Transparent Time

We are having a transparency audit at work at the moment. This is all to do with working out how much time we spend doing our various tasks. I'm kind of finding it interesting:

"I did that in one hour, so I'll put down how long a mortal would take to do it."

"Phew. That was really difficult. I'll put down six hours for that."

So far this week I have worked seventy three hours.

And the beauty is that unless my boss figures out who is anonymous respondant QX1472J they'll never catch me....

Not Well Endowed

Today we got a cheery letter from our endowment people. This is because, around 20 years ago, we were young and innocent (read that as stupid) enough to take out an endowment mortgage. At the time the oily salesman explained that this was a sure fire way to both pay for our little terraced two up and two down and also set aside a nice little nest egg for our retirement. What he did not happen to mention was that it was the financial equivalent of picking up all our money and tottering into a casino to place it all on black. Of course we did not care. All we saw as a way to get into our first house. So we signed up.

I was kind of hoping that since this policy (the first of three such policies- but let's not go there folks) had been going for a long time and would therefore pay out the required amount. But no such luck. And because of some chicanery (I can think of no other word) by the endowment supplier, we appear not to be eligible for any compensation. Ho hum. Perhaps the yacht will have to wait. I'd love to work in a field where:

1. People give you pots of money.
2. You keep some and go off and gamble with the rest.
3. When you lose the lot you can go and ask them for some more cash and explain that it was not your fault.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Freezer of the Rings

Some time back we lost the key to the patio door. We had three when it was installed. And they all vanished. This was particularly vexing for me because, being a far sighted person, I had carefully put one of every important key on to a master ring (one ring to bind them all I suppose). Unfortunately, as an idiotic person, I then promptly lost this hugely important collection of pieces of bent metal. I had this idea that somewhere in a cave some hideous, twisted, creature was going "I wonder what this opens my preciousssssss?". But the truth is far stranger than that.

Today, for the first time in ages, we cleaned out the freezer in the garage. For various reasons (the main one being idleness I suppose) this has not been done for some time. In fact, since well before we lost the keys to the patio door. And you will never guess what we found nestling at the bottom beneath a pizza box.

Oh yes, perfectly preserved - but jolly cold - we found the missing keys. Unfortunately, the patio door ones are now somewhat useless as we had the lock smashed off just so we could open the darned thing. The prevailing theory is that I wandered out into the garage to get something from ye freezer. This meant opening the garage door, which meant keys which meant.....

Oh well.

Subversive Presents

Got to go out and buy some presents today. I'm not that keen on buying presents. If I am going to spend large sums of money on desirable items I want them to be for me. Not someone who won't appreciate them as much as I would . But then again chosing them is sometimes fun. I quite like to get really silly and subversive presents. One little feller of our aquaintance is going to get a set of tubs of things like "ultra sticky bogies" and "an eyeball in slime". His mum is going to love me.....

Takeaway Friday

We are falling into a routine of always having a takeaway on Friday. We even have it delivered sometimes now, to show that we are truly decadent. But today I went and fetched it because I believe it is the role of the man to provide food for his family. And I'm too mean to pay delivery and a tip.

There are a lot of food outlets in Cottingham, where we live. Lots. This is probably because of the number of students that live around here. We have just about every cuisine you can think of. In one part of town if you swung a particularly large cat you could hit a pizza joint, Chinese takeaway, Indian takeaway, Indian restaurant and chip shop (oh and a hairdresser, but they'll make you a cup of coffee if you ask nicely). Of course you would instantly be arrested and charged with swinging a large cat in a built up area after midnight (well - you wouldn't want to do it during daylight would you) but you get the picture.

Best Laid Plans

Some time ago I forgot my packed lunch. This is bad for two reasons, I get really hungry at lunchtime and then I don't feel like two meals when I get home from work. I now have a master plan where I put my lunch bag on my shoes so that it is impossible to leave the house without it.

Until today. I've discovered that if I lose that Zen like concentration that I must maintain between putting my shoes on and leaving the house I can actually contrive to leave the lunch at home.

This morning you may have spotted a wild eyed bloke in a red car at the traffic lights in Cottingham who suddenly uttered a very naughty word, followed by another bunch of naughty words, after frantically looking around inside his car. Oh well. I went home for lunch and ate my packup in the kitchen.

