I am hopeless at menial things. They are tedious. In some respects, whenever I bring myself to do anything like this, I end up hating my own thought process. The logic goes along the lines of "Kenny, you hate domestic anything don't you? Yup. Well, why don't you just pay someone to do it for you? For a smidgin' of cash, someone is probably more than willing, capable than you and quite probably much better at it because they know the secrets. In an economy like this, there must be someone who will be happy with £50 for a couple of hours work." Rather than chastise myself for being a colonial throwback, you know why I never do anything about getting someone in to do it? Because they might disturb my (un)structured cabling. Even if you're in the business of wiring stuff, you might struggle with my setup. When the guy came to put in a new digital aerial (whatever one of those is -- you can't buy a normal -- presumably analogue -- one anymore), he put the feed into my room and would do no more -- "I'm not touching any of this sh*t" were his words, I believe. I accepted his response as the hallmark of a man who knows his onions; I am a one-man drain on the grid system who whilst trying to go completely wireless, still has enough copper to declare himself a natural resource.
While I was faffing with my downsizing exercise, a small question mark appeared. I am the first to admit that I am an armchair physicist at best. I know how some things work to a level that I wish I didn't, but overall I'm a bit crap. The question mark is this: if we can stream video over silly bandwidth (even non-LLU DSL is 2Mbps), why can we not do that over up to 54 Mbps in our houses? Quite obviously, we'd lose everyone's pet hate, wires connecting DVD players, computers, TVs etc.. It would be dreamland for everyone. Why can I not use my router to bung things at my TV or FPD? I'm sure the Evil Alberts, Waaarts and other much more science-y people than me will be able to answer that question. From my limited understanding of how wireless works, I can see no reason that we should not be able to connect all media appliances with no more cables than it takes to power them.
Maybe the problem is the encoding? You'll have to bear with me here. I'm thinking on my feet. Maybe you need too many dedicated ICs for every format? But as I wrote that, I was thinking that surely this can all be done in a small amount of firmware? Generic processors and GPUs are cheap as chips anymore, so bunging a bit of generic hardware into a TV or FPD would cost peanuts. I can imagine a world where you set up your router to connect you to t'interweb and then press a button to sync everything using WPA or WES as a safety measure. Bang -- all is talking flawlessly. It doesn't seem that unreasonable. I guess it will happen eventually, but because the technology exists today, I am frustrated.
Okay, I've proved that I hate cleaning by going off on one. This is what you get when you are dusting wires. Feel free to tell me I'm daft, and probably a nasty capitalist scumbag for wanting to employ someone...
I'm consolidated, although I am a tad annoyed that my PC will not talk to the bluetooth mouse and keyboard. It sees them but cannot get any services. I have one cunning plan to try before I declare the single keyboard and mouse a duff idea.
In the meantime, it appears someone is on to me but have got the wrong neighborhood. Worsley Mesnes is about three miles from here and if I might be so politically incorrect, it is not an area you would want your children to be living in. My best guess is that either someone was trying to acquire an illicit supply of gas while not being Corgi registered, or someone without a degree in practical chemistry was cooking up tonight's entertainment.
I don't get too many of these, so the prospect of probably not having to speak to another living soul until this evening has me bubbling with glee. What should I do? I know. I'll do some downsizing. And some cleaning. How is that for dull?
While I was considering my options, I was mentally making a checklist of what I could box up and put into storage. I mean, do I really meed a KVM at home on a tiny desk where realistically I can only use one machine at a time? Do I hell. I have an Ubuntu desktop system that is sat gathering dust. I'm thinking I might give that away. My PS2 gets fired up once every fifth apocalypse. That could go in a box. I have a whole bunch of semi-redundant peripherals (webcams, wireless keyboard and mice etc.) that are hardly ever used. Essentially I could get this down to just having a 22" FPD, Macbook, Windows laptop, a single bluetooth mouse and a single bluetooth keyboard. Oh, and the wireless printer scanner. Everything else can be boxed, ready for when I figure out what I want to do when I grow up and move out of here.
As I was procrastinating by having a smoke and assuring myself that the best method of attack on any project of this daunting scale was to plan properly (thereby justifying making another coffee and smoking yet another cigarette), I had a moment of envy. I am not usually one to covet other people's possessions (with the possible exception of Brad Pitt), but while considering the desk that I have, I got to thinking about Evil Albert's desk in his home office. It is expansive. It's that big I'm surprised that there are no indigenous tribes inhabiting it. Hmm -- maybe there are and he's never looked for them (job for you Albert). I could stick all the above gear on his desk and it would still look minimalist.
<tangent>You know these clothes shops that are massively advertised as being the hippest place in town to buy your clothes? The ones that your bank manager's worst dreams are made of? The ones where you walk into a massive space that is decked out in the finest interior designer tat available and there, in the center of the chamber on a plynth with Indiana Jones style traps surrounding it and spotlights pointing from angles that don't exist in the real world, sits a single jumper, neatly folded with an understated price tag on it? That's not how I like my shops, but it is very much how I like my desks. At least in theory.</tangent>
Even if I added my usual assortment of PHP, MySQL, Java, etc. reference books and the scratty pieces of paper with notes on them, a desk of such magnitude would be amazingly nouvelle-cuisine-like.
Oh how I lust after that desk.
One more cigarette and let the cleaning and consolidation begin...I know how to show me a good time, don't I? If I do well, I may reward myself by getting out the vaccuum cleaner.
Well I had a most perplexing night last night. After due fretting, self-punishment, soul-searching and a peculiarly large amount of introspection (yes, me introspective -- shocking isn't it?), I have given up trying to establish what, if anything, I think, or indeed should think. I should do this more often. Life is so much easier when you don't think about these things.
Anyway, my perpetual state of confusion aside, what's up? Well, my frock-buying session has had to be postponed due to football and work commitments, so it is unlikely to happen next week. I like to see this as one more week of my life that is criminal-record free so it cannot be an entirely bad thing.
In other preparations for the most wonderless time of the year, I received all my hard-fought gifts from various internet establishments only to discover that my phenomenal attention to detail had once again triumphed. I am sat looking at the most expensive mistake I have made since I married for the second time. What was meant to be a bangle was so small it could almost be called a ring. In fact...
SLOBLOCK (8)
Fortunately, I know a certain little girl who I am sure will be made up with it.
This means that rather than the two presents I thought I had left to buy, I have three. Nay matter, I will get on buying those this afternoon. Damn, I've just thought -- I acquired another person to buy a gift for yesterday. That's four, so my afternoon and evening will no doubt be write-offs. To be honest, I'm really not that bothered. If Fiona Apple turned up at the house and demanded to go outside, I would tell her to sling her hook. It is officially the most God-awful day ever. It's around the freezing mark outside, the fog that descended last night shows no signs of going anywhere and we haven't had any daylight to speak of. Truly dismal.
I've been on a Patty Griffin kick all week. I found myself humming this on Monday morning and have played it to death since. It's very much like a riff that Roy Harper would write -- not exactly folky but certainly not rock'n'roll. Bloody lovely tune though. Because I've not inflicted treated you to a small chanson in a while, I thought I would share.
Ooo -- last thought. Has anyone in the UK become utterly obsessed with the Boursin adverts? Some of the ads in themselves are quite amusing, but if you apply the ad concept to your everyday life, you can have a seriously good laugh. Apparently my father has independently started doing what I do. He spotted a motability scooter outside a bookies yesterday, thought "Du Jockey" and had to return to his car until he had stopped laughing. It pains me to say it, but I think I am becoming my dad.
Not only have I had a very nice conversation with two guys armed with enough fire power to take out the contents of a building, but I have watched snipers (okay marksmen -- a rose by any other name...) on rooftops all around. I think we saw Jack Straw arriving in a Mercedes that probably cost more than an average house. Hot from looking for Spooks, I arrived back in the office armed with coffee, to be given a new 2GB USB stick. I sighed a weary sigh, read the label and then squealed with delight.
Apparently we need to start being a whole lot more security conscious than we are. USB sticks that are not encrypted are verbotten.
The new USB stick, get this, has fingerprint recognition built into it. To access the 256-bit AES encrypted data, you need to swipe your finger over the sensor. How cool is that? We're talking really secret squirrel.
We're all setting up our prints and then we'll do some swapping to see if we can fool them.
All my juvenile enthusiasm put to one side, it does beg the question what on earth I know that I need military grade encryption to protect. I mean, all any would-be spies would have to do to get at the contents of my head (which is worth way more than any memory stick) is tell me I didn't know what I was talking about, at which point I would not be able to resist proving that I did. Game over.
