Monthly archives: March 2002

This entry was posted in Alcohol on by

Another lost weekend, but this one’s down to video games and apathy more than alcohol. Truth be told, I’m a little pissed off with myself. There’s so much I want to do, and I just don’t. Or if I do something, I won’t be able to fully enjoy it because I’ll be thinking about the things I should have been doing instead. AAAAAAGH!

Friday’s, Saturday’s and today’s pics are finally up, and you’ll notice a bit of Spring cleaning has been done.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

I had an interview today. I have a horrible feeling it didn’t go well. I never really learnt the correct terminology and, when presented with it I ummed and ermed about stuff I’ve been doing for ages. Hey ho. If this one falls through I know to digest a VBA manual before the next one.
Yesterday’s pic, and Today’s.
On the digital camera from, Morgan are advertising an SLR body style one so you can chop and change proper lenses. It’s a way out of my price range, and I don’t know how good or bad it really is yet.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

I have today’s picture, honest, I just haven’t scanned it in yet.

I’ve worked out that, at one aps and one 35mm film per fortnight’s worth of pictures, it’ll be cheaper in the long run for me to buy a digital camera. The initial outlay would soon be written off against savings in developing costs, though I’d still be running around with one of my old school cameras when I didn’t want to risk the new one.

This entry was posted in Jesus on by

Picture of the day.

Slightly drunk (and on a school night too!)

I�m_Sorry_Dave:

Paul�s new CD writer had arrived. Sarah had hardly put down the phone after telling him, and he was already at her desk. �Where is it? Where is it?�

�Jesus. Are you like this at Christmas.�

�I only get socks at Christmas. It�s no fun any more.�

�Here. It�s there.�

Paul examined the beige box he had coveted for so long. He frowned.

�What?�

�I don�t have a normal CD drive. What am I going to put the installation disks in?�

�The software�s on the network. In the PC Build drive. Here.� Sarah started down a tree of folders and directories at a speed which would lose most others.

Something beeped. Paul checked his phone. No. �You�ve got mail.�

�HAL�ll deal with it.�

�HAL?�

Sarah glanced over at her PC. �Honest Answers Language. I couldn�t think of a better way to get the name.�

�Huh?�

�I built a program which takes e-mails and answers them. It checks the sender�s name against a database of outstanding work and tells them what�s going on with their request.�

�You can do that? I haven�t even got beyond auto-reply.�

�I�m sure some people don�t even know they�re not getting it from me. I check the mails, but mostly HAL�s answered the question for them. Saves so much work.�

�Can I steal it?� Paul was hugging the CD writer to his chest like a long-lost teddy bear.

�Maybe. If you�re nice to me.�

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

Today’s Pic.
Having spent a day driving through some truly beautiful and spectacular Lancashire countryside, I’m off on one. I wanna find a lovely place to work or live-
Antiques shop. I don’t know, I see myslelf as more Acorn Antiques than Lovejoy, so probably not.
Converted windmill. MAybe. But I’d always be thinking of Trumpton. And all those damn Spaniards charging at it could get annoying.
How does a single storey property get to be imposing.
And finally, I think I’ve found it.

This entry was posted in buttocks on by

Some how, I managed not to FTP today’s pic along with all the others, so it was a little embarrassing when I pointed the previous post at it, even if only temporarily.

I’ve now been told what I was raving about on Friday night. Apparently I was obsessing about the fine buttocks of a girl I used to know who went by the name of Fraggle.

Boy, was I drunk. I mean, they were nice, but I’ve never admitted that to anyone before.

This entry was posted in Blogger on by

Blogger was having issues yesterday, here’s the pic.

The Eliza Effect is going to start jumping around the plot soon, as I write scenes as and when I think of them.

Lacking inspiration, and in an effort to find out how and why I was shafted last year, I’m thinking of playing the Data Protection card on my old department to see what they release to me. I expect to see lots of e-mails asking why I couldn’t be in two places at once, doing the impossible before it was requested.

Bitter? Me?

You bet.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

Lost weekend. I got embarrassingly drunk on Friday and have been suffering for it ever since. Be warned, iced alcoholic drinks sneak up on you and before you know it you’re sat in a corner of the kitchen being video’d having an unspecified rant (probably about how much I hate the real PHBitch, see below.)

