Saturday, January 31, 2009
Move completed
My hands smell of kutchen cleaner. The rest of me smells of sweaty cleaner.
It took me about four and a half hours of assorted throwing away of rubbish, packing the final odds and sods, and cleaning and vaccuuming in order to finish everything off today. I am really looking forward to a very lazy day tomorow with nothing more strenuous than a bit of embroidery. I might even allow myself a long lie-in in the morning. Now that would be quite sybaritic...mmm...
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It took me about four and a half hours of assorted throwing away of rubbish, packing the final odds and sods, and cleaning and vaccuuming in order to finish everything off today. I am really looking forward to a very lazy day tomorow with nothing more strenuous than a bit of embroidery. I might even allow myself a long lie-in in the morning. Now that would be quite sybaritic...mmm...
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Friday, January 30, 2009
Annoyed
I am seriously pissed off with Siminn. The chap in the shop give me information about moving the phone, internet and television that was wrong in every possible way. The timing was incorrect, television is unavailable, and now they tell me I can't even get internet here - which is complete bullshit as the previous folks certainly had internet.
Fortunately I'm going back into town tomorrow so I can pop into Vodaphone then, but the Great Bunny of Happiness is residing far from my warren.
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2 comments
Fortunately I'm going back into town tomorrow so I can pop into Vodaphone then, but the Great Bunny of Happiness is residing far from my warren.
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2 comments
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Still no Internet
It was due to come on today but hasn't. If it hasn't been connected by tomorrow when I get back from work then I think that an irate phone call will be in order.
Grrr...
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Grrr...
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tonight: diGrassi
The year is now settling into its stride, which means it's back to fencing on Wednesday nights.
We've now got quite a mixture of people, a third are authorised, a third are authorisable, and the other third are beginners. It does make it a little tricky keeping everyone occupied and happy.
The current approach is to start studying diGrassi. For the more experienced fencers it's a true period style and will be useful if they ever want to join the Drachenwald Academy of Defence. For the others it won't hurt to start learning in a fully Period style. At some point I'm going to have to find some time to do a bit more Spanish stuff too, but I've no idea when.
I'm also going to have to get organised and make myself some new fencing armour. Hopefully before Troll Hunt. Hmm... I'd better get a move on with it the. Maybe Sunday.
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We've now got quite a mixture of people, a third are authorised, a third are authorisable, and the other third are beginners. It does make it a little tricky keeping everyone occupied and happy.
The current approach is to start studying diGrassi. For the more experienced fencers it's a true period style and will be useful if they ever want to join the Drachenwald Academy of Defence. For the others it won't hurt to start learning in a fully Period style. At some point I'm going to have to find some time to do a bit more Spanish stuff too, but I've no idea when.
I'm also going to have to get organised and make myself some new fencing armour. Hopefully before Troll Hunt. Hmm... I'd better get a move on with it the. Maybe Sunday.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Another day without Internet
Well, strictly speaking I do have Internet at work but I'm rather busy in the office at present. Something to do with workload, I think. :)
I've worked out how to get both Internet and limited satellite in the living room thanks to long cables and electrical tape to keep it safely in place. All being well it'll be sorted by the weekend. In the meantime I'm working my way through the first 30 Midsomer Murders and being amused by Twitter.
Not much else to say, really. I'm not even sure what's going on on the revolutionary front as I'm so out of touch. Never mind - I doubt that it will be over by the weekend so I shall catch up then.
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2 comments
I've worked out how to get both Internet and limited satellite in the living room thanks to long cables and electrical tape to keep it safely in place. All being well it'll be sorted by the weekend. In the meantime I'm working my way through the first 30 Midsomer Murders and being amused by Twitter.
Not much else to say, really. I'm not even sure what's going on on the revolutionary front as I'm so out of touch. Never mind - I doubt that it will be over by the weekend so I shall catch up then.
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2 comments
Monday, January 26, 2009
Loving the machine
As well as all of the space and serenity, the dacha has another great thing going for it - the dishwasher.
From about the age of seven until I left to go to university I lived in a house that had a dishwasher. For me, therefore, the chore was not washing up but loading and unloading the dishwasher. Oh yes, I complained as much as any other child having to do dishes- related chores, but the dishwasher was a huge improvement on having to actually wash up. So much so that when it broke down a couple of weeks before Dad came home from sea one time my sister and I were really looking forward to his arrival. Or rather we were looking forward to the imminent return of the dishwasher to full function.
Then I went away to university and left the dishwasher at home. It was a pretty major act, especially after I graduated and became entirely self-catering. Many was the time that I looked wistfully at dishwashers in Currys, particularly the little portable two-person ones, but I could either not afford one or I had no space in the kutchen for it.
So to have a dishwasher again is a joy. Dinner for six is no longer followed by the inevitable pile of washing up. An A&S meeting for ten with coffee and cake is no longer the fore-runner of a sink full of mugs and side plates. Yes, life is certainly better with one of these mechanical marvels.
I'm almost tempted to calculate how much time I'll be saving that can be spent on embroidery but that might just be getting carried away a little too much. :)
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From about the age of seven until I left to go to university I lived in a house that had a dishwasher. For me, therefore, the chore was not washing up but loading and unloading the dishwasher. Oh yes, I complained as much as any other child having to do dishes- related chores, but the dishwasher was a huge improvement on having to actually wash up. So much so that when it broke down a couple of weeks before Dad came home from sea one time my sister and I were really looking forward to his arrival. Or rather we were looking forward to the imminent return of the dishwasher to full function.
Then I went away to university and left the dishwasher at home. It was a pretty major act, especially after I graduated and became entirely self-catering. Many was the time that I looked wistfully at dishwashers in Currys, particularly the little portable two-person ones, but I could either not afford one or I had no space in the kutchen for it.
So to have a dishwasher again is a joy. Dinner for six is no longer followed by the inevitable pile of washing up. An A&S meeting for ten with coffee and cake is no longer the fore-runner of a sink full of mugs and side plates. Yes, life is certainly better with one of these mechanical marvels.
I'm almost tempted to calculate how much time I'll be saving that can be spent on embroidery but that might just be getting carried away a little too much. :)
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Sunday, January 25, 2009
Same sofa, different room
The sofa has arrived.
I now have living room with four sofas, enough to comfortably seat the entire Shire (well the active members of it anyway). All tables, chairs, bookshelves and the like are at least on the right floor, if not quite in the right rooms. I just have to finish moving a bit more kitchen stuff and clean 19F and that will be it.