Anyway, this means that at any given point in time, I have around 18GB of flash drive on my person. Bit o'overkill methinks.
I've just done the first Starbucks run of the day. Wow. There are barricades all over the shop, helicopters circling and police everywhere you look. As I waited for Rick (yes, sad -- I'm on first name terms with all the staff in Starbucks) to prepare my morning shots, two armed police officers strolled in toting automatic weapons. They walked straight to the front of the queue. Being the chipper little bastard that I am when faced with authority I gave it a fairly sarcastic "morning lads -- if you have no cash, I'll get yours -- no need for the shooters". I had a bit of a chat with them as they gave it "cars are more dangerous than these" before someone pointed out that there was a queue and that they should get to the back of it like anyone else. Some people take that whole etiquette thing a bit too seriously. These guys were in full black body armor toting frickin' automatic weapons...
Apparently the Prime Minister is due but a few hundred yards away from here later this morning. As one of the policemen said when asked who was coming, "nobody important". [Update: Waaart was right -- it is actually the whole of the cabinet.]
I bade them farewell and legged it back to the office, where I have built a compound out of non-commissioned IBM servers and big Cisco switches.
Forget the Christmas number one. I will be number one on the FBI's most wanted list by Christmas, probably rapidly overtaking ex-wife numero duo (ouch -- saucer of milk to Kenny's table).
My first crime will be committed while shopping. Debs pointed out that in order to get the right frockage, I will need to try it on. 'it' may well become 'them' since this is fashionista we're dealing with. I am absolutely sure that women's clothes shops do not cater for ugly blokes trying on dresses, no matter how pretty their companion. Perhaps I should go to buy the dress in drag? There are so many problems associated with that. For starters, if we're going in the evening the 5 o'clock shadow will be more than visible by then. Oh God. I am starting to really worry about this. I guess I'll nip around to Debs' on Sunday and map out a plan. Whichever way, I can feel ASBO number one being handed out.
Oh God, God. This gets even worse. What if I end up in front of the beak, and the beak is Stan, who is a magistrate? On the one hand, it might be very embarrassing. On the other, I'm sure his liberal credentials will have my misdemeanor dropped within seconds and I will probably walk away with a good payout for defamation or some such.
My second crime is forgery. Please don't tell anyone just yet. I have just spent an hour making some Woolworth's gift vouchers for my family for Christmas. I know they will probably have ceased trading by then, but I am going to take great pleasure in handing out 5 £20 vouchers per person on Christmas day, and looking crestfallen that they are no longer any use and that I have wasted all that money. I might run some extra ones, just to throw at waifs and tramps in an insane rush of kindness. I have even made a code 39 barcode for each of them that corresponds to the faux serial number they have, so if you scan them, the numbers will tally.
While I'm at it, can I have a third offence taken into account please? I am about to print out a MFI receipt for one palatial wardrobe, complete with walk-in beer-garden, sock press, integrated masseuse and black-diamond encrusted coat-hangers. You know the one. You must have seen it on, erm, the Shopping Channel, yes, the Shopping Channel. You remember? The one I told you I'd bought back in September for my dad's Christmas present? Well bugger me, if they too haven't gone bust after I'd paid out most of this year's earnings to buy my dad something special. All I am left with is a doleful receipt to pass on as a gift. He can wave it in front of Deloitte or whoever is handling the administration in the hope that he might get a doormat for it. I feel so bad for him already.
Naturally, if I am caught, I will deny everything. When pushed, I will probably reluctantly have to nark on one of the waifs or tramps I handed out vouchers to.
You all promise you'll visit me don't you? I'll be the guy sporting a beehive.
I just got a call from Debs. It is she who is hosting the New Year's Eve party and who has proposed that everyone goes as a rock star. As I have said before, in a moment of madness, I made a throw away comment to the effect that I was going as Amy Winehouse. This was seized upon with great glee by anyone lacking a Y chromosome, not least Debs. Naturally if there is dress buying to be done, my little fashionista wants involvement, so we have agreed to go to the Trafford Center on Monday evening to source a suitable dress.
I saw a suitable one yesterday in Starbucks. There was a model shoot going on and they had taken time out for a coffee. I noticed the dress as I walked in and before I recognized the fact that it was a model shoot. To be honest, I noticed the model before I noticed the dress. Normally I really don't go for the kind of lass they Photoshop onto the front of fashion magazines but this girl was drop-dead stunning. Actually, she didn't look the part of a model (apart from the dress) which is probably why I thought she was gorgeous. The dress was kind of a ball gown in black with a very heavily ruffed skirt that was layered to look as if it were a patchwork of feathers. Wait. That description does you no favors does it? You have no idea what it looks like at all do you? Well, it's about as good as it gets from me so you'll just have to trust me on this one; it was lovely and I want one for NYE. God knows what I will do with it afterward. I need to find a six foot semi-demi-Goth lass to give it to. Actually, more generally I could do with finding a six foot demi-semi-Goth, period.
So the game is afoot. Seeing I am a devious oik, I am going to take the opportunity to see if there is a Japanese restaurant in the Trafford Center (believe it or not, I have never been there) and try to drag Debs for sashimi. Debs -- if you read this, pretend you have not and do me the courtesy of being shocked and appalled at the suggestion of sashimi.
I have just found the most gorgeous Christmas present for the Flip-Flop. It has two primary problems. The first is that it has not an ounce of passive-aggressive about it. The second that is that it's £756. Thank God I was not trigger happy. I mean, I love you to bits C'obel, but I wouldn't pay that as a ransom for you.
Is this not just gorgeous? I wish I was a lass with a rich boyfriend.
Shut up in the twittering galleries. I get like this when I get my shop on.
Because I am sad, have no life and am about as enthused about everything as Marvin the paranoid android, I was just checking out Facebook. My old barmaid-y lass Emma has been tagged in a video. [I appear to have acquired a wealth of people called Emma over the past few years -- I was fine with it until God started sending me emails asking me to call (Him) Emma which is when it all went a bit weird]. Emma can be seen grooving along to The Lion Sleeps Tonight in her front room with her cousin. She swears blind she was sober. Without a shadow of a doubt, I have not belly-laughed as much this year. This thing is priceless. If I could, I would whip it from Facebook and put it up here, but I guess a) that's kind of beating the point and b) Emma would never ever speak to me again, which would be a shame because she is a bit of a starry lass. I didn't know there was a "dance" for that particular piece of "music" (sic on both counts).
Utterly brilliant Emma. You made a nearly middle-aged man laugh his proverbials off for three whole minutes, and then made him hit play again.
Now I am off to do my Christmas shopping. Naturally I shall not be leaving the house; that is what the great unwashed do. Those of us in the know hit t'interweb and pray to God we don't get distracted by items such as Apple TV, 42" LCD TVs for 40p and nothing to pay until you're dead, Sky HD, etc. you know the score. Somehow I don't think telling my mother that I have bought her a year's subscription to Sky Sports HD for Christmas will work. Especially when I tell her that since she already has it at home, I have had it installed here for when she visits.
Speaking of maternal units. I was listening to a book review on radio five sometime last week where they were discussing A Mercy by Toni Morrison. It sounded fascinating and by all accounts is amazing. I hopped on Amazon and bought a copy. I now wish I had bought two. I *so* want to read it, but if I do that I cannot give it to the maternal unit for Christmas, because that would be just wrong. If I'd bought two, I could have read one and given it to the Flip-Flop (kidding C'obel -- don't tell Athletico). No, I would never do that. When you buy for the Flip-Flop, you need to do it with a balance of humor and pathos. As with every other interaction we have, the art of effective gift-giving is an exercise in guile and nuance. It absolutely *must* be passive aggressive or you've lost. I must admit that I find buying presents for the Flip-Flop one of my favorite pastimes, so C'obel, let it be known that I am on my game this year -- you'll think your birthday present was positively loving compared to your Christmas box.
Alors, I must away to do my duty in kick-starting the economy. I might try to convince Emma to let me publish that video on here, because it is superb.
I am about to put a new search thing that I have written up in the left hand div. I knocked it up last night while having a break from the other stuff that is frustrating me. I say this because over the next couple of hours or so, there may be some freaky-deaky layout things happen and I'll almost certainly knacker the XHTML compliance -- fret ye not; when I do I'll be quicker than the wife's hand on pay day in sorting it all out.