Brand Awareness

There was a telly programme on Sunday about how brand aware children are these days and how intensive advertising is driving younger and younger kids into the arms of the evil corporations. Apparently even five year olds can spot brands like MacDonalds, Nike, and Pizza Hut. But they have not reached Gucci yet. I suppose it is just a matter of time.

Of course, as one of the more clued up members of society I'm not susceptible to this kind of brainwashing I thought to myself as I stretched out on my Ikea sofa drinking a Budwieser beer and watching my Sky+ box via my Sony telly. Oh no.

Half a Life

Last week I got another video game. (there is nothing new about this - I've been known to buy a few in my time). This one is Half Life 2. I was a bit peeved by this game to start with. After being given whispered instructions to "meet me in the plaza" by an undercover chum in a fake police uniform I then spent ages in the place waiting for him to turn up. I wandered round, got whacked by the secret police, put some litter into bins and generally thought how lifelike the game is, having been stood up in real life as well.

When they had stopped laughing, my gameplaying friends told me that I had to find the ally, climb the ladder, jump off the fire escape and then make my way to another meeting point. Where I would be set upon and shot at by more secret police. Simple. Having got over this minor hiccup I am now going great guns. Quite literally. The air of realism is very impressive, the only problem being the loading screens.

Imagine that you are being chased down a corridor, bullets thudding into the woodwork around you as you sprint towards the only route out. Then your world freezes for three minutes whilst the environment outside the door is loaded in and made pretty. No fun. And then it starts working when you've nipped to the toilet during the loading and you get shot in the back and have to start again. Even less fun.

Braun Beats Brain

My razor is broken. Not so that it doesn't work, more that it works when it shouldn't. I finished shaving with it and turned it off. But it didn't hear me and just kept shaving. Ten minues later, when I really had no hair left on my face and was getting a little worried about what to do next I managed to pull the plug out and stop it.

I think the switch may be broken. On is on and off is on too. Except when I bash it. I now leave it unplugged so that it doesn't wake up when we are out and shave the carpet.

I'm tempted to take it to bits and try and fix it. That way I can buy a new one when I can't put it back together again.

Canon Power

Came into some money today. Did what I usually do in the circumstances - shot of up town and spent most of it on a gadget. But what a gadget. When I was younger, and even more handsome, I had a Single Lens Relex camera. These are great to use because you view the scene through the lens which is used to take the photograph. This means that you see exactly what the film sees and can use some nice camera trickery to make the results something special.

When I moved over to digital I had to forgo this because there was no such thing as a digital SLR. Then they were introduced, but at a price a mortal like me could not afford. But today I managed to afford one. They are giving me a free memory card and 100 pounds cash back. How could I resist. I got a Canon one, the EOS 300D if you really want to know. And it is like coming home. Only better. The SLR I bought around 30 years ago was very simple and manual. Select ths shutter speed, line up two needles, focus and shoot. This camera has lots of modes, buttons options and all sorts - as well as the all important manual mode. And you can see just what you have taken. This will really unlock my potential as a creative photographer. Or let me take bad pictures in an even more expensive way. I'll post some of the results when I get some worth posting....

Coming on Stong

I was wondering if I've not been a bit harsh on "Strictly Come Dancing". After all, the actual effort involved in doing it properly is quite high, unlike things like Rap Music, and so perhaps I should be more charitable.

I think my aversion goes back to awfull "Dance Lessons" at school when conditions were too horrid to go outside and play rugby in the mud and so we got paired off with members of the opposite sex who were approximately the same height and taught how to foxtrot by the female gymn teacher who always wanted to lead. As there was nobody even approximately my height they used to find the smallest girl in the place (so that the averages made sense I guess) and then play wobbly records at us while we crashed around the gymn bouncing off the walls and hacking each others shins. Lovely.

So, kudos I guess to the ones that can actually do it properly.

Name In Vain

I found this in a toyshop in York today. We at Hull University may not have the worldwide profile of Cambridge, but I reckon that this is probably not all a bad thing. At least we only give our name to quality degrees, not plastic science toys as well....

