It's all looking pretty grey

I'm still somewhat in shock over Doctor Who.

I know not to really get over invested in Doctor Who because that way madness lies but the abomination that was the Christmas Special just leaves me amazed that something so bad made it to air on Christmas Day without someone somewhere pointing out that it was bad even by bad Who standards. It wasn't even hilariously bad.

Anyway to sum up my Christmas: I've been drinking a lot of Southern Comfort, I got some socks and yet again everyone thought I was kidding when I said I wouldn't mind getting some Lego. :(

Have a Cake-Happy Butterman and a great new year.

I always thought that it was one of those universally denied truths that one of the first things most people do when they get a swirly office chair is to spin in it. Maybe they only do it once, say the first time they sit on it and after they're confident no one else can see them. Maybe they continue to do it whenever they think no one is watching or at least spin it with an unnecessary flourish whenever they have the slightest excuse but in the end of all the people that do this it's just the unfortunate few caught doing it that will ever admit to it.( Please tell me this is true. )

Right from the beginning, the casting of the new Star Trek film has had a general sense of "WUT?" about it.

Now Simon Pegg joins the cast as Scotty! I'm not sure why I find the idea of him and Zachary Quinto playing alongside each other so bizarre but it is good bizarre and not scary bizarre.

For the past week or so, I've been working at Leeds University. That's right. Now the tables have turned! You're paying me, University! Not so clever now, are we?! We'll just overlook the fact that they're paying me next to nothing.

Seeing the campus again has been a little strange. Though most of it seems unchanged, a few things seemed disconcertingly different, especially in the Union building. There were new checkouts in the student shop, the off-license is gone and there was a whole new 'Juice Bar' where before there was just a room with green seats and a funny smell. Oh well.

( More stuff )

I am hungover today and my body is determined to remind me at every single opportunity that I drank too much and should feel thoroughly ashamed at my lack of good sense. In fact right now it's just being downright cruel what with its decision to remind me of how desperately hungry I am and then reward me with nauseous feelings as soon as I set about to rectify this problem. :(

However this advert is proving to be very calming at the moment both for how awesome it is and also because the purification message seems to be something my body approves of (even if, ironically enough, it's an advert for vodka). there's a little fishie at the end too!

I'm having mixed feelings about the new series of the IT Crowd. On the one hand, I did laugh at things and there were some truly priceless moments but on the other, I'm not really sure why I found them funny.

A week of reading and drinking! \o/

It's feared there could be another 50mm of rain over the weekend (and 20mm on Friday) and considering how waterlogged the whole place is currently, that's just going to flood straight away. Then there's the dam too.

Of course at least it means more local news in which the orange news presenter asks people the most stupid questions.

"Halo thar flooded lady! Your house has been flooded, how does it make you feel?"

or making painful links from story to story

"Here in this school the most important machines are these tea urns :D....but there are even more important machines running at the Dam in Ulley >:("

And let's not forget the hilarity of the music they decide to play to the montages of flood images at the end of the news. We've had the soundtrack from Gladiator. I'm waiting for Ride of the Valkyries or the Dambuster theme when they announce Ulley is safe.

It's the morning after the night before not that you'd know anything was out of the ordinary where I live at present but I'm glad I don't live in Sheffield anymore. My mother's workplace is apparently under 2 feet of water and is going to be out of action for a while (some employees sighing and mumbling things about September). There were reports that Sheffield Wednesday's Football ground was under 6 feet of water at one point so there's no way I'm going to be getting into Sheffield through Hillsborough and with the Motorway closed for 14 miles, it seems safe to say Sheffield is a no go.

I can't find anything on the news but a narrowboat owning friend told us there were fears at one point that Lady's Bridge would collapse after it was revealed it was wobbling with both the torrent running under it and other torrents being channelled by neighbouring streets around it into the river (Lady's Bridge is just down the street from Wicker where a Pensioner was swept away by the flow coming down the road when trying to cross). Said friend was worried that had it collapsed, it would have resulted in flood waters pouring into the canal system (though I'm not sure how) which in turn would have flooded that out as it would have nowhere to flow to.

Then of course is the fear of the bursting dam a few miles away which is even more sobering. In short, I'm staying home! The TV told me to (as if I needed any encouragement).

Excitement about Doctor Who: Check
Desire to have a fob watch like that: Check
Strange excitement about John Simm: Check

Rapidly depleting dignity: CHECK

In the middle of the night, it struck! Another victim of the recently renamed El Niño ; Bringer of chaos, Destroyer of lives, Ruiner of good furniture. He seems suitably subdued anyway.






Poor Mogwai used to sit on my bookshelves and 'guard' my books through university so I'm a little more angry than usual but then he was at El Niño height so I suppose I was asking for it. If I can find the time and patience, I could convert him into a punk but I think that's showing a little over-investment and as I seem to have the time to chronicle this event with pictures, I obviously don't really want to. Besides, now he looks like he has a legitimate reason for his distressed look.

Or I should be.

I was summoned earlier to someone else's computer with a stern and bowel clenching message which simply said "There are things I've asked you to do that haven't been done". After raking my brains and getting more agitated about it, I arrived to be told that the large report I had been asked to compile and standardize was missing files on two of the eight people it was supposed to cover. Panicking, I stuttered something about being certain I had done them and delivered them personally to their computer. "Well can you show me where they are then?"

I leant over their computer and looked at the screen. I took the mouse and moved the scrollbar of the open window 1 centimetre to the right. The two files were there. This apparently is still my fault and in the future I must resize the window and arrange documents so they all appear on the screen and no scrolling is needed.

Heed this warning possible business people. The future of any company depends on it having its scrolling policy clear and concise. Scrolling: wastes your time, wastes my time, wastes the customers time!

