Pentax K-50, with a Russian-made 1000mm catadioptric lens. This was at 03:27, shortly before the most total coverage. I have a few more pics on Facebook. I bought the camera in rather a hurry for this — on Sunday, in fact. It was the only one in the shop that would attach to the Pentax mount on the lens without an adaptor. The body is pillar box red. At least I'll always know which camera is mine. I previously used the lens with a Ricoh film camera for the total eclipse in 1999.
This is what I saw
[Raak] This was precisely the time I woke up and went for a pee and peered out through the bedroom curtains (although it was 04.27 here). I saw this! I stared long and hard, fixing the image in my mind's eye. Over the farmland at the back of our house, it was so still, so starry, so other-worldly. Beautiful photo.
The photo looks markedly different from what I saw at the time through 12 x 40 binocs and with the naked eye. The contrast in the photo is much greater and the moon far redder. I saw a dull yellow-orange moon that was just a little brighter on one side. The eclipse was some way off symmetrical.
It would be interesting to know the exposure, f-number and ISO setting. It would be even more interesting to be on the moon and see the earth with its bright ring.
It would be interesting to know the exposure, f-number and ISO setting. It would be even more interesting to be on the moon and see the earth with its bright ring.
[Rosie] 1 second exposure, ISO 800. The exif data reports the f-number as 0, which probably means it doesn't know. There's no aperture adjustment or designation on the lens. The lens is 1000mm, but the image is substantially larger on this camera than on my Ricoh KR-10, so the effective focal length may be longer. The original picture is very dim, and the above was derived from the RAW+ file by level correction. The exif reports that auto white balance was on, but I'm not sure if that applies to RAW data or just the JPG, which was too noisy to be useful. Also, the eye doesn't see colours so intensely in the dark, so even a perfectly accurate photograph may look more intense than the reality in the light of day. What would you have seen through binoculars of the same magnification but much larger aperture?
Optical aids
I've looked at a lunar eclipse through my telescope in the past and the moon looks a gloomy translucent orange. The focal length of this home-made contraption is 1276 mm (50.24 in.) and the mirror diameter is 8.3 in. so it's about f/6. With a one-inch eyepiece the magnification is about 50. The moon's diameter was 1776 arcsec which would give an image at the prime focus of 0.43" or 11 mm but it's not adapted for photography so I didn't get it out this time.
If the aperture of the binocs were greatly increased there would be little improvement because then the size of the exit pupil would exceed that of the eye pupil and light would be wasted. You can't increase the surface brightness (per unit area) of any extended object whatever telescope you use visually, but photgraphically that's obviously not the case. The binocs make the moon bigger and easier to study but the surface light variations are the same as with the naked eye.
If the aperture of the binocs were greatly increased there would be little improvement because then the size of the exit pupil would exceed that of the eye pupil and light would be wasted. You can't increase the surface brightness (per unit area) of any extended object whatever telescope you use visually, but photgraphically that's obviously not the case. The binocs make the moon bigger and easier to study but the surface light variations are the same as with the naked eye.
moonstruck
Innit autumnal?
Autumnatic response.
(pen) Yeah. Trouble is, it's autumn.
[Raak] Dropping in here for the first time in a few weeks, so only just saw your picture. That's stunning.
Anyone about?
Very quiet, innit? Weekend a mere two days away - so what's everyone doing?
Somnolence
(pen) Good question. Both MCiOS and this place seem to have gone to sleep. Where's Gusset Login? I reckon I've won AVMA.
I've just remembered I have a three day weekend. I booked Monday off to use up my annual leave allowance. I'll probably just catch up on toilet cleaning.
(Pen) You sure know how to enjoy yourself...
[Knobbers] Actually it wasn't so bad. The toilets still need cleaning, because instead I went for a long bike ride in the still and sunny weather. We live in the countryside and there are no hills here in the Netherlands so it was lovely.
Cherrapunji Schmerrapunji
Some place in the Lake District has had 358 mm (just over 14") of rain in the last 24 hrs. Provisionally this is a British record. More later!
Floods etc.
Record confirmed. It was at Honister Pass or thereabouts, an Environment Agency gauge.
Sogginess
[Rosie] Cripes. *moves clothes upstairs from below-dijk-level-bedroom*
Happy Parsnips
So it turns out that a risotto is quite a common solution to the post-Christmas veg surplus problem.
Hello, everyone, by the way. Glad to see this place is still going, and that nothing's broken. I've had to do some behind-the-scenes tweaking as it turns out the venerable database library that this whole thing sits on will disappear when I come to upgrade the server OS, so perhaps things will break now. I'm a bit scared when I discover files that haven't been touched for nearly 10 years...
Merry Christmas rab. I hope all is well with Mrs rab and the rabling.
Happy 28th December from me too. BTW, a pilgrimage has been mooted - see the Dunxatorium for the proposed dates.
Happy New Year all. Hope you all have a happy, healthy and peaceful 2016. Got a houseful just settling into the first of the 'Back to the Future' trilogy (I won the box set and a hoodie from the University of Lincoln Facebook page - the big imposter that I am). Hoping for volunteer potato peelers in an hour or so - they will be rewarded with garlic bread, because it's a long time until dinner.
Astonishment
(pen) You won a hoodie? New toyboy then. :-)
Happy New Year, even though I am some hours behind!
Hoodie you think you are?
[Rosie] Nah, just the garment. I don't think the yobbish type wear university hoodies do they?
Depends. Red or blue brick?
Here at the university where where I work, they have made a feature of grey concrete tower blocks. Two buildings of 17 floors and a bunch of others averaging 10 floors clad in concrete biscuit, concrete flaps and concrete-and-glass. It makes looking out nice. Looking in, it looks horrid.
Made it to Thursday
Only more sodding morning 40km commute on wet and windy Dutch motorways bothered by tailgating idiots (which have been Belgian over the past two mornings) and hindered by crashes between those who are too selfish to use indicators or too self-absorbed to keep a packed column of traffic moving by driving SLOWLY and steadily (not by speeding to the back of the queue and stopping dead) or to realise that to join a column of traffic you have to match its speed - it doesn't have to let you in. Out of the seven drives either to or from work this week, only one has been smooth and approximately on time. Every other journey has been held up by stupid accidents. *whinge whinge whinge*
Traffic
[penelope] The moronic desire to get up to highway speed after merging into heavy traffic rates as my number one road rage inducer. I was, of course, spoiled by learning to do high speed merges on the excellently provisioned motorway entrance ramps, and vaguely remember public information commercials on how to merge on motorways. I firmly belive that whatever good road habits my generation have were inculcated by such ubiquitous repetitive TV-served indoctrination.
Dip, don't dazzle. Wear something white at night. Remember to use the Green Cross Code. Regginald Molehusband.
Breaking news
I live south of Rotterdam. One of two motorways heading south from Rotterdam (to Breda and Antwerp, respectively) is, this afternoon, sodding closed again because of a sodding accident. Therefore everyone uses the other sodding motorway. Therefore I can't get on either route south at all, therefore I can't go home until about 7pm when the road is opened again and the jams have dispersed. That makes 87% of journeys this week hindered by idiot drivers crashing into one another. My rage levels are approaching critical.
All white on the night
We had snow here Saturday night, not a lot, an inch and a half and all gone by Sunday afternoon. In beautiful downtown Carshalton it was rain because of the altitude difference, about 450 ft.
Is it okay if I write things like this?
Is it okay
to write like
this?
to write like
this?
[Rosie] Ditto. Our village had a sprinkling of snow. Next village east had none, but they're on the Thames, and we're 340ft above them.
@Gietrud
If rtl text works (doesn't here, I admit), that's probably easier.
[Giertrud] I cracked my head on the wall behind the monitor trying to read that. What are you trying to say, dear?
siht ekil gnitirw
!t'nia ti ylreporp pu ti kram nac uoy sselnu toN .oN
Well thank goodness January is nearly over. We've* had miserable news, miserable things have happened, and the weather's been miserable. February is a change, a lot shorter, and comes immediately before March. And I'm heading back to England at the end of Feb for a week with my mum. We're going to explore for grave goods, old things, shopping, good food and wine in Gloucestershire & Monmouthshire. Any recommendations?
* I mean 'we the public of whatever country you're in'
recommendations
[pen] When exploring for grave goods, you need to make sure there is not too much moonlight, that you have good shovels, and the cemetery does not have CCTV security.
(Also, my January was excellent. Perhaps that's the Southern Hemisphere for you. Doing almost no work definitely helped as well.)
(Also, my January was excellent. Perhaps that's the Southern Hemisphere for you. Doing almost no work definitely helped as well.)
a bag marked 'swag'
[CdM] How many cemeteries do you know that have CCTV?
[pen] I thought everywhere in Britain was now blanketed by multiple CCTV cameras.
[CdM] You ain't seen me, right?
(Actually, you won't have seen me on British CCTV. I don't live there.)
Breaking the silence
We're going tractor shopping this weekend. The windy miller wants a vintage tractor to use to power the millstones when there's no wind. Probably a Fergie. Cool huh?
Tractorated.
Got it. A 70-year old tractor in working order. I've never part-owned a tractor before.
Strange attractor
(pen) Pardon my utter ignorance and lack of imagination but how can a tractor power the millstones? Are you going to heave the sails round with it? I'm trying to visualise the setup. You/he could use a diesel generator.
Tractor-assisted Milling
Tsk! It's very simple: You position the tractor appropriately, chock the front wheels securely, and lash it firmly to the windmill superstructure as a backup. Then you jack up the tractor on one side, remove the elevated large rear wheel and fit a tyreless rim in its place.
Once that's done you run a special canvas belt around the hub of the windmill's blades and over the rimless wheel, now doing duty as a pulley. You start the tractor and place a block of concrete or a spare anvil on the brake for the wheel still on the ground, stick the tractor in gear and engage the clutch.
It's then a simple matter of slowly unjacking the tractor until adequate tension on the belt is achieved for the windmill's vanes to begin turning.
(Stevie) Ah!
*drops by with some birthday biscotti*
[Stevie] very close. But you put the sails out of gear and just use the PTO to drive the millstones using the mill's external driveshaft - you know, that thing at incovenient head-height with head-dents in it that sticks out of the outside wall. I can actually drive under it when I do a circuit of the mill to park because I don't have a Land Rover Discovery. The windy miller is currently saving up old socks to tie together to make the drive belt.
[cfm] I hope there's coffee too - you can break your teeth on those things and we're all getting on a bit in here.
Is it someone's birthday?
[cfm] I hope there's coffee too - you can break your teeth on those things and we're all getting on a bit in here.
Is it someone's birthday?
Gobachev Sings Tractor! Turnip! Buttocks!
Well, one could do it that way I suppose.
Look!
http://mentalfloss.com/article/76561/massive-bouncy-castle-grownups-opened-london
A novel experience
I am being headhunted, for the first time. It would mean a doubling of salary (quadrupling if you take into account that it's full-time and I currently work half time), and a move to civilisation. I won't mention the company, but their top people include several eminent mathematicians and scientists. I'm uncertain about exactly what the job involves, though, and whatever it is, whether I can do it, and well enough to justify the salary. It's also a startup, so I'd have to think about the chances of actually seeing that salary. On the other hand, my accumulated pile of cash plus pension is probably enough to see me out, so I can afford to take risks.
It's the "move to civilisation" part that I'm most attracted by. Let's just say, an intellectually renowned location about half way between where I am and that great metropolis of which it is said that he who tires of it is tired of life.
[Raak] You scored a job in Thetford? Sweet!
Go for it!
[Raak] Congratulations. And go for it!*
*Acceptance of Liability: The foregoing advice is offered without knowledge of (a) the recpient's personal circumstances or preferences or (b) the full and detailed terms of the employment opportunity. The Recipient acknowledges that, should he choose to follow said advice, he does so entirely at his own risk, and absolves the Profferer of any legal responsibility for resultant bankruptcy, misery, and homelessness.
*Acceptance of Liability: The foregoing advice is offered without knowledge of (a) the recpient's personal circumstances or preferences or (b) the full and detailed terms of the employment opportunity. The Recipient acknowledges that, should he choose to follow said advice, he does so entirely at his own risk, and absolves the Profferer of any legal responsibility for resultant bankruptcy, misery, and homelessness.
(Raak) So Cambridge United are looking yet again for a manager. Don't touch it. Er, congrats BTW.
Just to clarify, it's just been an initial contact so far. I'm still researching whatever I can find out about the company and what I would actually be doing.
The successful candidate will be tasked with defending company assets in "Awesomeville", our corporate Minecraft world. Must have own pixelated sword.
perishing
Morning folks. Monday morning, wall-to-wall blue skies, a brisk breeze and less than 2C. Two cups of coffee on my desk. Invigorating.
invigorating
A veil of thin stuff high up that I think Rosie would identify as cirrus, but the sun is blazing through it, for a summery 6°C best contemplated from indoors. Still waiting to hear from the city of perspiring dreams whether they're still interested, now they've had time to look up all my papers (and everything else I've ever done online).
[Raak] exciting! But how will you still listen to Alan Partridge on Radio Norwich if you move away?
[pen] There are four radio stations in the world: Radio 3, Radio 4, World Service, and Popular Music. I only listen to the first three.
If you're into canapes that are on the turn, then we've hit the motherlode.*
[Raak] In my house (where it has taken some dedication to find BBC radio stations what with being in another country and everything) Radio 4 as default, Radio 4 Extra sometimes, Radio 3 in headphones at work when I'm not getting on well with writing and also when I'm working at home alone in the house, it's on in the kitchen. I had a short wave radio and used to get the World Service sometimes, but it has even disappeared from that too, hasn't it?