Yes, after a good night's sleep I feel far less frazzled than yesterday. Which is a good thing considering the pile of unpacking that awaits me. :)
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I now have living room with four sofas, enough to comfortably seat the entire Shire (well the active members of it anyway). All tables, chairs, bookshelves and the like are at least on the right floor, if not quite in the right rooms. I just have to finish moving a bit more kitchen stuff and clean 19F and that will be it.
Yes, after a good night's sleep I feel far less frazzled than yesterday. Which is a good thing considering the pile of unpacking that awaits me. :)
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Saturday, January 24, 2009
Part two completed
Part 2a to follow.
So today was big move day. I started off filling the car, collecting A and heading out to the house... Where we discovered that the big 4x4 doesn't have a towbar. This meant that we had to use my car instead witha a smaller trailer than planned. With the help of A, Y and O a full run was made, clearing about 3/4 of the stuff.
This included most of the smaller furniture - table, chairs, that sort of thing. Not, however, the sofa, bed or chest of drawers. A further trip (aided by R and H) got the bed over and we decided to call it a day after that, partly because we were all getting rather hungry and partly because I was feeling somewhat emotionally drained by the process.
The plan is to hire a longer covered trailer tomorrow morning and to get the final big stuff (mostly the sofa and chest of drawers) and I can then deal with the final odds and sods and get on with the cleaning.
And the unpacking, of course. For now, though, I'm watching an old Midsomer Murder on DVD and considering an early night.
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0 comments
So today was big move day. I started off filling the car, collecting A and heading out to the house... Where we discovered that the big 4x4 doesn't have a towbar. This meant that we had to use my car instead witha a smaller trailer than planned. With the help of A, Y and O a full run was made, clearing about 3/4 of the stuff.
This included most of the smaller furniture - table, chairs, that sort of thing. Not, however, the sofa, bed or chest of drawers. A further trip (aided by R and H) got the bed over and we decided to call it a day after that, partly because we were all getting rather hungry and partly because I was feeling somewhat emotionally drained by the process.
The plan is to hire a longer covered trailer tomorrow morning and to get the final big stuff (mostly the sofa and chest of drawers) and I can then deal with the final odds and sods and get on with the cleaning.
And the unpacking, of course. For now, though, I'm watching an old Midsomer Murder on DVD and considering an early night.
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0 comments
Friday, January 23, 2009
Cut off!
I am sans Internet for the weekend.
A couple of days ago I popped in to my service provider to sort out the transfer of service. No problem, the chap said, phone this number and they'll sort ut out for you next day. Fair enough, I thought, and went on my way rejoicing.
So this morning I phoned the number. It was the wrong one, but the nice chap on the other end put me through to the right one. Where they told me that moving the phone would take 3 working days and the Internet 5 days. Then I came home to discover that the service here stopped immediately.
This makes me very happy to have a BlackBerry. It also makes me wonder what it is that takes 3 and 5 days to change. I'm not annoyed by this, just curious. Presumeably there's a scheduled batch update of new numbers, and I'll even allow for 1 night to turn everything off, 1 night to turn the phone on and another 1 night to turn on the ADSL. That doesn't add up to 5 working days.
Does anyone have any better explanation? Or even any more humerous ones?
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2 comments
A couple of days ago I popped in to my service provider to sort out the transfer of service. No problem, the chap said, phone this number and they'll sort ut out for you next day. Fair enough, I thought, and went on my way rejoicing.
So this morning I phoned the number. It was the wrong one, but the nice chap on the other end put me through to the right one. Where they told me that moving the phone would take 3 working days and the Internet 5 days. Then I came home to discover that the service here stopped immediately.
This makes me very happy to have a BlackBerry. It also makes me wonder what it is that takes 3 and 5 days to change. I'm not annoyed by this, just curious. Presumeably there's a scheduled batch update of new numbers, and I'll even allow for 1 night to turn everything off, 1 night to turn the phone on and another 1 night to turn on the ADSL. That doesn't add up to 5 working days.
Does anyone have any better explanation? Or even any more humerous ones?
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2 comments
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Icelandic news update
Here in the land of fire and ice things seem to be getting pretty warm.
Two days ago parliament re-opened for business after its Christmas break. From the news items I've read it seems that there were about 4000 people outside the place protesting, banging kitchen pots with spoons in order to make enough noise to interrupt parliametary business. The crowds were enough to make the honourable members drop their normal introductory church service and walk to the parliament building and, instead, sneak in through a tunnel from the government offices. Once in parliament nothing related to the economic crisis was on the agenda.
The crowds continued to make a noise, throw eggs and paint at the building, and build a nice big bonfire (useful in the cold conditions up here, especially when the national Christmas tree was standing there just waiting to be a fuel supply). Pepper spray was used against protesters several times. This continued until 03:00.
Yesterday the crowds were back outside the building and beating up the prime minister's car (Geir was, he admitted, surprised and 'felt threatened' by this). No bonfires last night (the fire brigade put them out as soon as they were lit, saying that it was illegal to light an open fire within the city limits) but stones were thrown at both the building and the police, leading the police to use tear gas for the first time since the anti-NATO protests in 1949. Last night there were also protests in Akureyri and Egilsstaðir - I decided to stay away on nationality grounds - although these were peaceful. Fortunately things are much quieter here than in the capital.
More protests are planned for tonight all over the country. Today one of the most outspoken current affairs programmes, Kompass (the equivalent of the BBC's Newsnight) was cancelled and its journalists and presenters laid off. Other journalists have been laid off by newspapers for asking awkward questions and some are protesting that the police are targetting them with the pepper sprays.
The word 'revolution' is in the air, and Icelanders whose judgement I trust tell me that the government will fall before the weekend is over. It is almost four months since the shit hit the fan and no-one in power has accepted responsibility for anything. The central bank blames the bankers and businessmen, who blame the government, who blame the international situation (but the Americans in particular). Naturally the people are unhappy, and some are proclaiming this the 'fleece revolution', mainly due to the preponderance of big wooly jumpers among the protesters.
Saturday is normally the big day for these protests - they've been taking place every Saturday since October - so the assumption seems to be that if anything is going to happen, it'll happen then. I, of course, will be moving house at that point and will be happy to be well out of the way.
3 comments
Two days ago parliament re-opened for business after its Christmas break. From the news items I've read it seems that there were about 4000 people outside the place protesting, banging kitchen pots with spoons in order to make enough noise to interrupt parliametary business. The crowds were enough to make the honourable members drop their normal introductory church service and walk to the parliament building and, instead, sneak in through a tunnel from the government offices. Once in parliament nothing related to the economic crisis was on the agenda.
The crowds continued to make a noise, throw eggs and paint at the building, and build a nice big bonfire (useful in the cold conditions up here, especially when the national Christmas tree was standing there just waiting to be a fuel supply). Pepper spray was used against protesters several times. This continued until 03:00.