Update: Wow. I broke one thing and that was having put something in upper case that the validator didn't like, so was a two second fix. If you use it and it doesn't do what you expect it to, let me know. It's only a first pass and the pattern matching logic is a bit Heath Robinson.
I have several pension funds dotted around the place. The biggest one (naturally) is the oldest one. At least it might be.
I have just had an email from Standard Life informing me to call them to get a login to their paperless pension-watch gubbins. I haven't looked at the value of the fund since about 2001. Back then it was a mouth-watering amount of cash. I have a couple of others with Friends Provident and I have absolutely no idea how much is in there.
My dilemma is whether I want to shed tears by getting one of these logins and actually viewing the balance of my investments. I have a sneaky feeling that they will be pretty good because my famous "fell off a Christmas tree" intuition/blind luck meant that I hit Asia big time in the early 90s because their economies had tanked and the only way was up. Because I was prudent/lazy, I never moved the money out of Asia. While you could argue that I have missed several peaks in the West, I would say that I could also have been big-time burned.
To check or not? Sometimes being dumb as a bat, lucky as a git and just plain oblivious is the best policy.
Okay, I've calmed down a bit. It's not quite as ridiculous as the first reports made it sound. The first soundbites I heard made my blood burn. On reflection, it is still kind of bubbling but with less intensity.
First off, a 2.5% reduction in VAT for 13 months. Apparently that will cost the treasury £12bn. Wait for it...any reduction in VAT on booze, cigs or fuel will be offset by an increase in duty thereby maintaining a status quo. I have no objections to the booze and cigs -- they are luxury items. Fuel though? A wholly different game. Fuel is the life blood of most businesses. The Chancellor was explicit that this rise in duty on fuel will remain in effect after the 13 month VAT moratorium so it's a low-hanging fruit hike in reality.
Not quite as daft as it first seemed, however... Kenny
Secondly, a 0.5% increase in NI in the future for both employer and employee -- he is kidding no-one here. It is a very disingenuous thing to pay lip service to the debt he will have accrued. Come the time of reckoning, we'll have forgotten the 0.5% NI rise because we will all be too busy screaming blue murder about our income tax increases.
Finally, the projection of the recession lasting through 2009 and growth being restored in 2010 is patently preposterous. I agree you need to have a nominal goal of when you think that things will pick up but that goal should be grounded in reality. I'll compare this to my work if I may. When someone gives me a piece of work to do, I can cost it up and be fairly accurate as to how long it will take to complete; as is always the way you can be quietly confident but there is a large factor that should always be kept in mind; you don't know what you don't know.
...still a bit hatstand. Kenny
That should be the part that you focus on. Prudence would state that you over-egg your "don't knows" so as to buy some leeway. It's under-promise and over-deliver. In modern day political speak that is "plan for the worst and hope for the best". Darling is quite obviously in a hole so deep that he has had to put his nads on the chopping block and predict the shortest projected recession ever, and he quite obviously is off his rocker. As I say, I appreciate we're in uncharted territory but surely the prudent thing to do is to hold your hands up and say that this is a tactical battle and we'll be fighting dirty until we can afford to start strategising again. You cannot provide a confident plan of how this will all be okay in a specified time-frame. At best that is naive.
Everyone, understandably, is looking for assurance that the government knows the score. It was frightening to hear the number of CEOs/MDs that were interviewed on radio 4 and 5 (post-speech) who were quite happy to believe the time projection. If the years of bust that we have experienced in our lifetimes tell us anything, it is that we are in for one very long haul.
Not so much box of frogs as schooner of tadpoles. Kenny
Short term prognostication that hypes everyone into an artificial high might work as a political tactic with the public but ultimately those that hold the purse strings sit in industry and they will read the first ten lines and move on to the coverage of Big Brother or some other reality show like, say, their balance sheet.
All I'm really trying to say is that as a report card, the government gets an A for creative writing, a B for effort, a C for RE and a flat F for mathematics.
I am much more of the Vince Cable camp. If you want to really shake things up, cut the income tax. It's as mad and unmeasured as the plan the government have offered us, but it does kind of prove a point. If market economics do work so well, surely Joe Public will prove it. Otherwise, we're all back to the drawing board.
I am sat watching the BBC live text update of the pre-budget report.
About as daft as it gets. Kenny
Imagine if you will, many question marks. Now arrange them in a halo-like formation slightly above my head. You get the picture.
I'm going to listen to the rest of this circle-jerk on the radio on my way home. I think you may be in for a long and vitriolic rant about what a royal cluster of a pointless exercise the Chancellor has just announced. I reserve the right to take back the view that this is a complete pile of moonbat-ism (with a silent j) but at the moment, that is my view.
I don't know what it is about this morning but I am feeling very little empathy with my fellow man. I narrowly avoided being severely delayed coming into work by being virtually the first car to pass two major league accidents, one on the Southbound M6 in the outside lane and one on the M62 in the inside lane. If I had been five minutes later, I would probably not be here now. Normally I feel for people who have been rear-ended but the amount of shocking driving going on this morning was, well, utterly shocking. It was inevitable that some bozzo would cause a pile-up.
And then I hit the BBC website to be greeted with this. WTF?
A train operator is considering blocking mobile phone signals in it designated quiet zones.
Chiltern Railways, which runs trains from London to Birmingham, says it may install covers on carriage windows to stop phone signals.
Spokesman Michael Scanlon said the system was already being trialled by another company.
"It is a kind of see-through rubber coating which stop signals getting into that coach," he said.
"We are watching to see how effective it is and how popular it is with the passengers."
Brilliant, because they are all about the customer aren't they? Being stood up in the quiet carriage due to a lack of capacity will be all that much more bearable because at least there will be no nasty cell phones to plague you.
This is typical of today's Britain. Let's all just focus on the minutiae and ignore the fact that we are hurtling into being a wussified nation of limp-wristed PC pansies.
I know, my caffeine levels are not high enough. I shall try to remedy that and get back to you later. In the meantime, someone give me some good news...thank you.
I woke up this morning riddled with guilt. I lay there for about 15 minutes wondering what the hell I had to feel guilty about. I came from work and went nowhere after I'd walked through the door. I didn't sit chatting on IM other than for a few minutes with my boss of sorts and a couple of minutes with the Vanquisher so there was no scope for feeling horrendous guilt. I must have drifted back to sleep and before i knew it was an hour later. This time, when I woke up, I knew why I felt guilty.
I don't dream very often. I have erotic dreams about once a decade. Some of you might recall my dream of some years ago when I woke up convinced Madonna was stalking me. I'm pretty sure that I wrote about it at the time because it was just plain dumb. Anyway, that was the closest I have had to an erotic dream in this decade until last night. I dreamed that Fiona Apple kept turning up wherever I went demanding to have sex. For some inexplicable reason, I kept turning her down. She became more and more annoyed with me each time she appeared at work or in Sainsburys or wherever and I gave her the "not tonight Jospehine" line. She even tried disguising herself as someone else I know and, ahem, 'like' but I was all about the "don't touch the Kenny". I recall there being one scenario where it might have been appropriate to be affectionate but once again, as it started getting a bit steamy, I cried off. Damn me. Damn me to hell.
So I am lame. I am lame because, even in my dreams, I have some kind of prudish deal going on. Lamer still, I woke up feeling guilty about the fact that I'd had a bit of a grope with someone I have never even met and gutted that I let my guard down. Isn't that just the most pathetically Freudian nonsense you have ever heard?
I have been trying my hardest to forget about the dream all day, but wherever I have been my iPod has shuffled its way onto some Fiona Apple. It was that bad, I had to intervene and switch to a playlist of the Goo Goo Dolls.
I spent the rest of the day writing code. I'm quite pleased with what I have done. It's cute and it's kind of useful. This time, you might actually get to see the fruits of my labor albeit on a different site. Just as I cracked the hard bit of that piece of code, I had an idea for something I might want to do on here. I know there are third-party pieces of script knocking about all over the net that will do what I want to do, but that would be no fun, so I'll write my own. That kind of sums me up right there. There are a million and one software packages that will allow you to blog. They cost nothing and are simple to install and use. What do I do? I write my own, because it's more fun and if it goes wrong, the chances are I will be able to fix it in no more than a few minutes. I think I have said this before, but since I wrote this in 2002 (ish), I have fixed about 2 bugs and less than five annoyances. When I moved domains, it took me less than an hour to move everything over. On the occasions where I have installed MT or Wordpress, it has taken me ages to figure out what the hell to do and where. While I may have lost a few hours over the years playing with my beast, I think I can honestly say that writing my own caused me less headaches, exercised my brain a little more than it would have been and, overall, it has been a much more fulfilling project.