Oh, and Radio 4 on Long Wave in the car on the 40km commute to and from work. It reaches as far as Rotterdam.
*Quote from the Alan Partridge film, Alpha Papa, which I know I will enjoy watching several more times.
Oh, and Radio 4 on Long Wave in the car on the 40km commute to and from work. It reaches as far as Rotterdam.
*Quote from the Alan Partridge film, Alpha Papa, which I know I will enjoy watching several more times.
I've never been able to get much of anything on shortwave. I remember in my teens listening to World Service on 648 kHz on a home-built radio (Philips Electronic Engineer kit). I could only get the signal in the evenings. The 648 kHz frequency stopped some years back, so I get it on digital now, and online, 24 hours a day. But have you noticed how everything sounds so much more authoritative on medium wave? I remember once listening to the World Service in the early morning, and then turning over to Radio 4 on FM, and thinking how much more solid and reliable the World Service newsreaders sounded. Then I realised I was listening to the same programme on both channels.
Only ever listen to NPR these days. They pimp the BBC World Service sometimes, usually late at night and for a tiny bit each morning.
Confessions of a pleb
(Raak) There's Five Live, on which I listen to a lot of footy but you'd have to threaten me with waterboarding to get me to listen to anything else on that ghastly down-market crap-hole. Otherwise it's 4 or 3. Has to be. BTW it was cirrus - you could see it on satellite pics.
I can also get BBC RAdio Kent on Medium Wave in the car. I'm about to change my car - and I'm dreading getting a car with a radio that doesn't have Long Wave, which is probably going to be the case. If so I'll have to find R4 on t'internet 3G on me phone and plug it into the car's Aux socket
(pen) Unlikely it won't have Long Wave. My banger, a 2002 Peugeot 206, has got it.
Longer
[Rosie] The tendency is for them not to have it now. They have FM, MW and DAB, but no LW. The windy miller's car radio is like that. (for me, it would be reason enough not to buy it...)
Oh well
The company I mentioned earlier has decided to proceed with other candidates, as the recruiter diplomatically put it. Well, it was pleasant to daydream about for a couple of weeks.
[Raak] Their loss. Time to retire to your secret base at the centre of the Earth to plot world domination and vengeance.
Wait for them to topple
[Raak] Wait for the candidate-in-front-of-you's spouse to declare they are moving to another country because he/she has just won a new post there, and then expect the (only slightly apologetic) call back. That's what happened to me.
Cross-posting) Breaking silence to announce that I have finally secured a ticket for a recording of ISIHAC! If anyone else is going to Southend on July 4th, I'll see you there!
May Day
Well, a week after May Day to be precise. We have a lovely burst of late spring heat here in the Netherlands - It's 26C, full sun, light breezes.... And excitement of excitements, the new antique tractor arrives tomorrow.
Enjoy it while you can, penelope, you never know what's about to come over the horizon..
(Dujon) Great shot. Is that in Oz?
owd cloud
[Dujon] Splendid!
[Rosie] Yes. It's a cell approaching from the west - which most storms here do. The shot was taken by my son earlier this year from farther up the mountains from me at around and about the 3,000ft level.
[penelope] I'm glad you liked it. I shall pass on your comment.
[penelope] I'm glad you liked it. I shall pass on your comment.
Oz
What is it about photos from dahn ander that makes them look so good? A friend just emigrated with family to Sydney and keeps posting pics of wonderful landscapes, exotic wildfowl etc. I've only ever done two days in Melbourne which according to Sydneyites is a near-death experience, so I can't comment.
Green cast
[Bismarck] It's envy.
(Bismarck) Probably the fact that the sun is "always" out and the air is very clean except when there's desert dust.
Ooh err
Summat happened. My finely penned post previewed but disappeared on submission. I'll post again when I have time.
[Phil] I am now imagining cosplaying as one of the Babymetal girls.
Thanks, Rosie! Another 45 minutes 'wasted'. ;)
All things bright and beautiful
[Bismarck] Many visitors and photographers remark on Australia's "light". The country on three sides is surrounded by lots and lots of water and much of the 'centre' is desert, so Rosie could be right about the clean air.
Exotic flora and fauna? They are to you, but badgers and squirrels are to Australian residents. I used to live about 3Km from my current residence where, particularly in dry periods, kangaroos (probably wallabies) would come out of the bushland next door and wander the streets; you won't find that in all places, though. Likewise with our avian population. Flocks of &$)@&! very noisy sulphur crested cockatoos; parrots; wrens; finches; kookaburras; butcher birds; bower birds (we have a bower in our front garden); whip birds - and quite a few more are regular visitors.
Landscapes are there and it's a largish country so subjects are there for the taking in all their variety. I love this place - I have lived here now for nigh on 61 years so am probably biassed - but make no claims as to its being better than any other country. After all this is a wonderful world (thanks, Louis) and beauty is everywhere if you look, even in England, the country of my birth.;)
Exotic flora and fauna? They are to you, but badgers and squirrels are to Australian residents. I used to live about 3Km from my current residence where, particularly in dry periods, kangaroos (probably wallabies) would come out of the bushland next door and wander the streets; you won't find that in all places, though. Likewise with our avian population. Flocks of &$)@&! very noisy sulphur crested cockatoos; parrots; wrens; finches; kookaburras; butcher birds; bower birds (we have a bower in our front garden); whip birds - and quite a few more are regular visitors.
Landscapes are there and it's a largish country so subjects are there for the taking in all their variety. I love this place - I have lived here now for nigh on 61 years so am probably biassed - but make no claims as to its being better than any other country. After all this is a wonderful world (thanks, Louis) and beauty is everywhere if you look, even in England, the country of my birth.;)
Big band etc
[Rosie] Re: your suggestion. Fun to play I'd imagine, but I find it rather dull to listen to these days. Ditto for jazz in general, and anything in which soloists get applauded during the piece. I also don't like most opera; lots of choral music; most "rock" music; especially prog rock; Bon Jovi et al; most musicals.... Actually, I hadn't realised how long the list is, given the amount of music I do like.
[follow-up] All that said, I only like about 6 of the current Top 40 singles.
[Phil] I don't know anything in the top 40 any more. Even I'm surprised by the speed at which this descent into fogeydom has happened. Or perhaps I'm perceiving it the wrong way - perhaps it's the music in the charts that's rubbish and not worth listening to any more. What exacerbates this is
a) Dutch pop music is utterly dire - plaintive autotuned adolescents singing formulaic songs written by someone else. So I don't listen to any lowland stations (except sometimes a Belgian one called 'Nostalgie')
b) I can receive only a very small number of UK radio stations in the car. Absolute Radio plays the same sings as it did in 2004 (when indie-type guitar-based pop music was quite good). Otherwise it's music-free BBC Radio Kent, BBC Five Live or Smooth - which plays almost exclusively music from the US - and I don't understand why.
c) I'm an old fogey.
a) Dutch pop music is utterly dire - plaintive autotuned adolescents singing formulaic songs written by someone else. So I don't listen to any lowland stations (except sometimes a Belgian one called 'Nostalgie')
b) I can receive only a very small number of UK radio stations in the car. Absolute Radio plays the same sings as it did in 2004 (when indie-type guitar-based pop music was quite good). Otherwise it's music-free BBC Radio Kent, BBC Five Live or Smooth - which plays almost exclusively music from the US - and I don't understand why.
c) I'm an old fogey.
[pen] If that's the definiton of fogeydom, I ascended to it at about the age of 20... but in fariness I suppose one person's 'formulaic' is another's 'inspired'.
Has anyone been through the full thought experiment of selecting one's own 8 tracks to be stranded on a desert island with?
Has anyone been through the full thought experiment of selecting one's own 8 tracks to be stranded on a desert island with?
Fogeydom
(Tuj) 25 in my case. As for Desert Island Discs I'd put a little late 50's pop, a little folk, quite a bit of mainstream jazz and Big Band and some piano pieces by Beethoven and Chopin. Is one allowed non-musical items? If so, I'd include Derek and Clive, top-notch taboo-busting filth. Luxury items a piano and and endless supply of fags.
!fogey
Mrs Phil & I had a moment a year or two ago when we suddenly realised that we might be embarrassing our children (now aged 20 & 18) by knowing about (and critiquing) the likes of Tinie Tempah, Skepta, Clean Bandit, Royal Blood, Slaves etc etc etc, and also listening to R1 in the car while carrying them and their friends. So we asked them. It turns out we couldn't be further from the truth. We are the envy of their friends, who are sick of their parents listening to Heart / Smooth / Classic FM and saying "all modern pop music sounds the same" etc. Which was nice.
I'm very proud to have introduced my children to Clean Bandit, Fidlar, Slaves and Mumford & Sons. I've also fleshed out their musical knowledge with Art of Noise, Bowie, Prince, James Brown, The Colourfield, Coldplay, Faithless and a load of others beyond and between.
I'm very proud to have introduced my children to Clean Bandit, Fidlar, Slaves and Mumford & Sons. I've also fleshed out their musical knowledge with Art of Noise, Bowie, Prince, James Brown, The Colourfield, Coldplay, Faithless and a load of others beyond and between.
I don't go much for all this modern music by the likes of Beethoven and Brahms. Music reached its peak 400 years ago.
Just rediscovering Jethro Tull and filling in the holes in the collection. That follows an intense two and a half month voyage of discovery with Glass Hammer that cost me deep in t' purse. Before Xmas I was collecting and discovering Muse after catching a performance on TV. Before that it was Tangerine Dream on account of all the advice to do so I got. In 1974. And interlaced through it all was an increasing interest in movie soundtracks. The one for The Way is a particularly good find.
Musing
[Stevie] I liked Muse - thinking of them as a 'Queen for the noughties' and went as far as forking out for a ticket to see them at Wembley in 2007 when I still lived close by. And now? I can't tell which song is which. They play fabulously at live shows though. Great performances.
Agree about the Muse comments. The last album was derailed by the absurd drill sergeant ranting parts. But when they are good they are excellent. Glass Hammer are a bit of a puzzler. Chronometree is absolutely hysterical and musically brilliant (a prog-rock concept album about a guy who detects messages in his favorite prog-rock albums teling him to form a cult and await the aliens in a field at which point ... ) and they have a rabid following of prog-crazed "real Glass Hammer" fans, yet of the, what, fifteen albums they put out the first half dozen were completely different to each other and ran the gamut of concept story rock albums drawn from the Mabinogion to a live folk concert recorded in The Prancing Pony. I love that. But the rabids want them to sound like Yes 2.0 all the time.
I never had a Radio 1 period, and it's been largely Radio 3 and my own MP3 collection for the last decade or so. There's the annual pantomime as a quick reference guide to the year's most popular bubblegum songs, and Eurovision for... god knows what.
Muse-ic
The whole Phil clan are Muse fans. We saw their previous tour (about 4 years ago?) at the Arsenal stadium, and it was phenomenal. I know people who made it to this year's O2 show who say it was even better. We pretty much permanently have at least one Muse CD in the car at any one time, and I spent the whole of SUnday's cricket match with various snippets from Origin of Symmetry running around inside my head. It's hard to play a safe forward defensive with Megalomania on the brain.
*stumbles upon an old bookmark*
Hello, world!
Hello, world!
Hello, nights! Haven't seen you for days.
[Muse] I've seen Muse four times live. The first was just after the first album release and was without any mega-screens, UFOs, mass crowds etc. To be honest I got bored of them, but the first few albums remain great. [Modern Music] Although I buy modern albums I suspect that they won't be popular with the kids. The latest by Joanna Newsom, Swans, 7shades, PJ Harvey and Katzenjammer have all been making my Mini vibrate recently.
Muse? I've moved on. Star Trek and The Martian soundtracks at work, Van der Graaf Generator on the trains.
(Stevie) Actually it's a dynamo. It's for the lights, or used to be.
[Rosie] Spelled differently, though I didn't really know that until I looked it up. Perhaps there was one of those shifts in reality where I wake up and find the world is pronouncing a word completely differently than they were the night before.
Don't stand under a tree
Nice thunderstorm tonight as I was driving to the pub. Plenty of cloud-cloud lightning and some forky stuff as well. From an elevated point looking NW I could just see clear sky near the horizon at about 1035 pm. Most unusual and only possible with a high cloud-base, which these storms had. And they were shifting, about 50 mph. All over rather quickly.
Lightning over Antwerp
I stood on our back deck late last night watching the lightning flashes illuminate the clouds towering over Antwerp, about 40km to the south of us. We didn't get a lot of weather action last night, but my colleagues are all suffering from lack of sleep caused by constant thunder and lightning last night. And it's awfully black out today, but still about 22-23C.
So, the Queen introduced a new variety of tea, in honour of today's historic vote. It is, of course, called, "English Brexit". Oh... you ask what ingredients? Leaves. Just Leaves.
(Giertrud) Shaddap. We have just made complete arses of ourselves.
(pen) More thunder yesterday. 9 days this month, a record for Hughes Hall (34 years).
(pen) More thunder yesterday. 9 days this month, a record for Hughes Hall (34 years).
thundering
[Rosie] Probably similar here. I'm getting fitter dashing in and out to rescue the washing on the line.
I am still here
Just about
Better than being incomplete ones, I supposie, Rosie!