Yesterday the crowds were back outside the building and beating up the prime minister's car (Geir was, he admitted, surprised and 'felt threatened' by this). No bonfires last night (the fire brigade put them out as soon as they were lit, saying that it was illegal to light an open fire within the city limits) but stones were thrown at both the building and the police, leading the police to use tear gas for the first time since the anti-NATO protests in 1949. Last night there were also protests in Akureyri and Egilsstaðir - I decided to stay away on nationality grounds - although these were peaceful. Fortunately things are much quieter here than in the capital.
More protests are planned for tonight all over the country. Today one of the most outspoken current affairs programmes, Kompass (the equivalent of the BBC's Newsnight) was cancelled and its journalists and presenters laid off. Other journalists have been laid off by newspapers for asking awkward questions and some are protesting that the police are targetting them with the pepper sprays.
The word 'revolution' is in the air, and Icelanders whose judgement I trust tell me that the government will fall before the weekend is over. It is almost four months since the shit hit the fan and no-one in power has accepted responsibility for anything. The central bank blames the bankers and businessmen, who blame the government, who blame the international situation (but the Americans in particular). Naturally the people are unhappy, and some are proclaiming this the 'fleece revolution', mainly due to the preponderance of big wooly jumpers among the protesters.
Saturday is normally the big day for these protests - they've been taking place every Saturday since October - so the assumption seems to be that if anything is going to happen, it'll happen then. I, of course, will be moving house at that point and will be happy to be well out of the way.
3 comments
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Tired
I am very tired tonight.
It's not as if it's been a particularly tiring day - a departmental meeting and a C lab for all of my students should not wipe me out like this. Okay, so I also did a trip out to the house (which my colleague Nikolai calls my dacha because it's out in the countryside away from the town) but that was surprisingly low-stress as most of yesterday's snow and ice had melted by late this afternoon.
It's a little strange driving out (or back from) there in the dark. There are no streetlights but instead on each side of the road is a yellow pole with reflectors. You drive so that you're closer to the one on the right than the one of the left and move over a bit further to the right if there's a car coming in the opposite direction. Every time I do one of these country roads I'm reminded of the initial training sequence from X-Wing where you fly through the arches. Fortunately so far I haven't found anyone shooting lasers at me as I pass. The road out to the house is fairly flat and direct but some of these roads are definitely up, down and sideways in a very computer-game-esque manner.
I have also now tested the satellite system. Never again will I have to miss Torchwood or Ashes to Ashes as it definitely provides BBC1. And BBC2. And Granada. And Ulster TV. And... It looks like I'll have Freesat in the dining room/kitchen and ADSL in the living room... unless I can work out how to move things appropriately to get everything in the living room. Unfortunately Freesat doesn't come with the really interesting documentary channels so the ADSL will have to stay. Still, it means I can watch the new F1 season without having to pay huge amounts of money. Hmm... I can see me holding F1 parties as a public service to some of my friends...
For now, though, I think I'm going to have a shower and an early night. Sleep well, everyone.
0 comments
It's not as if it's been a particularly tiring day - a departmental meeting and a C lab for all of my students should not wipe me out like this. Okay, so I also did a trip out to the house (which my colleague Nikolai calls my dacha because it's out in the countryside away from the town) but that was surprisingly low-stress as most of yesterday's snow and ice had melted by late this afternoon.
It's a little strange driving out (or back from) there in the dark. There are no streetlights but instead on each side of the road is a yellow pole with reflectors. You drive so that you're closer to the one on the right than the one of the left and move over a bit further to the right if there's a car coming in the opposite direction. Every time I do one of these country roads I'm reminded of the initial training sequence from X-Wing where you fly through the arches. Fortunately so far I haven't found anyone shooting lasers at me as I pass. The road out to the house is fairly flat and direct but some of these roads are definitely up, down and sideways in a very computer-game-esque manner.
I have also now tested the satellite system. Never again will I have to miss Torchwood or Ashes to Ashes as it definitely provides BBC1. And BBC2. And Granada. And Ulster TV. And... It looks like I'll have Freesat in the dining room/kitchen and ADSL in the living room... unless I can work out how to move things appropriately to get everything in the living room. Unfortunately Freesat doesn't come with the really interesting documentary channels so the ADSL will have to stay. Still, it means I can watch the new F1 season without having to pay huge amounts of money. Hmm... I can see me holding F1 parties as a public service to some of my friends...
For now, though, I think I'm going to have a shower and an early night. Sleep well, everyone.
0 comments
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Adventures in winter driving
I'm currently sitting at the local Kwik-fit equivalent while an Everton fan puts new tyres on my car for me.
I've been holding off buying studded tyres for the Toyota on the grounds of expense, and since it already has all-weather tyres and my driving has only been around town for the last couple of years I haven't really needed them.
Today, though, I drove off to the house at lunchtime to deliver some stuff and managed to get to within 200m of the place before failing to make it any further up the ice-covered hill. And when I say ice-covered I mean about 5cm of solid sheet ice, not slushy stuff. I then had to reverse down another 200m with the aid of the handbrake.
It was on the journey back that I decided to a) try again tomorrow and b) get the studded tyres before I did so.
I suspect that I'm going to need a new set of normal tyres in the spring as I can see that these are definitely getting rather worn, but that's a different month's paycheck so I'm not going to worry about it just yet.
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2 comments
I've been holding off buying studded tyres for the Toyota on the grounds of expense, and since it already has all-weather tyres and my driving has only been around town for the last couple of years I haven't really needed them.
Today, though, I drove off to the house at lunchtime to deliver some stuff and managed to get to within 200m of the place before failing to make it any further up the ice-covered hill. And when I say ice-covered I mean about 5cm of solid sheet ice, not slushy stuff. I then had to reverse down another 200m with the aid of the handbrake.
It was on the journey back that I decided to a) try again tomorrow and b) get the studded tyres before I did so.
I suspect that I'm going to need a new set of normal tyres in the spring as I can see that these are definitely getting rather worn, but that's a different month's paycheck so I'm not going to worry about it just yet.
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2 comments
Monday, January 19, 2009
Making progress
More snow today.
Enough that when I went out to the house at lunchtime I managed to run aground in the eight inches on the driveway. Fortunately there were sufficient digging and sweeping tools around for me to be able to get myself out. It was interesting, because the road wasn't bad at all, it was just the driveway that was a problem.
I think I may be beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel with respect to moving stuff. It's certainly nowhere near finished yet but I am beginning to see spaces where stuff used to be. What's left seems to be lots of little bits of stuff - things that I don't really want to get rid of but which don't really logically fit in anywhere so they'll probably just go into a storage box and sit there. Of course, this still requires me to sort out the stuff from the junk, which is a task in its own right. Time, I think, to go hunting for long-term cardboard boxes.
