I have volunteered to help out my mate Emma with her PC today. I have no idea what is wrong with it until I see it.
I always get a certain amount of angst when fixing other people's computers. I think I apply my paranoia of losing data to them, which typically is not the case with your average user. They expect their PC to trash itself once in a while and to have to reinstall it. I operate under the principal that it is an absolute last resort and I will move heaven and earth to salvage data. My own backup policy for my Mac is religious even though it is not likely to die from a bout of ethereal SARs like its Windows counterparts.
There is also that nagging doubt that you might have to act all doctorly and announce that the patient is dead or that it needs a transplant.
Then you have the fear that you might not be able to fix it or understand what the problem is. Thankfully that does not happen very often but when it does it knocks your confidence. I wrote some time ago that I spend my days working minor technical miracles and producing massively complex systems that are resilient, sit on multiple networks simultaneously and if there is a total site failure, switch to a dark site without you as a user ever knowing there had been a problem. It is not easy. So when the moment comes and I look at a problem that I just cannot get my head around it (and this is invariably someone's PC at home), I get really annoyed with myself.
After I have cast the rhunes, sacrificed a couple of children and incurred the wrath of Mohammed, I have a couple of pies that require some attention and then I'm sure it will be time to prepare myself for the weekly outing with the Vanquisher, where I hope the muppets who so riled me last weekend are not in attendance.
...but I said, "No, I'm not addicted to Facebook!" -- while pasting a Russian phrase in a comment box, IM-ing, sending out a gift badger, and checking out my Scrabble games at the same time :-/
As an experiment, I'm taking some time off until after the interview on Tuesday (it would help me concentrate on what I still have to do). I've asked Albert to firewall some sites out. I'll still read email, but there will be no Facebook chatter... no Scrabble... and no badgers... [*sigh*]
Don't know what to expect in terms of withdrawal symptoms: angst? ennui? creepy visions of babies crawling on the ceiling? Will I be breaking into Albert's server at 2am? We shall see. Obviously, a weekend of meditation and Microsoft Access is in order -- with some Amy Winehouse thrown in for good measure (Duffy, schmuffy! I need the real thing.)
We have a thing at work about EMOs. It started when we heard The Lancashire Hotpots He's turned EMO and we noticed the shockingly accurate description of Grom.
This morning Grom spotted a masterpiece that combines our love of EMOs and our adoration of Starbucks. Behold. I Bleed On Your Panini.
If you catch my MSN status today, it will not feature Fall Out Boy.
Well, it seems I am to finally be divorced again. I have to agree to some terms and apparently it will take a matter of days. I'm not sure whether to party or cry. I could fight it but what the hell is the point?
I guess I'll take the papers to a solicitor here and if they concur with the potted summary the sociopath has sent me, sign them and get the whole thing done with.
How awful to end up hating the person you once loved so deeply. Then again, it might wash away the last four years of torment and I can start to look at things with a bit more perspective. Would I really want to take back someone who had dragged me to the edge? Four kids, three fathers. Classy. Nah. To paraphrase my last post, the wench is dead.
I think I may be away this weekend. The last thing I will need is family analysis. They were never close when I was married so they cannot possibly understand its demise.
Hey-ho. I'll respond with a "send the papers". And you can be sure that come the day of release, there will be a Dolly Parton track on here and there will be no commentary. Watch this space.
Now then my little дшк's (is that even right Mrs Albert? -- I did it phonetically).
I suspect that I, like most of you, am still reeling from the news that RBS posted the largest ever loss in UK corporate history. £24.1billion. Wow. It takes some envisaging doesn't it? With the latest tranche of funding from you and I, that means the UK taxpayer has ploughed in £33billion into digging them out from the sickly depths in which they find themselves. The last time I looked, their market cap was £11billion. On the news of the next donation, the stock price went up nearly 30%. You do the math because I cannot get my head around it.
They have also subscribed to the £325billion insurance policy that the government have underwritten for the poxy sum of £6billion in premiums which is meant to shield them against further write-downs as a company (albeit an effectively state-owned company) at the cost of the tax-payer, but with the carefully crafted spin that the premiums would go back into the public coffers and go some of the way to paying for their bail-out.
[Kenny: cough]
Isn't this just like insuring a house after it has burned down?
Let me get this right. UK PLC buys FeckedCompany.com for about a bazillion times its market cap. And just in case FeckedCompany.com is anymore fragile than it seems, it sets up a company that sells FeckedCompany.com an insurance policy at a premium that it knows it will lose money on. This is like me buying the house at the end of the street (which burned down last night) for £150k and then thinking it's okay, I'll just set up an insurance company to cover any potential losses, charge myself £3k and then shout "oops" and pay myself £150k -- I could then sit back and say it's all peachy because by the time this is all over I can sell the charred shell to a developer for squillions and make a tidy profit on my £150k. Job is, as they say, a storm-trooper.
I know this is not the right thing to do, but at some point is not better to sit back and declare the wench dead? And I say that as a shareholder. Would it not be cheaper to just pay out the contents of people's accounts, ask UK PLC to take on the debts, mortgages and loans, sell off any assets or possibly redeemable arms and cut out the prospect of anyone making an immoral dollar on the back of it? What is to be gained from its continued existence?
Banks seem to operate under different rules to the rest of the world. Either all banks are nationalized and we admit we are a communist country or we humanely euthanize them and let natural selection take its course. You cannot selectively pick industries to support and I don't buy that banks are top of the food chain. Based on market caps, I can cite you a litany of blue-chip companies who have more cash in the bank (no pun intended) with less debt than most of the UK highstreet banks (and that is cash, not dodgy assets). These people make things. Banks do not.
Actually forget all the above. You either operate a capitalist system and let things hurt when it goes wrong or you don't. You cannot play at being capitalist with socialist undertones. Before you argue I am wrong, let me cite the fact that you are not right and it is now proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Blind faith in anything is a recipe for disaster and I say that from your average man in the street's perspective, not a political one. Expecting your government to shield you has been proven a fallacy (you cannot regulate entropy spiked with greed). I don't know what the answer is, but it certainly is not the heady cocktail of capitalist socialism because the c in capitalist will always be in upper case and the s in socialism will always be in lower case. And those in upper case usually have most of the money. I await the complete radicalization of armchair socialists.
We're all sat looking at the blue screen of death. I have this crazy feeling that hitting reset on the whole deal might not be so bonkers.
I am having a wildly good time at the moment. I have my Russian phrase book and an imagination. I am trying to master the alphabet so what I like to do is construct a bizarre curse and stick it through the google translator and see if I can pronounce it. I then stick that on twitter as my tweetage. Over to the left you will have been party to various imaginative curses involving meerkats, mongooses and now I have created an original profanity that involves Scandinavians, fruit and something that will probably send me to hell. It truly is the way of the future when it comes to learning languages. One day, when I am an adult, I will start to learn numbers and helpful phrases like "I despise poodles".