Sightings of Rab
[Rab] Hello! Do we all need to renew our Mornington Passports? Will there be restricted access to Crescent markets? Will podumes lose value?
[Pen] Will you decide to be English/Welsh or Dutch?
The behaviour of the Head Brexiteers in the aftermath has suggested an ... interesting (in the Chinese sense) scenario: Trump wins the Presidency (of the USA), decides to resign and walk away leaving us in the hands of whoever his running mate is.
I get the strong impression that all the top politicians who were belly-to-belly shouting "Oh yeah?" at each other a few weeks ago were caught like a young boy telling a teacher his term-long project is well under way when in fact he hasn't actually done any work. By the sixth week the lies can't stop because there is now a malfunctioning mental imperative preventing truth yet the do-no-work stance can't be rejected in favour of a work-like-mad-to-make-up-for-lost-time because the same malfunctioning brain is in charge. Lies and laziness are being rewarded in the short term and lightning might burn down the school before the end of term.
Lies
Continuing to lie until it becomes impossible to back out led to this rather odd, and rather gruesome, news story I spotted a few weeks ago.
Brexiteers
Well, now we have a real need for the HHGttG term "beljam".
Helo clouds helo ski
Yeah, I'm feeling a bit lazy. I'm in the middle of a fortnight off, the windy miller and I noodled around the Ardennes and Luxumbourg for a couple of days (ate and drank too much), and we're expecting The American Niece and her boyf in a couple of days, but I'm still doing the same amount of cooking and cleaning as normal. Have I forgotten how to holiday?
Holidays
[pen] Know what you mean, there's always the idea of doing it better yourself, just not at home, which equates to a holiday. This year went B&B&restauranting with Frau Bismarck, the brother in law and the kids in Brittany, just to make sure that no-one had housework. Normally it's a rental as we have several sprogs and that gets expensive. It cost an arm and a leg but achieved the aim. There had been a plan for an invasion of Prague in rental accommodation for the same price, but wife plus sprogs 1 and 2 refused.
Would you be one of the few Dutch families without a camping car?
Would you be one of the few Dutch families without a camping car?
pas de camping/geen camping
[Bism] The windy miller refuses to camp. I think he did it wrong (ordinary field, earth closet, insects) when he was about 18 and it put him off for life. I love it, have slept in the car and camped and caravanned everywhere (including the arctic circle) but even though I tell him the secret is air mattresses, a campsite with loos and showers, and a good pub for food nearby, he won't listen. And we don't have kids, so we do hotels.
So today, mid-way through our holiday, I am taking pleasure in jam-making (double batch - he keeps buying plums and strawberries from stalls at the side of the road and not eating them, so they get stashed in the freezer), ironing, and hoovering. I would get bored on a beach or watching the world go by at a pavement cafe, wouldn't I?
So today, mid-way through our holiday, I am taking pleasure in jam-making (double batch - he keeps buying plums and strawberries from stalls at the side of the road and not eating them, so they get stashed in the freezer), ironing, and hoovering. I would get bored on a beach or watching the world go by at a pavement cafe, wouldn't I?
Luxuryemburg
[pen] You wouldn't be around Larochette, would you? I remember 2 days there in the main hotel with a bunch of grill/barbecue kiosks along the road which did great meals.
I think it's broken
Or you're all asleep. So what's everyone up to?
Helping to make a drum head about 40 inches across. Another will be made in a few weeks to go on the other side of the drum, which itself is about 40 inches deep.
Casts a critical musician's eye over this project
Never seen a pizza used for this purpose before. Woodna fought ittaby terribly resonant.
pizza punnery
Can't think of a drumming/pizza pun at all. There must be one!
You need pluck
(pen) Music for strings is occasionally marked pizzacato = cheesily.
His syncopation's a pizza work.
[Raak] Why do you need a 40x40 drum? Are you taking up Taiko or planning to serenade the neighbours with the Dies Irae of the Verdi Requiem? (I ask out of professional curiosity as a percussionist)
[Raak] Will the drum be lit from inside?
[Pablo] I've been playing taiko for about 8 years, and right now I'm in the Swiss mountains at a taiko festival. [Stevie] I will see if I can persuade our Benevolent Leader.
[Raak] That explains that then. Taiko in the Swiss mountains? Bit like gamelan in Siberia innit?
This just in: Swiss budget for avalanche precipitation mortars exausted before winter season starts! Government said to be considering alternative approaches to clearing the ski slopes. Film at eleven.
Apologies
Hello. Just performing a server upgrade.
*taps on the glass*
Rab! Good to see you.
Taps on the glass? How big is it FFS?
Screening visitors
[Rosie] Screen. I mean screen.
The Number of the Beast
Do we need a Prime Minister? I don't see why. A Composite one would be far more multi-faceted.
(pen) You take me far too seriously.
(pen) You take me far too seriously.
[Rosie] Oh no I don't. ;o)
Keraunophilia
Only a feeble one-rumble-and-a-bit-of-rain here last night. Other places not far away have had exuberant electrical displays, crashing thunder and joyously roaring downpours leading to surface water flooding and hazardous driving conditions south of the M4 corridor. So why not the B269? Come on.
(pen) Thank God for that.
(pen) Thank God for that.
Still no rain.
It's cooled down a bit - now 21C or so and 16 at night (which is nice) but we haven't had any decent rain for about 3-4 weeks. even the promised donder en blixem didn't amount to very much, it seemed to swirl around us but dumped very little rain on us.
And I've got new shoes and a new coat and everything, ready for rain and inclement weather.
And I've got new shoes and a new coat and everything, ready for rain and inclement weather.
The obligatory pirate chat
Thar be not much rain in Beds either me hearties!
Heartiness
Arrr, Cap'n, if it be rainin' in yer bed, yer mun ha' left the porthole open again!
Thunder etc
[Rosie] Yes, it was rather damp in Newbury last Thursday evening. I avoided it by 12 miles or so, but watched the lightning from a distance while nervously walking the dog.
The very slow-moving storm finally reached us about 4am, and continued till nearly 6am. The closest lightning strikes were just under a mile away, but were some of the most powerful I've heard. Fortunately, we live on top of a chalk and flint hill, so it drains very rapidly down to the Thames, so the roads were largely OK by 7.30am.
The very slow-moving storm finally reached us about 4am, and continued till nearly 6am. The closest lightning strikes were just under a mile away, but were some of the most powerful I've heard. Fortunately, we live on top of a chalk and flint hill, so it drains very rapidly down to the Thames, so the roads were largely OK by 7.30am.
Storms
[Rosie] A couple of weeks ago there was a "gully washer" in Florida the likes of which the world hasn't seen since Mrs Noah smashed a bottle of Manischewitz across the bow of the ark. It only lasted for about 15 minutes but dumped inches of wet. This isn't super-rare in that neck of the woods, but it has been years since I was caught in such sheer amounts of ruined holiday.
The last time was on the causeway connecting Kennedy Spaceport with the mainland. Sea on both sides and lightning poking it periodically. I turned to Mrs Stevie and said "I know you won't like this, what with the Stevieling being in the car, but we have to let those two people on the motorcycle in or they could be killed". I looked over at the bike to see it laid-down and no sign of the riders. They had taken refuge in the ditch. The alligator-infested ditch, which we had been warned many times to keep clear of on account of hungry alligators of a particularly grumpy disposition. Now that is rain.
The last time was on the causeway connecting Kennedy Spaceport with the mainland. Sea on both sides and lightning poking it periodically. I turned to Mrs Stevie and said "I know you won't like this, what with the Stevieling being in the car, but we have to let those two people on the motorcycle in or they could be killed". I looked over at the bike to see it laid-down and no sign of the riders. They had taken refuge in the ditch. The alligator-infested ditch, which we had been warned many times to keep clear of on account of hungry alligators of a particularly grumpy disposition. Now that is rain.
Civilised weather
I have a soft spot for the rain in Singapore, which turns up for thirty minutes at carefully defined times of the day. Allows one to plan, don'tcherknow.
[Bism] my recollection was of a rainy season that deserved its name. When were you there?
[Sup] You've unmasked me there, only been there once in February, weather was as I described though.
Having a go on the starting handle
Muttering while observing from some convenient bushes
... fine figure of a woman, fine figure ...
Sputters
Are you all looking at my arse?
The windy miller and I are off to the 24-hour Citroen 2CV race at Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday. What fun. Ages since I've been to any motorsport-related (I use the term advisedly) events. It's been nothing but windmills for the past eight years.
Emerging from posteriororitily-induced hypnosis
(pen) For a short period I drove one of those. They can do 60 on the flat. Handling characteristics of a London bus; power of a Sinclair C5.
Trez Veet Duh Say Vays
I think the ones on the track last week had been pimped. Quite a lot. Great fun, free entry, free grandstand seats, disgusting toilets.
The 2CV has an integral toilet?
2WC
[Stevie] IN the Netherlands they are affectionately known as the Citroen Eend or 'duck'. There's also a brand of toilet cleaner in NL and in the UK called 'Toilet Duck' or 'Toilet Eend'. We are truly going round in circles.
Clogbogs
(pen) I get the impression the Dutch are cheerfully lavatorial. Is that a fair assessment?
[Stevie] Not really, not as much as the British. It's a coincidence about the Duck thing - it's a Europe-wide name for the toilet cleaner because of the shape of the neck of the bottle. Now I'm trying to identify the Dutch sense of humour...
[pen] The boy with his finger in the dike points* the way to the Dutch sense of humour, I think.
* Ahahahahaha
* Ahahahahaha
2CV
Not seeing the connection between the bottle-bank on wheels and a duck, myself.
Automotive
Depends on your stance. The Ka was nicknamed "Flea" in Germany (they seem to have an insect fixation), the Multipla was the "coffee pot" in France (probably could be exchanged for one after ten thou miles), not too sure about the resemblance either.
NL-humor
[pen] My recollection of Dutch humour was that they gave you very fair warning of an imminent joke, often some days in advance, allowing one to take cover. Is it still like that?
2CV
Our Finnish friends, who owned an underpowered 2CV, used to refer to it as the 'un cheval'.
appearances can be deceptive
[Superman] I get the 'flea' moniker and the coffee-pot (I'm thinking of a Bialetti stove-top espresso maker - does that make me one of the 'liberal elite'?) but it does take time for objects to earn an affectionate nickname, doesn't it?
And as for slow-simmering Dutch jokes, I haven't actually noticed any, probably because I don't work with enough Dutch people for the technique to gain critical mass. They're not without a sense of humour, but because mine relies on wordplay (most often) then there's a gap that isn't often bridged.
And as for slow-simmering Dutch jokes, I haven't actually noticed any, probably because I don't work with enough Dutch people for the technique to gain critical mass. They're not without a sense of humour, but because mine relies on wordplay (most often) then there's a gap that isn't often bridged.
Venereal apparition
Translunary apophthegm
As before
I had asked if anyone had seen Venus low in the SW around sunset but for some reason the question didn't appear. Well? The moon's there now as well.
Venus in Firs
[Rosie] I have seen it peeping through the trees the last few chilly nights.
Armless pursuit
(Boolbar) Bright, innit. You can see it in broad daylight with binocs and even with the naked eye under the most favourable conditions.
Venusian lunacy
Is it the thing shining diretly under the new moon right now? I can see it from the sofa. It's going to be a chilly one tonight.
(pen) It is, or was. The moon moves on, unlike Ars?ne Wenger. Venus gets higher and higher until mid February. Cue UFO reports.
Why has my carefully crafted grave accent come out as a question mark?
Jupiter beaming at me this morning. Still visible as the sun was lurking just over the horizon. [Rosie] Try using the html string è
[Rosie] I dunno, but I wish you'd stop ending every question with an 'e' sporting a jaunty grave accent.
(Boolbar) Normally alt0232 works but not this time. Something is slightly amiss because on doing "Preview" the text disappeared from the box and after several severe blows with a club hammer this is what came up. ??? lad.
It's done it again. I dunno.
alt0232
[Rosie] I never use that because absent a numeric key pad I have to use the numbers up top and it dun't wurk. Boolbar's suggestion should work as it is broswer rendering character set immune (a quick test: è).
It could be the preview is furging it all up. (quick test with preview: è).
So preview can't bugger up the HTML entity. Let's try with the number (quick test:
Egad!
? j?? ??p? th? ?h?r?ct?r? İ ⱳā?ẗ.
è é ë
These characters created via è é ë, as recommended by Boolbar.
These characters created via è é ë, as recommended by Boolbar.
Lacking content
Testing, testing.
Well, that works, as does the Preview. Let's try this: Tèsting, tèsting. That previews OK but only by using Boolbar's method. On MCIOS both systems work. Why dat den?
MCiOS v mc5
[Rosie] Differences in how the moves are stored I guess. Unicode and code pages are a bugger.
Free lunches
Yesterday's free lunch came with a Christmas box (containing wine and cashew nuts) plus a step-counter that counts randomly but no food because the queues were too long, full of people queuing for their free lunch, and I decided it was a better idea to eat lunch at my desk.
Today's free lunch is hosted by the research institute and is on the 17th floor so at least there'll be a fabulous view while queueing. University life, eh?
Today's free lunch is hosted by the research institute and is on the 17th floor so at least there'll be a fabulous view while queueing. University life, eh?
Just my view.