2 comments
Enough that when I went out to the house at lunchtime I managed to run aground in the eight inches on the driveway. Fortunately there were sufficient digging and sweeping tools around for me to be able to get myself out. It was interesting, because the road wasn't bad at all, it was just the driveway that was a problem.
I think I may be beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel with respect to moving stuff. It's certainly nowhere near finished yet but I am beginning to see spaces where stuff used to be. What's left seems to be lots of little bits of stuff - things that I don't really want to get rid of but which don't really logically fit in anywhere so they'll probably just go into a storage box and sit there. Of course, this still requires me to sort out the stuff from the junk, which is a task in its own right. Time, I think, to go hunting for long-term cardboard boxes.
2 comments
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Still here
I've been rather lax about posting for the last few days, I'm afraid.
No particular reason other than normal life-related exhaustion. I'm back into the swing of teaching again - which has its own stresses - and I'm gradually managing to move stuff from the flat to the house.
I had a strange run-in with one of the non-computing science students in the lab on Friday (this is a module taken by all science students, not just computing students). He turned up over an hour into a ninety minute lab session to see if he could just join the lab and carry on late. He and his friends get together for a regular game of football on a Friday so he would be late in future. That was okay, wasn't it? We could just come to some sort of arrangement for him to do the labs later, yeah? He was rather surprised when I told him that computing labs happen at the time advertised, not at any time convenient for him and no, he couldn't just join the lab now. The mind boggles. As it happens, these labs are done in groups or pairs so while I'll make space for students who might be ten minutes late it just isn't practical to have someone turn up half way through.
I've managed to do several more trips out to the house with a loaded car. I was originally planning to do two trips today but we're having a bit of a blizzard here so although I managed one trip this morning I decided against trying a second one in case the wind got up (it has). Still, that's the clothing moved. It's not exactly put away yet, as although there are sufficient drawers and wardrobes I didn't want to stay too long given the weather.
The wardrobes raised an interesting point: when I eventually have to but my own wardrobes at some point I'm going to have to be a little bit careful about making sure that they're long enough. The house has fitted wardrobes in the main bedroom and a stand-alone wardrobe in one of the other bedrooms. None of these are long enough for an evening gown. Or, for that matter, SCA garb. I suppose the shrinkage is because full-length gowns are no longer a part of the average female wardrobe. I may have to come up with some sort of creative solution to this as all of the assorted storage spaces are some twenty to thirty centimetres too short for my gowns. Even my non-SCA full-length evening dress (yes, I did being one with me just in case there was an embassy function that called for it).
The apartment is now beginning to look as if things are missing. I've yet to deal with the bookcases (most books will just go into the storeroom in boxes), needlework stuff and the kitchen but there are definitely signs of movement occurring. Tonight I'll start packing the latter two of those ready for a lunchtime run tomorrow.
Oh yes, and I've now finished my re-read of the Vorkosigan novels in preparation for the panel at Redemption. I'm pretty sure that I prefer the ImpSec/Dendarii ones to the Imperial Auditor ones. Unfortunately I don't think she's left many gaps to fill in the early sequence, and I've heard that the next one is another Imperial Auditor one. Still, lots of things for the panel to discuss.
5 comments
No particular reason other than normal life-related exhaustion. I'm back into the swing of teaching again - which has its own stresses - and I'm gradually managing to move stuff from the flat to the house.
I had a strange run-in with one of the non-computing science students in the lab on Friday (this is a module taken by all science students, not just computing students). He turned up over an hour into a ninety minute lab session to see if he could just join the lab and carry on late. He and his friends get together for a regular game of football on a Friday so he would be late in future. That was okay, wasn't it? We could just come to some sort of arrangement for him to do the labs later, yeah? He was rather surprised when I told him that computing labs happen at the time advertised, not at any time convenient for him and no, he couldn't just join the lab now. The mind boggles. As it happens, these labs are done in groups or pairs so while I'll make space for students who might be ten minutes late it just isn't practical to have someone turn up half way through.
I've managed to do several more trips out to the house with a loaded car. I was originally planning to do two trips today but we're having a bit of a blizzard here so although I managed one trip this morning I decided against trying a second one in case the wind got up (it has). Still, that's the clothing moved. It's not exactly put away yet, as although there are sufficient drawers and wardrobes I didn't want to stay too long given the weather.
The wardrobes raised an interesting point: when I eventually have to but my own wardrobes at some point I'm going to have to be a little bit careful about making sure that they're long enough. The house has fitted wardrobes in the main bedroom and a stand-alone wardrobe in one of the other bedrooms. None of these are long enough for an evening gown. Or, for that matter, SCA garb. I suppose the shrinkage is because full-length gowns are no longer a part of the average female wardrobe. I may have to come up with some sort of creative solution to this as all of the assorted storage spaces are some twenty to thirty centimetres too short for my gowns. Even my non-SCA full-length evening dress (yes, I did being one with me just in case there was an embassy function that called for it).
The apartment is now beginning to look as if things are missing. I've yet to deal with the bookcases (most books will just go into the storeroom in boxes), needlework stuff and the kitchen but there are definitely signs of movement occurring. Tonight I'll start packing the latter two of those ready for a lunchtime run tomorrow.
Oh yes, and I've now finished my re-read of the Vorkosigan novels in preparation for the panel at Redemption. I'm pretty sure that I prefer the ImpSec/Dendarii ones to the Imperial Auditor ones. Unfortunately I don't think she's left many gaps to fill in the early sequence, and I've heard that the next one is another Imperial Auditor one. Still, lots of things for the panel to discuss.
5 comments
Thursday, January 15, 2009
C is for
...Geeks.
Actually it's for a particular subset of geeks, but you get the idea. It might also be for 'clouds of evaporating grey matter pouring out of the ears' if some of my students are anything to go by. :) The pure procedural nature of C has come as a bit of a shock to their object-oriented habits. And then there are the printf/scanf format definitions... ;->
Yes, I did the first of the C programming labs for the operating systems module yesterday, which was quite fun. From my point of view anyway, once we'd found a suitable IDE (which was part of the labwork - as everyone's using their own laptops rather than the crappy machines we have in the lab it made more sense to let them find something that worked on their individual systems).