In response to my detractors surrounding the exercise bike, did you miss the bit that said I am a weeble?
On that subject, I have just got off the phone with my parental units. Initially it was to discuss the crossword and football but it degenerated into an analysis of exercises that might be useful for my legs. Mater and Pater joined a gym a couple of weeks ago. They are still at the enthusiastic stage of the process. All is rosy.
"Ooo, Kenny, why don't you come to the gym with us? They've all sorts of things there. That way you could use their exercise bike."
"Hello? Kenny and gyms? People around. Not a chance."
"But you have nowhere to put an exercise bike."
"Irrelevant. Anyway, you know I have broken both my kneecaps in the past and that doing anything too strenuous will end up doing me more damage than good."
"Swimming! There's a pool there."
"You know I can't swim."
"You can. I have a photo of you in Lake Garda swimming."
"Well I got over it after a fit of bravado in my early 20s when I swam out into a lake in Cumbria to impress the lass I was there with (I shall not name her on the basis that there is a slim chance she reads this), and then went into blind panic and just about made it back to shore. Since then I have never even tried water other than the bath."
"Tread mills."
"Streets."
"Rowing machines."
"Do I look like I'm a blue."
I know. I am belligerent. All of the above suggestions are good ideas except there is a grain of truth to all my responses. And I'm really not sold on gyms. If I am going to do these things, I want to be alone. I hate communal anythings.
As I think this through, I am starting to come around to Maest's way of thinking. I think I may be on the lookout for a bike.
God help me. Next I'll be vegan and caffeine-free. That is a path to madness.
I promised I wouldn't post anymore Russian just yet and I won't, but I'm in the process of looking into how to get a Russian visa. Has anyone in the UK ever done this? It strikes me that it is even more contrived than the Chinese visa process.
For example, go to Russian Embassy website. The first thing you will note is that on the left hand side there is a side panel of Google ads for various and nefarious agencies who are happy to help you get your visa through invites (don't ask me, I haven't got that far just yet). If you click on the link to getting a Russian visa on the embassy page, you get a new window with an ad for Thomas Cook, nothing else -- nada.
I get the feeling that our Russian cousins have some selective visa requirements. You either need to be rich enough to shell out about £40 to get some of the way to buying a visa, or you need to be canny enough to negotiate your way through a very unhelpful website. I want to do this directly with the Russian embassy because I hate third parties having my passport details and I refuse to support satellite industries who make a living out of making a process look more cumbersome than it need be.
From the Blue Murder I watched tonight: what kind of a criminal who wishes to remain anonymous drives a Hummer in the UK? Even in the US, it's a bit of a tattoo-like give-away.
My doc reckons that I should buy an exercise bike to increase the strength in my legs. I have nowhere to put one. What to do? I am not joining a bloody gym.
Long and tedious day ahead tomorrow. Tweetage and bloggage will be minimal.
I solemnly promise to shut up about Russian for a while. Should I book my flight at any given point, you will be the first to know and there will, no doubt, be a flurry of Russian missives.
Normal banalities will resume as football matches come and go, cricket matches are lost and things in general provoke outrage (case in point: Kate Frickin' Winslet).
While I'm on the subject of banalities, my doctor summoned me a couple of weeks ago and I was there this morning. Apparently I am very well which is a minor miracle given the amount of cigarettes, coffee and now coke I consume. The one piece of bad news is that it appears my legs may never be my own again. She expected them to be at least a bit better but sadly, nope. I will be a weeble for the rest of my days.
Yikes! I just said "learn the alphabet", not "hack a page full of scary HTML code"...
You don't do anything by halves, do you? I guess that's why you get a score of 80% in Conscientiousness and I only get 30% (on a good day). Whatever floats your boat, but don't expect me to learn all those codes (how do you insert one in a post?)
Looking at the table, I don't like their description of YERU for that sound, but in all fairness it is a sound very difficult to transcribe. I once thought that only Slavs, Romanians, and harbour seals can naturally produce that sound; then I heard Jamie Oliver on TV. If you listen to Jamie, when he says "DO", there's a clear "D", then that Russian sound like a guttural i/u, and only then the final "ooo" (as in, "What you want to DO, right, is wazz it all up in a blender"). But perhaps you would prefer to listen to a harbour seal, they are more melodious (can you get seals from Amazon? Gently used?)
So, I am impressed (nonplussed?) and expecting great things, and guttural sounds, from your general direction.
I must be a bit third-party fire and theft today. Maybe not. You decide.
I just chauffeured Die Führer chez parental units and on the way back I spotted some WTFage.
-- Shop-mobility scooter in the middle of Golborne Road tearing ass at 5mph. It had wing mirrors. I had to do a double take. Do you have to pay road tax on those things? If it is on the road, it needs to be subject to the same punitive taxation that cars are. Period. Detractors will argue that taxing them is taxing disability. I would argue that 90% of the users of them are not disabled. 'Nuff said.
-- At the top of the road there is a dental practice. At the moment there is a big sign pinned to the railings -- "NEW DENTIST REQUIRED. APPLY WITHIN". Do I need to point out how bonkers this is? I live in a town that is inhabited by great people who are primarily manual workers. They do their jobs, drink their ale and go to bed. The education in this neck of the woods is not exactly the best; in fact some might argue that those of us who managed to get to university did so in spite of the system rather than because of it. So why on earth would you think that a newly qualified dentist would be driving through Bryn looking for a job. The mind boggles. It would be like recruiting a heart surgeon on a flier outside your local chippy.
I am still pondering an open response to Mrs Albert, although I must confess that her making an appeal for a companion negated the need for me to do it. Ta Missusalbertushka.
So as not to disappoint Dr Stu, I'm going to rant about, guess what, Tori Amos.
In stark contrast to last night's nastiness where I very nearly lost my temper and decked some brain-dead wazzock (it's okay, I didn't thanks to a swift intervention by the Vanquisher), I am having a very peaceful day today. It will involve dusters, a vacuum or two and oodles of Tori Amos.
The Vanquisher is a big Tori fan. Last night he was telling me about a couple of albums that I didn't have. I think mentally I had consigned Tori to history because I couldn't believe she could ever come up with anything better than Scarlet's Walk. I downloaded them this morning from MP3 Panda -- I am not sure how kosher it is, but it's about 20% of the cost of iTunes. I downloaded The Beekeeper and American Doll Posse. Neither are anywhere near as stunning as Scarlet's Walk, but they meet the requirements for Kenny to be gobsmacked.