Your comment takes me back a bit, penelope. The pinnacle of my banking career was working on the twentieth floor as manager of the customer services department. My office was on the north side of the building - which was situated on one of the high points of Sydney's CBD - and had an absolutely gorgeous outlook across and along Sydney Harbour (Port Jackson) from The Bridge and The Opera House out to the heads. Unfortunately, other than the odd glimpse of the view, it was impossible to properly enjoy it as I was just too busy. :(
Lunch with a view
Today's free lunch had no view (windowless hall), a short speech and very long queues. But an interesting walk there and back that included some of the busy Nieuwe Maas river and the old water tower from 1873. I'm really not in the mood for any more free lunches.
[Duj] Wow.
[Duj] Wow.
Viewlessness
Ey up pen, so Dutch architects can deliberately design a building with no windows on the seventeenth floor?
[Bismarck] I think she is cramming in more free lunches than you realise, even though there is no such thing.
forced smile day
So, our Secret santa presents get dished out later today, while we munch on mince pies. Apparently we're supposed to wear Christmas jumpers too. I feel like Marvin today.
Forced jollity
[Phil] I hear you. Ugh. Forced jollity brings out the obstreperous teenager in me.
Lunch Update - There is no free lunch today. I made corned beef and brinjal pickle sandwiches, and I've already eaten half of them (it's 10.30am).
Lunch Update - There is no free lunch today. I made corned beef and brinjal pickle sandwiches, and I've already eaten half of them (it's 10.30am).
Free lunch anomaly
[Boolbar] I suspect the quantum representation of free lunches permits the improbable occasionally, given the number of lunches consumed daily. Though according to pen normality was restored today.
Today's free lunch
Not so much a free lunch as the promise of cake and coffee during an open afternoon - a 'come and have a look' kind of affair - at the windy miller's business' new offices. Next door to Ikea...
Can I guess where the office furniture came from?
[pen] A flat-packed lunch?
Listening to everyone bitch about unacceptably something free lunches and having to endure the unspeakable horrors of Christmas jollity at work for one day reminds me why I got out while the going was good back in '84. What a bunch of whining whiny whiners.
Open season
[Phil], Secret Santas are agents of the devil. It's OK to impale them, or just any random person if you can't work out who bought you that pair of yellow socks.
Secret Santa
<*mutters*> Yellow toe socks for Bismark. Filled with coal.
whineless
The only problem is all these lunches take time that I don't have. They break my thinking when I could be usefully engaged writing webpages or brochures or news ot other stuff. Luckily it was back to just half an hour today.
OOoh yellow socks filled with coal! Great idea!
OOoh yellow socks filled with coal! Great idea!
[penelope] So don't go. I'm not seeing the problem here.
Yazoooooo
[Stevie] Unthinkable. Awards, year summaries, need to be seen to be joining in, stuff like that.
[penelope] I never do. I've opted out of three "official" parties (all that required cashmoney up front, admittedly - in the USA There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) this week alone so I can go across town to an English-style boozer instead. If I'm going to spend money it's going on booze'n'pie'n'chips, not soft drinks, canapes and a variety of ethnic foods that I can't bear to even smell let alone eat. And why pretend to like people who have trouble sharing a conference room with one without snarling three hundred and sixty four days of the year?
Damn near missed my "Ten Years In, Congrats You're Vested" certificate ceremony too. Only went to say thanks to and shake the hand of the outgoing deputy commish who got me the gig.
Merry Christmas everyone at MC5
Almost every present I had is either red wine or chocolate. Merry Christmas to you all (hic) and a yummy New Year.
Merry Christmas, though for your time zone I am a bit late.
(Giertrud) Central Standard Time? 6 hours then. The thing about Britain in December, you may or may not know, is the sheer gloom of a cloudy afternoon, i.e. most of them. It can be pretty well dark at 4 pm.
[Rosie] I took it that Giertrude was in fact undead, possibly a Zombie but one shouldn't discount the vampire option just because the fad has faded, and is now ravaging the living in your area.
(Stevie) Nothing ravages Warlingham, not even the Lib Dems.
Happy New Year
Hmmm... odd. Sorry I keep dipping out, I've only just noticed Rosie's comment about accents, and am investigating.
Test
Tést.
T?st.
Aha! Right, I know what to work with...
Tert
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."
Gonna try a tert
In this room it's 21°C. The Welsh for Snowdon is Yr Ŵyddfa. Good enough. You're an excellent programmer, rab.
Terting terting
I could do with a holiday. I'm fed up of being on the road to work before the sun even comes up!
Things that are like other things
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.
Getting things moving
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.
Terminology
don't you mean 30km/h, pen?
Pedantry
32 km/h (approximately).
I mean too bloody slow
Whatevs.
Commuting questions
[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?
A car-share from nowhere
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.
Well f*ck y** and *v*ry*ne els* on th* ro*d.
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.
Sweary Mary
(pen) My oaths are briefer than yours and I find myself thinking "you use that word too much."
My briefs are oather than yours.
[Rosie] Pants to that.
Dashcam
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.
Pay per view
[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.
Log off
(Stevie) I like the ones where a colossally overloaded trailer of timber starts swinging from side to side then over it goes and the whole f****** issue lands in the ditch. Yes, I too am a time-waster.
(pen - ult) Oather than mine? Shurely not.
(pen - ult) Oather than mine? Shurely not.
Dashing Cam
[pen] I don't see the need to contrive accidents. Annecdotal evidence suggests that the minute you turn on your dashcam some idiot will drive a tank across the highway narrowly missing you, or swerve in front of you with an unfeasible load of matresses and haybales lashed to his roof with lamentably poor knotwork.
Put in a rear dashcam and enjoy the immediate onslaught of cyclclists and motorbikers so caught up in the moment they have forgotten how perspective works.
For a few tens of pounds outlay I can visualize a time when your Yootoob channel brings in six figures from advertising, more than paying for the inevitable dent-knocking-outery and door replacement. Just remember to yell "Kremlin matryoshka gorbachev!" as you weave around the haybales and collide with one of those tricycle ice-cream things and it will all be gravy.
I've been working on an idea to lighten the mood when traffic accidents occur. Nothing sours the situation more than getting punched by an angry person with whom you have just collided at speed. I think the whole mood can be de-escalated by the addition of a proximity-triggered klaxon fitted behind the front grill that can scream "YeeeeeeeeeHaaaaaaaa!" as you swan into a Smart car or someone's BMW and give everyone's airbags and seat-belts a good work-out. I got the idea after listening to I Want My Baby Back from Kenny Everett's World's Worst Record.
Time Wasting
[Rosie] Time spent watching overloaded cranes falling over or trucks drive under an overhead obstruction with the bed raised is not deducted form one's life span. In fact, I encourage such behaviour if only to counter those times spent trying to get a human being to intervene 'twixt you and the government (eg to sell you a new road tax disc) after which one tends to sag against the nearest bar and utter such truisms as "there's four hours I'll never get back".
Accidentally on purpose
Hook up your reversing camera to a large screen attached to the rear windscreen. Should cause endless fun.
Screen test
I'm confused - facing out or facing in?
TWTWTW
What a bloody week. I don't want to look back at it.
Sadism
(Stevie) Is there any life deduction for watching leopards strangle warthogs prior to enjoying a tasty meal or watching hyenas ripping chunks out of a buffalo which only gives up when a considerable part of its inside has been removed. Incidentally, the word warthog looks Welsh to me and I always mutter it to myself as if it were. After all there is a genuine Welsh word arthog (short open "a", lightly trilled "r", "th" as in English) meaning bear-like and with the same figurative meaning as in English, i.e. bad-tempered. The plural of warthog would probably be warthogion though warthogoedd or warthogydd are possibilities. It's unlikely to be regular (warthogau).
Grizzly stuff.
There was nothing banging about Arthog last time I visited (probably early '50s) even vaguely resembling a bear. Perhaps a hill or the (very few) local residents presented a somewhat ursine appearance.
Wouldn't a Warthogion be a collection of Warthog folktales?
Alight here if you can bear it
(Dujon) You must have missed the station which only existed because of the nearby touristy Arthog Hall. There is a steam engine named after it (No. 6993 if you must know) and I suspect the big brass nameplate is hanging up somewhere in the building.
(Stevie) Yeah, I like that.
(Stevie) Yeah, I like that.
Station staff
No, I didn't miss the station, Rosie, as that is where I stayed for a week. Well, in the siding, in a camping coach. A staff-controlled single line that wended its way up the valley to who-knows-where, the whistle echoing off and around the hills, a mist hiding the already hidden places; a child's paradise. Geez I'm getting old. ;)
Rosie - how deep'n' desperate is this freezing easterly going to be? Wind is picking up here, and temp is dropping... (according to the neightbour over the road, whose weather station Tweets every couple of hours).
(Dujon) The line went to Dolgellau then up the hill and down again to Bala, Llangollen and joined the main line at Ruabon. Ten-coach holiday trains with two smallish engines laboured mightily up the bank. The line closed in 1965 but parts of it have been reopened under preservation with unrealistically clean shiny engines and a dismal speed restriction (25 mph).
(pen) Deep'n' desperate? Not very. Not for an easterly in February but it'll probably last a week. Not much snow if any. I'm not looking forward to it either.
(pen) Deep'n' desperate? Not very. Not for an easterly in February but it'll probably last a week. Not much snow if any. I'm not looking forward to it either.
It couldn't get more miserable here, weatherwise. Deep grey gloom, and temperatures hovering just under freezing. And I think I've just witnessed the stripping of my UK pension by a bunch of unprincipled Westminster turncoats. Bastards the lot of them.
Inclemency, poverty
(pen) Same weather here only one degree warmer. Light drizzle, mist and gloom. Lovely! Bad about your pension. Stay where you are though because 29% of Britons support Trump, further evidence of our widespread knuckle-scraping ignorance. If I were younger I'd seriously consider moving somewhere a little more at ease with itself.
Snow
And lots of it. Stayed home sick. Really sick, but no-one will believe me.
Weather
Howling winds making everyone in the house nervous. Outside the house the wind is picking up too. Still snowing. 7 inches or so so far, but it has drifted halfway up the front door.
Doris
Yesterday's storm was interesting. I took a trip there and back across the Oude Maas river by water taxi at the height of her gustiness. Our original choice of dock was too exposed to wind and waves for it to pick us up safely, so we had to walk a bit further up to a calmer one. Exhilarating.
Nomenclature
How can they call a storm Doris? It's a genteel upper middle-class name from the 20's. My piano teacher as a kid was called Doris, Doris Austin (pron. Awstin). My parents knew a few Dorises - they were awfully nice. The Crystal Palace full-back in the '60's was Martin Hinshelwood, nicknamed Doris. It was not a compliment.
Dorises
I heard they were alphabetically naming them after people in the Met Office. I shall Google.
I've said for years that Doris is a name to strike fear and terror into people, and that it should be moved into rotation in the hurricane name stack soonest. I also disagree vehemently with the practice of naming hurricanes or tropical storms using male names. Male names do not convey the same "get out of Dodge now" subtext that female ones do.
How about using the names of demons? "Storm Demogorgon" has a fine ring to it. Next up will be Eligor, Focalor, and Glasyalabolas.
Demonised
Thing is, [Raak] I'm not familiar with the names of demons (shame on me). Perhaps we could just name them after nasty people? We've missed the opportunity for 'Bannon' but we're in time for storms 'Farage', 'Gove' and 'Hopkins'.
I know that last year's storms were named from suggestions tweeted to the Met Office and Met Eireann, and that they alternated male and female, as do this year's.
Also, does anyone else remember hearing on QI many years ago that Herod's wife was called Doris?
Also, does anyone else remember hearing on QI many years ago that Herod's wife was called Doris?
[pen] What on earth do you have against Mary Hopkins?
Up the bum
I've just had a prostate biopsy. Briefly quite painful but better than not having one. It's probably cancerous but can easily be treated. The consultant said that all men of 90 have prostate cancer but they die of something else. I seem to have started a little early, perhaps (74). The treatment was brilliant and prompt, at Mayday Hospital in Croydon. Why don't they get a proper car park? Bastards!
[Rosie] Well... it's absolutely fabulous that they've got you under effective and early surveillance. But I'm so sorry about the car parking, you're probably going to have to use it a few times over the next couple of months. Hope it's bearable.
(pen) I've used the car park twice already; I got a taxi this time because the procedure might have left me feeling a bit vulnerable but the feeling of having been whacked up the bum with a heavy blunt instrument soon wore off. I'm fine today.
No sunshine?
All the best, Rosie, I hope that the biopsy test result comes back with a good prognosis.
(Duj) The consultant said it was actually win-win in that any cancer can be treated and reduction in size quite routine anyway. Having now accepted there's a problem I'm looking forward to the beneficial effects. Less urgency and less getting up in the night. My Dad had his removed in 1968 and it was quite an operation but techniques these days are so much better.
Hello again, all. All the best, Rosie.
Wotcha, nights. Fast path to remission, Rosie.
[Rosie] May your treatment be effective and discomfort-free, and may your parking be abundant. Good luck.
(nights, Stevie, CdM) Thanks very much. It seems that prostate cancer among older men is, if not quite routine, at least quite common and the least harmful of all cancers unless it spreads, which is pretty rare. My cousin had it and died of a stroke, aged 84. The cancer was quite irrelevant.
(CdM) I don't think the treatment will be discomfort-free - may involve a catheter. Parking anywhere in the Greater London area is like the biopsy, a complete pain in the arse.
(CdM) I don't think the treatment will be discomfort-free - may involve a catheter. Parking anywhere in the Greater London area is like the biopsy, a complete pain in the arse.