I also managed to drop one set of my admin duties yesterday by giving up the vice-deanship. When I took it on it was on the understanding that when the new dean was appointed then if he was from a science background I would see through the handover period and step down in favour of someone from the business part of the faculty, thus maintaining a sense of balance at the management level. This I duly did. Business seemed rather surprised about this, perhaps because it doesn't seem common here for people to voluntarily give up such posts, more that the posts are pried from their cold dead fingers, as it were. From my point of view it means fewer migraine-inducing meetings in Icelandic and, given the huge amount of overtime I'm doing this semester, shouldn't affect my salary too much.
Fencing last night was a small group with a new arrival so I went into 'train the trainer' mode and had one of the local authorised fencers cover the basic stuff with our newcomer. I'm covering all of the bases on the job continuity front, shall we say; I don't want to leave the Shire with no-one who can teach other newcomers. This was good in another way, as we've now covered everything in the introductory manual and I'm going to have to decide which of the period manuals we're going to focus on in future. Sadly it's not going to be Carranza or Narvaez.
Today has been predominantly admin stuff. Have I told you all recently how much I hate paperwork? It was sufficiently off-putting and procrastination-inducing that I now have a rather tider desk than at 09:00 this morning. Still, at least it's been dealt with and I'm ready for tomorrow's lab. Which may provide some amusing photos by the time we've finished. I really must make sure that the camera is charged and that I take it in with me in the morning.
For now, though, I'm off to bed. Where I will try not to read Komarr until 01:00 again like I did last night.
0 comments
Actually it's for a particular subset of geeks, but you get the idea. It might also be for 'clouds of evaporating grey matter pouring out of the ears' if some of my students are anything to go by. :) The pure procedural nature of C has come as a bit of a shock to their object-oriented habits. And then there are the printf/scanf format definitions... ;->
Yes, I did the first of the C programming labs for the operating systems module yesterday, which was quite fun. From my point of view anyway, once we'd found a suitable IDE (which was part of the labwork - as everyone's using their own laptops rather than the crappy machines we have in the lab it made more sense to let them find something that worked on their individual systems).
I also managed to drop one set of my admin duties yesterday by giving up the vice-deanship. When I took it on it was on the understanding that when the new dean was appointed then if he was from a science background I would see through the handover period and step down in favour of someone from the business part of the faculty, thus maintaining a sense of balance at the management level. This I duly did. Business seemed rather surprised about this, perhaps because it doesn't seem common here for people to voluntarily give up such posts, more that the posts are pried from their cold dead fingers, as it were. From my point of view it means fewer migraine-inducing meetings in Icelandic and, given the huge amount of overtime I'm doing this semester, shouldn't affect my salary too much.
Fencing last night was a small group with a new arrival so I went into 'train the trainer' mode and had one of the local authorised fencers cover the basic stuff with our newcomer. I'm covering all of the bases on the job continuity front, shall we say; I don't want to leave the Shire with no-one who can teach other newcomers. This was good in another way, as we've now covered everything in the introductory manual and I'm going to have to decide which of the period manuals we're going to focus on in future. Sadly it's not going to be Carranza or Narvaez.
Today has been predominantly admin stuff. Have I told you all recently how much I hate paperwork? It was sufficiently off-putting and procrastination-inducing that I now have a rather tider desk than at 09:00 this morning. Still, at least it's been dealt with and I'm ready for tomorrow's lab. Which may provide some amusing photos by the time we've finished. I really must make sure that the camera is charged and that I take it in with me in the morning.
For now, though, I'm off to bed. Where I will try not to read Komarr until 01:00 again like I did last night.
0 comments
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Break out the sleighbells
Akureyri is looking very Christmas-card at present.
I dashed off down the valley with some stuff at lunch time today. There were one or two points when the sun caused problems (12:30 and the sun was just beginning to edge over the mountains to the south) but once you get out of direct sunlight the landscape is quite stunning. Not much in terms of trees, but those that are there have that card-perfect clumping of snow on their branches. I'll try to remember to take the camera next time and get some photos.
The lunchtime dash unveiled another interesting side of the kreppa as well. Just after Christmas I popped into PC World to pick something up for Dad and afterwards he gave me a cheque for it (being a traditional type). As I was in the vicinity of my bank I thought I'd drop it in. It turns out that they no longer handle personal cheques since the collapse. Which is a bit of a shame, although not a disaster.
I was in that part of town in search of fun and interesting resources for a lab on Friday (which I eventually found in Toys'R'Us instead) and to collect a parcel at the post office. Yes, my CD version of Traveller 5 had arrived. It's in pdf format so it will go onto my eReader. Okay, I know that's exceedingly sad, but I have all four previous editions (in both electronic and paper formats) and I will admit to a warm fuzzy feeling when reading it on my laptop. There was a definite surge of nostalgia on seeing some of the star system generation tables. And no, I didn't read the psionics section first... no, not me... must have been some other sad, lonely individual... I have, however, so far restrained from character generation. So far. :)
No, there is no hope for me.
0 comments
I dashed off down the valley with some stuff at lunch time today. There were one or two points when the sun caused problems (12:30 and the sun was just beginning to edge over the mountains to the south) but once you get out of direct sunlight the landscape is quite stunning. Not much in terms of trees, but those that are there have that card-perfect clumping of snow on their branches. I'll try to remember to take the camera next time and get some photos.
The lunchtime dash unveiled another interesting side of the kreppa as well. Just after Christmas I popped into PC World to pick something up for Dad and afterwards he gave me a cheque for it (being a traditional type). As I was in the vicinity of my bank I thought I'd drop it in. It turns out that they no longer handle personal cheques since the collapse. Which is a bit of a shame, although not a disaster.
I was in that part of town in search of fun and interesting resources for a lab on Friday (which I eventually found in Toys'R'Us instead) and to collect a parcel at the post office. Yes, my CD version of Traveller 5 had arrived. It's in pdf format so it will go onto my eReader. Okay, I know that's exceedingly sad, but I have all four previous editions (in both electronic and paper formats) and I will admit to a warm fuzzy feeling when reading it on my laptop. There was a definite surge of nostalgia on seeing some of the star system generation tables. And no, I didn't read the psionics section first... no, not me... must have been some other sad, lonely individual... I have, however, so far restrained from character generation. So far. :)
No, there is no hope for me.
0 comments
Monday, January 12, 2009
Another few inches
I'm glad I took the car out on Saturday.
If I hadn't it would have been rather more work digging it out of a foot of snow this morning. As it was, there were many inches to clear and the snow was above the bottom of the door. This is where it gets a little ridiculous.
Nevertheless, I got into work ready for the first lecture of the year. It was an operating systems one and I can see that this module is going to suffer from the same problem as computer architecture - working out how much I can fit in an individual lecture. I've just about managed to cover half of what I'd hoped. Perhaps I'm going to end up doing 3 lectures / 1 lab rather than 2 / 2 - which wouldn't be too bad as it would mean that I could stretch the C labs over almost the entire semester.