I had a rush of blood to the head a couple of weeks ago and bought the sheet music for Scarlet's Walk. To say I can't sight-read music is an understatement. If you're a mathematician, you are meant to "get" music. I think it speaks volumes about my mathematical ability that it takes me an eternity to figure which note is which. I am musically dyslexic. If I casually look, I kind of pick up what the hell is going on. If I concentrate the notes might as well be hallucinatory Minogues dancing all over the page. All that said, I looked at the music I had bought while I was on a conference call last week (yes, it was a thrilling call). I sat at my desk and tried to finger the notes as I was talking trifles. Impossible. If I can't do it on a desk with no scope for error, stick me on a piano and watch the catastrophe unfold. The woman is not human. It's not just that she writes some bizarre melodies, but I swear she ignores any conventional timing. I think she works on some mad Asian concept of timing. I can't even whistle in the timing she uses so the chances of my fingers obeying my intent are next to none. A complete waste of £15. I might as well have taken the money and thrown it into the Leeds-Liverpool canal.
Alors, I need to stop talking about cleaning and actually do it. I fully expect to be back because I will spend all day procrastinating and marveling at mad piano skillz.
Ok, this has gone far enough... For the past couple of weeks I have been witnessing with increasing alarm a process I can only describe as The Russification of Kenny. I believe an intervention is in order.
First: drop the pretense! We all know why you want to go to Russia. I saw you get all misty-eyed when that song started playing on the radio -- Muskrat Love, was it? "Muskrat Susie, Muskrat Sam/Do the jitterbug out in muskrat land"?! I know what you were thinking... and it's not natural! Besides, she told you to lay off, remember? ("Not a meerkat to be trifled viz", "snootful of polonium"... ring a bell?)
Second: OK, so I'm not exactly a russophile (the fact that every year I Google "natural increase" + Russia, and smile gleefully at the ever-decreasing population numbers, should be a clue). But even the most impartial observers of modern Russia could tell you that, while a majority of the population likes nothing better after a hard day's work than relaxing with friends and family, reading poetry and strumming their balalaikas... there's a significant percentage whose main occupation is parting other people from their money/passport/clothes/etc. For those guys, you're not geeky, lovable, musical, happy-go-lucky Andryushka: you're what's for dinner!
Thirdly: when it comes to absorbing vast quantities of alcohol without flinching, nobody beats your average Russian. Either you make a rule to have only 1 drink (of whatever is on offer) and no more, or avoid drinking anything at all. You don't want to step into the wrong taxi while intoxicated one evening, and be found 2 days later wandering the outskirts of St Petersburg, blue-lipped, buck-naked, and with a large bump on your head (assuming you are found.)
So, you're not going anywhere until you learn a few essential phrases (such as: "Do you speak English?", "To the British embassy", "Take everything, it's yours", and "Please stop beating me, I am not worth your effort"). Being able to read some basic street signs would help, too.
I like your idea of traveling with a friend (for obvious reasons: power in numbers, the sharing of expenses, and having a warm body to huddle against when you're wandering the outskirts of St Petersburg at night, blue-lipped, buck-naked, etc.)
So here's an appeal for travel partners: hey, peeps! Who wants to go to Russia with Kenny? Go on -- it's a lovely place! :^)
Well Mrs Albert tried to teach me some Russian last night. There was a slight flaw in the plan. She can read Cyrillic and I cannot. I remember trying to contort various consonants into discernable words but I don't remember what any of the random streams of oral contusions were. This is no bad thing because even if I could remember them, I would not know what they mean. I'd end up insulting someone's mother when trying to ask for a packet of cigs, which would inevitably lead to some form of FSB intervention and a resulting international incident. I think I learned three things:
1) The b in Cyrillic softens the preceding letter.
2) Rather than be an annoying git and calling everyone "darlin'", I can now confidently call them dushka.
3) My enthusiasm for languages should always be counterbalanced by my complete ineptitude for anything that is not English.
Mrs Albert is worried about me going to Moscow. She was raised not so much behind the Iron Curtain, but in one of the many pleats that constitute a curtain, be it iron or not. They were forced to learn all sorts of freaky-deaky foreign languages. I guess that if you were sat on the iron fence back in the cold war days, you have a right to be skeptical about the gubbins that transpires in Moscow; after all you have first hand knowledge of how bad it can be. Naive me thinks we should put all that behind us and start being chums. And anyway, if I am to keep up my international man of mystery reputation, Russia is the last taboo that I am willing to break (I will not ever enter the Middle East on account of its utterly loony occupants). If I manage to get to Moscow (and that is still an "if"), the only places I will have left on my list will be Australia and Peru (maybe Brazil) and then I will be more than happy to spawn and die. Hang on, I've done the spawning thing. I guess that just leaves that whole dying deal.
Evil Albert, himself, is starting to resemble a Russian oligarch, except for the fact that he is quite obviously not a meerkat but a Yorkshireman. He has his fingers in so many pies, you wonder how he manages to keep track of them all. He's giving a lecture next month on radio frequencies and how they affect things. By things, I mean stuff that I plain do not understand. I am tempted to go listen to it. He said something about 35MHz which reminded me of an encounter with a young lady in my youth and then mentioned 2.4GHz at which point I probably passed out from the extrapolation. It should be interesting though. Albert knows his onions from his shallots.
Reyt, I have a crossword to batter. I may be back later but no-one reads blogs at the weekend so I may not.
In between panics this morning, I am contemplating trips of different magnitudes. The most immediate trip is chez Château Albert at the behest of Mrs Albert. Obviously there is an unfinished crossword dangling somewhere about the East Wing that needs a Kenny's eye cast upon it. This trip has the added benefit of all the little Alberts being away -- not that I mind the little Alberts, it's just that they are a little exuberant a little too early at the weekends which, when you have stayed up late casting aspersions on everything from the idiocy of corporate hell to the quality of Quavers these days, is a tad too much to bear.
Tomorrow I will return and it's the usual Saturday evening with the Vanquisher where again the uprising will be discussed at length.
The more interesting trip that I am considering is to Moscow. In keeping with my commitment to be more sociable and to actually take a holiday, I am thinking about going visiting my hero Aleksandr Orlov. When I last looked at a weekend break in Moscow, it was priced at £1500 upwards. For a week at the end of March, including flights and a 3 star hotel two miles away from the Kremlin and Red Square, it is a fraction of that. It gets even cheaper if two of you go (duh), but I am struggling to think of who might want to go with. Nay matter, I can do it alone. In a happy coincidence Mrs Albert speaks Russian so tonight I will be taking notes.
Anyway dushkas (okay my third word of Russian), I must do some happy-clappy techno-weenie designing.
Can I just share with you the joy that I have when I use my new Trico wiper blades? I mean that sincerely. They are just so ace I actively want it to rain just so I can watch the little gems in action.
Well what can we say about Allen Stanford. Everybody's friend and patron saint of all things goodly to public enemy number one fugitive in under forty-eight hours. Truly amazing.
