T?st.

Aha! Right, I know what to work with...

Tért

Ok, that looks a little better now. It looks like you can enter fünn¥ chårac†ers right at the kéybøard... although I don't know quite why.

[Rosie] Your question "Why does it work at MCiOS and not here?" has the very simple answer: "Dan is a much better programmer than me."

In this room it's 21°C. The Welsh for Snowdon is Yr Ŵyddfa. Good enough. You're an excellent programmer, rab.

I could do with a holiday. I'm fed up of being on the road to work before the sun even comes up!

I have unblocked a drain. The satisfaction of seeing the washbasin suddenly empty freely is curiously alike to that of a really satisfying bowel movement.

I'm having a clear-out... of the cupboard in my office, which I have never used, but lots of other people have, aince 2007, apparently. It's all going in the bin. My to-do list is limited this week (everyone seems to have taken an extra week off work, and as I'm the one they ask to work on their documents at the final stage then there's a lull until they all come back to work - which, judging by this morning's traffic jams and 20mph average speed on the all-motorway route to work, was this morning. Pffft.

don't you mean 30km/h, pen?

32 km/h (approximately).

Whatevs.

[pen] Do you car-share? Are you aware of its benefits? Driver or passenger? Would you prefer [Software]or [Rosie]? Are you going my way?

Whlle the Netherlands is pretty well set up with lots of carpool parking spaces adjacent to nearly every motorway junction, we've chosen to live just out of the usual commuting range for Rotterdam - south of the river, mate. (That's the Haringvliet). Our rural idyll means there's no-one nearby who works where I do, nor the hours I do. In fact, very few people live outside of the city. They think I'm weird.

(Bismarck) Car-sharing is a form of torture. I'd rather travel in a packed rush-hour train where anonymity rules and talking is taboo anyway. But in your own car that cannot hold. Anyone who spoke would be immediately shot. Of course this only applies to work journeys. Anything else - well, jump in.

I think my swearing at other drivers would quickly put anyone else off car sharing with me. Sometimes even I'm shocked at the foulness of it. The weekly offer in Aldi this week is a dashcam, and I considered buying one for a moment, before realising that it would mean my expletive-laden judgements would be there for all to hear.

(pen) My oaths are briefer than yours and I find myself thinking "you use that word too much."

[Rosie] Pants to that.

Why not use a dashcam but speak in mock Russian? Youtoob fail videos are twice as funny with someone shrieking "Smirnoff spetznatz gorky!" just as the four articulated trucks up ahead disintegrate into their component parts and show you that while you thought the traffic was doing around 50mph from the footage it is actually moving somewhere in the region of 110. In deep snow. In a near blizzard.

You could publish the footage as The Perils of Penelope Somewhere In Europe.

[Stevie] What a spiffing idea. I just need some friends to cause distractions along the route to work, thus causing a regular supply of accidents, as you suggest.