T O T K a t - 2 0 0 6

People

Standing outside the Apple Store on Regent Street, where Tiger is being presented on launch day. There's a bit of a queue and the annoying thing? People asking what is going on and then laughing when they're told. People.

Two cats looking for a new home

I know I have joked about this in the past to friends, but this time I'm being serious.

2, neutered male, black and white, 8 year old cats looking for a new home. They come with as much of the following as whoever will take them needs:- feeding bowls (x5; 3 plastic, 2 ceramic), carrying boxes (proper ones, not cardboard or anything), a small scratching post (with a platform and an igloo at the bottom), as much cat food as is still in my house when they go, and cat beds (2x buddhabags, a sheepskin sling that goes over radiators and a sheepskin pad).

They're completely non-aggressive, they have never bitten or scratched me on purpose, one is particularly affectionate once he gets to know you the other is less keen on being picked up (he's the photogenic one) but will not deliberately hurt anyone who does, they're house-trained and fully inoculated until the beginning of September.

I just can't look after them any more for various reasons. If anyone is able to take them I can deliver them anywhere reasonable within England and Wales. I won't let them go to a city or town centre house and I'd rather they went to someone I know or a friend of a friend. If nobody of that description does want them, then I will have to take them to the Cats Protection League (with a suitably large donation).

[Cross posted on my website and on Livejournal]

English schminglish

Your English Skills:

Grammar: 100%

Spelling: 100%

Vocabulary: 100%

Punctuation: 80%

Except that question 14 is wrong. The comma should be outside the quotation marks.

Toy lust

I feel the need for toy. Something I don't actually need but something I just want. I've been good for a while now.

There's the iPod Shuffle, or a Tungsten T3 (which have stopped being made it seems) or Tungsten T5. Or an All-In-One Laser Printer/Scanner/Copier/Fax. Er. Or not. Though those things have come right down in price. I find the march of "big office" equipment into the affordability range of very small businesses quite amazing. OK, it isn't like I keep an eye on these things, but still. Amazing.

Heh

So one of them has got the picture now.

Buddhabags

So I got these Buddhabag things for the kittens, having heard at least 2 people rave over them. And now that I have them home and shown them to the kitties, the kitties are not impressed. I even plopped one of them down on top of one of these furry contraption and he just stalked off immediately.

Bah.

Ungrateful little sods.

Why?

Oh my God! Why do parents of infants and toddlers have their tiny, fragile children mutilated? I'm talking about ear piercing here. What say has the child in it? The dangers of infection must be vastly increased at that age. Plus, isn't there a danger that the earrings may come out and the (at that kind of age, orally fixated) child end up choking on them? And, I may be wrong, I thought there was a minimum age below which it is illegal to carry out piercings on people.

Commuting

I left the house at 0745 this morning and I'm now waiting for my last leg of the journey home train now. There's the platform train info thingy now telling me that my train won't be here until 5 minutes after it was due to be. So far. It'll slip more by the time it actually gets here. Which might not seem much, but the current state of Thameslink means that it hasn't come far. There are still no cross-town trains and one can only assume this will get worse when the full cross-town service resumes next month, given that there are more points where delay could occur. You might think it isn't much, but it'll be 12 hours after I left home for work that I'll be back home again. Again. 5 minutes means a lot to me at this point.

Anyone looking for sysadmin work?

This plopped into my mailbox just now:-

Senior System Administrator - Essex - Unix, SMTP, IMAP, POP3. Excellent opportunity for a Senior System Administrator to join a company working at the forefront of new technology. Candidates should have commercial experience in email architecture (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, Sendmail/postfix) coupled with a strong understanding of DNS, VPN & TCP/IP Any knowledge of MYSQL, PostgreSQL, Proxy Servers, HTTP, Apache or Cisco would be highly desirable. This is a very fast paced environment experiencing rapid growth and as such offers unlimited career progression opportunities, or alternatively provides a fantastic environment to develop innovative solutions.

Anyone interested, let me know and I can give you the guy's email address.

But what can you do?

It's swings and roundabouts. Something fails because someone else changes something else which impacts on the first thing. They don't think to check what the impact will be of changing said thing and you don't know it has been changed because they didn't check or think anyone would need to know. And then, like a fool and not knowing about the change, you tell people that things haven't changed. Then you find out they have, look stupid and not know why they were changed because the changer isn't around to ask. So you can't change them back to how they were before because you don't know why they were changed in the first place. Argh!

Memes? Me?

The tube

Every single morning I get a travel alert about the District Line. It is only a matter of time before it either breaks completely or is shut for a few weeks to sort it out. It is so bloody annoying that I have to add an extra 10 minutes, at least, to an already 1 hour 15 minute journey in the morning. This city is so broken. How does anyone think we could ever cope with a couple of million extra travellers each day for an Olympic games here?

Controversial?

So Rover are shedding 5,000 jobs and people are calling for assistance and funds to save jobs and the company. We're losing just under 4,000 jobs at the BBC and is anyone calling for aid for us?

Still not right

I left work at 1805. I will get home at 2005. After a long day already (I left the house at 0715 this morning), this is obviously just what I need (a two hour journey home, that is).

Pfah

Minor delays, my arse. I've been stood on this platform for over 10 minutes now and still no sign of a Wimbledon train. Oh, no. I take it back. There's now one due in 5 minutes. Still. Nothing for well over 15 minutes is rubbish.

Why Am I Still Here?

In at 08:25 and still here now at almost 18:00... I think I really ought to haul ass home. It's been a _really_ busy day.

Note to self

Set TiVo for the new(?) series of Scrubs that kicks off on E4 tonight at 9pm. Not sure if it is new to the UK, but I certainly don't remember seeing an episode with Heather Graham in it before.