So there you go. I've been on a guilt trip, a trip to Sainsburys and a trip into coding land, which eats your hours faster than anything else you do in life. A complete waste of a day, but compared to last week at work, it was joyous. I'm now going to take a trip into Alias land and then prepare to do exactly the same things tomorrow, hopefully without the guilt. Better still I would be happy for the guilt so long as my stupid brain allowed me to get beyond being some kind of paragonic, celibate loon.
Over the last couple of days the Waaart, Maest and I have once again been involved in discussions of earth-shattering importance. Really, why we need a G7, G8 or G12 beats me. They should just drop an email to we three and before you can spell irrelevant, we'll have it sorted, no matter how tricky the subject.
For example today we have been discussing outsourcing. We all have outsourcing on the brain for different reasons. I find it all a bit tedious because I've been there and done that before. It can work with a bit of luck and the wind in the right direction but more often than not it doesn't. The way I like to look at it is in purely abstract terms. You spend money to outsource something that you will then pay less money to run, before realizing that you ignored massive risk and that you're not saving quite as much as you thought, yet you have no mitigation to reverse the whole deal. Before you know it, your ROI will be achieved in your grandchildrens' lifetimes. At least it would be, but your company will have been dead and buried for decades by then. I'm sure it doesn't take an MBA to come to that conclusion. It's that old oxymoron common sense again. Anyway, we didn't nail that one because contrary to how it may seem, we all have jobs to do that involve disappearing into reality for a couple of hours a day. I guess if we spend another day, we'll have it sorted. After all, two PhDs and a Kenny cannot be wrong.
One of the reasons that we didn't come to a conclusion was that we revisited the congestion charge. Maest, with all due gravitas, pointed out that the best time to maximize both revenue and public support would be during Winter. This prompted a WTF? email from me back to him. That's the kind of email you send when you're talking about policy. Maest's response, having fully anticipated my reaction, was -- get ready to groan -- "The Congestion Charge, sponsored by Lemsip -- Cough up!." You may groan now.
Not to be outdone, the Waaart and I set about a truly radical idea. Given that our national football team appears to be in a state that you might optimistically call functional, now would be the right time to outsource it. We have decided that the modern trend to outsource managerial positions and players within the Premiership would do wonders for our World Cup prospects, were we to outsource the England team to, say, Portugal or Brazil. I defy anyone to come up with a risk so large that it would scupper the deal. On balance, the worst that could happen is that we lose, which is in no way any more dire than were we to keep it in-house.
During my drive home, this outsourcing of national presence played on my mind. I started with football, moved on to cricket, did a slight left turn and then considered manufacturing before I realized that we had already done that. All that remains really is our national debt. My Telegraph reading bones want to outsource that to France, where it all belongs. Failing that, we could just sell it on to someone glad of the business.
Remember, if you have a problem that nobody else can solve, and if you can find us, maybe you could hire the A-team. You are guaranteed out of the bottle box thinking.
I discovered while driving home tonight that I would make a truly awful criminal. A report on the radio was giving an update on the hijacked Sirius Star which is currently anchored somewhere off the coast of Somalia. The tanker has a crew of 25, is worth $100m and is carrying $100m of oil. When pressed about what the estimated ransom might be, there were several moments of avoiding the issue which gave me ample time to consider what I would ask for as a ransom. Quite literally, I thought $2m would be fair. Kenny the pirate would be hunkered down, rubbing his hands and his AK47, waiting for a stonking good pay day and grinning inanely.
Inane is perhaps the right word. After the caveats and avoidance, it was established that one estimate (admittedly at the higher end of the spectrum) was that the pirates would ask $250m for the release of the boat. I listened as if they had mis-reported, but no, it was $250m.
How daft am I? Even with my criminal mind finely tuned into a "deal", I manage to come up with the concept of "fair" in the justification of a ransom amount and then, just to add insult, apparently undersell to the tune of two orders of magnitude. My guess is that $250m is a bit steep but I suppose my guess is not worth squat diddly given my exceptional extortion skills.
I know that you all will now think I'm a soft touch. Don't for a moment think that. I am the dictionary definition of fair when I'm at work. I will not insult you as a supplier by pig-headedly hammering your quote down by a few more percent because I know you have to make a living. Equally, if I am a supplier, I will not be pushed so far that I will operate a loss leader unless I know there's a golden goose to be had and in return, I will not screw you for every last dime I can smell. My old company in the US took issue with me on this. Their targets were well above 50% gross margin. In the days since the dot bomb, if you're in the capital equipment market and are expecting anything above 50% GM, you are smoking the best quality crack available. 50%, even as an aspirational target, is laughable. If you hit 45%, you're probably par for the course.
It's this kind of recklessness that has me tarred as being right wing. I guess I must be a hopeless businessman, as well as a failed bourgeois pig and an utterly awful criminal.
I could go on, but I am now distracted by football. Uncommonly, I actually have high hopes for the B-team we are fielding. I hope I am not wrong.
You can leave the usual insults in the comments. ;)
Don't tell anyone that I drank something without caffeine, but is it not strange that apple and mango juice, when combined, taste like slightly rancid coconut? I had to smoke two cigs to get rid of that horrible taste, and I feel a Starbucks trip is now in order.
I had the chance to spend a lifetime listening to Dido's new album on the way into work.
The upsides:
-- I now think that my life is absolutely peachy. I don't have to worry about sailors disappearing (again), being late for work (again), home being empty (again), my books vanishing (I shitteth ye not) or <insert-random-symbolic-object-here> not being here. I live a rich and fulfilling tapestry of wholesome goodness and controlled euphoria in comparison to some -- I guess I have the Mac to thank for that.
-- A couple of the songs are not bad, although to be honest, they sound like Dave Gahan should be singing them rather than Dido.
-- One track had me very animated as the opening deadpan drumbeat promised to produce a cover of the Sisters of Mercy cover of that old Hot Chocolate gem Emma. Unfortunately the anticipated deep distorted bass never appeared. There was a twinkle, a fizzle followed by the sound of someone whining about how it hurts to breathe on days like this.
The downsides:
-- Dido has been in the same state for over 10 years. You would think they would have changed her meds by now. I'm going to get my doctor to give me double the goods next time and send her down some proper gear. You never know -- if she took them, she might actually make it to the kettle in the morning without having a breakdown (hell, even I manage that). In the immortal words of Paul Simon, "breakdowns come and breakdowns go".
-- I looked at the song list. Two of them had the same title, only the second had 5/4 appended. It couldn't be could it? Yes it could. Because she could, she re-recorded the one song with a 5/4 beat. Bloody musos.
-- Speaking of musos, do they not recognize the existence of major chords at the Royal Academy?
-- If you ever need a dictionary definition of over-produced, look no further.
Dido, bless (I guess that will become her name now), I love you to bits and you are cuter than a button, but I fear a failure to up/change your meds will severely reduce your fan-base. Develop a Jack Daniels habit. Your world will seem much more bearable.
We all know I'm lame don't we? Well I can prove it. Count the number of things that are *wrong* in the following paragraph:
A while ago I read somewhere on Facebook that Dido's new CD was out today. I had a reminder set in my Mac calendar (I even set it such that it would account for silly time zone differences) however when I hopped onto iTunes to buy it, it was nowhere to be found. I feel cheated.
If you counted anything below four, you missed a trick.
We love Dido. In fact, I should add her to my list of loves to the left. I would do but I'm sure that spending anymore than 10 seconds in her company, whining about how it hurts to breathe, would no doubt have me in front of the beak looking at a 25-life stretch. Bless her. That said, it may be time to re-fernagle my list of loves based on moon phase, tea leaves and sheer flightiness -- I know I offended at least one person by having one name on that list so I'll do that now, while I chew my legs off waiting for Spooks.
Update: Found it, downloaded it. Expect a review tomorrow.
I have a horrible sickly feeling that I haven't had for quite a while. It's Nico's 6th birthday today and I tortured myself all the way into work wondering whether I should email Nski to wish him happy birthday and inform her that he has some cash on its way. Emailing her goes against every sense I have, but I figured I had to rise above the bitterness and do the decent thing. It was not easy. I hope she doesn't reply because I have no desire to enter into any dialogue.
Normal service will resume shortly, after I wash away this taste of bitterness with a gallon or so of Starbucks' finest.