One minute he's got a bank that has virtually bailed out Antigua for years, is rubbing shoulders with high profile politicians, sponsoring cricket matches, golfers, F1 drivers and The Donkey™, and is Mr Philanthropist. The next he's a $8bn fraudster with allegations of money laundering hanging over his head. To add to his charges, he's tried to flee the country, and is now AWOL. To be honest, his rap sheet is only short of badger-baiting to achieve a job-lot of every crime in the book.
Half of me wants to see him hang. After all, he's effectively bankrupt Antigua.
On the other hand, I want to doff my cap in his general direction for being a character and proving that you can get away with fooling every regulatory body for donkey's years by employing an one-man auditor based in a one-room office above a hair salon, next door to the chippie somewhere in London. And the only reason he was caught was by someone doing a favor for someone else. And we all wonder why the world economy is in the state it is. You can trap people who are defrauding the benefits system of 50p and a Mars Bar a week but you completely miss a good few billion going walkabout on a balance sheet. I suppose the moral is that if you're going to commit fraudulent acts, think big.
How many more of these people are we going to discover in the coming months? Who is next? Bill Gates -- indicted for revenuing something that doesn't exist like, say, productivity software? Aleksandr Orlov for providing fake meerkats? Will Rupert Murdoch go the way of Robert Maxwell? The list is endless.
Early morning. Much worry. Mild panic. Long meeting. Führer's birthday. Early night. New boss in the morning. I should probably have just tweeted that.
I'm glad I'm not in charge of nuclear submarines, banks or a loaded revolver. On the plus side, Patty Griffin, some damned fine food and a good handle on what I need to do tomorrow. I can also grab the sleep of the just for providing the Vanquisher with an introduction to Joni Mitchell. I will fall asleep imagining driving a Saab 9-3. As the days go by, the more I am leaning to do it. I take the view that if I make it to the start of April and I'm still obsessed, I should just do it rather than lusting.
Yesterday while lunching, we got onto the subject of my late grandfather. To be honest we very often do because you had to meet him to believe him; he was a character beyond belief. He died prematurely in 1985 thanks to years of no-one giving a rat's ass about working conditions down the coal mines.
He had some fairly bizarre traits. He wore a long Mac and a beret wherever he went. He would be wearing that same garb as he rode his moped home from work. The road I now live on, where he spent most of his life, has a slight gradient heading towards a roundabout at the bottom. I remember watching him come home from a 12 hour night shift in the pit, on his moped in the snow and gliding down the road with one knee the only thing keeping him upright as he hurtled towards a rather nasty crunch.
He had a passionate hatred of all things medical (wonder where I got that from?) and he didn't trust cars at all. On the rare occasions you could get him into one, he would bail out at the first set of traffic lights. Yesterday we were reminiscing about one journey where he got out at one set of lights and started walking, only to get back in again at the next set of lights. The man was a comedy genius.
About a month before he died, he went into Billinge hospital to have a varicose vein operation. We were on our way to visit him in hospital (maybe two miles away) when we spotted a familiar figure limping down the road. Against all advice he had checked himself out of the hospital and started walking the 5 miles home. In later interrogation this was because they had caught him smoking in the bathroom and he had been chastised -- he never took that well.
He fancied himself making some money as a boxer (I met his hero Peter Kane years later in one of the local pubs that we used to frequent) so started taking part in bare knuckle fights at the back of the Britannia. I don't think he made very much (maybe another family trait on the fighting and the money front).
There were times in my mother's childhood when she had no bedroom because he bought a job-lot of budgies, times when the bath was unavailble because he had bought a job-lot of goldfish. He hated most people, but loved animals with a passion that you rarely see. He used to playfully throttle the dog, after having shared a fry-up for breakfast with her, shouting "Nelly in your belly", a reference to the next door neighbor he so loathed. When his chickens used to peck us, he would lambaste us for not showing animals enough respect -- we should be more cautious and not upset them.
His trips to the market were legendary. Anyone who knows me will attest that I drink tea in a form that most mortals could not handle. My grandfather was the master. He could not resist a teapot. It was almost a weekly event that the teapot was upgraded. Some weeks he came back with three or four depending on how flushed he was feeling. He emptied the teapot once a day, just adding more leaves as the day went on. By the time early evening came, it was treacle and I loved it. Yet another vice I inherited -- I rarely use a single teabag for a brew -- it's usually a double-bagger.
I used to think that I took after my father in looks however if you look at pictures of my grandfather's father (who died at 42 from lung cancer), we could be the same person. It is spooky. I've said this before so some of you will know, but when I first saw this image, I had a stomach dropping moment:
By today's standards he was an ASBO waiting to happen. He drank heavily, smoked like a chimney, cursed like a trooper and was about as dysfunctional as they come.
So imagine my surprise when my mother let slip my grandfather's view of me:
I spent last evening watching the second half of the ITV show '''Blue Murder''' starring Caroline Quentin and the stunningly gorgeous Gillian Kearney. I had watched the first part and come away from it thinking it was bit like Midsomer Murders (i.e. camped up fun). Last night's episode was far from camped up. It was dark. Very dark. I think the last time I had that stomach churning feeling was watching the final series of Murphy's Law.
I am now away to buy the DVDs. They will keep me out of trouble for a while longer.
While I'm reviewing pictures, I am having a girly moment. Joni Mitchell triggers something in me that I have no control over. Thanks Holly in Binghamton -- it's all your fault!
Breaking news: a recording of a telephone call allegedly made by Mrs Orlov has ignited a bidding war in the tabloid press
(A complete transcript of the recorded message appears below. All efforts have been made to preserve the original accent.) -------------------------------------------------------------
Andy, daragoy moy. Don't heff much time, I heff just put baby to bed end vass vatching a little Meerkat Idol viz Aleksandr, zen I slipped away to call you. On TV a nice boy sang such soulful version of Meerkat Sally by Vilson Peekett -- veak at the knees, I vent! A young lad, bit green behind the ears, but such nice shiny coat (*sigh*) Reminded me of you, my luff... And ziss is why I call: HE must neffer know, Andryushka. Neffer, in million years! You would end up in ditch wiz snootful of Polonium in your belly -- and I could not bear it, dushka! Aleksandr is not the sort of meerkat you mess viz. He talks about his bizniss here, but of course you only get bizniss here in UK if vell connyected in Russiya, zat all I can say. So don't call, and don't write me, or him, about no more futbol club, or anysink. Ziss is goodbye, Andryushka... For your sake, and my. (*sob*) I vill always be... (*sob*) your Meerkat Sally [*CLICK*]
This will have to be quick seeing I am meeting the Vanquisher in under an hour. Photos of Goggle will be available tomorrow at some point, although I do have a rather packed schedule. You know how it goes, lunch, a trip chez Fashionista to show her my Macbook -- I will convert her -- and all that kind of sociable stuff that Kennys generally avoid.