Thank God for Monsoon

What would I look like without that shop? A walking tent, I reckon. Or a bag lady. Or just generally shabby. You see, it is the only place in this country that sells _nice_ clothes for women my size (and larger). OK, so they've shifted their sizing to make people feel flattered, 'cause I don't think I've lost weight, but still they're invaluable to me. And OK, so they're not cheap, but they use good materials, they're not afraid of natural fabrics and the designs are really good. And now I've stopped worrying about what to wear on Friday. *beam*

Farmers' Market

So there's a Farmers' Market at work today, out on The Network. Which was handy as I needed onions for dinner tonight. Or rather, maybe I did. (I got out some meat this morning with plans for dinner, but now I've seen the market...).

Not only onions but some biltong (made by the guy who was selling it - no idea of the country of origin of the meat involved though, I forgot to ask) and a freshly made chicken & mushroom pie (which I hope I don't forget in the fridge when I go home tonight). And for lunch, I got two organic granary rolls, a garlic-encrusted goat's cheese and a tiger-stripe tomato. Yum!

Stupid people

There I am, getting on an over-ground train just behind a woman and her two boys. They turn to the door of the First Class section and after a couple of attempts by one of the boys to open the door, the mother mocks him with, 'can't you read? It says push not pull, stupid.'. At which point it was rather tempting to point out that she clearly couldn't read either, as there was a sign on the door that said 'First Class ticket holders only' and there was no way on God's Earth that they had that kind of ticket for the (extremely short, suburban) journey they were making.

Hmm

I'm not entirely sure that being able to post to my journal from my phone is a good idea. Sans iPod, I get quite irate when I travel on public transport and today, I don't have iPod with me. Keeping the word 'fuck' out of any post in this state... well, it isn't going to be easy. And there are People. Lacking in a sense of their surroundings or fellow travellers.

They really are cute, though.

I mean, they may throw up quite a lot for no apparent reason and leave hair all over the place but they can be quite cute sometimes.

Quite a good guide

Herein lies quite a good guide to blogging[0] while employed (and I don't just mean on company time).

[0] - yes yes, I know I hate that word, but that's what's used in the article.

Alternative lunch

Of course, when we get sold we won't be able to use the White City canteen any more. Which is a bugger. I like their salad bar. *tucks into pasta with sweetcorn, grated carrot, kidney beans, chick peas, butter beans, green beans, red and green peppers* I guess I could make my own, but that requires forethought and planning. Dammit.

New Garth Nix

I was flicking through Amazon, looking for some new easy reading and I found a new Garth Nix book coming soon, carrying on in the Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen world; "Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories". Pre-ordered it. :o)

Mobile test

From my lovely 6170

One wonders

And I haven't done any reading at all on the subject, but do the Duchess of Cornwall's children get any titles out of this wedding at all? *muse*

In case I haven't already said

The Nokia 6170 is nice. It is much much faster than the 6600 for navigating the system and using WAP. OK, there's no Bluetooth, but that's no biggie at all. It's much smaller than the 6600 and the screen less prone to damage because it is a folding jobbie. There are a couple of niggles about the interface when it comes to SMSing, but they're not show stoppers. And it seems, though I never really wanted a camera on my phone, that the camera is much better than the one in the 6600.

In short. I really do like it.

Choco-crack!

I'm sooo sleepy I succumbed to the hot chocolate from the drinks machine. It is dubbed "choco crack" in these parts because it is a little on the addictive side.

Televisual enjoyment

This last few months, I have been mostly being introduced to, and got addicted to The West Wing. Having not seen any of it ever before, I was lucky enough to start with Season 1 and work up to Season 3 so far. Given the vouchers Amazon have been sending me, I'll soon be able to get Season 4 and 5, which is a good thing because we're almost through 3 now. 's good stuff. Really. When I started watching it, I expected it to be quite heavy and a bit boring really, but it is actually funny and really quite clever in places.

Thank you Robert Dyas

It's been just over a year since I've had lasagne, chilli or anything with minced beef in it. But now, thanks to Robert Dyas and the supermarkets, I have been re-united with the glory of lasagne. You see, for a start, the supermarkets are actually selling non-EU beef now. Not totally reliably, but most of the time. Never minced and only sometimes roasting joints, but steak is nearly always available in some form. And after trawling Argos and various department stores for a mincer and only finding big, electric ones I finally found a cast-iron one in Robert Dyas.

After a little bit of getting used to which bits of the meat needed trimming off to make the mincer work happily (no, not the fat but the stringy, sinewy bits which get wound around the blade and choke up the mincing holes) I now have more minced beef in the freezer than it has seen in a year. *bounce*

Oh for God's sake!

Nobody whines about plumbers using "jargon" this much... or car mechanics or even solicitors. Yes people occasionally joke about their jargon, but not on this scale or all over the media. People tinkering with their own cars or doing their own plumbing, or household accounting aren't seen as nerds or weirdos in some way. People generally don't see it as a bad thing to take the trouble to learn a bit about things like that. I wish the population (and especially the media) would sodding well grow up and stop seeing "geeks" as anything different to or more "amusing" than plumbers, electricians, solicitors, accountants...

I really really hate the fact that we're something to be laughed at, and being told that what we do is "just pressing buttons" but at the same time allegedly it's all too complicated for Joe Bloggs. Make up your minds people and start giving us a little respect rather than half embarrassed pity, half envy, half suspicion. And start standing on your own two feet. I mean, most people know how to change a car wheel and put on the spare, right? And how to check the oil and washer bottle in a car. And how to re-start the central heating after a power cut. It's not much different taking a little interest in your computer and how to keep it healthy and safe.

September is so far away

It's only April! And the only holiday on the horizon is September. OK, it's going to be a cottage on Crete, but still... 5 months away! *whimper*