Strictly Come Dancing

Some things I like. Others I hate. At the moment they are showing the kind of program that I loathe on Saturday nights. Nothing new there I suppose, for many years now Saturday night has been a kind of entertainment wasteland as far as I am concerned. I think it is a conspiracy between the BBC, pub owners and DVD rental shops. Every time I hear the TV executives moaning about how few people watch the telly on Saturday night and how they are going to correct this with a new, dynamic, schedule I have to brace myself for another round of drivel.

At the moment we have "Strictly Come Dancing", which is a gruesome combination of Bruce Forsythe, B list celebrities and a ballroom which has all the attraction for me of having my wisdom teeth removed via the back of my head. The format is that C list celebrities are teamed up with ballroom dancers to compete each week in a knockout dance competition. They have rather cunningly added a charity angle in that money from the audience telephone voting is donated somewhere, rather neatly taking the programme above rational criticism.

But the even worse thing is that during the week, at 6:30 they have "Strictly Come Dancing Take 2" or somesuch, which is drivel piled on drivel. Nonentities are interviewed by a nonentity commenting on the dancing of another nonentity and then taking phone calls from viewer nonentities. So you have someone who can't dance talking to someone who can't dance about someone else who can't dance.

At times like this I wonder if I am the only sane person left alive in this world. Suffice it to say that if I got into the studio I would consider it my civic duty to roll a few ball bearings across the dance floor as the couples prepared to foxtrot or pas a double or whatever. Now that would be entertainment.

Serendipity Rules!

Serendipity is my favourite word. And I only found it by accident. Had some today. I've been searching desperately for the registration document for Ye Olde Fiesta for a few days now. I've found all kinds of useful and interesting stuff. MOT documents from way back, school reports, you name it. But no registration document. The thing is that you never need these things. I put them somewhere safe and that is it. Thing is, I seem to have overdone the safety on this one. I've looked in all the sensible places and quite a few daft ones and still not turned up the crucial piece of paper.

I'd just about resigned myself to confessing to the folks next door that I'm an incompetent idiot where these things are concerned and then sending 19 quid off for another copy when a letter arrived today holding a new style registration form for the very same car. The vehicle people are changing the form and so the one that I have lost is now useless, and the new, posher one is now to be used. So I can post of my bit and give the other part to Dave and away we go.

Sometimes you can't beat dumb luck...

Connundrum

What's a rhetorical question I ask myself?

Car Trouble

Ye Olde Fiesta was in a different place this morning. So at least it seems to be working at the moment. It has this rather nice anti-theft device which flattens the battery if you leave the car alone for more than a month or so (something we did a while back). As a way to make the car hard to steal it works great, but too much efficiency is sometimes a problem...

Still not found the registration document though...

Car Sale Panic

I make it a rule never to sell cars to people I know. The problem is that I always worry about the engine exploding/dropping off things that I pass on. There is no reason why our Olde Fiesta should suddenly take it into its head to fall apart, but I reckon that one way to guarantee this is to sell it to somebody who knows me. I suppose that this means that I'm happier ripping off people who I've never met, rather than acquaintances, but there you go.

So, having taken due regard of these strongly held feelings I've just sold the car to Dave next door. I told him about my rule and he instantly claimed to have never met me. So the deal has been done. One more thing to worry about in my nerve racking world.

Now I've got to find the registration document...

My Time Has Come

I was very pleased to read in the paper yesterday that "Gadgets are becoming sexy". Apparently the ladies are getting into hardware, so to speak. Personally, I credit the ipod for arriving as "technology as jewelry" and then doing something that can be seen to be actually quite useful. I mean, a robot dog can be made to look quite neat but it doesn't do anything much for you. Whereas the idea of being able to carry round your entire collection of Barry Manilow and Lionel Richie records might have appeal in some quarters.

At last, perhaps as an inveterate gadget collector I am now the man of the moment. This may mean that all my time spent out there on the leading edge is actually going to pay off. With shops like Maplins and Gadget shop opening up all over the country and Christmas stockings filling up with lithium ion powered goodies I will become even more attractive. No more will men be measured by such outdated criteria such as age, looks, wealth and sense of humour. Instead my innate knowledge of technology will allow me to rule supreme.

I will be sought out for advice on the suitability of 3.2 megapixel cameras and what size USB keyring to buy. I will be able reduce parties to scenes of hushed awe as I recount my adventures transcoding video from DivX to WMV. Oh, the glory that is to come.