My throat wasn't too keen on lecturing and it took me three glasses of water to get through the session. It hasn't been happy all day since, so I'm hoping that it's not just going to give out on me entirely. That would be bad. Lots of strepsils and nice warm drinks are called for during the rest of the day.
The moving stuff isn't really happening yet. I'm going to try to take a couple of IKEA bags of stuff each lunchtime and see how far that gets me by the end of the week. If I can clear a reasonable amount of stuff by this weekend then I'll see about moving some of the furniture, but if all else fails I'll move it the weekend after. I could move over even before I move my bed as there's a spare bed I could use in the meantime, but I'm still somewhat unmotivated. Thank you, hormones.
I think this may call for some comfort chocolate and an episode of Angel. Or NCIS. Or something.
0 comments
If I hadn't it would have been rather more work digging it out of a foot of snow this morning. As it was, there were many inches to clear and the snow was above the bottom of the door. This is where it gets a little ridiculous.
Nevertheless, I got into work ready for the first lecture of the year. It was an operating systems one and I can see that this module is going to suffer from the same problem as computer architecture - working out how much I can fit in an individual lecture. I've just about managed to cover half of what I'd hoped. Perhaps I'm going to end up doing 3 lectures / 1 lab rather than 2 / 2 - which wouldn't be too bad as it would mean that I could stretch the C labs over almost the entire semester.
My throat wasn't too keen on lecturing and it took me three glasses of water to get through the session. It hasn't been happy all day since, so I'm hoping that it's not just going to give out on me entirely. That would be bad. Lots of strepsils and nice warm drinks are called for during the rest of the day.
The moving stuff isn't really happening yet. I'm going to try to take a couple of IKEA bags of stuff each lunchtime and see how far that gets me by the end of the week. If I can clear a reasonable amount of stuff by this weekend then I'll see about moving some of the furniture, but if all else fails I'll move it the weekend after. I could move over even before I move my bed as there's a spare bed I could use in the meantime, but I'm still somewhat unmotivated. Thank you, hormones.
I think this may call for some comfort chocolate and an episode of Angel. Or NCIS. Or something.
0 comments
Saturday, January 10, 2009
I've got the keys
I'm just back from a trip to the new house.
Armed with a bag of coats and some craft stuff I headed off through the snow the 19km down the valley to Skógarsel, where the keys were awaiting me. Of course, while yesterday had been absolutely clear, no snow anywhere to be seen below about 500m, overnight we got about 4 inches of the stuff, making the roads rather more slippery than usual, so the 20 minute drive was on the far side of 30 minutes, but that's no worse than a commute from St. Andrews to Dundee and I did that for three years. My other commutes have been much longer.
I had a wander around and thought about which room I want to use as a storeroom for the stuff I'm not planning to unpack, whether I want to use the master bedroom or one of the others, where I'm going to fit my few other bits of furniture, that sort of thing. I've installed the coats on coathooks (although some of them may go to the Red Cross in the near future as I never wear them) and the craft stuff in the craft room (yes, I have a whole room to dedicate to crafting!).
On the way back I paid a visit to Bónus, the cheap'n'cheerful supermarket. Interestingly enough, it has far fewer empty shelves than Netto, probably because Bónus is a store that focuses on basics, rather than on fancy foreign imports.
Now I'm going to start packing things. If the weather clears tomorrow I'll make another run out to the house, but otherwise I'll just get on with the organisational stuff.
4 comments
Armed with a bag of coats and some craft stuff I headed off through the snow the 19km down the valley to Skógarsel, where the keys were awaiting me. Of course, while yesterday had been absolutely clear, no snow anywhere to be seen below about 500m, overnight we got about 4 inches of the stuff, making the roads rather more slippery than usual, so the 20 minute drive was on the far side of 30 minutes, but that's no worse than a commute from St. Andrews to Dundee and I did that for three years. My other commutes have been much longer.
I had a wander around and thought about which room I want to use as a storeroom for the stuff I'm not planning to unpack, whether I want to use the master bedroom or one of the others, where I'm going to fit my few other bits of furniture, that sort of thing. I've installed the coats on coathooks (although some of them may go to the Red Cross in the near future as I never wear them) and the craft stuff in the craft room (yes, I have a whole room to dedicate to crafting!).
On the way back I paid a visit to Bónus, the cheap'n'cheerful supermarket. Interestingly enough, it has far fewer empty shelves than Netto, probably because Bónus is a store that focuses on basics, rather than on fancy foreign imports.
Now I'm going to start packing things. If the weather clears tomorrow I'll make another run out to the house, but otherwise I'll just get on with the organisational stuff.
4 comments
Friday, January 09, 2009
Back on the treadmill
I'm back at work.
Which has already led to a migraine and a curling up in a ball with a box of orange matchmakers. Tomorrow I have to start doing the serious packing to move and transport the first load over to the new house. I no more feel like moving than the man in the moon. :(
The economic situation here is steadily darkening. Unemployment has tripled in the last three months. Even in my rather small circle of friends and acquaintances I know two people who've been made redundant. I've found myself stocking up on things like cooking sauces because as foreign imports they're beginning to disappear from the shelves. The number of empty shelves in the supermarkets is growing.
I'm led to believe that the rural areas (i.e. everything outside the Reykjavík region) are handling the kreppa better than the capital. This is probably understandable as they've never really had all of the 'benefits' of the good life led by the Reykjavikingar. It has been interesting to see a couple of news articles recently looking at the origins of the kreppa and the responses to it. People are now describing Iceland as a 'Nordic Zimbabwe' for reasons more than the rampant inflation - in particular the political elite are now almost universally derided (except by their most fervent party supporters). Research papers are already being written on what went wrong.
*Sigh*
That was your latest 'State of the Rock' update. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I have worked out what is normal anyway.
0 comments
Which has already led to a migraine and a curling up in a ball with a box of orange matchmakers. Tomorrow I have to start doing the serious packing to move and transport the first load over to the new house. I no more feel like moving than the man in the moon. :(
The economic situation here is steadily darkening. Unemployment has tripled in the last three months. Even in my rather small circle of friends and acquaintances I know two people who've been made redundant. I've found myself stocking up on things like cooking sauces because as foreign imports they're beginning to disappear from the shelves. The number of empty shelves in the supermarkets is growing.
I'm led to believe that the rural areas (i.e. everything outside the Reykjavík region) are handling the kreppa better than the capital. This is probably understandable as they've never really had all of the 'benefits' of the good life led by the Reykjavikingar. It has been interesting to see a couple of news articles recently looking at the origins of the kreppa and the responses to it. People are now describing Iceland as a 'Nordic Zimbabwe' for reasons more than the rampant inflation - in particular the political elite are now almost universally derided (except by their most fervent party supporters). Research papers are already being written on what went wrong.