My quick point is to suggest that I smell a stitch up. The government are making noises about restricting cash bonuses paid to bankers, instead opting to allow them to award themselves stock options that are only exercisable once the banks have paid back what they owe the government. If you were a banker, looking at no bonus this year, but could award yourself a bazillion shares in Big Bank PLC, where would you want the stock price to be at the moment? Yup. About as close to delisting as possible. How do you go about ensuring that? You play on the market's fears. Let's face it, banks could not be getting any worse press than they are so isn't it, as a famous labor official once said, "a good day for announcing bad news".
Strange that Lloyds TSB have issued a warning that they face a write-down of £10bn thanks to their acquisition of HBOS. Can these people even spell "due diligence"? The answer is yes, if you're making an acquisition and no if it's used in connection with theirs.
Alors, £10bn write-down -- coincidence? Methinks not. Even now, the banking system is playing its devious little games. And the cruel irony is that there is not an organization on earth that can stop them. B'tards.
Mrs Albert. I consulted with the Vanquisher and Kate Winslet is definitely on "The List™". In return, I think I deserve a guest post written in some freaky-deaky furriner language -- we all know French so that would not be fun. You have a choice of your many languagitudes -- Latin, Romanian or my personal favorite, Russian.
Right. Time and tide wait for no man, so I had better watch last night's NCIS before I go pretend I'm two.
I called at Sainsburys last night for some sustainance. When I arrived back at the car, some kindly individual had parked next to me, leaving me a whole six inches to open my door. Two of those were comprised of the width of the door. For once in my life, I had actually gone to the driver's side; in carparks I get disoriented and usually default to US car mode. Nay matter. During the course of limbo'ing into the car, a gust of wind managed to blow the door right onto my leg. Normal cursage occurred, complete with warning labels, red letters and a faint aura of squigglyness.
I called for some petrol on my way out. As I walked in to pay, I had the familiar sickly feeling of my jeans sticking to my leg. I couldn't believe that I might have cut it so carried on regardless, albeit with a slightly camp limp. When I got home I checked. Sure enough, I had gallons of blood sticking my leg to my jeans. I cleaned it up and went out for the evening with the Vanquisher. We had a sterling evening and heard some absolute gems of phrases; nowhere in the world comes up with random phrases like Wigan. This morning, the same leg feels like it has been run over and the "scratch" I diagnosed is actually a bloody great gash surrounded by a bruise that makes Australia look microscopic.
The incident has quite obviously disturbed me. I have just downloaded the very best of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music. A sane Kenny would never do that.
I have an ailing grossmuttie to shop for, an email debate about freedom of the press to be belligerent about and a niece's birthday to attend so I be a-wenting. There was talk of another trip out with the Vanquisher this evening. We'll see.
I just got an email from Nick Harper's mailing list. Nick is son of Roy. 'Nuff said. It details a list of gigs around the country in the next few months. The one that caught my eye was at The Horn in St Albans, site of many a crossword battering at the hands of Stan, Drummer Dave, Psycho, Ray and I.
The Horn = Lauren and Sarah and Dolly Parton and Counting Crows and all things good.
Stan, I said in the text that it was the 8th of May -- it's the 7th. Suggest we contact the mob and see who can make it. It\'s a fine excuse to meet up and do the big five before some tunes and a good laugh.
Go-go geeky-crosswordy-musicky-us.
Update: 13th April -- The Duchess in York. Expect at least me and Albert there. Maybe even Mrs Albert. And Kidder and Flippenfloppen (if I remember to tell them).
James Dean has nothing on me. I flout the norms of conventional wisdom on a daily basis. For example, this morning I had *two* sausage butties. With butter. A better example is that I have found a "specialist" website that I have bought some stuff from. Apparently the goods are made from very strong and beautifully smooth rubber that will not wear out too quickly, even if they get wet a lot. If you're an open-minded kind of guy/gal like me, you too might want to visit here. I bought the EF600 (a full 600mm) and an EF350 (a more leisurely 350mm). I should get them tomorrow (with a bit of luck) but I'm off out in the evening with the Vanquisher and Emma and Lauren so I won't get to play with them until Saturday. I can't wait.
What else? Ah yes. There's some bloody nothing of a news story occupying the radio this evening. I had to switch it off. The crucial facts are:
-- Some right wing Dutch politician who is trying to outlaw the Koran in Holland has produced a 17 minute "film" correlating passages from the Koran with statements made by Osama's backing band, the Mad Mullahs, and then with terrorist acts attributed to nutjob jihadis. He has been indicted in Holland for inciting hatred.
-- Some non-event of a peer in the House of Lords (UK Independence) has invited said Dutch whacko to attend a screening of his film in the Upper House in order to "stimulate debate".
-- Government have said "Under no circumstances will Dutchie be admitted to Blighty because he would incite hatred."
-- Dutchie has said "Screw you guys, I'm coming over anyway so you can deport me and I get basket-loads of adoring attention from your mindless media, thereby getting my message out to the whole of the UK."
-- Dutchie has arrived amidst salivating press pack.
-- Dutchie has been refused entry but managed to stay on British soil long enough to call the BBC to explain how awful it all is.
-- The press are feeding like they haven't seen food since God was a little boy.
Peter Allen had the noble Lord who issued the invitation to Dutchie and Lord Ahmed (patron English Lorded Saint of All Muslim Brothers) on the show to duke it out. Good Lord. I have never seen Bonfire of the Vanities but a more apt description of the handbag waving could not be created...
"You scoundrel, inviting a zealot to air his filthy anti-Muslim bile to the sacred chamber."
"You sir, might be quite wrong if I may be so bold."
"Sorry, yes, but my point remains, this will incite racial hatred."
"Very good Lord Ahmed. But perhaps it won't."
"Fair point old bean."
"Ahhha."
"Errrr."
"Yes, well I disagree with it."
"So do I. Perhaps after the holidays we might have a cup of tea and discuss it."
"Very civilized but after that ding-dong, maybe a good stiff one might be in order."
"I'm a Muslim."
"Jolly good -- the club it is then. TTFN."
I kid ye not. That is a pretty fair summary of how events went. When they cut back to Anita, I hit the CD button. I then quite happily rocked my socks off (as James Dean would have done had Fiona Apple been around in his day) all the way home, where I daringly visited Sainsburys for some teabags and a small cake.
I think my take on it is that not admitting Dutchie would be a) the restriction of free speech b) daft because the average age of the House of Lords is, erm, well clinically dead so they're not likely to announce a counter-jihad and c) hypocritical seeing we paid one of the Mad Mullahs hundreds of thousands of pounds in benefits while he plotted to blow us all to kingdom come (without infringing on his right to groom jihadis).
