he put in a better pressure head system so that we don't get circulation into (and, I suspect, over the top of) the header tank in the roof. The thickness of crud in the removed pipes proved the efficacy of this.

However as I type this he's got some sort of heath-robinson setup in place to do a "Power Flush" of the whole system (to remove the crud from the rest of the system). Given it's all microbore pipework, and we've seen leaks in the system already, there is *no* *way* this isn't ending without an Incident of horribleness somewhere in the house...

Monday, Bloody Mondays

Today I Ar Mostly Working From Home.

Going out of my nut with admin & catchup.

Sure Sign one is becoming an Old Phart: Every new procedure, or change to a procedure, is unnecessarily complicated and adds pain to one's day. Some bright spark thinks it's a great idea to reconcile provisioning system A with payment system B, notes no automated mechanism to do so and thus is born The Procedure, that All Must Follow on Pain Of Death (or at least non-payment of incurred expenses) such that error-prone manual data entry substitutes for column joins across federated database tables.

Not that I'm bitter or anything, you understand...

Lazy Sunday Mornings...

Had a  lovely night out with Dearly Beloved; I had Steak, she had Fajitas. Kids didn't mis-behave too badly (although Youngest was rather too proud of herself getting told off for playing on the uninflated bouncy castle at the party earlier in the day.

Oh and Eldest continues her "I'm losing touch..." ways with news that she and Friend played "Orphan Children of 1066" together but she couldn't remember who was the Norman and who was the Viking[1]. Instead of, you know, Schools or Dressing Up or something.

And today the sun is out and the grass is drying off which means I probably ought to get dressed and mow the lawn or something. Later. Later. After I've made Lattes I think...

[1] = I know, I know. It's these little slips that give me hope I'm still going to be able to provide some input to her.

So if this is a sort of diary....

I ought to update it every day?

OK, yesterday's later learnings:

1. If offered a chance to escape early, TAKE IT. Hanging around and attempting to be diligent will be punished, e.g. by the phrase "Oh all that work you've helped us with? It's all broken...". As an example.
2. Hanging around on a Friday will inevitably lead to packed trains, and thence to Chaos. Like track failures meaning what was already a long journey turned into an outrageous one. Didn't get home until 23:00 in the end. Not fun at all.
3. At least East Coast Main Line has power points. If the iPhone had died a battery death (and it wouldn't have lasted the 4.5hrs that train took the way I was using it...) I'd have been a very bored and unhappy camper indeed.

Today's going much better though. Got an unexpected Free Gift Lie-In from Dearly Beloved, both Kids have disappeared for much of the afternoon, and we've booked a spoil-ourselves-rotten weekend for next month, all on points and gift vouchers. Later we shall be dining out.

Today's learnings?

1. Passive-Aggressive control freakery is embedded in my genes, based on the greater or lesser degrees to which I observe it expressed in ancestors, siblings and offspring.
2. Sex Bob-omb are named after side-characters in Mario Bros 2. And "Scott Pilgrim vs the World" is a far, far geekier film than I'd even guessed...

It's only 10:30. What can I possibly have learnt today?

1. Great nights out with old friends have Consequences. Especially when only one of you has work in the morning...
2. I am 250 miles and a minimum of 4.5 hrs from home. And I don't know when I'm leaving
3. The workplace habits of the average office are very, very odd. Why are all the women - ALL of them - here today with tinsel, fluff and red hair ?

So what have I learnt today?

Hmm, good one. I'm coming close to a dangerously zero-input day.

Having said that:

1. Don't assume that all the technology works. Just because you've heard nothing doesn't mean everyone has heard nothing. You might, e.g., have been accidentally  missed off the distribution list....
2. It may be possible to infer friends and colleagues current workload from the frequency and nature of comments and status updates on e.g. Facebook. But then it's also possible you're creating invalid data out of meaningless noise...
3. Just because a bit of late-night voodoo worked to get one server working. doesn't mean doing the same voodoo is going to work on another. Besides everyone knows sacrifices have to be made at night under moonlight, right?

Film Night - Scott Pilgrim

Went and saw this film last night. I can't believe a film with such a Nerdy heritage and back-story is so popular, but I'm glad it is.

I didn't spend enough time (or 10p pieces) in arcades as a nipper to get all the references and homages, but I got my fair share. From the Windows sound, the Apple ding, Queen's Flash Gordon sound effects and the numerous implausible beat-em-up inspired special moves and announcements, a rollicking great time was had.

Special mention must be made of the Soundtrack which was superb both in content and particularly in terms of appropriateness for the subject matter. So much so that for the first time in an extremely long time I should go hunt down the soundtrack album...

My apologies to the other patrons of the cinema who would have gotten annoyed with my chuckling along throughout but I enjoyed it.

A good friend characterised it as "Not going to win any Oscars but doesn't stop it being a great use of a couple of hours". I agree wholeheartedly.

On the politeness of downing tools and walking...

Just what *is* the etiquette for telling one's valued customer that it's beer o'clock and there's a movie with my name on that won't watch itself?

On the politeness of upping sticks and quitting

Just what *is* the etiquette for telling one's valued customer that it's beer o'clock and there's a movie with my name on that won't watch itself?

Other things I have learnt today...

n) Product manuals lie and mislead

(actually I didn't learn that today, but I did have it reinforced...)

Really?

So it turns out that just because mon pere created a blog (and, it appears, promptly forgot about it), I've become pressured both mentally and by Blogger's dashboard's honking great "Press me To Create A Blog!" button every time I go to find his Blog, into creating one of my own.

Despite having no need, interest or purpose in doing so. What a waste of space and time.

Let's see if we can do something better with it than that.

Things I have Learnt Today:

1. Never trust a Met Office that forecasts rain without pointing out the winds and the cold. Bring thicker jumpers as well as raincoats
2. Certain hotel chain's in-room tea-making facilities can be abused by bringing the teabags and milk cartons to work for when there's no local capability.
3. I missed my calling in life and based on the last 24 hours I should have been an Apple salesman...
   

(I didn't say they'd be interesting things I'd learnt, did I?)