*Sigh*
That was your latest 'State of the Rock' update. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I have worked out what is normal anyway.
0 comments
Thursday, January 08, 2009
eReading with the Sony PRS-505
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I've recently acquired a Sony PRS-505 eReader.
I'm very impressed. It's slightly larger than a standard paperback book, although not so large as a trade paperback, and about 150 pages thick. I bought the extra case with built-in light so it's a little thicker than the original but it's certainly not a large and clunky machine.
Unfortunately it doesn't come with drivers for the Mac, but a quick google led me to Calibre, a cross-platform eLibrary management program which allowed me to convert some of my HTML format Bujold novels into bbeb files and upload them directly to the 505. Calibre itself is not entirely obvious, but once you've worked out what you're doing with it it's very good for converting almost any format into something that the 505 will read.
Ebooks uploaded, I then proceeded to spend chunks of the holiday period reading. The controls are pretty intuitive - I worked out both sets of page-turning buttons, the 'up one level' menu and the zoom button without any difficulty. There are two sets of page-turners, one placed on the right where your thumb naturally sits if you're holding the book two-handed, and the other at the bottom left for the one-handed reading position. Both are easy to reach and use.
I found it very easy to read. The screen isn't backlit so it's easy on the eyes, and the viewing angle is considerably wider than my previous eReader the Palm TX. The font seems to depend upon the document; I was reading in the smallest size text (there are 4 font sizes) and a serif font. The larger font sizes are very clear and can be read from quite a distance away. A little investigation of the more obscure settings pages provided a method for changing the display from portrait to landscape - necessary when using the larger text sizes in order to get a sensible number of words on the page.
You can bookmark pages for later use, although the 505 does automatically remember where you stopped reading, which is very useful. That's always been one of my favourite features of eBooks on the Palm, not having to worry about my bookmark falling out of the book.
One thing that took me by surprise was the slight delay upon turning the pages. I've been used to the Palm TX display changing immediately but the P505 has a perceptible delay while it updates the screen. I thought that this might annoy me but in fact it's strangely familiar; the refresh delay is comparable to the length of time it takes you to physically turn the pages of a paperback. Whether this is accidental or is in fact a clever piece of psychological trickery to make the reading experience more bookish I have no idea.
Although the out-of-the-box 505 comes with a plain cover I bought the alternative cover with built-in reading light. This is a nifty little thing, a plastic prism with an illuminated edge which fits into the reading screen and lights the text from above. I've used this quite a lot for reading in bed and it is extremely effective. This is powered by AAA batteries and has two light-level settings. I've no idea how long the batteries will last but I've certainly already done about 12 hours of lit reading and they're still going strong.
The batteries for the 505 itself are very slow to discharge. That's a huge improvement on the two and a half hours for the Palm. I haven't managed to discharge it fully yet (other than a Mac-related issue when I managed to use the 505 to recharge the MacBook overnight rather than doing it the other way around). It certainly has plenty of juice to do a day's travelling without even dropping to three-quarters charge. It manages this by only requiring power to turn the pages, not to refresh or display them.
I'd initially loaded it up with converted epubs, but the 505 can also handle pdfs. I tested this out with the Basic Armouring Manual, a pdf with plenty of graphics. Again there was no problem, monochrome line drawings showing up quite clearly. This takes longer to load and refresh than plain text but are zoomable to look at the detail.
There are a couple of things that are missing. First, and probably most important to me, is a search function. It could be done using the navigation buttons but would, I admit, be a little clunky to enter search terms. Adding a keyboard would take up too much real estate to be worthwhile. Secondly, I'd add a method to move through the tables of contents at more than one chapter at a time, as if you want to look at something in a late chapter then it requires a lot of button pressing to cycle through the chapters.
Overall I'm certainly impressed. It's idea for me, given the amount of travel I do the prospect of being able to stick it in my bag ready to read no matter what the lighting conditions. There's also the financial issue; books here are ludicrously expensive and the range is limited. Although it's not possible to get all new releases as eBooks it's still a lot cheaper and more convenient that ordering them from Amazon and paying all of the import duties. The 505 should take about 160 books on its internal memory but it can also take SD cards to extend that. Not that even I need to carry that many books with me, although I can certainly see its appeal as a reference library. So far, though, I have resisted the urge to put my recently-acquired electronic copy of Kernighan & Ritchie upon it.
What I'd love to see, of course, is bookshops like Waterstones having an eBook point in their stores where you can go in and buy books for immediate download - either straight into your reader there and then or possibly onto individual data cards. It would be wonderful to be able to wander in, browse and buy the latest releases and then go and start reading it in the in-store coffee shop. I wonder how long it'll take them to start doing that?
11 comments
I'm very impressed. It's slightly larger than a standard paperback book, although not so large as a trade paperback, and about 150 pages thick. I bought the extra case with built-in light so it's a little thicker than the original but it's certainly not a large and clunky machine.
Unfortunately it doesn't come with drivers for the Mac, but a quick google led me to Calibre, a cross-platform eLibrary management program which allowed me to convert some of my HTML format Bujold novels into bbeb files and upload them directly to the 505. Calibre itself is not entirely obvious, but once you've worked out what you're doing with it it's very good for converting almost any format into something that the 505 will read.
Ebooks uploaded, I then proceeded to spend chunks of the holiday period reading. The controls are pretty intuitive - I worked out both sets of page-turning buttons, the 'up one level' menu and the zoom button without any difficulty. There are two sets of page-turners, one placed on the right where your thumb naturally sits if you're holding the book two-handed, and the other at the bottom left for the one-handed reading position. Both are easy to reach and use.
I found it very easy to read. The screen isn't backlit so it's easy on the eyes, and the viewing angle is considerably wider than my previous eReader the Palm TX. The font seems to depend upon the document; I was reading in the smallest size text (there are 4 font sizes) and a serif font. The larger font sizes are very clear and can be read from quite a distance away. A little investigation of the more obscure settings pages provided a method for changing the display from portrait to landscape - necessary when using the larger text sizes in order to get a sensible number of words on the page.
You can bookmark pages for later use, although the 505 does automatically remember where you stopped reading, which is very useful. That's always been one of my favourite features of eBooks on the Palm, not having to worry about my bookmark falling out of the book.
One thing that took me by surprise was the slight delay upon turning the pages. I've been used to the Palm TX display changing immediately but the P505 has a perceptible delay while it updates the screen. I thought that this might annoy me but in fact it's strangely familiar; the refresh delay is comparable to the length of time it takes you to physically turn the pages of a paperback. Whether this is accidental or is in fact a clever piece of psychological trickery to make the reading experience more bookish I have no idea.