Best wishes
[Rosie] You have an admirably pragmatic attitude towards illness. I always do the man thing of ignoring a grumble, then eventually get off my arse* to see my GP, who then says "Oh, it's just a virus". Though, of course, one day, it won't be...
*apologies for any insensitive wording...
Has spring sprung?
Is it spring yet? I haven't really noticed a change in temperature - I'm still vested.
Sproing
[pen] Here it's bright as summer, cold as winter. It's spring.
(rab) Tell your GP that rabies is a virus, as are many other lethal lurgies. I know what he means, though.
rabsody
Oh thank goodness this site is back. It was apparently down yesterday, and I thought Scotland had independented without telling anyone.
*Aprils*
Soooo close to finishing writing the twice-yearly alumni magazine and sooo happy about it. On the other hand, I just had to cancel a trip to the UK because of an attack of the you-know-whats.
You-don't-know-whats
Irate tractor drivers? Poisonous micro-bats? Cheesed-off Dutchmen?
Whatever it was, hope they're gone now with no lasting damage.
Whatever it was, hope they're gone now with no lasting damage.
Shut of the shots
Shot of the shits? Almost, but not quite. Bloody hell. I've lost a few kilos. Am I sure this isn't amoebic dysentery or some Dutch marshland parasitic invasion? No.
Diseasedly
Low-lying coastal delta? Dengue fever for sure. Survival rate is quite good, though.
Which is worse, Dengue fever, or constant campaigning and voting?
Let's vote on that...
Depends on how much pain you have in your cam, I suppose. It also seems to provoke a form of sleeping sickness that makes one have déjà vu nightmares.
Orangery
It's King's Day tomorrow in the Netherlands; a national holiday in every sense of the word. For most Dutch people, it means a feverish plague of orange tat - to wear, eat and wave in the air, a lot of beer, and an all-pervasive soundtrack of oompah bands and bouncy pop tunes played through bad loudspeakers from every village street. (This is my experience of it in the previous 8 years of village life - it may be different elsewhere in the country).
But the windy miller and I will be heading to the windmill in Zeeland. I will take a pile of books, a warm blanket, and a big packet of sausages to cook.
But the windy miller and I will be heading to the windmill in Zeeland. I will take a pile of books, a warm blanket, and a big packet of sausages to cook.
It's cold where you are? So you and the Miller are going to have an under-the-blanket sausage festival up at 'mill? That sounds very sensible under the circumstances.
[Stevie[ I am too shocked to speak.
(As it happens, I made coffee for everyone, sat out in the sun drinking coffee and eating cake, cleaned the lav thoroughly - spider footprints all over the seat - and after a lunch of sausage sarnies, I went to sit in the car to read, and got through two-thirds of Jessica Mitford's autobiography 'Hons and Rebels', including an hour's doze. Lovely.)
(As it happens, I made coffee for everyone, sat out in the sun drinking coffee and eating cake, cleaned the lav thoroughly - spider footprints all over the seat - and after a lunch of sausage sarnies, I went to sit in the car to read, and got through two-thirds of Jessica Mitford's autobiography 'Hons and Rebels', including an hour's doze. Lovely.)
Exactly a week later...
My life seems to be all outings and jollies. It isn't - but as it happens I'm catching the ferry back to England tonight, the first time I've been back since last December.
The Crab
Hooray - I will not die of prostate cancer. Just seen a specialist and they have a treatment plan all worked out (catheter not involved). It'll take a couple of years at least but there is a very high probability of then being totally cancer-free. Even if not, it can be monitored and re-treated and represents no danger.
[Rosie] Thank God for that. My grandfather died of it, so I am glad to hear the news. Even if I have never met you in my life, your absence would be more than a passing thing.
Maleness
Good oh, Rosie. Great news, indeed. I hope the treatment isn't too onerous. I'll also have a drink for you this evening. :)
(Bismarck) That's very kind. I'll be quite happy to live another 15 years, being 74, and the doctor I saw earlier today implied very strongly that this business won't affect my longevity. Now, about your smoking, Mr Hughes.
(Dujon) The treatment may involve side-effects (chemo) and later possibly radiotherapy to give it a final bashing on the head. This is a bit more than taking paracetamol but I've found over the years that I seem immune to side effects, never having had any from anything. Let's hope it continues. There is already an improvement from the hormone therapy I'm undergoing - less "urgency" and less getting up during the night and no side effects such as hot flushes or sprouting boobs, which apparently can happen. And how much libido can you lose at my age? Well, a bit, actually, but it must be a serious problem for younger men, whom I do not envy.
Glad to hear that Rosie. These MC sites do come alive due to their inhabitants, so I look forward to many more years of wit 'n' wisdom from yourself (and steam locomotives).
P.S. Why do I still get libido and albedo mixed up?
Rosie
Luck, and no side effects. If you'll take some well-meant advice, keep a few bottles of the otherwise disgusting gatorade at hand during your regimen. I hope you won't need them, but better a couple of bottles you never used than not having none when dehydration hits. There's also something called pedialite over here, used for babies but essentially the same dilute cocktail of electrolytes. Can't get that at the supermarket though.
(Boolbar) Thanks for your concern. re libido/albedo - have you been trying to shag the planet Venus? Bright, isn't it.
(Stevie) I was told about possible dehydration but I think water will do. BTW, what's gatorade? Sounds like something distilled from a bayou.
Nice news
[Rosie] That's the nicest news all week. Lucozade will do the same job as Gatorade, I think, but it won't be so snappy. Ginger ale is marvellous stuff too, especially if the treatment robs you of your appetite.
[Rosie] Very glad to hear that; good luck with the treatments.
(CdM) They will be worse than the disease, which is little more than a nuisance, though not ultimately, needless to say. Thanks for your concern.
Gatorade
Sports drink. Rich in electrolytes. Water may not do, as it is the chemical imbalance that is the problem rather than lack of water. Orange juice is my usual rehydrator of choice but once you are on chemo you may find the taste becomes unpalatable. Hope I'm overstating the case. Speedy recovery at any rate. My Dad underwent the same regimen and he's free umpteen years down the road.
It's the bloody 15th of May!
Morning all. This weekend I have been mostly shouting above the din of a noisy restaurant to translate an entire Dutch menu (a very nice menu actually) to an old schoolfriend and her chap who visited for the weekend (Mauritz in Willemstad) that mader me lose some of my voice, and exploring the Napoleonic fort at the end of our dijk, which is a couple of miles away, but still on the same dijk. Exploring Fort Sabina was like one of those dreams in which you discover another staircase leading to rooms in your house that you never knew were there; it's so close to our house and has such a massive sense of history; it's now given over to nature, wind and water (and a decent cafe selling nice beer).
And what I really meant to say was... it's already halfway through May!
And what I really meant to say was... it's already halfway through May!
[pen] Halfway? I have a feeling we have another 5 years of May left.
Neighbourliness
The neighbours opposite (overbuurmensen) are gradually removing their kitchen in preparation for a new one going in in a couple of weeks. Today they'll rip out the floor and sloosh in the self-levelling goop, so they're coming over to eat at ours tonight. Salmon and new potatoes.
Can I come too?
[pen] Perhaps a self-levelling chocolate goop for desert?
Self-leveling underfloor goop. Hah. Once they are done they will lay their floor and never be able to get any of their appliances to mate the plumbing without a healthy reservoir of Class Four Words of Power.
The house settles and goes out of square, taking walls and plumbing with it (ironically, the plumbing will be out of plumb). Wheel in new washing machine on nice new level floor and the fun starts. Also, once floor laid, skirting boards may not fit under door frame. I wish everyone the best and as you value your sanity, don't get too close. I'm currently facing a bathroom wall that is now so far away from the frame of the house, the tap stems no longer poke through enough for the taps to be fitted. Oh how I laughed.
tapping
[Stevie] Your house sounds like the spire of that Chesterfield church.
The neighbours' house is a dijk-house; split level with a front door at road level, and storeys above and a storey below which is semi-underground, built into the dyke. Theirs also has constructions built out from the back of the house, on legs.
Ours is a dijkhuis too, but ours is new and built on pilings. Theirs is a hundred years old in parts and not built on pilings. Their front door doesn't fit, they have corridors that run in U-shapes around the building, and there are at least two routes to every room in the house. I'm very fond of them but they have too much stuff and cannot help but buy more.
Thank you for the warning about sanity. I fear you are right.
The neighbours' house is a dijk-house; split level with a front door at road level, and storeys above and a storey below which is semi-underground, built into the dyke. Theirs also has constructions built out from the back of the house, on legs.
Ours is a dijkhuis too, but ours is new and built on pilings. Theirs is a hundred years old in parts and not built on pilings. Their front door doesn't fit, they have corridors that run in U-shapes around the building, and there are at least two routes to every room in the house. I'm very fond of them but they have too much stuff and cannot help but buy more.
Thank you for the warning about sanity. I fear you are right.
My internal picture was the spire of Ely Cathedral which was reportedly three feet off the vertical at the tip. Speaking of good intentions gone all tilty while no-one was looking, tomorrow Mrs Stevie leaves for DC and I begin fixing the perambulating fence of not-all-that-windproofness-when-you-get-down-to-it.
Epeeing into the wind
[Stevie] Isn't that fencing the recurring theme of your DIY posts on this website? I remember it from years ago. Perhaps it's time it went - is not even as if you have to keep the Steveling confined any more.
Nope. I value my privacy, such as it is.
Didn't get to fix the fence because of rain and bleeping work.
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it
[Stevie] A noble task! Those swearwords won't censor themselves.
No, that's the noise my computer makes when the remote connection is timing out.
[Stevie] Mark your boundary with a row of nails. It is said that a tack is the best form of the fence.
Argh! No court in the world would convict me, Boolbar.
Hooray! Them and their clever machines have had a closer look and I have no cancer whatever outside the prostate and so don't need chemo. A very good day. A very good day indeed.
Very good news Rosie.
I bet you feel about twenty years younger, Rosie. Marvellous, marvellous, old chap.
(Stevie,Dujon) Cheers. Thanks. The prostate itself is still cancerous but it's completely under control and the hormone therapy is working, i.e. the wee-wees are faster, less urgent and there's less getting up in the night. Pints of beer are less likely to cause "spillage". This is important, obviously. This treatment is going to have to last some time but has no side-effects apart from the obvious one of loss of libido which is not the worst thing in the world for someone of my age (74) but a slight loss nevertheless. I was told, quite seriously, that every man of 90 has prostate cancer (but dies of something else). Can I hang on to it for 16 years? Some people with more threatening cancer give it a name. Any suggestions? Trump? Ibrahimovic?
Rosie's complaint
Why not call yours a "Corbyn"? After all, although it has dangerous principles it's pacific, looks like it's quite happy in its own allotment, was around for ages before coming to your notice, and you'd be better if once it's gone.
Have a beer from me, for medical reasons.
Have a beer from me, for medical reasons.
(Bismarck) It doesn't make much sense to name a malignant growth after something benign, does it?
Chuffed
[Rosie] Glad to hear your good news!
Thanks to all who have wished me well
Weather news - look away NOW
Super thunderstorm at 4.30 pm. AFPD for a few minutes, visibility down to a couple of hundred yards, then some large hail. Large by Met Office definition, i.e >5 mm; this was over twice that. I measured the rain - 12.7 mm in about 7 minutes. Still quite warm and stuffy, and no wind. Some action at last.
The Rosie Prostate Saga
[Rosie] I've been absent from this site for some time. Good Lord, you must've been through the brambles mentally, but very glad to hear that chemo has been dodged. Having lived alongside someone who had every side-effect short of death 3 summers ago, I can assure you that every chemo case avoided is a tremendous bonus!
Best wishes for future beer consumption, although I too side with the quack on the "Now, about the smoking, Mr Hughes...." front. :)
Best wishes for future beer consumption, although I too side with the quack on the "Now, about the smoking, Mr Hughes...." front. :)
(Phil) Thanks for your thoughts. Beer consumption continues, the only problem ever having been elimination of the processed material and that is a lot better than it was. Apparently I have responded very well to hormone therapy and can now have radiotherapy which should knock it on the head once and for all. This, though, may not be all fun.
Glad to hear things are going well and that it hasn't affected the beer glands. All the best, mate.
In other news
So what's everyone doing tomorrow? An ordinary Wednesday - or is it?
(pen) Not exactly. Another trip to the Marsden, this time for a pre-radiotherapy scan. The treatment proper involves 37 visits. It's about half an hour's drive, depending on traffic but I can pick and choose the time of day which is very useful. The treatment is far worse than the symptoms which are now no more than slight and lends the whole process an air of unreality. But you have to go through with it or things may happen later, you could say. The hospital is brilliant and are confident the treatment will be successful. You're rarely absolutely cured of cancer, of course and checkups will be needed from time to time.
I have been given a booklet about dealing with this particular form of cancer. It's a useful read and there are photos of various smiling late middle-aged and elderly fellows, sometimes with their soulful-looking wives. One of the men is someone I instantly recognised and know quite well, as I do his wife. In the Big Band I used to play in before it packed up he and I were the trombone section. Also, he is a Chelsea supporter. I had no idea he'd had prostate cancer because even though he must now be about 80 he's pretty vigorous and healthy. A good omen, and a small world.