Greater Manchester Transport can eat my damned shorts.
I make no apologies for how bombastic this may sound. A Kenny riled is a fearsome adversary. And yes, I'm going to play the deprived region card mercilessly.
Before December 11th all of Manchester and its surrounding areas get to vote on whether we want a "congestion charge". See here for why this a bad idea in less controversial terms.
The argument goes that the introduction of a congestion charge will fund a new public transport infrastructure for the area; a Nirvana of the North if you will. You'll be able to get anywhere at a decent price ten minutes before you set off. Joy.
Now look at the detail. If you're in Wigan, you will have a "new high-speed bus" from Wigan through Leigh into Manchester. I have no idea how high-speed that is. At the moment, if you catch a bus from Wigan to Manchester via Leigh, it will take you at least an hour and a half to travel 18 miles and you will pay at least £8 for the joy. I have yet to see anything anywhere that describes how this service would be quicker than existing services (I suppose they could operate a train mentality and only stop in the town centers en-route which is utterly ridiculous).
Other parts of the Northwest are linked to Manchester by the tram system. The tram system goes in every direction out of Manchester except towards Wigan and it is explicitly stated that there are absolutely no plans to extend the tram route in our direction. The tram system pans quite cutely into the affluent Southern parts -- Altrincham, Wilmslow, Knutsford, footballer's wife territory where the average income is substantially above us working class oiks to the Northwest. Quite frankly, this would be a tax. A tax on those of us who live in unserved bordering districts to fund something that will serve everyone other than us. It is immoral.
I sat with my father this afternoon watching the football and he recalled I had asked him about whether we had received our referendum slips. Before I could even start going off on a rant he beat me to it. The older I get, the more I think like my father does. This is not because he influences my thinking -- hell, we barely spoke until I was at university and then a few years after that I offed to the US. This is because we are both moderately intelligent people who can see through the vacuousness of our bloated government system.
The fact that Londoners did not have the bollocks to stand up to the congestion charge shows how lily-livered we, as a nation, have become. We're sold on "green". Driving is bad. We should all take trains. If you do a bit of ferreting on t'interweb, you will find a study from the University of somewhere clever (I think it was LSE) that compared the carbon footprint of someone driving from London to Edinburgh to that of someone who took the train. The difference was in the noise. Playing the green card and the "greater good" just does not cut the muster here.
Year after year, we allow ourselves more and more government. It's breath-taking. Europe has us by the nads from one angle and we take it again as we allow the invention of further layers of stealth administration by allowing organizations like Greater Manchester Transport to effectively mandate the payment of random charges. Look at London; if you give an inch on the map, they will take a few miles. What starts off as being a congestion charge zone spreads quickly as the prospect of more money has our elected leaders frothing at the mouth. Stalin would be drooling.
I know some of my more liberal friends think I tossed my political credibility into the bay a long time ago, but as I get older, more and more the enormous tiers of government and their interference have me screaming. I have nothing against practical socialism. I will gladly help out in anyone in need. I do take issue with big government and their "take-take-take". What amuses me no end is that the very people who are vehemently against ID cards are the same people who willingly bend over backwards and get out their platinum cheque-books to allow yet another level of bureaucratic lunacy inflict even more eroded economic freedom. Given a choice, I think I would rather pay less to the government and have a safe country, but hey, that's moonbat talk.
My armchair socialist mates (sat in their comfortable middle class homes) will probably leave me numerous comments as to why I have completely lost the plot. This is not one I will back down on. Big government is bad. Congestion charges are wrong. Believing the spin that allows big government, local government and random private sector taxation is just moronic.
Please, if you live in the area and you have a vote, tell them to go and pound sand. The proposal is yet another way to make sure that you forfeit your money to an unsubstantiated cause. If we keep allowing this kind of invasive taxation, we will end up back in the 70s. Do the right thing, not the PC thing.
With that off my chest, I will now try to stop being so bloody outraged. Alias, it is.
I've been doing a bit of digging for some Amy shots on which to model my New Year's Eve costume. It was a good excuse to hook my PVR up to my Mac and see what could be done. Last January, I recorded Winehouse from Channel 4 and never really got around to watching it. Today, I downloaded it from the PVR to the Mac, did a little firkling and lo and behold, I have an MP4 version of the TV show.
The Mac never ceases to amaze me. As I type I have the extended desktop hooked on my 22" LCD display, watching a HD episode of Bones. Don't ask me why Bones. It was the only HD thing I had handy. This machine is Heaven. I really don't understand how Apple don't just eat the PC market alive. Anyway, I'm digressing. Back to the plot...
I'm liking this outfit:
I'm looking at that shot and I reckon I definitely have the legs. Do I go the whole hog and shave them? [Debs -- I'll take your advice on that one.] I only have one tattoo which will nowhere near match Amy's litany of self-abuse so I'll need to find somewhere that does henna tattoos for the occasion. That way they'll disappear. I reckon I can find some size 10 baby-doll/ballet shoes on t'interweb so that should be okay.
I have a problem with cleavage though. I mean my MBs are nowhere near large enough to emulate Amy. How is it that someone who is so stick insect in stature has such ample cleavage? Nature surely does work in mysterious ways.
Now the question is, where does one find such a dress? Debs and I are meeting up one evening next week to acquire said beast. Initially it was going to be a little black number, but I am so digging the above that I think I may insist on it. If the worst comes to the worst, I'll have to bribe Debs into making it for me -- she is a bit special when it comes to making clothes, fashionista that she is. God knows what I'll do with it afterwards. Maybe I should keep it and wear it on totally inappropriate occasions? I'm liking that idea a whole lot...presentations, team building exercises, going to the pub etc.. I think I could get away with it -- "Don't mind Kenny, he's obviously run out of his meds and is back in that whole cocaine/booze fueled Amy thing again. Just thank God he hasn't brought Blake. Anyway he swears less when he's being Amy." I suppose the alternative is to find a 6' lass who has no qualms wearing such an outfit although I'm not sure I know too many 6' lasses and of those I do know, they are probably not the sort to be prancing around in chiffon dresses. Perhaps if I took to the streets of Liverpool or Newcastle one night, I would be mugged for it.
Anyway, work is underway. I don't think I have ever put so much effort into one evening. It had better be a laugh and a half. Suggestions on where to find cleavage and a dress like that are welcome. A thought: maybe you are a 6' lass who owns such a dress and might care to lend it to me for New Year's Eve? Maybe not eh?
Apparently the Telegraph carried this story on Tuesday, but I must have missed it. Thanks to Pandora, I have been reminded that the Diocese of Bath and Wells has banned gnomes from cemeteries. It's an outrage.
Wasn't the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells the debauched fellow in Blackadder? "Banking with a smile and a stab." Strange how history repeats itself again and again.
George Osborne has opened his mouth, only to change feet again. He actually issued the words "collapse of sterling".
There are two things to wish for here:
a) He is referring to a sub-par Scottish football team.
b) His words are treated by the global economic community with a similar level of gravitas to those of Pete Doherty. Honestly, did the Tories learn nothing from House of Cards? "You might very well think that, but I could not possibly comment."
Yet another reason to not vote Conservative. I am now certain that Vince Cable is the most plausible leader we have. One can only hope that Clegg is brushed aside in favor of Cable before we do the whole election dealy-bop.
Speaking of Debs, a while ago she advised me to get my hands on some Mediaeval Baebes, as it were. I was all for it until she pointed out that this was not a blanket invite to sexually harass any lass who might be Ophelia-esque. What she meant was the ensemble that is the Mediaeval Baebes. I did so and then never listened to it until my iPod hit upon them in a shuffle.
I'm strangely drawn into it all. It's everything I would normally hate but it has a certain appeal. For a start, if you check out their gig guides, they tend to perform in cathedrals. The last time Kenny went to church, someone had died. That is as close as I get to God. Except, say, when He appears in my comments spewing forth His love of His little people. Secondly, they do all sorts of stuff in Latin which, in my mind, has them inextricably linked with religion. <ramble>I once went to Roman Catholic wedding in Italy. It was lovely except for the ceremony which went on for about four lifetimes. Waaarty and I sat for those lifetimes looking at each other, both mortified that there might be a fifth lifetime involved before we could get out for a smoke and then hit the reception.</ramble> Point is the Baebes have religious connotations which is never good for me.
