T O T K a t - 2 0 0 6

SOLD

Ohyes, and there's a big "SOLD" sign outside my house now. That'll be there a while.

Still, I've got a nice shirt...

The vendor has accepted our offer. We're going for another look this evening, mostly to assess the height of the loft but partly to get another look at things. This is really quite stressful. The stress comes from the uncertainty and the fact that the market is really extremely bouyant. Still... I've got a nice shirt on today.

People

To the stupid, selfish bitch who rammed herself behind me onto the tube at Green Park and jammed her over-sized handbag really quite hard into my right kidney until Victoria and then proceeded to hurl abuse at me for trying to keep my face out of the elbow of the guy in front of me by holding my ground when she jammed it in even harder... I am actually in pain now and I really don't see how it is my fault you were a bit squashed when you were too dim to lower your enormous handbag from your shoulder so that we all had a few more inches.

I don't see why you think hurling badly formed abuse at me makes you a better person and when I explained that your bag was causing me pain and there was really no more room to be had, yelling up the escalator to me to "get a life" really didn't make you look all that clever or special and everyone else on the escalator really was laughing at you.

Oh, and I'd lay off the ciggies and sunbeds and re-think my wardrobe if I were you, you're looking really rather like mutton dressed as lamb.

House stuff again

*mutter*turns up in a frickin' Maserati*grumble* ...and if I hear the phrase "it's a good size" one more time...

We may have found something. May. More later.

Nothing to see here

Hum. Looking rather empty. I did try to post an enormous rant this morning about feckless, thoughtless people but my phone decided to reboot itself instead of posting it, so I bet that's a relief for you.

Anyway. I appear to have sold my house. It went on the market on (Easter) Saturday, had a first viewing booked for the Wednesday, but someone booked after that and came on Tuesday, twice, and offered the asking price. Which was nice. And rather unexpectedly quick. We're now looking for somewhere to live.

We saw somewhere last night; great location, good size, nice layout, good price but... needed a bit too much doing to it. Bah. Seeing something else tomorrow morning. We'll see how that goes. Things appear to be selling so quickly that they go under offer before the details get to the agent's web site, never mind the local newspaper, so we'll have to be quick if we actually like something.

Uk public in the dark

Apparently the awareness of analogue switchoff in the UK is low amongst the population.

(How? There are loads of infomercials on the TV (OK, on BBC channels for definite and maybe on others but I've not seen them) and I've seen posters. But then maybe I know what they're about because of my job and most normal people wouldn't know or care?)

Or rather, 73% of the population surveyed didn't know when analogue was going to be switched off in their area. Well, count me in that 73%. I know it's coming and it's happening between 2008 and 2012 and I know that my region isn't switching off in 2008, but that's about it. Thing is, I don't care because I already have digital TV and have done for years. And so has a very large proportion of the population. So, surely a better survey would be "of those people who don't already have digital TV in their home as their main TV, who doesn't know that analogue switchoff is coming?"?

As for the subject of who should pay for switchover... don't get me started.

Hitachi unveils bad idea

Hitachi has unveiled a suite of (HD ready) new televisions. Equipped with 4 tuners (2 digital, 2 analogue) and a hard disk, they will sport DVR functionality (as in time-based recording of programmes rather than schedule based), a 10/100 ethernet port and an SD slot. Given that they wouldn't arrive in the UK for quite some time, I can't see the point of buying a TV with a built in analogue tuner (let alone two). The functionality would drop off during digital switchoff. Plus, time-based recording isn't so great, especially given that the automated channels are often the worst offenders for not running to the billed times. I'm not sure they haven't over-egged the omelette with these.

It must be half-term

...or something. (OK so Easter is impending, but I thought the school holidays was only 2 weeks at Easter, which would mean the kids would go back the day after Easter Monday. Which seems wrong.)[0]

But anyway.

I got into work at 08:50 this morning; having caught the same train that I usually do (OK, so now it's First Capital Connect and not Thameslink, but that doesn't make it go faster.), taken the second tube on the board out of Wimbledon station and not run anywhere (what, in these boots?) I was at my desk at 08:50. I've not seen this happen before during school holidays, so what's going on?

[0] I do know it's not half term, so.

And this is why...

And this is why the world is in danger of sliding back into the dark ages... and why you should have your children vaccinated.

An article in Metro this morning had a spokesman for the AA saying that the Highway Code was (and I paraphrase) a bit difficult for normal people; only those weirdo geek types would understand it all.

Really.

The population fears(!) and distrusts science and scientists and the medically trained people we like to call doctors, finds the Highway Code a bit too hard and doesn't want to have to learn difficult and boring things like science, foreign languages and maths in school.

I fear for the future. Never mind global warming.