I have been given a booklet about dealing with this particular form of cancer. It's a useful read and there are photos of various smiling late middle-aged and elderly fellows, sometimes with their soulful-looking wives. One of the men is someone I instantly recognised and know quite well, as I do his wife. In the Big Band I used to play in before it packed up he and I were the trombone section. Also, he is a Chelsea supporter. I had no idea he'd had prostate cancer because even though he must now be about 80 he's pretty vigorous and healthy. A good omen, and a small world.
steaming
[Roie] Re: your comment to me in the Pea & Honey game - I've only ridden on two steam trains, one on the NY railway, and one on exhibition on the preserved part of the Louth-Grimsby line. And I have no idea what either of them were. (Didn't comment in the game because it makes the stanzas messy - tidy, tidy, tidy!)
trombonists unite
[And Rosie again] That sounds reasonable. I hope you find a way to deal with the side-effects of the treatment. When you get to be [more than 40] and have done lots of things, it's inevitable that people you know or have known pop up on telly, radio or in print from time to time - the delight is never knowing where or when.
The Beyer-Garratt trombonists
(pen, 1st) I should hope not. Dreadful dirty things. Beyer-Garratts are huge. I wouldn't want to fire one.
(pen, 2nd) It's all been postponed until early September because the prostate has not yet shrunk quite enough with the hormone treatment for it to be bombed with short-wave X-rays. The smaller the better because it lessens harming healthy tissue which causes the side effects. So a quiet life for a bit.
More than 40? Yes, keep going.....
(pen, 2nd) It's all been postponed until early September because the prostate has not yet shrunk quite enough with the hormone treatment for it to be bombed with short-wave X-rays. The smaller the better because it lessens harming healthy tissue which causes the side effects. So a quiet life for a bit.
More than 40? Yes, keep going.....
I fully intend to
Spent Sunday (30C in the shade outside, slightly less inside due to judicious management of shade and through draughts) in the biggest of our two attic guest bedrooms, installing bargainous bookcase and linen cupboard (42 euros and 50 euros from the Dutch equivalent of eBay respectively) and emptying (OK, binning the contents of) boxes from the house move two and a half tears ago. I threw out my collected payslips from my last jobs in the UK - one collection going back to 1998, which is about the time I started contributing to the predecessors of this site. Blimey. It was a long, long time ago.
Dear Ms penelope
pursuant to the new post-Brexit changes to the tax code to be enacted next year, all residents of the UK who were employed between the years of 1970 to 2016 must supply proof of adequate withholding during the relevant working years.
Please forward copies of your payslips for the last five years in the UK to HM Ministry of Monetary Annoyance, 10 Nosuch Circle, London W1 ...
pursuant to the new post-Brexit changes to the tax code to be enacted next year, all residents of the UK who were employed between the years of 1970 to 2016 must supply proof of adequate withholding during the relevant working years.
Please forward copies of your payslips for the last five years in the UK to HM Ministry of Monetary Annoyance, 10 Nosuch Circle, London W1 ...
That sounds a bit laborious.
Tax-driven
[pen] Still got mine all the way back to year dot. I'm going to keep hold of them, too, as I've lived and worked on local contracts in various countries, so come pension time I have the proof incontrovertible, or at least enough to allow me to litigate from my shack.
BTW, if anyone thinks of saving through one of those Irish life insurance jobs, don't. My one has the same book value as the contributions, and the redemption value exactly two months after the official valuation in April is somehow only 65% of said contributions. Easily the worst investment I have ever made.
BTW, if anyone thinks of saving through one of those Irish life insurance jobs, don't. My one has the same book value as the contributions, and the redemption value exactly two months after the official valuation in April is somehow only 65% of said contributions. Easily the worst investment I have ever made.
Dear Jeremy Taxman
Naff off. I earn euros now, you numpty.
Love
penelope
Naff off. I earn euros now, you numpty.
Love
penelope
And following my earlier post...
Friday AND pay day AND temperatures below 25C... happy, happy, happy.
Ex-Pats Hiding Out In Holland Give Inland Revenue The Two Finger Salute!
Dutch Tax Cheats Refuse To Pay Their Share!
"Let Them Eat Chocolate and Tulip Bulbs" Sneer Callous Brexit-Dodgers!
Story on page 5.
You won't want to miss our Page 3 Bird, former Miss Windmill Acet Aldehyde (22).
Dutch Tax Cheats Refuse To Pay Their Share!
"Let Them Eat Chocolate and Tulip Bulbs" Sneer Callous Brexit-Dodgers!
Story on page 5.
You won't want to miss our Page 3 Bird, former Miss Windmill Acet Aldehyde (22).
CH3CHO
Subtle stuff.
nauseous
A surfeit of chocolate-covered tulip bulb fritters, probably.
We've been DUPed - again.
(Softers) Nice one, but I don't think many will be fooled.
Well, you can fool all of the people ......
Outage
Hello. Looks like there was an outage last night. Not entirely sure of the cause - could be as benign as a simple kernel panic but I'll investigate further to check it's nothing more malign.
Are we back yet?
'Kernel panic' sounds like a Face Pyjama. Is it a real thing?
Nope, nothing like that.
Punctuation
I think "expats" is better without a hyphen otherwise it sounds as if the person has somehow metamorphosed from copros bovis and this will simply not do as a chatup line at all, will it, pen?
What do you get if you stand under a cow? A pat on the head.
[Rosie] I have no idea, I'm an immigrant. 'Expats' is a name people give themselves when they're in a state of denial, not really believing the place they have chosen to live is actually 'foreign'.
[pen] Entirely agree.
[penelope, Software] And gifted by others to imply contempt based on the assumption of that very behavior. It's interesting that an Englishman here is often called an "ex-pat" but Hispanic ex-pats are universally "immigrants".
Exile
[penelope et al] Penelope and I are both immigrants and expatriates. I was expatriated forcefully (in the sense of having no choice in the matter) and penelope voluntarily (unless finding a husband in another country is considered an hormonal dictate). Of course the use of the term expat (or ex-pat) is just silly idiomatic waffling. I have heard the term used to describe someone who is working in this country but will, in all likelihood, return 'home' after a time - which is quite the opposite of its true meaning.
[Duj] I'll have you know I tried out lots of potential husbands in the UK, but none of them met the required standard.
Didn't try me!
[pen] or height?
Possessing a windmill could be a criterion, I guess?
Work, Work, Work . . .
Grad school is NOT for the faint of heart . . .
Just popping in to say h'lo
Yes, it's me, sans plus sign (which I dropped ages ago). Good to see MC5 is still alive and well. ????????
Now there's a blast from the past. G'day.
dr q
You're not fooling anyone Raak, which is of course to say "Dunx" impersonating "Software" in his "Dan"-pretending-to-be-"flerdle" persona.
Welcome "back".
Welcome "back".
Doctor Q! Wotcher, mate. Still at Pittsburgh Uni? Great to hear from you.
So yeah, a few of you know, but not everyone does, so here goes…
My real name is now Gracie Jane; pronouns are she/her. But I'm still in Pittsburgh, and people still call me Quuxum, even IRL.
[Duj] You might be on one of the meds I'm on as well :)
My real name is now Gracie Jane; pronouns are she/her. But I'm still in Pittsburgh, and people still call me Quuxum, even IRL.
[Duj] You might be on one of the meds I'm on as well :)
[drgj] Good for you! =) Out of interest, how long do people usually pronounce the "u" sound in "qu...um" for?
[drquuxum] Pleased to meet you, Gracie Jane. Great good luck in your new life.
[drq] Glad to see you back here. The more the merrier. And following on from Tuj, how do you pronounce "quuxum" (in my head it is kw-uck-zum)?
And thinking about it, how is Tuj pronounced?
And thinking about it, how is Tuj pronounced?
[Bool] Yup; I usually spell it out as Kwucks-um, or even K????-?m.
Yes, how is Tuj pronounced? Tudge? or as in French "touge"?
"Tuy". That or "Mangrove-Stoat Frog Warbler" depending on where one is pronouncing "Tuj".
The entity known as Tuj
Unpronounceable in this solar system, I have always thought, existing only as a symbolic representation in ASCII of a different existence. 1945166590+22554-171, if your Gödelising is up to it.
Alas, your instantaneous translator is on the blink. "Bismarck" is easily pronounceable in almost every language on Earth.
Hello again
Been tweaking. Hopefully nothing broken...
Rhymes with "smudge" in my head, but YMMV. On this line, there aren't any truly unpronounceables among us, a la Drewsxpa, at present are there?
[rab] You'll ruin your teeth.
Pronunciation
[Tuj] But what would you know.
Mornin' all. Comment ally voos?
Trebonski, as my Dad would have said. Bilingual but French wasn't one of 'em.
dokodo don, dokodo don, dokodo don, dokodo don
Our taiko group played for a friend's wedding yesterday. At the party afterwards, that is, not the ceremony itself. The bride is one of the group, so she was playing with us, with a shoulder-slung drum over her full white wedding rig. Later today I expect to be very happy when the restoration of my Mac from backup completes (touch wood). The disc failed last weekend and I've been poking at the Internet through a variety of letterboxes since. Or maybe I shall be happy in a couple of days. It has just announced, "About 37 hours and 2 minutes remaining."
Happiness is restored, along with the backup.
Backups
37 hours? How much were you recovering?
About 1.75 TB. I got the machine back from Apple yesterday with a new disc, the current OS, and nothing else. I booted it, it saw my Time Capsule, and in just a few clicks and 18 hours, it's back to normal. It reported a transfer rate varying between 8 and 25 MB/second, I'm not sure why it would be that low. My broadband is faster. Maybe I should have remembered to plug in the Ethernet before it started over Wifi.
Was it a Time Machine backup? These are very slow, for some reason.
Having said that I had a backup that ran for a comparable time over USB2 last week. I had resized my hard drive from 3/4 TB to 1TB and told windows to do a backup to the same drive I had used to do the restore from the smaller image. Part of the problem was I forgot to disable Malwarebytes until 24 hours had passed uneventfully (as in the "end of backup" event hadn't fired), but I think that there was some sort of messing around comparing block usage with bit maps too. I should have used a clean USB drive from the get-go.
[rab] The backup was made with Time Machine, but the restore process was handled by the Migration Assistant. Apart from whatever speed issues there may be, it seems to me that Time Machine works the way that all backups should, ever since disks superseded magnetic tape. You aren't limited to just doing a full restore, you can look at the backup and see all the individual files and access them just like they're ordinary files on a disc, which of course they are, not hidden in some opaque archive format. Automatic hourly backups meant that without having to think about it, when the disk failed I lost no data. Do modern backup solutions for other systems provide this level of does-it-right-ness?
Discs haven't superseded mag tape. The cost factor is with the disc, but in streaming mode tape can beat a spinning disc in speed of writes. Not only that, you might be surprised at how robust the tape market has become since defense in depth backup strategies were developed in the wake of cheap,reliable discs. Of course, it is all about to change again as Flash becomes cheaper and more reliable.
Tape me up
If your tape breaks, you can splice it, losing only certain files. Solid state memory and optical disks do not have that option.
[Bismarck] Don't they splice themselves?
Light Show
Spectacular thunderstorm here. Some of the lightning made the scene look like daylight. Not all that much rain, surprisingly.
Electric Light Pourchestra
What Rosie said, but with a very hefty downpour of rain followed by a few hours of drizzle.
[Rakk] My understanding is that discs can recover lost blocks if they are in the right sort of configuration, and Flash has hardware redundancy built-in for its peculiar fail modes, so I guess the answer is "Yesnabe".
But in order to get the sort of speed and reliability from spinning discs that tape offers (in streaming mode - important specific there) you have to "waste" a lot of discs. Personally I think tape is neat just because of the robot silos. Technology should have moving parts to provide visual interest. Today's tech is all solid state in boring boxes. Some years ago I toyed with the idea of using tiny motors like the ones in toy helicopters to drive lightweight gear trains, the whole on an appliqué that could be stuck to a tower casing to make it look like it was doing useful stuff. Might still try that.
[Stevie] So it was you that invented the fidget spinner?
Cumulonimbi
Made it over here late morning, flood-like and loud as anything. Which was fun as I was having a job interview, to which it added some useful absurdity. Didn't manage to use it as a proof of divine support, though.
Thunderstruck
[Bis] I got one of my loveliest-ever jobs during a day or so of deluges and flooding. I even had a refugee friend staying over because his street was flooded - I was reluctant to take him in because I wanted to read-read-read before the interview, but humanity prevailed, and the job was a good fit.
Where's 'over here'?
Where's 'over here'?
Fidgit Spinner
No. If I had, it would glow green and spark as it span.
Job Interview With Weather
You should have calmly placed your smartphone on the table between you and the interviewer and had it play Ride of the Valkyries as the weather crescendoed. If it had been me I would also have thought to wear 15 inch cymbals attached to the inside leg of my trousers at knee-level so I could join in the fun as I interviewed, but that's just me and my over-preparation thing at work.
AS the weather glooms, looms, flashes and crashes about outside, two people sit opposite each other at a table while tinny Wagner belts out of one of the glass slabs on the table..
"What would you say your biggest faults are?"
"WHAT?" syncopated metallic crashes are heard coming from from under the table
"I SAID: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BIGGEST FAULTS ARE?"
"MY INCONVENIENT INTROVERSION. ARE WE GOING TO DO THE ONE ABOUT WHICH TREE I WOULD BE NEXT, BECAUSE IF WE ARE THE ANSWER IS THAT ONE OVER THERE."
AS the weather glooms, looms, flashes and crashes about outside, two people sit opposite each other at a table while tinny Wagner belts out of one of the glass slabs on the table..