I’m also late with the pictures- Friday’s, Saturday’s and today’s.

PHBitch:

George took everyone into a meeting room to tell them he was leaving. They weren�t as ecstatically happy for him as he�d expected.

Paul was studying the floor. A little plastic trapdoor in front of him would flip open to reveal power sockets and network connections. He pushed at it with his shoe, trying to flip up the finger holds. �Of course, someone will have to replace me and I�m pleased to announce that Marie Daley,� Paul�s head shot back up, �will be taking over my post.� Sarah caught Paul�s movement and studied his face. He had gone a shade of red. Beyond him, Mike was shaking his head, somewhere between resignation and despair.

Sarah made up a reason to visit the office. After dropping off the reference book, she casually asked, �So who is this Marie Daley then? I haven�t met her yet.�

�You don�t want to know.� Paul assured her.

�I do. I�ll have to work for her. Tell me what not to do.�

�She�s the Bitch Queen. Don�t disagree with her.� Mike advised, �Even if she�s disastrously wrong.�

�Particularly if she�s disastrously wrong. She gets nastier when she knows you�re right.�

Sarah sat on the desk beside Paul�s PC. �How much nastier.�

�I once made a system change, a minor one at that, which saves the company about a hundred grand a year in manpower and recovery fees. And she spent half an hour screaming at me because it changed the number of pages in her weekly report.�

<flashback>

Paul checked the pages again. Eight, down from twenty the last time he had run the report. He left them on the desk, looked at the arrangement and moved them slightly to the left, just to make them that little bit more obvious. Happy, he nodded and returned to the office.

�What did she think?�

�She wasn�t there. I left it on her desk.�

�Not hanging around to bathe in the glory?�

�I�ll bathe later. It�s time to surf.�

Paul got to the phone on the fourth ring, �Hello.�

�Come out here now.�

�Okay.� He shrugged as he put the phone down. �She sounded pissed off.�

�Why would she be pissed off.�

�Maybe�. No, I can�t think of a reason.�

She held up the report as he approached her desk. �This is wrong!�

�No it�s not, I checked.�

�This is wrong.�

Perhaps he had been a little abrupt, it was time to try reconciliation. �How is it wrong?�

She picked up another report from the desk. The same layout, but noticeably thicker. �It doesn�t match this. This is the one you printed out on Friday.�

�Ah.� Now he knew where he stood. It was time to take the credit and get his kudos, �I improved on it. Some of the returns were coming through labelled differently. I fixed it so it re-labels them properly and the search can�..� He wasn�t getting through. She didn�t have a face made for pleasant expressions and was using it to full effect.

�Why didn�t you do it on Friday?�

�I didn�t know how to do it on Friday. I just fixed it yesterday. But now it�ll save a load of time every week.�

�Alex was supposed to come in and do all this manually over the weekend and you�re telling me that all that work would have been wasted?�

Paul was having problems joining the dots. He had nearly cost The Company a little money, but he had definitely saved it lots of money. �This makes his job easier when he does turn up. And it finds more returns than he ever could in the time he�s got.�

For a moment there was a hint of understanding. �Well you�ve wasted my time.� This was true, she had spent minutes looking at the reports and counting the different number of pages. �I want you to apologise.�

�What for?�

�For this.� She waved the old report at him.

�You want me to apologise for making things work better and saving the company loads of money?�

�I�… If Alex had come in we�d have had to pay him, and now you�re telling me you can do all that automatically. Why didn�t you tell me you could do that when you printed out the report on Friday?�

And so it went on.

</flashback>

Sarah shook her head. Of course, the tale was skewed by self interest, but it sounded just wrong enough to be true. �So what happened?�

�I stood there listening to this shit for half an hour, not really understanding what I�d done wrong. Then for the rest of the day people kept coming into the office and telling me what a bitch she was. That bit was quite satisfying.�

This entry was posted in racism on by

Today’s pic.
Okay, I have a confession. Whilst surfing around yestserday I downloaded Mein Kampf. I haven’t started to read it yet, but I’m not expecting it to be pleasant.
It’s partly fascination, partly the sort of thing Hatewatch (currently down) was trying to achieve- know your enemy/ let the idiots speak and hang themselves. I tried reading the Turner Diaries a while ago, and got as far as chapter three. It’s bland and pedestrian and, though the nastiness is kept under control in an attempt to keep the less radical reading, takes it as read that anyone who isn’t a white racist should be killed.
On a lighter note, I’ve decided, as I was telling my father last night, that I’ll probably be an overnight success in 2006. So I’d best start working on it now.

