Continuing my tour of traditional British establishments this evening, some colleagues and I ventured out to play Bingo at a big Bingo Hall in Slough (not far from Slough Bus Station which features in the opening credits of 'The Office'). We got hostile stares from the regulars... we played two games (£5 very quickly spent, in my opinion, but we could have picked up £15,000 on one national game) and left to go mand find something to eat. But I have to say, the staff who explained how to play before we went in were great, and gracefully accepted our apologies for calling out two false alarms when we thought we'd won, as we made out early exit. It's a bloody complicated game, Bingo. Next office outing is either horse racing, or to the dogs in Walthamstow ;o)

(pen) Bingo? The dogs? Can't fool me - you're posh, really, aren't you? :-)

[Rosie] Coming to that conclusion, yes :o(

Tuj, flerdle] There's also this .

Just posting this to see what time the server thinks it is.

I'm very happy and wanted a little gloat. Hope you'll excuse me! I was given a diamond this morning. Necklace, not ring (would be too soon I feel). Very small, but its a diamond! No one has ever given me one before! No occasion. Just cos he loves me. Its nice to be loved. I'll shut up now.

How could you be so heartless to accept it, Lib? That's probably the poor bloke's drinking-money-for-a-week now suspended from your neck. Soppy blokes - honestly!

(Dujon) Maybe your drinking money for a week. I wouldn't presume to know. :-)

[Lib] I am not so chauvenistic. Congratulations, your first girl's best friend.

Can't get anything to go in though Preview works. Anybody know what's happened?

It's down now. I'm not sure what the problem is. Disk error, perhaps. This may be serious. I'm connected but there's not much I can do. I'll let you know.

That was really odd. The disk was in a peculiar state and very few commands functioned. Notably, I couldn't reboot it using any of the usual commands. (It's in a locked machine room at a colocation facility three miles from here and it's after 11:00 at night so pushing the button was not an option.) I did manage to force it into a reboot state somewhat more directly, and it came back promptly with everything seemingly fine. I'm doing an unscheduled backup now since today's didn't have a chance to occur at its normal time.

(Dan) Working OK now. Thanks, as ever.

Cold snap this morning with ice on the car, cross my fingers that this will remind the grass to stop growing.

I'm glad there was a frost today too. I'm hoping it'll make the slugs that terrorise my rabbit and eat her food go away. I've tried beertraps but the rabbit knocks them over and drinks the beer!

It's distinctly cold here in sunny Bath too - but then, this is why November is my favourite month!

(nights) Dec, Jan, Feb and March are all colder than Nov, the last two sunnier as well.