"What would you say your biggest faults are?"
"WHAT?" syncopated metallic crashes are heard coming from from under the table
"I SAID: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BIGGEST FAULTS ARE?"
"MY INCONVENIENT INTROVERSION. ARE WE GOING TO DO THE ONE ABOUT WHICH TREE I WOULD BE NEXT, BECAUSE IF WE ARE THE ANSWER IS THAT ONE OVER THERE."
[Stevie] I've downloaded RotV for future reference, you never know. Didn't get asked what my faults are (there's a Pandora's box...), did you ever support Communism and would you rather plant a tree, cut one down or cut one down and lie about it.
[pen] One linguistic border to the south of you.
[pen] One linguistic border to the south of you.
Wagnerian Aids To Interviewing During Thunderstorms
and the knee-cymbals?
[Stevie] Still in two minds... Wagner didn't score for knee-cymbals, so it lacks authenticity for the purist, which might count against me if the interviewer knows their stuff.
Answering Rosie, earlier
It was Wednesday, I think, we had very hot thundery weather, torrential storms all around us but only a few hot drops of rain chez windy miller. Thursday - I think the neighbour's weather station recorded more than an inch of rain. It was spectacular.
[Bis] Bonjour. (Not 'ow-do' - hoedoe - as the Brabantsers confusingly say instead of 'bye'.)
(pen) Ah, those weather charts were right, then, though I'm not sure exactly where you are in The Netherlands.
In a thunderous voice
I looked at central Europe on, I think, my Friday. There was a spectacular string of storms in an elbow, almost a right-angle, from north of Hamburg curving down to southwest of Saltzburg then a bit of a gap to western France (SE from Paris) where a smaller but significant area was also producing much electrical activity.
Given that the lightning markers are coloured from white to yellow to orange to three shades of red depending on six 20-minute periods it was a most colourful sight.
Given that the lightning markers are coloured from white to yellow to orange to three shades of red depending on six 20-minute periods it was a most colourful sight.
[Rosie] South of the Netherlands; the big islands of Zeeland just to the west of us, and to the North, via the big Haringvliet bridge, Rotterdam. We would be able to see the lights of the bridge if it wasn't for our neighbours' house.
Whoops
Saltzburg sb Stuttgart.
Wagner Not Having The Foresight To Score For Knee Cymbals
I see your point, but it would be difficult to answer the interviewer's questions while playing a trombone or french horn. Perhaps you could join in one of the brass parts by playing it on those Irish Armpit-Actuated Bagpipes. Now I think on it, the vigorous Clouseau parrot-inflation arm movements would augment any interview process, thunderstorm or no thunderstorm.
Nowt since July?
So what's everyone been up to? I've had three weeks off - spent 8 days in the UK. Ate fish and chips by the seaside watching the rain and visited the Mary Rose at Portsmouth's Historic Naval Dockyard - the best museum I have ever visited.
re: Nowt since July?
[pen] I just got back from a road trip across the north of Pennsylvania (and a small bit of Western New York). Quite lovely, and I'll be uploading some pictures soon-ish.
Chewing my own leg off so I can escape work and go to Florida for a week.
Legless in Florida
[Stevie] Splendid. I have worked so bloomin' hard this year on supporting my department with all of its projects (*ahem*) that I have been unable to use up my vacation days at the correct rate. So I've had a bit of a session in the working hours part of the SAP platform, which fell over only twice as I tried to use it. As a result I'm having at least a week off per month between now and the end of the year.(Smug, I know, but this is a benefit of being a Dutch university employee).
Hey, August is cool
Warmest day of the month here, 24.5°, which frankly is crap for a highest-in-August and the second worst ever, i.e. post-1983.
[Rosie] It's that time of year. Time to fire up the genny and clean it's pipes out. Hopefully it either blows itself out or goes someplace else before I have to drive through it in a week and a bit.
Gulf of... Mexico?
I can't help feeling that building a wall in Texas would help stop these foreign storms.
(Bismarck) Some wall.
Officially autumn
So how was everyone's week? And what's planned for the weekend? If I apply myself, I could be making jam for the fourth Sunday in a row - it requires a foraging expedition by cycle from the windy miller's mill tomorrow (but first, the bicycle must be retrieved from another windmill where the apprentice left it a couple of weeks ago). Pffft.
Domestics
My week was good, thanks pen. I'll be making crabapple jelly this weekend
My week sucked balls but tomorrow I plan to vent my spleen by putting three intrepid investigators into the middle of a den of vile cultists doing things so unspeakable to anyone falling into their clutches that the very minds of all will be torn asunder by the mere contemplation of the foul ... but I've said too much. Delta Green day. My favorite day of the month. Crippling SAN loss all round if it all plays out properly.
Jammy jam
Blackberry-picking expedition very successful. I bled only twice. Jamming tomoorow then. And I got a tax rebate. A good weekend so far.
Hmmmm
Sun blacked out; Texas flooded; Los Angeles on fire; N Korea about to launch nuclear missiles. You'd think God was upset with America about something.....
.
.
.
The Russians have planted a flag in this forum. What will you do about it?Ave Maria.
You've probably spotted by now that I tend only to drop by whenever I fiddle with the server config. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I'm now running mariadb instead of mysql.
Hello rab
How's tings?
Backatcha
Fine, although it would be nice to create around another 20 hours in the day. Although if that was 20 more hours of being shouted at by the world's loudest six-year old, I might well revise that opinion.
Surely there's a use for loud six-year olds?
Can we not usefully employ the six year old to shout over Nigel Farage or Trump or something?
Fortissimamente
Hexamegaphone.
Portents of Doom
[Phil] Paraphrasing something I just saw on Facebook: If Irma destroys Mar-a-Lago while leaving the rest of Florida unscathed, I will hand in my atheist card.
Urasdfghsfgfk
OS upgraded... is this 'thing' still on?
Another test
Another test
(rab) So you speak Czech?
The Phone Book
For the first time in I don't know how many years, BT have sent me a "phone book". How quaint!
Yeah, we just got one too. Had no idea where to put it.
I put mine in the bin.
When I'm cleaning windows
After three years in this house, I FINALLY found a window cleaner to do the ones I can't reach. You cannot imagine how happy this makes me.
*puzzled* Can't you just tie squeegees and sponges to the windmill blades?
squindmilleegee
[Stevie] We don't live in a windmill. They're too full of machinery - and drafty gaps to ventilate the dust out - for anyone to live in. However, I have often considered how convenient it would be to attached the wet laundry to the sails and have them dried and straightened at the same time. Less ironing to do is always a good thing.
[penelope] *puzzled* But don't all the houses in Holland have windmill sails on them? I'm beginning to think the Junior Boys Bumper Book of Foreign Places (1962 ed) was perhaps less authoritative than I was led to believe by the Raptnuckle Infants School librarian. You'll be telling me next that the skies over Berlin are not darkened by fleets of dirigible warships, waiting for the Next Big One.
I've been about 2/3rds of everywhere, and it was in Utrecht that I realized that Holland is almost certainly a better place to be a human being in than anywhere else I've ever been. One day perhaps I'll even find the words to explain why. I think the words exist but I'm pretty sure they're Dutch.
A belief in the power of gezeligheid and the 'keeping our feet dry' polder model of discussing everything to the nth degree before making a decision (and the ability to have a proper discussion that this necessitates - missing in 'other places' where political point-scoring is seen as winning), probs. Actually, it is pretty organised here. Lots of red tape and regulation, and plenty of tax to pay, but the roads don't have holes, the water stays out, and I can get a next-day appointment with my GP.
If only I could speak better Dutch.
If only I could speak better Dutch.
Holland == Heaven On Earth
Notwithstanding the heartbreak of dry-rot in the klompen of course.
Party time
Woo-hoo! Did my usual application for a TV license and was told I now get it free as I was very close to a certain age.
Gratis
It's a good feeling is it not, Rosie. I had the same sensation when I fronted up at the local traffic authority to renew my drivers' licence (5-years and a few bob) and was told that as I had reached 'a certain age' they declined to take my money. I would like to thank the taxpayers of this blessed country for your magnanimity.
We don't have TV taxes here, by the way, although we used to. I think someone in the public service did some number-crunching and found that enforcement didn't really work and that it cost more to try to enforce licensing than the income garnered.
We don't have TV taxes here, by the way, although we used to. I think someone in the public service did some number-crunching and found that enforcement didn't really work and that it cost more to try to enforce licensing than the income garnered.
[Rosie] Good News: Free TV. Bad News: TV Programming.
[Stevie] Good News: Everyone can have free TV by not watching TV.
Bad News: If you have one of those globe chairs in the room, the tendency to fill the time by plotting World Domination can consume one.
(Stevie, Raak) All I watch regularly is Match of the Day 1 & 2, HIGNFY and University Challenge. I never watch anything live but record it and play it back about 2 in the morning with a strong cup of coffee or a stiff brandy. That way you can fast-forward through the interviews, which tell you nothing, and the sages on the panel. I reckon that on ITV could watch the entire World Cup in about 20 minutes.
(Dujon) The driving licence for over 70's here is only for 3 years and you have to self-certify that you're fit to drive.
(Stevie) Can't even dominate the sodding back garden.
(Dujon) The driving licence for over 70's here is only for 3 years and you have to self-certify that you're fit to drive.
(Stevie) Can't even dominate the sodding back garden.
Self certify
"Are you fit to drive?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
Good News: Plotting world domination can make you an international bestselling novelist.
Bad News. Being an international best-selling novelist didn't do Solzhenitsyn an awful lot of good.
Chain poem
'Twas Brexit, and the slimy Gove / Did gyre and gibber in the halls / All mimsy was that Johnson cove / And the "OUT" maths was balls.
Someone do the next stanza...
[Superman] Nah. This is the chat thread, and you're just wanting to rant poetically. Who knows where it will end? Start a game for it if you really want to. (I do an awful lot of it on Twitter - in fact I troll 'Brexit Central' daily.)
In other news, I have successfully used my Dutch network *smug* to get new tyres installed on the windy miller's 70-year old Fergie tractor, as a birthday present. And the local GP surgery has offered me a Vitamin D shot to counter the winter gloom.
In other news, I have successfully used my Dutch network *smug* to get new tyres installed on the windy miller's 70-year old Fergie tractor, as a birthday present. And the local GP surgery has offered me a Vitamin D shot to counter the winter gloom.
(pen) I like the idea of you trolling the rabid loonies. I hope you're not too rude.
Plans fr the weekend, anyone? I actually don't have any. Which is nice.
This Weekend
Eat. Sleep. Archery. Repeat.
Some alcohol may be involved as well.
Some alcohol may be involved as well.
[Blob] Archery? I dint no you did that. At targets I presume, rather than rabbits and edibles.
Middle-class darts
[pen] Yes targets. Although I have done field archery shooting at pictures of rabbits and other game.
Oops
Ah. Soz.
The Archers
[Blob] So you and your friends basically spent the entire weekend on your butts?
Buttering up
It's not too early to start discussing plans for the weekend, is it? it's the English Editors' association dinner in Utrecht on Sunday. We'll all be minding our Ps and Qs, obvs.
No butts but...
We tend to call our butts bosses 'round these parts. So after a bad week at work I can enjoy filling my boss full of arrows. As for this weekend I shall be avoiding shopping and will continue to do so until it is safe to venture out in 2018.
Kerrrrching!!
[Boolb] I think I've done all the shopping instead of you.
What the Hallibut?
I doubt Britain will run out of fish puns . . . http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2017/11/18/britains-fish-pun-stocks-critically-endangered/
(KS) There is no Cod but Halibut. I nicked this from the great Steve Bell
Get thee to a fish punnery
OK, save it for a spare game slot, chaps. Or kill one of the slow moving games and raise your fish stocks in there.
In other news, I usually order the fish if I'm eating out. Best dish is mackerel or trout or John Dory grilled over a fire in this restaurant (which although tiny is in the top 500 in the Netherlands). If you plan to go, the windy miller's mill is 500 yards away and is open every Saturday.
In other news, I usually order the fish if I'm eating out. Best dish is mackerel or trout or John Dory grilled over a fire in this restaurant (which although tiny is in the top 500 in the Netherlands). If you plan to go, the windy miller's mill is 500 yards away and is open every Saturday.
sentient websites
The MC5 website just complained that my last post smelled fishy. Incredible.
[pen] It must have been the mention of an open game slot - this isn't the site for that!
Last weekend, at LI Whocon 5, I ran into the son of Patrick Trouton.
miscellaneous
[Tuj] I am shocked!
[Stevie] Who? Was he hurt?
[Stevie] Who? Was he hurt?
Eel be ok.
Decemberation
Things seemed to have slowed down a bit in here. Are you all sitting on your Christmas puddings, waiting for them to hatch?
Satin tights.
I've had a 2 day cold. Gave me a chance to watch my Wonder Woman box set though. Watching Lynda Carter throwing Nazis around is a strange but delightful pleasure.
T minus three
If all goes to plan, I will lock my office door on Friday afternoon and won't go back until NEXT YEAR. Have just about had it up to here *points to gullet* with ridiculous requests for work, and I found a couple of days holiday going spare. I'm going to take them.
Party pooping
Thursday - Today I am mostly doing parties three and four.
The first party (6th floor potluck on Tues) I managed to avoid although not without being interrogated about my reasons for not wanting to go (umm... you're colleagues, not friends. My time is my own).
