Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Aaaaaand after a weekend of my computer working (or at least working as well as it ever does) it decided to crap out on me this morning. Again.
I’ll run the startup repair process again tonight and see if that fixes it. It only took three hours last time…
Someone doesn’t want me having a Eradicator…
So, a while back I placed an order on eBay for some Warhammer 40k bitz – including two Leman Russ turrets – from a seller that I’ve dealt with many times before without problems.
My order arrived a few weeks later – minus one of the turrets.
I emailed the seller politely asking where the second turret was, and they apologised profusely, saying they’d send it immediately.
Not long after the first order I placed an order with another seller (again whom with I’ve happily dealt in the past) that included a Leman Russ Nova Cannon. My order arrived a few weeks later, sans cannon.
I emailed the seller to point this out, and they apologised profusely, immediately refunding the cost of the cannon.
Today a parcel arrived from the first seller. It contained five 40mm bases that I never ordered, and no Leman Russ turret.
Call me paranoid but this is getting suspicious…
Hundreds of people were killed and many more are dying of cancer.
Back in 1986 it was my primary school’s 50th anniversary. To celebrate this event, all the students wrote an essay to be placed in a time capsule to be opened on the 75th anniversary.
Which was last Sunday.
So, I got to read a letter from my 11 year old self – turns out, I was an idiot! ;D
TIME CAPSULE 1986
Hi, my name is [REDACTED]. Im 11 years old and I have blond hair lots of frecles big feet. Im the 3rd smallest in the class (Belinda [unreadable] the smallest) and I collect stamps, soft toys, chip bukets, rocks and budgie feathers I have 4 pets two fish one bird and a dog.
This year is the Internationale Year of Peace (1 singn for the international year of peace) And Pope John Paul the second is coming to Pperth. Hes having a big mass on the thirtyieth of november, Im going.
Earlier this year we could see Hallys comet and at 1oclock in the morning we got up to see it (0100 Hours on the 24 hour clock) it looks like picture two.
This year the space shuttle columbia blew up (3) and so did the cherbonal nuclear reactor (4). Hundreds of people were killed and many more are dying of cancer.
I think In 2011 I think (in School) everyone will have a computer and the teachers will be humanoids. You do all your work on your a computer and it gets printed out on the printer. For sport you turn your computer to remot control and move the ball by it. Everyone has a chemistry set and constant chemical supplies and you can learn how to make a micro chip.
flife would be fun.
What’d I tell you? An idiot. Although at least I was correct about the teachers being humanoids 😀
The various numbers were supposed to reference a sheet full of hand drawn pictures, but I ruined my first try and didn’t get a new one done in time. That’s always kind of weighed on my mind – perhaps I should draw one now and take it up to the school as a replacement…
That sweet, syrupy taste.
Good Lord! This is the Wyrmlog’s 1000th post!
Cecil! Get the champagne!
It came to my attention over the weekend that I appear to have addicted myself to Coke Zero.
Yes, laugh if you must. Make comments about how I’m completely exaggerating my situation and how what I actually mean is that I just like the stuff, and I’m being dramatic. But no. I’m dead serious. I think I’ve become an addict.
You see, the thing that you’re probably forgetting is that Coke Zero contains caffeine, and caffeine is a dependency forming stimulant. If I wanted to be more scientifically accurate I should probably say that I’ve become a caffeine addict, but the thing about caffeine addiction is that the addict develops a psychological association between the high from the caffeine and the delivery method. The addict doesn’t actually crave caffeine, they crave whatever it is that contains the caffeine.
In my case, Coke Zero.
I’ve never consumed that much caffeine. When I get to work in the morning I grab a caffeine containing drink to give me a boost and help me face the horrors of eight hours of PHP coding and fielding phone calls from idiots who wouldn’t know an SMTP server if it bit them in the rear. Historically I’ve consumed sugar-free Red Bull, but the supply of it at the eccentric supermarket over the road has been erratic for the last year or so, so I’ve been substituting Coke Zero instead. And I’ve developed quite a taste for it.
But there’s a difference between having a taste for something, and being addicted. So what was the moment I knew I had a problem? On Saturday afternoon I was sitting at my computer and feeling thirsty. “Hmmm” I thought, “A Coke Zero would be really nice about now” so I got up, went out, walked over to the shops and bought a two litre bottle, carried it home and had a drink. Then I felt like another drink… Half an hour later the bottle was empty, and I still felt like a Coke Zero. Derp.
Following on from this revelation I’ve been looking back over the last few months and realised that I’ve been preferentially selecting Coke Zero when other, healthier drinks are available. I’ve also been drinking it in the evenings when I know I should avoid caffeine in order to have a decent night’s sleep. Whoops.