I don't really make separate posts for my thoughts on TV shows or finales. At least I don't think I do (I'd check back through my previous posts to be sure but this would require opening new tabs and more than one mouse click which is all too much effort for a wednesday lunchtime). Normally my "thoughts on..." are buried in a comment field somewhere and end up only being seen by two people, one of whom is me.

( Anyway, they're here today and are sadly long winded )

Little else is new other than my realisation that I need to get a new job which of course means doing all the stuff I hate doing like trying to fill up all those voids in my CV and making my piffling work experience look more impressive. Not to mention of course the horrible bit of getting references and working out who to ask and how to ask them.

EDIT:
Someone just showed me this. Mr Darcy and Mr Collins stick-up-arse awkwardness may be because they were autistic apparently. Yes. Quite.

I am posting to my journal

( FOR SPARTA!! )

Days are doomed to be crap when they begin with you falling out of bed and doing something to your hip that offends it so much, it decides it's going to remind you about it all day.

Someone was banging on the door so loudly and urgently that I assumed something horrible must have happened and rolled over only to run out of mattress. I got to the door wearing odd shoes and back to front shorts to discover it was the postman with a package for next door and for some reason he was annoyed at me. Next door were lucky to get that bloody package.

( Read more... )

What have I done today?

Shared my knowledge on Adrenochrome (learned from Hunter Thompson) with someone who already knew more than me. Then I made disparaging remarks about the Daily Express. I also played around trying to create a toasted message on a piece of toast using a stencil. My findings are that apart from being a ridiculous thing to do in the first place, messages can be no more complex than say, a love heart or a smiley face as anything else ends up looking like randomly burnt toast. This limits toast as a possible communication medium quite severely.

I also cleaned the kitchen because it was gross, spent a load of time messing about online and then downloaded half a film before deciding I'd just go to the cinema on my lonesome to watch it. Then I went out and bought a new collar for the cat and some beer. These are just a few of the fascinating things I get up to when I have time off.

I have also learned that I will have to hand in my geek card as I am incompetent. The older computer has been playing up with Kernel panics ever since it got its OS upgraded and was moved to another room. I originally diagnosed the problem as a dodgy HDD. So after ordering and fitting a replacement I've discovered that actually it was a strip of memory that was causing all the problems seeing as it was stuff my Dad got from dubious sources years ago. The new OS is just a little choosier about it and it's something obvious I should have tried immediately. Not satisfied with that, I also set about fixing the PC as the monitor couldn't detect a signal. I was right in my diagnosis that the videocard had come loose (the fact it was moving was a hint) but in fixing it I seem to have done something wrong or offended that PC in some way as now it doesn't want to turn on anymore.

I normally don't like people that talk in earnest about having a 'Positive Mental Attitude'. Maybe it's because I associate them with dreary motivational seminars where I'm made to feel very defensive of my pessimism and left wanting to protect it as if it were a puppy with a bandaged paw. Quite often, hopelessly optimistic people are really quite boring to be around. There's just no fun in finding everything 'fabaroo!' I like feeling rotten and making cruel jokes about people that probably don't really deserve it or moaning about stuff that isn't actually as bad as I make out and then being a hypocritcal git and calling someone else a miserable sod.

On the other hand I have just had to put up with someone so negative or rather someone who allows the slightest hiccup to render everything positive void that I want to choke them with a shoelace.

I recommended a new computer system to someone and after buying it, they ask me to show them a few things. This computer does lots of things they always wanted the old one to do. It runs crucial software the other didn't, it's more compatible with other computers, it's much faster and there's a wealth of free and useful software available for it and it didn't even cost them that much. One simple feature is very useful for this person. The OS can be set to display the icons of pictures as little thumbnail previews, a simple thing the last computer couldn't do and that was always wanted as it would make organising the thousands of pictures less time consuming. Basically it fits the criteria and the person is very, very happy. Then there is one small problem. One particular picture will not show as a preview. The reason is that it is in some obscure format that can't be shown for whatever reason BUT it can still be opened as normal and converted to a recognisable format if it really is necessary. It's the only picture in that format that the person owns. Nevertheless this hiccup apparently renders the entire computer to be useless and a waste of money.

It also made me stomp off and post a twuntish rant online because I am a coward and won't call them an idiot.

I swallowed the shame I felt for resembling Aslan and have had my hair cut for the first time in about 6 months. Now it is short (a relative term).

The Positives:

With hair stuff and a little effort, I can achieve that mussy, unkempt hair I like to have and what is more I have found a product I can use that doesn't feel like something unpleasant secreted something even more unpleasant on my scalp. Mussy Dylan Moran-esque hair FTW

The Negatives:

If I don't do anything with my hair and just let it do it's own thing, it morphs into a 70s Donny Osmond hairstyle. Donny hair FTF.

What wonderfully cool things have you found out about recently?

I found out about Alluc.org and it is good.

A bad thing I found out is that sometimes people insist on putting up torrents of things in really weird formats that require me to fiddle around swapping great big multi gigabyte files from OS to OS in order to possibly convert it into something that might possibly convert into something else I might be able to possibly watch. If not then I just wasted a big chunk of bandwidth downloading a movie I can't watch.

I also discovered that the Dr. Who fandom whilst undoubtedly filled with nice people also has people that go crazy very quickly and scare me.

A Merry belated Christmas to any and all that wish one.
I hope you had a good one, ate tasty food and otherwise did enjoyable stuff.

For my own records:

( The 2006 Xmas Dossier )

I also learnt how to do something really simple in photoshop recently that I had been too embarrassed to ask about for ages (*cough* putting a neat outline around text *cough*). It proved to be really simple too, a simple tickybox type thing. Anyway my Photoshop Technology is now 16% so I am happy.