This entry was posted in Bogle on by

Today’s pic.

I didn’t take many pictures of Bogle, but I’m sure at least one will make an appearance here next week.

I’m thinking about putting more graphics on the front page, it is a bit…. sparse isn’t it?

In the meantime, another little bit of The Eliza Effect-

Fake_It_�Til_You_Make_It:

George sat across the desk from Sharon Walker, hoping the sweat wasn�t soaking through his shirt�s armpits. She looked at the diagram, not really understanding it, but looking like it impressed her. Then she read George�s overview, which said less than the technical description, but managed to do it with far longer words. George tipped his coffee cup, to glance down into it surreptitiously. There was a large drop of black liquid in the bottom.

The silence had lasted too long. �Of course,� George offered, �when they came to me they only had half an idea. I gave them some input and told them to go ahead with it.�

<flashback>

George flicked through the forms on the screen. Mike and Paul were trying psychic suggestion to get him to hurry up. Finally, he delivered his opinion, �Fewer of those silly icons you keep using, okay. And I don�t want this interfering with your real work.� He closed the database and went back to the Sheffield United web-site to show he was finished with them.

</flashback>

Walker glanced up at George, just enough acknowledgement to encourage further comments. �And then, when people started to show an interest, I just let them sell it.�

<flashback>

Paul had taken point, hovering around George�s desk to intercept him the moment he came through the door. Out in the open-plan, Mike and a tall, grey haired man were watching a monitor over the head of one of the more photogenic users. All that was needed was another five minutes or so.

The door opened. George. He straightened, checked his posture, wiped his tie flat and strode across the room as carefully as possible. Thursdays were his liquid lunch day with the boys from marketing. He was desperately trying to schmooze his way into a position with them. Paul checked the open plan. The grey head was bobbing, the back was stiffening. Any moment now he would ask a question.

�Who�s that with Mike?� Paul shrugged, but George provided his own answer, �Shit, that�s Bill Walsh.�

�Who?�

George was dumbfounded for a moment. �He�s the head of sales!�

�Oh. I hope Mike doesn�t say anything embarrassing then.�

�He�.. What�s he doing?�

�We thought he might be interested in the stock control system.�

�He�s not meant to see�.. I was going to show him that.� George adjusted his tie again, shrugged his jacket into a sharper position and strode into the open plan.

�I bet you were.� Paul headed back to the office.

</flashback>

Walker laid down the paper, then slid it toward the pile she had been accumulating all day. �You put all this effort into the project, and yet, I see you applied for a job with Marketing.�

�I�. Erm, well�. You�ve got to keep your options open. You know.�

�Oh yes, yes, I know. You�re a very ambitious person. That�s to be applauded. Which direction would you really like to take?�

�Well. It�s. You know.� George had pinned the end of his tie to the desk with a finger and was gently stroking it with his thumb.

�I know some people in Marketing. I could put in a good word for you.�

�Umm�.. Thanks.�

Walker smiled at George. �I�ll get back to you about this.�

This entry was posted in Bogle on by

I hurt a bit. It was Bogle yesterday and the weather was, if anything, worse on all those days I wimped out of training rides- snow, sleet, hail and gusts of wind which brought me to a standstill or shifted me a foot or two to the side. I managed three loops- 78 miles. On a better day, I think I’d have managed three and a half. Stats- at the end of the first loop (just under the claimed 26 miles) my average speed was a respectable 12.9 miles per hour, by the second run it was down to 12.5 and on the third- which perversely had the worst weather of the day on the first half and the best on the second- I was down to 11.9 mph overall. The wierdest thing is that this is better than my average for the one loop which I did as a training ride in far better weather a month or so ago.

Yesterday’s pic. And today’s.