Last thing: hits went up today thanks to some random linkage from one of the BBC's tech blogs. I can't remember anything technical that I have done recently that would be even vaguely interesting, but hey, whatever.
Apparently my comments are still blocking Zimmer's real email address so he manifestly fails to comment. I don't understand -- I think the only check I do nowadays is to ensure that there is a valid MX record for the address. I will check that momentarily.
In the meantime, Zimmer was attempting a shameless plug for the local theatrical society in Crewe. I guess if anyone lives near Crewe and they are fond of a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan, they should pop down there.
Let us not speak of the football. Outclassed in every department would make it sound like we had the faintest of hope which, of course, we hadn't.
I have a little script dealy that emails me when I reach a major milestone in visitage. Today I hit 250,000 and I saw the email pop up telling me I had. I quickly jumped on to find out who the lucky (sic) person was -- I can tell the regulars from their domains -- only to find a random IP with no user agent, ergo not a person but some automated gubbins. I did a quick whois and was a bit miffed to find it's probably the Chinese government's little bot to find out whether their citizens should be permitted to read such filth. Damn. No kudos in that. I was amazed because my stats code, written by yours truly, ditches any record of a visit by anything I class as a bot. I have no idea how my logic failed so I have yet another unsolvable problem to try to solve.
As a side note, I hope the Chinese government have stopped blocking me. When I was Beijing they did. I think I have always been rather respectful of China. I might have mentioned the poverty when I came back but I have nothing but love for the place. I think I have even articulated that I would move there if I could, just for the hell of it. Nay matter.
The first non-bot quarter million chap was none other than Zimmer. Zimmer lives about 30 minutes from here. I have never met him, but he occasionally helps me out with my technical dilemmas. So Zimmer, you get the badge.
On to other news. It was my niece's second birthday yesterday. To ease Kidder's blood pressure at the increasing amount of space her stuff consumes, I contributed some cash funding to what is probably the world's richest bank, The Royal Bank of Gogglebot. Apparently, she was on TV yesterday morning for her birthday. Kidder and Flippen-Floppen had sent a card and photo into CBeebies or whatever it is called. Her darling little choppage was displayed on TV. Naturally, I didn't find out until last night so I am currently pulling down the whole of the CBeebies from yesterday morning to see if I can find it. I have some mad script that decodes the BBC iPlayer feed and stores it as a more permanent source. It would be nice if I could embarrass her in future years by showing her that she had been on TV. If she is anything like Kidder or I, this will probably result in patricide, matricide and Kennyicide. She'll get her inheritance quicker and we'll all be spared the humiliation of infirmity. Everyone's a winner.
Finally, as per my earlier twitter, why is the England friendly scheduled for 21:00 GMT (22:00 CET)? Given I am up before 06:00 on weekdays, I struggle beyond 22:30. I will be lucky if I do not crash before the end of it -- particularly midweek.
The news that Yorkshire has seen a 30% increase in the rat population has me running for my car in blind panic. If there is anything that scares me more on the planet, I have yet to find it. Well, maybe the prospect of being in the same room as the Minogue is on a par, but there's only one of them to vanquish not a great army of them. At least I think that is the case...please tell me that I'm not never more than three yards away from a Minogue. <shudder>
'Tis true. I am a wuss when it comes to anything rodent-like. We had mice in one of our houses in Middlesbrough. I moved out and onto the couch of one of the lasses on my course. I slept on her sofa for three weeks, until it was proved to me that the mice had gone. I tried to sleep in her bed, but she objected. That's not true. I didn't try to sleep in her bed; I just wrote that in some misplaced attempt at gritty realism.
My fear stems from an unfortunate incident at primary school. I was putting PE equipment away under the stage in the main hall when one the filthy little bastards fell on my head. I have no doubt that my little 7 year old unbroken voice screamed like a little girl. Tears followed. When I went home, Pater told me not to be so soft. He then detailed that when he went walkabout on night-shift at Bradford Road gasworks (where the City Ground is now at Eastlands), he used to have to literally kick the rats out of the way. Then he told me about a flat he had in Whalley Range where he slept on a mattress on the floor as the rats went about their business. Then Mater piped up about a time where she had reached up into a vessel of some description in a shed, only to put her hand into a nest of baby rats. I think I can safely lay the blame for my horror of rodents right on the doorstep of my parents.
So, if I'm not in work for the next six months, you'll know why.
First off, bye-bye Scolari. I hardly knew you but I have some words of advice for you. You were doomed to failure. With the departure of the Chosen One, the prima donnas that comprise the Chelsea first team had a meeting of egos which resulted in a super-ego being formed smack bang at Stamford Bridge. You should have got rid of Drogba during the transfer window -- who knows, morale may have improved considerably. As it happens, you're gone and Drogba is set to annoy the pants off every football fan in the land, while winning every award in the Awards Season. The Waaart alleges that he spotted Sir Alex taking Russian lessons at the local college. I responded that Sir Aleksandr Orlov needs no Russian lessons. The Waaart reckons his post-match interviews would be fab -- "Simples!".
Next, it appears that the question of women in the Church is once again in the spotlight. I honestly cannot understand any institution that is alleged to be the great faith of humankind can honestly take itself seriously by questioning the role of women. If I were a woman, I'd never even think about entering a church. I suppose this means we will be subject to endless quotes from the Right Gnomic Reverend Williams and various Bishops of Bath and Wells, Durham and Myrthr Tydfil. I'll be sure to keep you appraised of the random bollocks that will spew forth as the debate gets underway. Look for deep and meaningful words like sanctity and feckin' moonbat.
There was something else annoying me this morning. I'm sure it will come to me at which point it will be relayed to you.
That was an unfortunate turn of phrase given what the people of Victoria are dealing with at the moment. Let's hope that is over soon.
I got home and was helping Emma with her CV/resumé. She was worried that she hadn't heard back from an interview she had last Friday. I said not to be too concerned. The way these things work is that a position is created, recruited for and then just as the offer was in the bag, some HR oik or accountant usually starts asking whether the hire is absolutely necessary (having ignored the fact that they were okay about it a week ago). I remember promising faithfully to respond to candidates within a padded 10 days and failing thanks to corporate goons. I also remember finding some brilliant people who HR then scuppered. The way I explained it to Emma is "these are people with little brains but massive egos -- they think their reticence is of value". I wrote that rather glibly with the intention of explaining how utterly bonkers the hiring process becomes once a company grows beyond about 50 employees. [There's a great book called '''Accidental Empires''' which details the arrival of the be-suited brigade into Silicon Valley tech companies which tries to explain the madness that is a startup turning into Megacorp -- it focuses on the culture shift but there are parts where, if you have ever been through it, you sigh with empathy.]
