Hmm... I waited ten years between under-gradding and post-gradding, and have now resolved to study nothing but happy things that interest me, which is mostly food, conservation, art and historical stuff, not science or authoring. If all goes to plan, I'm off to Rotterdam next month to work for a day on a conserved windmill. And also to see a very nice man who happens to be the Miller. :o)

Well then, enjoy your Miller time :-)

[Rosie] Dad was an industrial electronics guru during that period. The reason for the power cuts was to avoid brown outs according to him. The national grid had been so badly compromised during WWII that power was in short supply. It was deemed safer to cut the power altogether than tolerate a severe voltage drop. They used to sound sirens around ten minutes before the power cuts in the local factories apparently, so that the machine shops could shut down gracefully. The good old days.

[blamelewis] hello!
[flerdle] Melbourne is indeed pleasant, despite lacking a proper harbour.
[ISP] There may well be a connection between people who put themselves through a thesis and people who take pleasure in playing a game like MC. An unusual relationship with reality could well be one of them.
[pen] How about the science of food (e.g. courtesy of Harold McGee)? That's definitely a happy thing!

[penelope] Watch out for clog-wearing mice in that windmill. The staircases are infested with them from all accounts.

I did have a plan last year to take an A-level every year for the next ten years. I think I've missed the deadline to enter for French this year, so maybe I'll start the mission next year and do two (to catch up). The plan is that if someone says to my daughter when she's 18, "oh, I've got 7 A-levels", she can reply, "well, my dad's got 14." The only extra proviso for this is that I don't attend any lessons/lectures in order to gain the qualifications - I'll rely on reading what the syllabus is, and a bit of common sense in terms of background reading. And, yes I've checked, there are still exam boards that do not require coursework :-)

(SM) Mine must have been a purely local problem due to malfunctioning switches or transformers and not insufficient supply. This was just one phase down or out over about a square mile.

[Sierra Mike] I have my own clogs for stamping on said mice - they came as a present from the Miller last weekend. Luckily they were filled with chocolate as a sweetener...

Hope there's good ventilation, in case he's Windy.

[IS,P!] Hmmph. He's a Dutch Miller. Have you got a pic of one of those?

[pen] He's a film star? Seems a little on the old side for you, mind.

[Darren] Still, he does well, considering he died 15 years ago.

I thought he seemed a bit quiet. Just my luck :o(

Hello nights. It takes a bit more than emboldened shouting to scare me off! How are you? I've got a post holiday cold. Grump.

Where is everyone today? Not very chatty? Cheer up. Its almost the weekend!

Hello all. It's a long time since I've been in here. Very smart.

Sorry Lib - I was enjoying a bacon sandwich...

[UK] I'd have thought you'd have a bit of a sore head!

[Lib] Well, fortunately it hadn't been cooked too fiercely. But getting the grease out of my hair is going to be a bind...

It doesn't matter how sh*tty the week has been , Friday always lifts the mood, doesn't it? Anyone know of any nice jobs going for someone bossy, intelligent and good at news writing? CV available on request. And The Dutch Miller is coming over again next weekend, :o)

Oh, and a lovely bit of spamming, which is a natural glow-worm or something: "ON fenugreek do maladroit.."

[pen] I think the next line is "beware the Jabberwock, my son!"

Morniverse seems slow today, or am I just toooooooo bored at work?

(UK) Not just today, either. The place seems infected with a kind of ennui. It'll pass, no doubt.

[Rosie] Well, I was hoping that someone might guess my AVMA before I left the office today, as I may well not be back online until Monday morning.

It's always very slow on Fridays. In fact I recall it being even less busy last Friday. Not that I check in here obsessively the whole time, of course.

Saturday was a non-starter.

There was an article in the paper a day or two ago about how boring and irksome working life has become even for people in well-paid professional jobs, what with vast amounts of form-filling and other pointless paperwork, meetings, meetings about meetings etc, etc. The way this place livens up during working hours shows how true that is.

The local authority I (used to) work for transferred our dept to Capita at the begining of Feb. I have had to drastically cut back to a minimum amount of browsing during work time. Before there was a woolly policy about internet use. However, my new employer begins their internet use and email policy with the phrase "You have no right to privacy"

I'm glad that my Brian Blessed impression didn't freak EVERYONE out. I'm well, thanks. Final semester. Argh. And I've been getting some lovely poetry in my spam too. But even better is the amount of recipes I get for Spam, being a GMail user.

(Inkspot) In that case don't do any more work than you absolutely have to. I hope at least you've retained your salary level.

MCIOS went down at 2.54 am today.

For about 5 minutes. You'd think a guy could take a server down for maintenance at 3 am in the user base's time zone.

FWIW, the timestamps on old moves from the first half of 1998 are now correct.

(Dan) Thanks for your efforts, as ever. Like Michael Howard, I am a creature of the night.