Just extracted this from the just-released minutes of our last staff meeting. It’s from a section about what tasks are assigned to whom:
Dan:
How very right.
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
In this era of pro-Linux and pro-Windows hoo-hah, it’s good to see an article who’s writer really has his head screwed on: Common OS Myths Debunked is a wonderful piece; go read it.
Linux is not the answer!
Windows is not the answer either!
Don’t even get me started on MacOS…
Operating…
Typhoid in my left arm. Hepatitis A in my right arm, and a heap of Malaria tablets to boot. Decided that the best way to get this lot into my bloodstream as fast as possible was a quick sprint around Aberystwyth. Now I feel slightly dizzy and nauseous. Lovely.
On the up-side, I didn’t have to pay for any of this medication. Today was the last day that the surgery I attend isn’t charging for those which are considered ‘holiday medication’.
Feeling a little more woozy now. Think I’ll dance for a bit to make sure it’s worked it’s way into my system properly (better to make myself hideously sick for a day than ill for a week, I say), then take a rest.
Hooray for pathogens!
WTF??? If you go to Symantec’s Online Virus Scanner using most browsers, you’ll be told that you need to use Microsoft Internet Explorer to continue! Isn’t this just asking for trouble? It’s like saying, “Yes, we’ll check your house is secure. Now just unlock your door…”
Just plain weird.
Yes, the the rumours you’ve heard are true – The Flat has been rearranged. In a mighty effort (and with the help of Claire, Paul and Bryn), we’ve pretty much ‘mirrored’ the room widthways. This change provides several benefits:
[damaged post partially recovered on multiple occasions]
The Register are running an article about the new UK ID card, and what it all means. They’re always a great source of information on such things, if slightly cynical… and this document is no exception. Go read it. Then throw rocks at Mr. Blunkett. <grin>
Last night’s dream
Claire was complaining at me because I’d bought online driving lessons, which she considered to be significantly worse value for money than ‘traditional’ ones. I argued that I didn’t
actually want the lessons, but they were only 10p each and I only had 20p pieces and I needed 10p pieces, so I bought them so as to have them give me 10p pieces in change.
After I was woken by the alarm and hit the snooze button…
This morning’s dream
I wake up on Ynyslas beach, and (despite wondering how I got there) decide that I ought to go to work, so I start trekking South towards Borth. Alex, a coworker, overtook me, driving
his old car (he replaced it a few months ago).
Monday night’s dream
Somewhat reminiscent of Far Cry (a first-person shooter I’ve been playing too much of recently), I was armed to the teeth and shooting heaps of mercenaries. As time went on, I began to
have a conflict of morals, and began wondering who was the ‘bad guy’ – me, or them. Then, perhaps to prove it, I raped one of the hostages I was supposed to be rescuing. Hmm.
I still can’t get my online bank working. Too close to the deadline to be at this stage. Shit! Shit! Shit!…
I woke up this morning to two mysteries:
1. Why had I set my alarm for 8:30am?
2. Why do I have a nose bleed?
I’ve solved the former: Claire needs to move her car (which is parked on double-yellows outside) or she’ll get ticketed when the morning wardens come by (morning wardens? they’re like traffic wardens, but they put tickets on people who still look half-asleep). The latter? No idea.
Yay; we’re off to the Borth Animalarium today, to look at meerkats! Followed by Troma Night!
My ‘Online Bank’ project isn’t going very well. So far it allows you to add Books to a Cart and get the total cost of them all. Which isn’t terribly useful, because that sounds more like a bookstore to me than an online bank… but I couldn’t find an example online about how to use EJBs to make an online bank, just a bookstore. D’oh.
Feel like taking part in a sponsored masturbatathon? The internet remains a strange and wonderful place, as this form [PDF] indicates. Go take a look.
Have you seen AQA (All Questions Answered), a new online/SMS service? The idea is that you text message a question to 63336 (only on O2, Vodafone, and Orange, right now: costs £1) and their server uses a clever combination of intelligent algorithms, data mining, and human researchers to provide you with an answer.
They’re working on the policy of ‘All Questions Answered’. It could make the Scholars pub quiz a little easier. =o)
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[on 13 October 2018, I was able to confirm that only the image is now missing]
[chez geek card]
The problem with long deadlines is they creep up ever so quickly.
This weekend, I’ll be learning JBoss, Ant, and JUnit, and then writing an an online bank program. Eep.
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[more of this post was recovered on Friday 24 November 2017]
This is just plain weird. How to perform a fecalectomy on a keyring.
I’ve got some damn cool new board games, including the second best one in the world, and another one in the top 100, according to the voters on BoardGameGeek. Paul, Claire and I played Hacker from Steve Jackson Games (the people behind Chez Geek and the inspiration for all those weird cards I’ve been posting to my blog). Later, Bryn, Paul, Claire and I played Carcassonne, a clever tile-laying game, and tonight, Claire and I played Tigres & Euphrates, another tile game. I’m rediscovering my love of board games, and slowly forcing it upon others as well. Bryn bought a copy of Risk, and Claire’s spent forever cutting all of the little pieces out…
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
I handed in my dissertation yesterday. What a farce. Here’s the approximate order of things.
08:30 – Get up. Compile a postscript (.ps) copy of my dissertation, and upload both this and the .tex source files to central.aber.ac.uk. Start walking up to campus (Bryn offers to give me a lift, but I feel energetic, so I bound on up the hill).
09:00 – Reach campus and pay for £5 of printer credit (100 pages). Find a workstation room, log into central, and lpr -Puserarea diss-final.ps (print) it. Marvellous. Pick
up the printout.
09:15 – Drop my (printed) dissertation off at the Library to be hardback bound. Everything’s going splendidly. Trek back down town. The hand-in window is 14:00-16:00, so I’ve got loads of time.
13:30 – Arrive back on campus, this time with two CDs (containing the source code and sample data for the project). I buy sticky things from the Union with which to attach them to the inside cover of my dissertation, and then trek to the Library to pick up the masterpiece.
13:45 – Hmm. The binding office seems to be closed. Guess they’re on lunch. I go to return a library book from the Physical Sciences Library, …
Update, 11 January 2020: As the tail-end of this post appears to be lost forever, I’ll fill in the essence of it from memory: after a leisurely morning/early afternoon of getting my dissertation printed and bound for delivery, well-ahead of the deadline later in the day and thus avoiding the mad rush for the printers and binders later in the day, I arrived at the hand-in point only to be told I was supposed to be handing over two copies, not one, and so I ended up caught up in the mad rush I’d been smugly avoiding after all.