I applied my glib comment to Emma to today and, damn, if I should not be listening to my own advice. I passionately object to criticism by the back door. If I don't know how something works and it is your area of expertise, I expect to ask a question and get it answered. If I am talking bollocks, I expect you to point out the error in my assumptions. I don't expect to hear my name being banded around the office with the overtones it was. I could rant on and on, but to be honest, it would serve no purpose.
I have said this before and I have no doubt I will say it again. When you are so damned cock-sure of yourself, you're deluded. Second-guessing your thoughts is the only safety-harness you have. Playing schoolboy games in the real world will end in tears. I should have been thinking that all the way home rather than worrying that I might have asked a daft question. Everybody asks daft questions at some point.
Anyway, I want you all to send some good vibes Emma's way. It's hard for the yoof of today to get into a job that is more than casual. And Emma's someone you would want dealing with your customers.
This is the kind of highbrow missive exchange I usually have...
From: Kenny To: Muffty McTart Subject: Now then Sent: 7 Feb 2009 13:19
Ola ma petite champignon,
When are you free?
Kennarf'
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From: Muffty McTart Subject: Re: Now then Date: 7 February 2009 17:35:22 GMT To: Kenny
Oi - I will sort out a date this week, but I don't think it will be soon as booked up
Damn fine mushrooms.....
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
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From: Kenny To: Muffty McTart Date: 7 February 2009 17:40:07 GMT Subject: Now then
To the Yorkshire Tw@t's wireless device, named after a bramble (who does that?),
Just give me a date. Preferably with Heather Peace, but if I have to have a date with you, I guess that is okay too.
Do you honestly think I *want* to come to London? I do this if only to preserve your delicate adopted Southern pansy fragility. If you were half the man I used to know, you'd get your arse up North. By the way, I'm away for most April and May -- charity work rehoming stray Northerners in the City.
For a Saturday, I have been mildly productive. Pater had ventured to Bury market on Friday and returned with some black pudding. He insisted that I go round for a breakfast that involved said beast. I'm hot and cold on black pudding. Some are utter dross and others are joyous gastronomic treats. This was about the best I have ever had. I intended eating and then leaving to go get my car cleaned but a boat load of Facebook insults interrupted me long enough to notice that some football had broken out at Eastlands. Naturally I had to stay put and watch.
I did call and get the car cleaned on my way home. With all the muck on the roads this week, you couldn't even tell what color it was, so I was shamed into taking it to the drive-through place down the road. I expected to be charged extra for the squillion layers of kack all over it but at the end of some serious effort they said £5. I was too shamed by the state of the car to just pay £5, so I tipped the guy £5. I've been given grief by my family in the past for taking my car to be hand-washed and paying for it. I think that is a silly, silly argument. Yes, I could do it myself in half an hour but I don't really have all the tools to do it properly and I have no intention of buying them. I think the point is that the lads who do the car washing need to earn a living. They may well not have aspired to that particular vocation but it earns them a crust albeit probably a meager one. I think it would be a sad day if I needed £5 more than these guys do. They do a much better job than I ever could so why the hell should I not use their services? It suits everyone.
Having said that I have had the car washed, I am now sat wondering whether I should attack the inside. I did the windows inside on Thursday evening but the back foot wells are piled high with crap. I have been reluctant to touch it on the basis that I am pretty convinvced that I have a family of Polish immigrants (who smoke a lot) living back there, and I don't want to disturb them. The full horror is probably that there is a full bin bag full o'crap back there. It's very rare that I have anyone in the car other than me so I have completely neglected the garbage factor. In my defense, I do spend about 4 hours a day in the car, so food, drink and cigarette packs will accumulate. I will deal with it today or tomorrow.
Tonight is another night of planning the revolution. Rob and I will be found in the usual place. We may have some guest appearances from the lovely Emma and Lauren who have both pledged they will appear but looking at their Facebook status, they are both struck down with lurgy so I don't expect them. Nay matter. World affairs are more important than merry banter.
PS: Word. The next person who tells me I look like Woody Allen or Vladimir Putin will trigger my tipping the nod to The Vanquisher to hit the red button of doom in the direction of York. :) Some b'stard who I used to work with in the US also told me I looked like the chairman of NYSE. Patently piffle. Were I a genuine look-alike for either, I would either be assassinated or rich. I am neither. I am more convinced that I resemble Aleksandr Orlov.
Before I retire (and this is starting to become habitual), a quick last question:
Who else out there would drink anything else rather than plain water, given a choice?
I hate the stuff. My mother is the same. We gag if you give us plain water. I can honestly say that at no time in my life have I ever said "Damn, I could just do with a drink of water" -- it has only been in desperate situations when I have voluntarily drunk it.
Someone must feel the same way. Either that or Mater and I are freaks (no comments on that bit).
Half way across the Pennines midst the bleak mid-Winter, stormy winds were blowing. More accurately salty, gritty spray was hammering my windscreen. I filled my screen-wash up barely 10 days ago so imagine my surprise when it was suddenly empty and I was peering through a streaky, salty mess. I managed to crawl to the service station where I was stung for £5.69 for some magic blue concoction. The whole deal set me back 10 minutes so it was actually 8 o'clock when I made it to my desk. After booting my myriad computers, I set off for Starbucks and returned to my desk approximately 12 minutes later than usual.
Apparently, driving without screen-wash is punishable by a 3 point endorsement on your license. Whoever knew?
I'm not sure how much longer I can tolerate such inconvenience.
On a more serious note, I think I am of the opinion that if it carries on snowing like it is, I am going to cancel a late afternoon meeting and get the hell out of dodge. In fact I will make a call on it on the hour, every hour, starting in about 20 minutes time.
I heard some analyst chap on the radio on Monday (as I was stealing my extra 2 hours in bed) state that for every day of snow, British industry loses £600m in productivity. This means that by the end of this week, we'll have lost £3billion. If the weather continues like this into next week, we'll be looking at an order of magnitude of another bank bail-out in lost productivity. Scary.
If I end up hitting the road, you may well be hearing endless drivel from me all day. I suppose it will compensate for the fact that you only got a finite amount yesterday.
I have very often thought that I should undertake a little experiment and post something here as a "guest-post" just to see if I was busted. I haven't because I have a sneaking suspicion that anyone who reads this regularly would spot it a mile off. Several people over the years have said that I am incapable of anonymizing myself on the basis that anyone who knows me would spot something that was written by me instantly. I am both flattered and perturbed. I'm flattered because that must mean I have some "style" be it good or bad. I am perturbed because that means that anything I submit in an anonymous capacity at work (you know, the usual "What could we do better?" type survey) is instantly attributable to me which means I have to go out of my way to try and not be me, which means I end up sounding even more like me than I usually do. Story of my life that; an endlessly increasing panic about panic itself.