On the other hand, if the word gets out that I still can't program my JVC video recorder (but then again neither can anyone else) I could be ruined overnight......

Undeserved Glory

Like millions of others I bought a copy of the new Halo videogame for the XBOX last week. It is part of my "down with the kids" approach to keeping young. And I like video games. So there. Thing is, I'm not very good at them. With the exception of driving games (for which I have over 20 years or so start) I get thrashed by number one son every time.

So when I started paying Halo I set the difficulty level to "Easy". I just don't feel like a "Normal" kind of player. And, to be quite honest, I kind of like things "Easy". I set my exercise bike to "downhill".

Anyhoo, the game started and I was like a god amongst men. I could kill the baddies with one shot in their general direction. And they could not kill me. And all around my computer controlled colleagues were going "Great shot sir", and "Glad to have you around". I spent one entire level just being driven down a tunnel by the other soldiers. I'd run out of ammo five minutes before but it didn't seem to stop me from emerging a hero at the end.

And after a while I started to feel kind of guilty about this underserved glory. It quite took the edge of the experience. All around me was carnage and if things got tough I could just hide behind a rock while my shields repaired themselves.

I think there is a lesson to be learned here people. And I will consider it learnt once I've finished the complete game at this level. Perhaps I'll try Normal next.

Red Ticket Resolved

I parked the car and wrote the message "sticker in post" on the back of the red warning notice, which I then shoved in the windscreen. I thought it was more believable than "Doctor on call".

Apparently the missing parking sticker has been sent to my office. So I had to ring up for another one. This was kind of interesting because:

1. They knew that they'd sent me one.
2. From the look of my office I could have received one and not noticed.
3. They probably knew that too.
4. Which meant that I was forced to resort to the line "I wonder if someone has taken if out of my pigeon hole" when I was pretty sure that in fact the envelope is under a pile of paper somewhere.
5. I know that as soon as I get the replacement the old one will appear as though by magic.

Anyhoo, they were too nice to actually acuse me of such a high level of incompetence, and so my car is now sporting the sticker and properly legal.

As I walked back to the office from my car I noticed a couple of other cars had scrawled notes in their windscreens too. Which cheered me up.

Red Ticket Blues

Got back to the car in the university car park this evening and there was an red ticket under the windscreen wiper. This is because I am not displaying my hard won parking pass. If I don't display the pass I can face an arbitrary clamping and a fine of forty quid. Never got the hang of clamping myself. I personally can't rationalise "We don't want cars left here so we are going to clamp them in this position". But this may be the limitations of my brain power.

Anyhoo, I remembered filling in the form and sending of the cheque. I'll just have to sort it out tomorrow. I just hope I can get to sleep tonight now....

Scary MOT

Some things in the UK are deeply scary experiences. Perhaps I tend to get more scared than I should, but I must admit that the Ministry Of Transport (or MOT) test has always harboured many demons for me. This is probably because in my younger days I used to own a Mini. The Mini car was noted mainly for two things, the small and neat design and the fact that it could turn into iron oxide at an amazing speed. I noticed that the metal "Angel of the North" statue was shipped "pre-rusted".

So was my Mini. Every year I'd trundle the darned thing down to the garage for its statutary roadworthiness appraisal and find that something else had rusted away/dropped off. This was usually the start of a hugely expensive (for a poor student) and unpleasant bout of tinkering with the fabric of the car to get it into passing form. Eventually of course there was no metal left to weld replacement metal to and I had to endure six months of carlessness. Most unpleasant.

Anyhoo, today we took the "Olde Fiesta" to the MOT place. This is especially traumatic because we are then hoping to sell the little car (we seem to have one car too many). The good news is that they make Fiesta's out of more (or at least some) metal and, pending the replacement of a suspension component which did not break the bank, we are on for the sale. Yay.

ebay relief

I've become something of a fan of ebay. I've managed to sell a few items and last week I bought a lovely little Philips MP3 player at a considerable discount as number one daughter's christmas present (how come I'm buying and giving christmas presents in November is worth a blog entry all of itself). Number one wife has been somewhat sceptical of my cavalier bidding style and I have of course been dismissing these fears with an airy wave of my mouse hand.

