Monday So this guy at work ccs me on an E-Mail about how he has gotten permission from one of my 3 bosses to task me to write a script to clean up a filesystem based on some XML that arrives in-theater. Easy-peasy, done.

Tuesday He ccs me on the tail end of an E-Mail chain, the bit where he volunteers me to start programming some ill-defined event-driven horseshirt fired up by a piece of software everyone hates. I point out that the script to be run from the time-based scheduler is simple and moreover, done, although I haven't actually been asked by the aforementioned boss to do the job, that I have no wish to become entwined in the ongoing trainwreck of the software he wants me to start looking at and perhaps I'll just hand off he script to the user department and let them worry the details.

Wednesday another e-mail claiming that whhat is equired is much more complex than a simple script. We do the pantomime "Oh yes/no it is/isn't" thing for a bit. He tells me that he wants a different filesystem cleaning than the one he asked for, and that since it is part of a system I help manage I should just do it.

I refer him to the original mail, point out that the filesystem he's now talking about *is* auto-managed by the software and that the filesystem that keeps filling up with crap and that the users cannot keep down to a managable size is external to our software, was set up by the user for some arcane purpose that even they don't really understand or have any sort of plan for and that's what I was asked to fix and what I have actually, indeed, fixed.

I tell him if he really wants to do what he's asking for today (as opposed to what he wanted on Monday) that the lead time will likely be months and moreover I'll need a proper requirements document stating definitively what needs doing to what for which reason. However, if he really needs his disk to stop overflowing because Irving cannot clean up the crap his team creates, I have a script to do that which has been running in emulation since Monday and even incorporates a bullshirt mail requirement that was snuck in Tuesday.

I'm out tomorrow so a doctor can electrocute me in the name of science. I wonder what Friday will bring?

[pen] I hear all your lights went out in a collapse of civilization in a World Gone Mad. Hope you are unaffected by the imminent breakdown of society and outbreak of cannibalism.

[penelop:] Walking in the dark is wonderful. Last night I went out at 8:50, got back at 10:10 after a 4 mile stroll. I should add that public roads do not a good night-time walk make. I do take a torch and dogs, but there was enough moonlight to render the torch unnecessary for half the walk. I am lucky that I live in the middle of a 'dark-sky' area, which makes night-time wandering more pleasant.

[Stevie] It was Amsterdam where the lights went out - we were fine in Rotterdam and the restaurant menus are still without human flesh.
[Phil] I've been planning my routes. I want some flashy lights for my sleeves, but there's a nice square route around the back of the house - around a complete polder, on dijks all the way - for long summer evenings, and a route around the village for winter ones. It comes back past the chip shop.

[pen] "Chjip shop", surely?

(Stevie) You've got the i and j the wrong way round. You'd better hide from pen - she is mightier than the sword. I'm a bit pissed, actually, and had better go to bed before the bloody sun comes up.

[Rosie] How's the head? And what was the occasions?
[Stevie] Chips is patat in the Netherlands. Not a drop of malt vinegar to be seen anywhere near them, though (nor in the supermarket, come to think of it). But the chip shop is on the dijk, if that makes you happy to have the i-j-k all together in a word. And our address has 'dijk' in it - ours is the first house (a new one, on an old plot) on an old dijk.

[pen, Rosie] No, I was riffing on the apparent fact that in Dutch the letter "j" is pronounced like a "y" (as in Esperanto) and on pen's use of the Dutch spelling of "dyke". In my head the pronunciation "chyip shop" (which is how most English speakers actually say the word in my hearing) became rendered as chjip shop for the 'Allo 'Allo Win.

Putting the j after the i would make the word "chiyp shop", which I can't pronounce yet after five minutes trying without it going "cheep shop", which would be right for Italy but not Holland.

By pure coincidence, I am less than an hour from departing to "The Chip Shop", a UK-style pub on Atlantic Avenue.

Which, since it is the heart of Brooklyn, should be spelled "da chip shop". If it were on Lon Gylund it would be "da chip shawp".

(Stevie) Ah, most erudite. In Scotland, of course, it would be "chups", possibly wuth a wee bi' a "fush" though more likely a Mars Bar.

(pen) Not really pissed, just a bit loose. Occasion? Hadn't been to the pub for three days, Boozing at home on your own is not actually all that fun.

Fush and chups in Scotland, or 'feesh and cheeps' according to an Iranian family friend many years ago. We still call them that now. Jeez, I miss feesh and cheeps.

When I first came to the usa I lived in Westbury and often ate in The Harvest Diner. I noticed that during the summer all the waiters spoke with Brummie accents and asked one about it. He told me they were all relatives of the owner, who had started his life in the food service trade in a place I wouldn't have I heard of.