Although the out-of-the-box 505 comes with a plain cover I bought the alternative cover with built-in reading light. This is a nifty little thing, a plastic prism with an illuminated edge which fits into the reading screen and lights the text from above. I've used this quite a lot for reading in bed and it is extremely effective. This is powered by AAA batteries and has two light-level settings. I've no idea how long the batteries will last but I've certainly already done about 12 hours of lit reading and they're still going strong.
The batteries for the 505 itself are very slow to discharge. That's a huge improvement on the two and a half hours for the Palm. I haven't managed to discharge it fully yet (other than a Mac-related issue when I managed to use the 505 to recharge the MacBook overnight rather than doing it the other way around). It certainly has plenty of juice to do a day's travelling without even dropping to three-quarters charge. It manages this by only requiring power to turn the pages, not to refresh or display them.
I'd initially loaded it up with converted epubs, but the 505 can also handle pdfs. I tested this out with the Basic Armouring Manual, a pdf with plenty of graphics. Again there was no problem, monochrome line drawings showing up quite clearly. This takes longer to load and refresh than plain text but are zoomable to look at the detail.
There are a couple of things that are missing. First, and probably most important to me, is a search function. It could be done using the navigation buttons but would, I admit, be a little clunky to enter search terms. Adding a keyboard would take up too much real estate to be worthwhile. Secondly, I'd add a method to move through the tables of contents at more than one chapter at a time, as if you want to look at something in a late chapter then it requires a lot of button pressing to cycle through the chapters.
Overall I'm certainly impressed. It's idea for me, given the amount of travel I do the prospect of being able to stick it in my bag ready to read no matter what the lighting conditions. There's also the financial issue; books here are ludicrously expensive and the range is limited. Although it's not possible to get all new releases as eBooks it's still a lot cheaper and more convenient that ordering them from Amazon and paying all of the import duties. The 505 should take about 160 books on its internal memory but it can also take SD cards to extend that. Not that even I need to carry that many books with me, although I can certainly see its appeal as a reference library. So far, though, I have resisted the urge to put my recently-acquired electronic copy of Kernighan & Ritchie upon it.
What I'd love to see, of course, is bookshops like Waterstones having an eBook point in their stores where you can go in and buy books for immediate download - either straight into your reader there and then or possibly onto individual data cards. It would be wonderful to be able to wander in, browse and buy the latest releases and then go and start reading it in the in-store coffee shop. I wonder how long it'll take them to start doing that?
11 comments
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Back on the sofa
I got back to Akureyri late this afternoon.
Nice as it was to see folks over the holiday, it was a rather busy two weeks, with a lot of driving and not a lot of me-time, so there is a certain pleasure in being back here. I'm not going into work until Thursday so that I can have a day to reset myself into work mode.
Having an extra day is probably a good thing for other reasons - on Sunday I felt my throat begin to turn to glasspaper, and even now the process of swallowing is quite painful. I do seem to be coming down with a lot of these chest and throat infections recently; I have a suspicion that the recent stresses have fragged my immune system, leaving me fair game for any bugs going. Fortunately there were few people on the flight last night (it was less than a third full) so I'm hoping that I haven't picked anything up from that one.
As I type this, someone over to the western side of town is letting off huge numbers of fireworks. They've been at it, off and on, for two hours already. I hate to think how much it must be costing. Before Christmas I read that the Chinese supplier of the tons of fireworks set off by Icelanders over the new year had agreed to defer payment until later in 2009 so as to prevent a miserable new year. If the local light and noise is in any way indicative of the number of fireworks set off then that's going to be another huge foreign debt.
While I was at Manchester airport yesterday I asked, out of curiosity, what the exchange rate was for Icelandic krona. About 160, it seemed, but it's been near-impossible to get krona outside Iceland since the collapse as the banks won't touch it. Yahoo Finance gives a current rate of 336 to the pound. Ouch. I suspect that the IMF loan has been supporting my Christmas break so that I only needed to pay 180 instead of 340.
I'm off to relax. Although yesterday's travel was relatively low in stress it was still 02:00 before I got to the hotel. I see a long sleep approaching.
0 comments
Nice as it was to see folks over the holiday, it was a rather busy two weeks, with a lot of driving and not a lot of me-time, so there is a certain pleasure in being back here. I'm not going into work until Thursday so that I can have a day to reset myself into work mode.
Having an extra day is probably a good thing for other reasons - on Sunday I felt my throat begin to turn to glasspaper, and even now the process of swallowing is quite painful. I do seem to be coming down with a lot of these chest and throat infections recently; I have a suspicion that the recent stresses have fragged my immune system, leaving me fair game for any bugs going. Fortunately there were few people on the flight last night (it was less than a third full) so I'm hoping that I haven't picked anything up from that one.
As I type this, someone over to the western side of town is letting off huge numbers of fireworks. They've been at it, off and on, for two hours already. I hate to think how much it must be costing. Before Christmas I read that the Chinese supplier of the tons of fireworks set off by Icelanders over the new year had agreed to defer payment until later in 2009 so as to prevent a miserable new year. If the local light and noise is in any way indicative of the number of fireworks set off then that's going to be another huge foreign debt.
While I was at Manchester airport yesterday I asked, out of curiosity, what the exchange rate was for Icelandic krona. About 160, it seemed, but it's been near-impossible to get krona outside Iceland since the collapse as the banks won't touch it. Yahoo Finance gives a current rate of 336 to the pound. Ouch. I suspect that the IMF loan has been supporting my Christmas break so that I only needed to pay 180 instead of 340.
I'm off to relax. Although yesterday's travel was relatively low in stress it was still 02:00 before I got to the hotel. I see a long sleep approaching.
0 comments
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Tech support
I'm currently sitting in a motorway service station south of Birmingham awaiting the arrival of a KFC meal. I'm here because they have broadband, while P's venerable old Windows 98 machine only does dial-up, making it a little difficult for me to set up her new Vista laptop (no phone socket).
I've just spoken to Dad on the phone - tomorrow I'm up to Liverpool to set up his new laptop too - and it turns out that his broadband is non-functional due to a faulty phone line.
It's clearly not my year for tech support. Already. :)
Sent með Blackberry frá Vodafone
0 comments
I've just spoken to Dad on the phone - tomorrow I'm up to Liverpool to set up his new laptop too - and it turns out that his broadband is non-functional due to a faulty phone line.
It's clearly not my year for tech support. Already. :)
Sent með Blackberry frá Vodafone
0 comments