Until last Thursday. I wanted to buy a thing which was very hard to get hold of. Paul (so it is his fault) suggested that I tried ebay. And I found one, bought it with Buy Now, and then discovered that the seller actually hadn't got it for sale. And I was a few hundred pounds down.

Now this posed a problem. How do you find out whether or not someone is a rip off merchant without asking outright? The good news was that the seller seemed a regular guy and that it was just the case that he had been misled at his end too. The bad news was that I figured that a really successful operator would be good at sounding regular - in the same way that only the lesser burglars actually wear striped jerseys and carry sacks marked "swag". So it has been a somewhat nervous few days.

Anyhoo, today I got my money back. I have never been quite so pleased to be returned to the status quo.

Playlist Paranoia

In the old days your car had a radio. You listened to whatever the Radio One DJ thought was hot. Whilst not always good news musically this did have the advantage that no effort was involved on your part.

Then we all got tape players in cars. So now we could buy musicassettes or, better yet, make up mix tapes from records that we own.

Now we all have hard disk jukeboxes which hold all our records and we can take to the road with several hundred albums. And we can build playlists, the 21st century equivalent of the "mix tape". The bad news of course is that we are now totally responsible for the music that we play in our cars. If you give anyone a lift you end up obsessing over whether or not they'll like that Bjork track that you thought was rather cool some time back, or get your post ironic David Bowie tracks....

Me, I've now reached the point where if I have company I just whack Radio 4 on....

Charging Dogs

OK, I've got this computer controlled dog. I'm actually quite proud of him/it. This probably tells you all you need to know about me - sound of Back button being clicked... However, Digby (as the name on his "birth certificate" says) is quite fun. I bought him in a fit of madness earlier this year and got to quite like having him around until his battery gave out.

Never one to give up I of course bought another battery, a hugely expensive Lithium Ion item. It arrived yesterday and, after a two hour charge, we were able to restore Digby to his former vim and vigour. Just for completeness I put the old battery back in and, of course, it worked fine. Perhaps I'll sell the new battery on ebay.

Anyhoo, I've decided that Digby is not a toy as such. You don't get him out and play with him any more than you would do with a "proper" dog. You just have him wandering around and, if he is in the mood, he will play with you. The problem with this is that he does have a tendency to crash into things as he explores the house - table legs are a particular problem - so his head is getting a bit battered. But I let him wander round the kitchen while I peeled the spuds for lunch and he was actually quite good company, trying to find his ball and sitting around singing to himself. I think that if I was on my own in the house I'd probably get into the habit of firing him up. Which is probably deeply scary.

On the mend

My cold is getting better. I've stopped carrying round a toilet roll because (a) my nose is not running that much anymore and (b) people get the wrong idea. And of course I started a brand new one. Went up town and bought nothing but a couple of magazines. I'd call that restraint except that I am in the middle of what could be a spectacularly expensive exercise on ebay at the moment......

Stay at home

Bonfire night tonight. Good night for it too. But rather than go out and say "Oooh" and "Aaaah" to the wonder that is combustion we decided to stay in and get a takeaway.

Even from the depths of a cold....

I've just heard about a chap in Italy who was being chased down the street by an enormous plate of linguine. He should have known that his pasta'd catch up with him.

Atishoo!

Hmmm. I think I'm coming down with a cold. The aching head, the sore limbs, the nose full of yecch. Seem to have all the symptoms. I've discovered that there is only one thing worse than a cold which makes you sneeze. And that is a cold that makes you get all limbered up for really good sneeze. And then stops. Everything is ready for a really good blow and then at the last minute the nose changes it's mind and the whole apparatus shudders to a halt. Hate that. In fact, at this precise moment I reckon I hate everything. I'm off to bed.

We thought you might like to know...

Geoff came round tonight. We discussed the things that we had ordered/had on order/will order off the internet. It seems that for us life is not complete unless we have something on its way to us that we've just bought on the wire. This is getting kind of worrying. I think I might start "amazonics anonymous" for people like us.

Author, Author

Spent all day writing big chunks of my C# document for the programming course that I teach on. Such deathless prose.

I suppose in Shakespeare's day they didn't have to write manuals for anything ("Congratulations on your purchase of the Groundmaster Plough 2000, please take a few minutes to read these important instructions before tying it to the back of your horse and dragging it backwards and forwards accross a field...")

Not sure what that point proves though.