All that said, I love it. I've just burned a copy for my paternal grandparental unit because I know she will love it. She's only got about 10% vision left so I tend to burn her something for her CD player each week. Last time I downloaded all the podcasts of Lake Wobegon. This week it's the Baebes. I might point out here that this in no way should detract from the image you have of me being a tyrannical git of the first order. The fact is that come the revolution, I will need to wheel her out to tell everyone what a nice boy I am.
I've just checked out the title of this track that I have on now and predictably it is called Beatrice. Very Arthurian. Very melodic. Very relaxing. Very Sunday morning. For the second time this week, I approve of something.
Right, I have a big decision to make. Do I trash my Windows PC to reinstall Windows or do I trash it and partition it to dual boot Windows and Fedora? I might sleep on that one. I told you to expect inane drivel -- I have not disappointed.
I'll let Maest, Freeda, Hilda, Waaart and God duke it out in the comments below. I'm going to return to the point of the post. I have never considered myself eccentric.
This morning, before I had even had chance to fire up the coffee machine, the maternal unit arrived with some Belgian ginger chocolates for me. I'm suspicious and I had just got out of bed so asked what the occasion was. Apparently none. I was about to castigate her and explain that I am not a kid, but on balance these were Belgian chocolates *and* they were ginger. There are times when one should swallow one's pride and just go with the flow, especially if it involves ginger anything.
The maternal unit is a crafty one. She senses weakness (no coffee in me) and talks at you in elaborate diatribes about who, when and what. I have perfected the art of going for a cigarette whenever the diatribe touches on any subject that is not to my liking. Call me antisocial but I don't really give a rat's arse about most of the topics of conversation especially if it is pertaining to ex-wife numero uno. After one such sojourn to smoke, I realized I had arrrived back inside to catch the start of a second subject of disinterest, so cunningly steered the conversation away and told her of the accusation that I am eccentric. Of all the people on the planet, you would expect your mother to leap to your defense, wouldn't you? Maybe I expect too much of people. She looked astounded for a couple of seconds and then asked how I didn't know this. "You mean you have never thought for a moment that you might be just a bit odd?"
Honest to God (and Maest), a bit odd.
I can cope with scatterbrained, thick, detached, third-party fire and theft, but odd? No blooming way.
As I was making a good strong case for my being as sane as the next man, I got a text from my mate Debs, asking when I wanted to go shopping for a nice little black dress to wear on New Year's Eve. When I heard about having to go as a rock star back in April, I was in a mood about something (probably trivial) and just muttered the first name that came to mind "I'm going as f***ing Amy Winehouse". Those of you that know me will understand the irony in that; it was said with a degree of pathos. Before I knew it, I had a Winehouse beehive on order for me and Debs hassling me about going shopping for a dress. All of the above was thrown right back at me in support of my being odd. I gave up.
I might call Debs and see if she's free tomorrow. We can go girly shopping for me.
Seriously though, I think I am a bit offended at being labeled odd and eccentric.
There seems to be a lot of Kate Silverton searches at the moment. I haven't seen anything she is doing in ages so i'm a bit baffled as to why there are so many enquiries as to where she gets her hair done or whether she is a lesbian or not. However, my favorite search of the day is:
I've just been over to Starbucks with Grommage. While we were waiting for coffee, another one of our co-workers approached and informed me that I should be the next Dr Who because I would make a good one. I looked confused. Grom explained "Well, you're perfect for it; you're the textbook eccentric."
This explains a lot about how my colleagues interact with me.
I have never, ever considered myself eccentric before. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Maest, Waaarty and I very often waste away the hours in deep philosophical conversation by email. Never has this been truer than the recent exchanges regarding global warming. Dr Maest does clever things with agriculture. Dr Waaart does clever computery things. Kenny is an opinionated git, so we have a very fair and balanced view of the world.
Maest was recently lamenting the fact that no-one can prove that a cow is a contributor to global warming...
"And if you can tell me what the arse end of a cow has to do with global warming, and then tell those same halfwits..."
There was some discussion around this point but as is usual when the Waaart and I are involved in anything, it always comes back to gadgetry. Maest commented that if the Russians had half the kit that Waaarty and I have between us, they would probably have won the Cold War, at which point Waaart threw a curved ball straight back on topic:
"I'm thinking of installing a Cow's Arse in my bedroom plus a test harness to do experiments on greenhouse gasses. Any idea how to boot up a cow's arse?
Does it matter whether the boots you use are black wellies or do they have to be green. How much shit do they need to have on them?
I'm really not very good with technology.
You know where this is going don't you?
Kenny wrote: To boot a cow's arse, you need a banjo. Badum tish! I thank you. I'm here all week. Try the fish. K xxx
And...
That *must* be an excuse to roll out the old photo. Must have been at least 3 months since we last saw it...
And so...
Humanity can sleep easy knowing there are three people out there in the ether, tirelessly working on the big issues.
I feel kind of let down now. I went through all the hoops of dual-booting my beloved Macbook with OS X and Ubuntu, faffed with the dodgy Ubuntu virtual desktop resolution, discovered that Totem is pants and then discovered VLC, all to bring you this:
I want paypal gifts. I want endless gratuities. I want adoration.
Was it worth all that trouble? I suppose so. I did learn quite a bit from the process. Mortals would have given up after Mediaplayer wouldn't work. I, armed only with some wiliness and pointers from Zimmer and help from one of our top developer chaps, have done the decent thing. You may all prostrate yourselves in the direction of WIgan or expect a call from a guy you thought didn't exist, armed with a scythe.
Well thanks to something called refit, bootcamp, time machine an Ubuntu distribution and one of the bigger brains on the planet (not mine), I am now even more in love with my Macbook. Can we say dual boot OS X and Ubuntu? Yes, we certainly bloody can. Is that just sexy or what? I got most of the way there but felt like I needed someone with more Ubuntu knowledge than I have to hold my hand and tell me all was going to be okay. At one point, I thought we'd trashed it completely, but just rebooting with the time machine backup drive attached resurrected it in seconds.
This means that later this evening, after I have had my nosebag, I will screen shot the purple hair-do in all its magnificence and my promise to you will be fulfilled.
The only daft thing I did was install 32-bit Ubuntu when the dual-core 2.4GHz processor in this baby is 64-bit. That's because I'm dim. If I feel particularly anal I will trash the Ubuntu and reach for the 64-bit distribution.
As we all know Kenny is planning a coup. He has been watching too many episodes of Alias and has been taking tips on evil empires from Arvin Sloane from SD6. Once installled as Head Despot he has decreed that Rob the Vanquisher shall be vice-despot. Up until now, you may have doubted the existence of the next in command. If you look in the comments, you will see that the Vanquisher has posted a comment thus proving his being. We had discussed a Dick Cheney style vice-despot where we would have left you guessing as to whether the Vanquisher was alive or not, thereby adding to the element of surprise when he knocked on your door armed with scythe. Having watched Obama's win, we decided it was okay for Rob to verify his existence and thus instill some fear in the masses.
Welcome to the ether Hopper. May your style of justice be swift and random.
Sorry Bryony dear, my mission to Bristol at the back end of this week has been put off until sometime next week.
Naturally this means that Oddie has been gifted an extra couple of days of Autumn Watch before nature takes its real course, Unfortunately that means Bryony will have to come up with something else for her column when she sits down to type tomorrow. I'm sure she'll cope.
I'm actually quite glad. I have better things to do than pitch up and hurl obscenities at old men. Interpret that last sentence as you will. I'm actually having far more fun installing Redhat servers, Those of you who are not part of the tedium that is IT will not follow this, but in my job, I am meant to be "hands off" on systems -- I have never understood whether I am denied system access because a) I'll do something so clever that no-one will ever understand it afterward, b) I will do something so horrendously wrong that it will toast something and lead to squillions in lost revenue or c) you should never leave an unattended dog in a room with a leg of lamb. Anyway, at the moment I get to login and firkle things so Kenny is not only a happy bunny, but he gets to see things that those nasty sysadmins guard like sacred runes.
As far as purple hair-dos go, I've decided (after an email from Zimmer) to stick Linux on a USB drive. I'm going with Redhat first simply because I know my way around it. I might try Ubuntu at the weekend. In the meantime, I know how on tenterhooks you all are for some purple. I am working on it. No need to thank me.
Can we say wow? I think we can. I think we can scream it. That had to be the best episode of Spooks ever.
Whoever writes those scripts deserves honors. When were these filmed? I don't want to spoil it for anyone if they didn't see the BBC3 episode tonight but it was so close to the bone it was quite literally frightening (maybe a delay of 8 weeks on reality?).