The reason I mention this is because during a one-to-one session with Le Grand, Grand Frommage today, he mentioned something that I thought I had pincer manouvred him on. I thought I had been fiendishly clever and played a bait and switch with the end result that Kenny gets his way without anyone knowing it was Kenny getting his way. Mais non mes petits. It transpires that my pincered initiatives were used verbatim and that it was very obvious who the missives had come from, thanks to the style of the language. As it happens, the act of managing to convince two jaws of a machine that I was right was much appreciated so being busted as the perp was pretty good for me. But it does trouble me that if I needed to do this in anger, I would need to seriously reappraise how I write.
Stan has in the past accused me of doing the stream of consciousness thing. I guess I am guilty of doing that on here on occasion, but in work I do my best to paint a scenario and give very lucid terse options, together with an argument for whatever my thoughts are on the matter. It's not a stream of consciousness, but it's a logical stream. I also tend to use my experience in dealing with bozo US corporate suits as a guiding light; keep it as dumb and one liner as possible and appeal to a) their personal objectives for the quarter/year, b) their love of $$$$ and c) the greater good. It is a tedious game to play but once you have learned the rules, you may be a whore, but you're a whore who gets things done. It has to be said that I enjoy playing that game if my adversary is worthy. If I'm shooting fish in a barrel, it's boring.
Anyway, straw poll:
Kenny is...
a) Instantly recognizable for his God-like prose. b) Instantly recognizable for his flowery-assed drivel. c) Instantly recognizable for his resemblence to one Aleksandr Orlov. d) Instantly recognizable for his endless tedious admiration of certain pianists, actresses and journalists. e) Instantly recognizable for his nauseous cant. f) About as forgettable as last year's Britain's Got Talent winner.
Be brutal, but be honest -- if I need to up my game on not sounding like me at work, I need to know it. I thank you.
It reads in a rather large file of records line by line and if there is user data in there, it anonymizes it by taking the userid and md5 hashing it and writes each line out with the userid hashed. Yay me.
Test harness of about 50 records. Total lines in = 52. Total lines out = 52. Yay me.
Live data sample: Total lines in = 250000. Total lines out: 248903. Woe is me.
I know what you're thinking. Actually let me rephrase that (because I know Maest will be thinking "I love pork products"), I know what *some* of you are thinking. You are thinking that I am going to have to wade through 250000 lines of data to try and spot the fractional percentage of dodgy ones and figure out what has gone wrong. You are wrong because I will not do that. Instead, I will ask whether someone who might be a better Perl programmer than I might want to help a fella out, because for the life of me, I do not see how this can possibly be happening. Line in, if (match), hash, line out, else line out.
Anyone? Or am I having a conversation with myself? I seem to be doing that a lot today. The lovely Emma (my ex-barmaid, late of The Lion Sleeps Tonight fame) has an interview for an internet design company on Friday and asked me if I would give her some background knowledge. I advised in advance that I might not be the best person to do this to someone who is a causal user of t'interweb but she insisted, so I did. Excerpt:
everybody has abandoned msn says: (13:07:08) ah i see cheers kenny you are always a big help
Hornswoggler says: (13:07:29) You mean in a kind of "WTF is he on about again?" way? ;)
everybody has abandoned msn says: (13:08:34) u know me so well lol
Anyway, I'm babbling -- anyone care for some Perl to have a sken at?
Well that was awful. I looked out of the window at 6am this morning and called it a non-starter. I don't mind driving in the snow, but I do mind other people doing it so I called in and promised faithfully to do what I can from home. I then went back to bed for a couple of hours. The adrenalin rush I get from snatching a sneaky couple of hours sleep is palpable. So when I finally got my groove on I had to commute the three feet to my desk via downstairs for tea and a cigarette. Crikey 'eck it's cold out there. It's also rather white and unsavory. A thoroughly miserable commute.
Apparently we are in for more today and tomorrow. Judging from the prognostications of the Met Office, I might be lucky to make it across the Pennines tomorrow too. Normally, this would not tax me too greatly but I am quite concerned about being there tomorrow -- I have the opportunity to finally nail one of our suppliers down, and nailed they will be whether it be by phone or mano a mano.
I have it on good authority that our favorite gnome-worshipper, one Maesti McMaest has slid off the road somewhere near Bedford. He claims it was on a country road. I am dubious. They don't have country in the Home Counties, just miles of concrete cows and mastic asphalt.
On the subject of girly-Southern-puffter-land, London is shut so don't bother going there. Actually, you probably can't get there; the buses are not running, several underground lines are shut, trains are dealing with the wrong kind of snow and the M25 is even more of a carpark than usual. It is fair to say that there will be looting in this time of national emergency. There always is. I am waiting for the appeal from the UN for humanitarian aid for our Southern jessy cousins (I wonder whether the Palestinian government will allow the broadcast?). The last time a solitary snowflake gently wafted onto Trafalgar Square, the whole population were frozen in disbelief that the weather didn't know that it wasn't allowed to snow in London. Now would be a great time to be a breeder of St Bernard dogs -- I missed the boat *again*.
Okay, it wasn't a DVD, but a CD. No matter. Listen to this and tell me you haven't called the emergency services.
A joy.
You don't want to be in the same room as me at the moment. There are fluids being spewed all over the place. It is the dictionary definition of comedy.
I am so bloody loop-de-loop happy, you would not believe it.
I have spent the day doing battle with the unseemly innards of Vista. It is an abomination of an operating system. It tried to be Mac OS X and failed with flying colors. I have overcome but my nukes are now well and truly aimed at Redmond.
No matter, I am happy. I have just been sorting out my recycling. Normally it infuriates me but today has gifted me a prize I never expected. The Observer is usually fab; I love Barbara Ellen's style and I could quite happily curl up and read her stuff ad nauseum. I usually chuck the crappy DVDs that they have on 13th century basket weaving but today's is an absolute winner. Unless you are Kenny aged and of a particular mindset, this will not impress you. The DVD they have is only the funniest sketch *ever*. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore doing the Frog and Peach. I cannot do it justice. It is comedy genius. I defy anyone to see it and not have to call an ambulance.
I'm waiting for some other mindless tosh to finish (Lark Rise To Candleford?) so I can try to cheer up Die Führer.
I first saw this sketch in about 1985. It crucified me. I ached for hours. Then Peter Cook died and I was gutted. I read about him after he died and felt a great deal of empathy for his plight. Like many comic geniuses, he was a bit of a tortured soul. He seemed to have the same troubles as Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Leonard Rossiter. The good news is that the old Pêche à la Frog is a lot more palatable than the Dereck and Clive stuff and I now have it on DVD. I will be backing this up because it is too precious to lose. I might even see if I can Youtube it; the world deserves to see this.
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Sorry for my silence. If you're interested and on Facebook, I did my 25 things thang there which took more time than I expected.
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Have to run. Peter Cook to watch. If the snow doesn't kill me, the comedy will.