So, what am I going to do about this? Not a great deal. Caffeine is a pretty harmless drug, I mean it’s not like I’m hooked on heroin or something. I’m going to source a decent supply of sugar-free Red Bull to break the cycle, not drink caffeine on the weekends unless I’m doing something really active, and not drink it at all after 4:00pm. That should see me straight.
Probably 🙂
Blagh.
Been feeling totally dull, blah and pointless of late. In an attempt to do something approaching worthwhile I spent much of yesterday uploading the photos from my 2009 trip to the UK for Ali and Mat’s wedding to my Flickr account – which I’ve been meaning to do since the day I got back over two years ago.
The vast majority have no titles, descriptions or geotags – but I’ll work on it over the next few weeks. There’s also one day’s worth of wandering around Leicester left to go up, including my exciting and action packed investigation of the Medieval Packhorse Bridge!*
(*Not guaranteed to be exciting or action packed)
Those should go up this afternoon. In any case if you have an abiding interest in amateur photographs of unidentified English buildings, fields and street signs, please consider my photostream!
Back to work…
Learn something new every day
Wait – holding down the hash key silences my phone?!
Awesome!!
Casting Wild Aspersions
I called up the electricians about my invisible smoke alarm. They were nice, reasonable and apologetic about it, and are sending out a revised invoice.
Damn. I’d worked myself up to do my best Victor Meldrew impersonation…
…Well there isn’t a smoke alarm! No smoke alarm has been installed! Unless it’s cunningly concealed inside the pile of discarded wires and brick dust your workmen so thoughtfully left in my kitchen…
…No! I don’t care what ‘Barry’ says! The words ‘smoke alarm’ at no point issued forth from his lips during the entire procedure! A large number of other quite unprofessional ones did, but ‘smoke alarm’ was not amongst them!…
…Well if ‘Barry’ or one of your other trained neandertals can be bothered to come down here and show me the smoke alarm he claims to have installed, I’ll happily pay your account. But until then you’re not getting a cent out of me!
(For the record the electricians – one of whom may or may not have been named Barry – were entire professional, and didn’t leave any mess to speak of. You’ve just got to exaggerate wildly and cast random aspersions if you want to channel old Victor).
Deeper and Down
REM have decided to break up, my dinner last night was tube pasta seasoned with the dust from the bottom of a parmesan cheese container, and I’ve been sent a bill for hundreds of dollars worth of electrical work that I’m fairly sure doesn’t exist (unless someone broke in and installed a smoke alarm where I can’t see it).
This is probably not going to be a good day…
The new normal
Dinner last night – Gherkin Dip and Sliced Ham sandwiches.
Breakfast this morning – Gherkin Dip and Sliced Ham sandwiches.
Lunch today – Gherkin Dip and Sliced Ham sandwiches, brought from home.
Money spent so far today – $5.20 on a muffin and Red Bull, all in 50c pieces culled from my strategic silver change reserve.
Further Austerity Measures under Consideration
– Is it feasible to bake bread with a mixture of normal flour, self raising flour, milk powder and bread crumbs?
– Is raw vegetable stock a viable source of nutrients?
– Do I really need to buy deodorant?
Put the cloves and Tom Collins mix in a bowl…
I’ve been teaching myself to use a couple of open source programs lately. Hugin for image stitching, and Scribus for desktop publishing.
Scribus is a pain. This is not because it’s a bad program, it’s because Desktop Publishing is a pain. You’ve got to worry about margins and gutters and fonts and all kinds of crazy stuff that gets automatically handled in a word processor. This is the price you pay for being able to do much cooler things layout and publishing-wise.
It’s a steep learning curve, but Scribus is proving to be really flexible. Once I get the hang of it I should be able to pump out professional looking PDFs from here to the wazoo, and actually launch that games publishing empire I’ve been planning for years…
(Yeah, let’s see if that happens… :))
Hugin is a lot of fun. Take a bunch of photos, load them into Hugin, and it stitches them all together. It can do a lot more than that of course, but I’m still just learning. You can check out some resulting gigantic panoramas of the semi-demolished Entertainment Centre in my Flickr stream.
On another subject it’s good that these programs are open source – and hence free – as after a triple hit from Council Rates, Strata Fees and Water Bills my bank balance is looking really ill. I’m having to go on a crash austerity drive for the next few weeks, which will no doubt result in more meals of bread crusts, pearled barley and soy sauce. But hey, it could be worse, at least I’m not eating pie crusts, cloves and Tom Collins Mix 🙂