You guys in the US need to look out for the BBC America screening (it was called MI5 when I was there). Seriously, it chills your blood.
I think I'll need a few minutes to calm down before attempting sleep.
I'm miffed. I have just spent about 20 minutes cycling through Alias DVDs to find the purple hair-do and associated outfit. I found the perfect shot, paused, rewound, flicked through a few frames, etc. and hit the magic Mac buttons to take a screen-shot of the window. Nada. Niet. You have to close the DVD player before you can use the screen-shot facility. I guess this is their attempt at forcing DRM on DVDs.
Quite frankly, it's all a bit pathetic. If you buy something from iTunes most of the time it will come with the Apple DRM so you can only play it on authorized devices (your iPod, PC, Mac). However you can burn your music to CD. Woot.
If you have a store-bought CD and rip it using iTunes, you can make it such that the resulting file is not DRM protected. This means that if you have burned your iTunes purchase to a CD, you can then rip it back as DRM-free MP3s and thus pass them on to your friends by email or whatever means. Effectively, if you have a will, you can abuse the iTunes purchases.
Now think of DVDs. Surely if I have a DVD, I should be able to back that up by importing it onto my computer? Wrong. Even if I wanted to distribute it all over the internet, have I really got the patience to upload a good couple of GB for a single episode? Have I buggery. So allowing the import of DVDs to your hard drive is actually less of a risk than allowing the import of CDs but oh no, we're more precious about video than music.
Mutter. All I wanted was a screen-shot of the purple hair-do. I guess I'd have to mess around with taking pictures of the TV to get one. Can I really be arsed doing that? I suspect you know the answer to that.
I have been harping on about the various hair-styles on Alias. As far as styling goes, this is a little lame compared to most of them. So if you consider this I would regard as conservative compared to the really cool do's, you will understand my fascination. As I say, the plot is pretty good, but I'm all about the hair.
I might see if I can screen-capture the purple do from the DVD tonight.
I now expect the usual barrage of insults about my sexuality from the usual suspects. One day, I will modify this code to allow me to *optionally* permit comments.
I am so pleased with myself. For once, I have had some self-discipline and applied my talents (no giggling in the cheap seats). While digging some Rachminov grooves, I have managed to achieve what I have spent years trying to do. Just in case I am punch-drunk from the effort, I am about to send it to Australia for some third-party affirmation that I am not clinically mad. It's a little something but a little something that means a lot to me.
I've also spent some time considering how to reply to an email I received with some awful news. I'm pretty good at being glib but I'm horrendous at deep. Maybe deep is not where I should be going anyway. Over-analysis is not useful sometimes and very often it is self-indulgent rather than helpful. I think I've got to a point where I can reply but it's taken some soul-searching.
All that said, my gast is still flabbered that not only does Bryony read this, but she apparently shows it to her colleagues to prove that some people do like her. Apparently her and Sam Leith get the most pathos from the Telegraph readers which is a shame. I'm now in a bit of a pickle. How do you allude to someone in the third person when you know they read what you write? I manage it with the Waaart, Maest and others because I know them too well so can get away with murder. I have exchanged a few emails with Ms Gordon over a couple of years so that level of familiarity might appear a bit rude. What was I just saying about over-analysis? Very good Kenny -- shut up and reply to your email.
I think it's time I slapped the Alias in again. You wouldn't believe what is going on. Each episode is a masterpiece of formulaic script-writing combined with cunning plot evolution. And the hair-dos's. Oh, the hair-do's. I fell in love with the purple punk look last night. I think if I have learned anything from Alias, it is that a decent hair-do can transform the plainest lass into a stunning Goddess.
Between *8* episodes of Alias last night, I happened to hop onto the computer to see if anything mind-bogglingly exciting might have happened and was gobsmacked to see an IM from one Bryony Gordon claiming she was not at all sad for staying in watching crap TV. Oops. Apparently she does read my blog. Gulp. She was very complimentary about my writing style. I suppose I'd better up my game somewhat now.
There followed a brief discussion about the fact that I have to be in Bristol for a couple of days next week so will be on Oddie-watch -- I am told he can be spotted on one of the bridges overlooking the estuary so I am tempted to break out my gun for the occasion. I have promised Bryony an exclusive when my mission is complete. In return she has agreed to provide me with the name of the pub where the Telegraph staffers indulge so I can weasel my way in there and then blog their (allegedly) outrageous behavior. Given I had been watching Alias, my brain was on high alert for spy "tells" that would send telemetry into a state of whirring which would then trigger the dispatch of unmarked helicopters to addresses in Wigan and London. It's a pretty lame way to get to meet her face to face, but hey, whatever.
I'm sure that you'll not be surprised when I say that she sounds like a thoroughly likeable young lady. I approve.
All that said, I now have a date with a certain Ms Ellen from the Observer. I have no doubt I will be back today because I have lots of things I need to do on the computer that will involve a Machiavellian degree of procrastination, but for now I need industrial quantities of coffee.
November 5th was Wednesday. Thanks to your bad time-keeping I thought Sydney had been shot in Alias. I am now fully vested in Sydney empathy so I can't be doing with having her shot.
Because I operate on a devil may care basis, I went beserk on the way back from watching the football (shut up before you start) and picked a CD entirely at random in the car. It happened to be just the job; Sarah McLachlan. Midst my Fiona, Regina, Tori, Patty and PJ Harvey moments, I very often forget to get a dose of Ms McLachlan down me. She really has written some great songs in amongst some very average ones. This happens to be my top tune from said songstress. If you click the play button, get it cranked up very loud. I know it's probably a bit over-produced but it's a bit good all the same.
I'm only going to say one thing about the football. The Berb (or as my father keeps calling him, Gorbachev) is a truly amazing player to watch. Everything he does is so fluid -- he doesn't run, he skates. The one disarming facet to the Berb is his total composure. Where other players see red, he calmly gets on with the game. I am utterly convinced that when he does snap, there will be world war as a result of the carnage.
I lied. The second thing about the football was that it was an absolutely cracking game, albeit with the wrong result.
Anyway, I now have two choices. I could either write some code or I could have a marathon session of Alias. As Dr Conners commented, it is full of twists and turns however I have to say that I suspect its raison d'être is solely to allow hot chick to travel the world on someone else's dime. Oh, and to have some pretty amazing hair-dos. I think the only hair-do I don't like is her normal one.
I was going to comment on Bryony's Facebook status which reads "Bryony Gordon wonders who wants to come round to hers and eat comfort food whilst watching the x factor *deafening silence*" but I'm not in the habit of insulting people I like. Wait a minute; I do it all the time. Bryony mi'duck, develop a crack habit instead; it does you less harm.
I think I'm teetering on the brink of saying I think he's a thoroughly top chap (his Eastenders years aside). I think this may be because he reminds me a lot of my brother, except with a silly Southern accent.
Anyone would think I work for a living with the flagrant slacking that is evident on here. I try my hardest to keep up the illusion that I am independently wealthy but sometimes a bit of work breaks out that demands my full attention. This week happens to have conspired to have that condition coinciding with quite a few personal things that require immediate attention. Normally I would bore you with them, but if I did I'd have to come round and individually assassinate each of you; and that would just add more to my list of things to do so you can understand my reticence to blab. Let us just say that there's a game afoot.
While I've been running my ass off, I have been listening with some disinterest to the US election. I've probably read more than I have listened to. I think my take on it is that I'm glad it's over. Thankfully I will no longer spend Sunday lunches listening to my maternal unit verbally bitch-slapping Sarah Palin. The corollary to that is that I now get to watch personal politics in action as Obama takes to the world stage. I left a comment on Bryony's column summing up my view. It's easy to run a campaign shouting "change" and establishing a mantra that is to do anything that W hasn't. What is much harder is to translate that into hard policy. The only hard policies I have heard from Obama are worrying ones. Don't get me wrong; I'm quite happy to give the guy a shot and see what he does differently that will magic the US out of a hole but forgive me if I don't hold my breath.
Last night was irritating. Every November 5th, I get fractious. The UK must be the only country retarded enough to celebrate a date that commemorates someone's failure to blow up the Houses of Parliament by burning effigies of one of the conspirators and setting off fireworks. Even as a kid the lunacy of it did not escape me. As I stood outside having an agitated half-time smoke last night, I made a glib comment to the paternal unit that were I ever to seriously consider shooting someone, it would be on November 5th -- I would be long gone before anyone noticed thanks to the cover of the damned rockets. Honestly, if I'd have lived through the blitz, I would have signed up to go fight the swines who were disturbing my peace; there are only so many decibels my Fiona can be raised to before I start causing tsunamis in other parts of the world.