Yesterday's lunch party (#2) was actually worth doing - the research institute's awards and nice food.
This lunchtime? Not so good. Quarterly staff update meeting for the whole business school, masquerading as Xmas Lunch. There are never enough dining spaces for everyone (so you have to stand for the whole meeting before they open the buffet) and the queues are enormous. Cannot avoid this one but won't bother with queuing for food. Will head back to my office and buy a sandwich.
Party Four this evening - the windy miller's company do. The company is growing fast, and seems to attract the reformed protestant type, although the WM, like me, doesn't do religion. It's their habit to invite all wives and children, and the Xmas party is now up to about 50 people. Most of them have at least four children each and dress traditionally (you can spot 'em a mile off). I'm usually the only childless woman there, and the only one wearing trousers.
Bah humbug.
The first party (6th floor potluck on Tues) I managed to avoid although not without being interrogated about my reasons for not wanting to go (umm... you're colleagues, not friends. My time is my own).
Yesterday's lunch party (#2) was actually worth doing - the research institute's awards and nice food.
This lunchtime? Not so good. Quarterly staff update meeting for the whole business school, masquerading as Xmas Lunch. There are never enough dining spaces for everyone (so you have to stand for the whole meeting before they open the buffet) and the queues are enormous. Cannot avoid this one but won't bother with queuing for food. Will head back to my office and buy a sandwich.
Party Four this evening - the windy miller's company do. The company is growing fast, and seems to attract the reformed protestant type, although the WM, like me, doesn't do religion. It's their habit to invite all wives and children, and the Xmas party is now up to about 50 people. Most of them have at least four children each and dress traditionally (you can spot 'em a mile off). I'm usually the only childless woman there, and the only one wearing trousers.
Bah humbug.
Radioactive
9 down, 28 to go. Prostate cancer radiotherapy sessions. Side effects - say no more. But it will work.
Chin up, Rosie. There's a few of us 'old blokes' cheering you on. Your doctor(s) seem, from your past comments, to believe that you have a very good chance of full remission; now that's something for which to look forward.
Cheering you on
[Rosie] Keep up the good work, sir. Let's think laterally. What fun or usefulness can you have with your radioactive (*ahem*) parts? And can we write limericks about them? (The adventures, not the parts).
[Rosie] Canonically, when exposed to radiation, human beings are reported to develop mutant super-powers somehow related to the circumstances and body part that got zapped. I look forward to tales of a mysterious new masked vigilante stalking the streets of London and the incredulous stories told by those foolish enough to cross your path as you flit through the foggy night, fighting crime by means of your awesome new powers.
Prostate power
Thanks, people. (Duj) "Cure" is aimed for and will very likely be achieved. If not the thing will be kept quiet and maybe given another radiative bashing. I won't die of it, but maybe with it. Once a cancer patient of course, always a cancer patient and there'll be regular monitorings every few months. (pen) Let your pen (sic) flourish. Keep it clean. (Stevie) Cum, cum, sir, your imagination is in overdrive. :-)
I'd like to give a word of praise to the hospital which is The Marsden, Sutton. The staff are brilliant. Both patients and staff have a smile for each other. In addition, transport has been arranged which saves shuffling/barging/swearing through heavy suburban traffic.
RIP Heinz Wolff
Much regretted. I hope the funeral directors will challenge well-wishers to find a way of transferring the coffin to the grave from a distance, using only a piece of wood, some cloth, an eggbeater and a long pole.
Rosie - what to look forward to ...
(Blob) I get through too many fags as it is but that can't be the source of my current problem simply because I don't smoke them through my membrum virile, or membrum pretty fucking useless as it is currently. I have discovered yet another recovered prostate cancer survivor, total now four. This was someone I haven't seen since 1963, a very good mate at University.
Merry Christmas
(Giertrud) And to you m'dear. Actually it bores me silly so I'm just going to stew and scoff one choccy after another. There's not even any football - I dunno.
High spot of the day: The soundtrack of my mother in law (deaf as a post) on the phone to my mother (also deaf as a post). Neither could understand what the other was yelling about even when they weren't yelling at the same time and making their phones decide who to give priority to and for how long.
Highlights
Highlight of my day was finding that my sausage rolls were pretty darn good. First time for me, but you can say this for Delia Smith recipes - They work!
Highlight
Nearly being beaten at Triv Purs by my 12-year old nephew. In the end my brother in law beat both of us.
Gasping for air
The barometer here is down to 978 mb, the most interesting thing to have happened round Christmas apart from Mount Mourinho erupting yet again. Ho, ho, ho.
TrivPurs
[pen] Mrs Stevie and I used to be challenged regularly to TP by friends of hers, who gloried in our lack of any sort of knowledge of sports (in which they excelled). In two consecutive games we were first to the middle (me on point with science, geography and history, Mrs Stevie on Arts and Ents) and they chose "sports and leisure" as our game-breaker. Game one the question was "How many men on a cricket team?"
This was doubly funny because all game there had been questions on English history, Science done in England and the Geography of England. Every other question was asked and appended with howls of "Another English question!"
The second game went much like the first, with us romping home and being asked a Sports and Leisure question again: "How many holes in a bowling ball". I laughed so hard I thought I'd pass out.
The next time we got together with that pair we'd been to the UK for a visit and acquired a UK set of TP. We smuggled one box of cards into their American set and they didn't twig why the apparent quota of English questions had doubled until we both cracked up and confessed.
Happy New Year
I really should give this place a spring clean...
The rabling has discovered Monopoly and invented a variety of quantitative easing schemes, including mortgaging his socks.
HNY
[Rab] How old is the rabling now? 35? 36?
In other news, I'm back at work after two and a half weeks off and having a stab at pretending to be an editor. What the heck do I know about copywriting?
Is it lunchtime yet?
In other news, I'm back at work after two and a half weeks off and having a stab at pretending to be an editor. What the heck do I know about copywriting?
Is it lunchtime yet?
Editation
Don't editors just have to dress badly, wear an eyeshade, chew rope cigars and yell at everybody?
Dream job then.
Bonce bashing
Most satisfying. Don't overdo it.
Radiation
[Rosie] It just occurred to me, after watching another Dr Who Xmas special, that there is a slight possibility of not developing mutant super-powers, instead devolving into a revolting blob, retiring inside a giant pimply salt shaker and going homicidal on everyone & his dog.
No sudden urges to hide in a dustbin and kill everyone on the street I hope?
Editation
Dessed badly? Check (I'm still getting dressed in the dark here in the Januarial low countries); wearing eye shadow (not eyeshade, but close enough) - check; chew rope cigars? Eeeuuuuwww. Yelling at everybody - check.
I think I qualify.
I think I qualify.
[penelope] Do you still get to rip open your office door, wave a fistful of paper in your hand and scream "Stop the Press!", or throw people out of your office, yelling "Either bring me the straight dope on the Mayor and the actress or find another job Kilcullen!"?
Fluorescent naughty bits
(Stevie) No, none of that but don't get too close.
pen is mightier than the sword
[pen] Sounds fun. Maybe before Britain completes economic suicide I should be begging you for a job =)
Apparently my 'serious' demeanour prevents people from calling into the office and asking me to do things for them. I'd call that a result.
[Stevie] I'm not a newspaper or publication editor - I'm an in-house editor, so work on webpages, internal messages, brochures, our own news items. I miss the days of real newspaper work though - two decades ago now, when the most fun was finding puns to put into the reports of garden shed burglaries from the weekly CID briefing at the police station, and deciphering the spidery handwriting on the back of an envelope that had been shoved through our market place office letterbox, describing the weekly meeting of a village branch of the WI. *sigh*
The pay was utter rubbish though.
[Stevie] I'm not a newspaper or publication editor - I'm an in-house editor, so work on webpages, internal messages, brochures, our own news items. I miss the days of real newspaper work though - two decades ago now, when the most fun was finding puns to put into the reports of garden shed burglaries from the weekly CID briefing at the police station, and deciphering the spidery handwriting on the back of an envelope that had been shoved through our market place office letterbox, describing the weekly meeting of a village branch of the WI. *sigh*
The pay was utter rubbish though.
[pen] I fail to see why any of your description of your actual editing duties precludes the stuff I brought up.
His Girl Friday
That last entry sounds like Stevie calling pen into his office and telling her what's what.
fake news
[Bism] I can assure you that didn't happen. Stevie was too busy shovelling snow back into his neighbour's yard. Or should that be 'neighbor's yard'?
[pen] It should, the gardens in question being in New York.
[Bismarck] I've never warranted more than a cube in my life, and I haven't been in charge of anyone else since 1995, when my pig-headedness when it came to repeatedly requesting training for my staff and in giving them glowing reviews when the richly deserved it ensured I'd never be put into management again.
Never being in charge
[Stevie] Quite. I've never wanted to be a manager - it's just trouble. However, I do want to become more expert at what I do (editing and copywriting). Trouble is, the career progression of most places, including this one, is set up assuming that everyone wants to be a manager. Therefore, I am unable to move up to the next pay grade unless I change my job and move to another department, no matter that I am nine years and umpteen training courses into becoming better at this one. Folly.
I have to take this semester off for financial aid reasons and I should concentrate on my class proposal, but then I get distracted . . . I need to treat this like it is a class and have some self-discipline.
May we know your subject?
Prostrate on the carpet
31 down, 6 to go. I think I'm actually going to miss this routine.
Of course . . .
I'm getting my Master's Degree in Theatre.
Job vacancy
Anyone looking for a job? I'm recruiting for an IT assistant to join me. Need to have good knowledge of databases (Oracle and/or SQL) and programming skills in e.g. VB/C/C++/C# and ideally .NET environment. Salary negotiable, but think along the £50k lines
...
Ah, should mention location - Potters Bar, Herts, UK
February innit
I’m just procrastinating - I should be hoovering.
Sad to be driving New Yorkwards from Florida, where I’ve been lounging around and playing in Diagon Alley in my Slytherin drag.
Note to the LIRR
There is a small group of Confederate flag waving reptiles heading your way. Please, please, prepare - if only for the sake of Stevie, who likes to arrive at work on time and then arrive home in time for his evening meal.
Yours etc.,
Duj
Yours etc.,
Duj
LIRR
59 “we suck” advisory emails from the LIRR since Jan 29th. That’s just the Ronkonkoma branch suckage. 59. Only the LIRR could send “normal service restored” emails and think they were achieving greatness by doing so.
[Stevie] by those statistics, the advisory notes constitute normal service. I have submitted a petition to the MTA that the East Side Access should be opened by you and renamed the "Carpal Tunnel" in your honour, as of the pain and anguish caused by years of commuting.
East Side Access
Another example of wonderful planning. A tunnel between Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. This will solve ... what exactly? I mean, the choke point in the whole sorry mess is the fact that of the four tunnels under the East River, only two are signaled in both directions allowing for bi-directional travel without the need for time-consuming emergency train orders. One of the two is permanently assigned to Amtrak traffic. The other two tunnels are signaled in one direction only. One is signaled into Manhattan, the other out of it. Thus traffic will be disrupted in 3/4 of the possible tunnel signal outages (since if Amtrak's tunnel is lost, they immediately take possession of the other bi-directional tunnel (which means effectively that the bi-directional tunnel is twice as likely to fail as any of the others from the LIRR point of view.
So the extra Grand Central traffic will not only add to the system congestion, it will be f*cked-up by the same tunnel idiocy from which the existing network suffers.
Hidden text
The utterly stupid part of all this is that the tunnels flooded during superstorm Sandy and the signals had to be replaced using "Obama Dollars". Instead of wiring them properly (as had been known to be needed for at least the 33 years I've been travelling on the LIRR) They put them back the same retarded way they were before the flood happened.So the extra Grand Central traffic will not only add to the system congestion, it will be f*cked-up by the same tunnel idiocy from which the existing network suffers.
Bring back the staff.
Talking of staff
I'm interviewing a domestic cleaner tomorrow. I'll get my weekends back (but will of course pay for the privilege).
Staffing
[pen] Do they need special qualifications to tackle a windmill?
[pen] I thought y' had ter pay miller fer privilege.
[Bismarck] Just a long squeegee for the sails, I think.
'Squeegee for the sails'
That's a song. Or part of a limerick. Or a concept. Not sure.
[pen] It should be a band name.
[pen] Will the staff have to call you "mill-mistress" or is the proper term of servile respect "madame miller"?
Paying for a clean house is next to godliness
I was 49 when I got my first-ever dishwasher. I am now 52, and have just engaged a cleaner. Why the hell didn't I do this years ago when I could barely afford it? It's unbloomingbelievable what a difference it makes. Now I have time at weekends to go and hoover the windmill.
I used to be a dishwasher, but now I'm single.
Weekenderations.
Weekends are filling up. I can blame the windy miller for most of this. Next weekend is a late Valentine's Day stay at our favourite aubergey kind of place in the Ardennes to eat beautifully prepared wild things and drink a lot of wine before sleeping it off; then the weekend after it's a hotel dinner, bed and breakfast en masse to celebrate my husband's business partner's 10 years in business (with a few other of his colleagues and their wives, who are all a great deal more fastidious about saying grace before and after a meal than we are because most of them come from the Dutch bible belt - this one will be interesting rather than fun), followed by, the next weekend, a few days in Blighty to celebrate Mothers' Day with Mater.
But this next one is empty. And the forecast says it won't rain,. Suggestions?
But this next one is empty. And the forecast says it won't rain,. Suggestions?