Which turned out to be a fish and chip shop less than a mile from my parent's house in Coventry.

[Stevie] Not Earlsdon, by any chance?

[Phil] No. We lived in Whitmore Park. About here. Track down Chesholme Road (north-wards, downhill) from Rotherham Road to that first cross, which is the rear access entry. We lived on the bottom right corner.

I think it's something to do with age and the approach of a milestone birthday (I was in my thirties when I started in here, y'know). I've sent more critical emails, tweets and FB messages this week than ever before in my life, and some of them were not received well. Too bad. You put it out there on social media , so don't be surprised when it gets a response. I ain't stopping now. That's why the fact that I'm consistently pissed off at someone who is relentlessly unfunny, unskilled and unrhyming and relentlessly sexist in the Limericks game has finally surfaced. I'm not sorry.

...because I know it will irk you to know that you mistyped "misogynistic".

[Phil] I'm merely pleased that I allowed you to exercise your inner pedant. :o)

[pen] Bit early in your span for a mid-life crisis innit? Carry on at this rate and you'll either be on serious medication or be in politics by the time you are 35. Nothing on the web is worth a ventricle or major blood-vessel in your head.

Phil has an inner pedant as well??

[CdM] Hahahahaaa! :)

I discovered this sentence in a discussion on ending sentences with prepositions. I hope to use it some day.
"What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for? "

(Phil) The book is about Australia, so between up and for insert about Down Under.

[Rosie] Applause.

[Rosie] shouldn't that go between of and up?

(Phil) Yes.

...expect Phil's inner pedant to show up any day now to point out that, technically, "Down Under" is a noun phrase rather than a pair of prepositions.

Well, at first I was going to suggest that "down" isn't a preposition, but changed my mind. Both my inner and outer pedants are happily turning a blind eye to the capital letters of "Down" and "Under" too :)

(Phil) I didn't want to arouse the Wrath of Dujon or that of any other Strines.
(CdM) Course it's a noun phrase, my exopedant tells me. The medial- and endo- backups needed no invoking.

The Wrath of Dujon sounds like a title of a Doctor Who from the early Pertwee era. :-)

[CdM] I like it, hope they recover the tapes one day. Or it might have been a working title for the second Star Trek movie...
Kirk: "Duuuuuuuujonnnnnn!"

Anyone home?

Quick, while no-one's here...

Oh dear, thanks to the 8 word game, I have a new hobby. I didn't need another one. This morning's effort doesn't make a lot of sense, but I think it could, with a bit of work....
Re-vent some racist sin at a Syria hero. My latino gets EU quest, e.g. on Italy. More hairy satanists. I care most? Never!

I heard a tale recently that Drew Barrymore was asking Johnny Depp about the rumours that Nick Saban, the Alabama football coach, was a fully inducted member of the Mafia, and was operating under an assumed name.
"Drat! Saban a made man, eh? Depp? Answer!" Drew snapped.
He named a man. A bastard!

I may create a new game on another server in which to write palindromes, but in the meantime, here's another:
Pist now. It's a free beer. Fasting is a sign it's a free beer fast. I won't sip.

Sorry, Phil. Not clever enough for that sort of thing. Well done, btw.

[Phil] O no. O no. O no. O no. Not on. O no. O no. O no. O no.

Conversation between secret agent and Q, when the agent refuses to sign for his new vehicle:
"One man sub? Autogyro?"
"Mr Armory got u a bus. Name?"
"No!"

Q now briefs by SMS?

[Stevie] Yes, m8.

As I appear to have killed the chat with palindromes, I take them all back.

[Phil] That last one didn't work. It was gibberish when read backwards.

I've just bought a calculator, a rather posh quasi-vintage Hewlett-Packard with RPN, and along with a guide in English is one in French. A calculator in French is une calculatrice which makes the noun obviously feminine but makes the object itself sound feminine as well. To English ears the word sounds like "calculatress" cognate with words like actress, manageress, temptress, goddess etc. A computer though, is un ordinateur not une ordinatrice. Maybe that reflects its attraction for nerds, almost exclusively male.

A calculatrice suggests an intelligent cockatrice to me. Beware the hidden key combination that unleashes its deadly stare.

Briana: Once there was a sailor Who sailed the seven seas On a ship called the limburger Me: It was stinky cheese! (beat) What do you expect when you say something like that?

(Raak) It already has one - the display. It's horrible, characters far too narrow and they've re-inserted the crossbar in the noughts which is simply taking retro too far. A bit like fitting coupling rods to an electric locomotive.

(Kagome Shuko) Looking at the Games list I'd say we were the only two people in the building.