Right, I feel like I have done my misguided diligence in posting and proving I am still alive. I must now away to firkle some Redhat servers. By the way, if you can spare a kind wish in my direction I would appreciate it...that game I was talking about.
I am way too tired to try and summarize today into a one line quip so I'm here.
Hopefully by this time tomorrow the radio might have returned to normal. If there is one thing more irritating than listening to Main Street America being interviewed on US TV and radio stations, it is listening to the B team of English radio interviewing Main Street USA as they display their abject lack of knowledge of policy on any given issue. Even Peter Allen was lost for words on a number of occasions as the voters commented on their reasoning. There are some things even a pro cannot plan for or gloss over. The candidates were, to put it mildly, both poor. May the least poor win.
My head is scrambled. I am going to bed with a load of chocolate and my Alias DVD. Unfortunately, that is not a euphemism.
As I said, I have to be up at 05:30 tomorrow morning. If I'm feeling exceptionally lazy, I have the luxury of being able to hit the snooze button maybe twice. So what have I just remembered? Yup. Spooks at 10:30. I do not have the self-discipline to wait until next Monday. That means bed by midnight really. Damn you Al Beeb.
I know you're all on the edge of your seats waiting to find out how Tuna 2008® turned out.
Thanks to the Waaart, Albert and Zimmer for their suggestions. Supervisor, we know cats are not allowed within a parsec or two of Kenny so your advice was noted but not acted upon.
I decided I'd take the easiest route given that I have trouble operating a cooker. I seared it so it was much like a medium-rare steak as per the Waaart's advice. I slapped a load of lemon (no limes around) and black pepper on it and ate it with steamed asparagus. I have to say, it was not bad at all. It is nothing like the muck you get in tins or on sandwiches. In fact, think tinned salmon and then think the real deal -- miles of difference. It's very much like you have a steak but a lot easier on the old molars and it is very filling. I shall be doing that again.
Now I have a couple of pages of gubbins to write in preparation for tomorrow. Actually, now I think about it, I have three lots of a couple of pages to write for different meetings. After that, it's Alias (which is becoming well-enthralling) and an early night because tomorrow is going to be one long-assed day; I am literally going to be on the go from 5:30 tomorrow morning until around 9:30 tomorrow night. If I manage to steal 10 minutes somewhere along the way, I'll let you know just how damned cute Ms Gordon is. Second thoughts; I've just done it. I'm sure something will annoy the pants off me or make me gush twixt now and a stolen moment tomorrow.
Is anyone else as on tenterhooks as I am about the BT ad campaign? Will Adam and his lass finally make up after Adam's various crimes against humanity? First the bugger moved jobs and it royally miffed his lass. Then he bought an inferior wireless router so whenever he was on IM making strides towards reparation, his signal dropped so his lass got even more annoyed. Now she's stopped taking his calls. I can't wait for the next episode. This is the greatest commercial romance since Cheryl Campbell Sharon Maughan (thanks for the correction) in the Nescafé Gold Blend adverts. I ended up in love with her in the same way that I am in love with the lass rom the BT ad although I'm not that keen on her latest hair-do.
Anyway enough of my lecherous advert watching. I have a favor to ask.
Yesterday I went to the store to get some food. It's as tedious an experience as I remember it. Next time I have to do some such, I will order it to be delivered. While I was there I must have had a rush of blood to the head because I bought two tuna steaks. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I am unsure as to whether I will like them or not, having never had that particular rush of blood before. The fact is that I loathe tuna from a tin. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Foul loathesome offal. Yack. Did I mention I hate tinned tuna? Yes? Good. I do. However I love tuna as sashimi. I think the chances are 50-50 as to whether a tuna steak will cut the mustard. My problem is this: how on God's green earth do you cook them? You all know that I am a demon in a kitchen (sic). My instinct is to liberally dowse them in pepper and then grill them for as short a time as is humanly possible, then serve them with lime. Does that sound reasonable? I think it does -- I must have seen that in a restaurant somewhere and made an inadvertent mental note.
I have to cook these babies tomorrow so the clock is ticking. Albert -- you know a thing or two about which side of a pan faces upwards -- any recommendations? Failing that, get Mrs Albert to tell me; her being of the Californian persuasion she probably has an idea or two. I'm sure the Waaart might have some suggestions too.
By this time next week hopefully we'll have heard the last of the US election. When other countries have elections we hear about them in moderation. Maybe it's because I take more of an interest in them nowadays, being that it is the country my kids will grow up in, but this time around there seems to be more coverage in the UK than ever before. It is beyond tedious. What's more the coverage that we get is at best juvenile. We all know that in another life Kenny would have been a journo so it is only natural his amateur journo mind is outraged at the quality of coverage of the candidates.
I'm not going to link to these stories because I suspect that if you have half a brain you'll have about as much interest in them as I have. When I pulled up the news sites this morning, I was greeted with an "illegal aunt" and a story about an effigy of Sarah Palin that has been created ahead of Guy Fawkes night.
I haven't read the Obama story. The headline was enough for me to think "Who cares?". First off, it's not his aunt who is running for president. Secondly, if that is the most worrying thing about an Obama presidency, you have completely lost the plot. Let me rephrase that. You're bonkers. This is a man who will end the US reign as a super-power, economically and morally. I very often said to Nski that she should drop the patriot act occasionally; no country has been a super-power for anymore than a few hundred years. There's a guy somewhere holding up the US number saying come in number one, your time is up. That guy is Obama.
Okay, I reneged and looked at the Palin story. It's a bit like being a ghoul on the pavement, watching with morbid fascination. Having read that, I am embarrassed to be British. It should not shock me. This is a country that watches reality TV shows so sensationalist melodrama appears to be part of our genetic make-up. Burning an effigy of someone is immoral. No ifs or buts about it. Point of order: what do we think when we see Muslim whackjobs burning US or UK flags, or pictures of Dubya or Blair? Yup. If we're sane, we should be thinking "that's a bit extreme". If you're Kenny and you've forgotten to take your meds you might think "I have absolutely no sympathy for you at all. For a long time I had no sympathy for Israel, but I am slowly starting to understand."
My point is the same one that I tried to make a few weeks ago. If your informed opinion of someone is restricted to whatever over dramatized bollocks the media have spoon-fed you, your opinion is certainly not informed. How utterly idiotic is it that a town in Sussex can work themselves up into such a fervor over a US vice-presidential candidate that they have almost certainly never met? The mind boggles. The sad thing is that I know the type. There's a guy who is very often in the Railway in Garswood who is as nice a chap as you could meet. He's a gentle giant and I like him a lot. But when it comes to anything outside his immediate vision, his opinions are based very transparently on what he has seen or heard from the media. How can you lack awareness of being a sheep? My views may not be to the taste of everyone but they are based on years of watching and thinking. Has it not crossed the minds of the media that actually, Sarah Palin's views have been formed along a similar line? Should the good people of a remote US state be burning effigies of Kenny because of his world domination plan? (Don't answer that).
Now I have calmed down, I will resist the urge to throw offensive material onto the fire and read the paper. I seriously hope that Barbara Ellen is as rational as she usually is. I would hate for my blood pressure to be anymore elevated than it is.
Roll on Wednesday when the next item on the agenda is analysis of whether the voting was rigged. Sealed envelope prediction: if Obama wins, it will not have been rigged. If McCain wins, a huge cloud will settle over the outcome. Have you ever noticed that vote rigging allegations only ever surface when a democrat has lost? I'm not saying. I'm just saying.
Update: If you do nothing else today, read Barbara Ellen's take on the Ross/Brand debacle. On a scale of one to ten in levels of being right, she's twelve. Love her to bits.
Update to the update: While you're on the Barbara Ellen page, read her reasons for voting Tory. I don't often laugh out loud but that did make me chortle quite heartily.
I was just faffing doing some maintenance on El Bloggo when I noticed what I had written as a title to the previous post. It struck me that the .ken TLD is the ultimate in vanity plates. Better still .kenny. Admittedly .ken is more useful:
bro.ken unspo.ken stric.ken drun.ken parta.ken etc.
but .kenny has its uses:
ave.kenny hail.kenny heil.kenny you-are-so-right.kenny condemned-by.kenny etc.
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
-- Edith Sitwell
373512 glorious calls to prayer (okay, hits) since 2nd September 2003
Not quite as daft as it first seemed, however...
