Propositioned

29 Jan

I forgot to make a sandwich last night, so I have no lunch today - doh! Well I can go and buy something. So that was a bad start to the day. I did however receive a new laptop battery today, which is obviously a good thing. Generally though I feel a bit down because it's cold and wet, and my favourite people are 6,000 miles away. Still 2 weeks and one day until I can see them again.

This weekend I'm going to see mother in Devon. I've bought a cheap web cam so we can call the Dragon and the boy. I did a quick test of the new cam last night. The bloody thing won't plug and play, how medieval is that? It also managed to conflict with my existing cam, so I got riled with that last night. It did work eventually however. I realised that I also need to get a microphone too.

Seems to be a very slow news day. I don't feel I want to comment on anything.

My train season ticket expires at the end of this month and I can't decide what to do. It's not worth buying another monthly one as I am going to be abroad for the last two weeks of February. I could buy two weekly season tickets, but that's a more expensive way to buy them. Since fuel is relatively cheap at the moment, I think I might drive for a couple of weeks. I have to drive on Friday 13th anyway, because I am going straight to the airport after work. Hmm, I think I'll drive.

I keep reading about this amazingly hilarious complaint letter sent to Virgin Atlantic. It was all over the news yesterday. Apparently Richard Branson himself got involved and called the letter writer personally. I don't want to take anything away from the guy, and the letter was pretty good, but you know, I've seen much better complaint letters. In fact, I've written better complaint letters come to think of it. I think the one I sent to First Great Western 100 times was one of my favourites. It pointed out that since it was as freepost address. they had to pay postage, and the cost of receiving 100 letters from me was actually considerably greater than the cost of compensating me as I originally requested. The Virgin complainer didn't even have very much to complain about. He was flying economy on a budget air line. He's food didn't look any worse than a lot of in flight meals I've had.

I was propositioned by a prostitute last night. I say I was propositioned, but in fact, she just gave me a "how about it" look as I waited in a queue of traffic on County Road. I hadn't realised the ladies of the night used that particular road, though it is adjacent to a well known red-light area. Why do they call it that, I've never seen any red lights there. Anyway, I gave the young lady a smile, but declined her kind offer. I was heading towards B and Q to get some brass screws for the bathroom project. The traffic was so slow that I gave up and went to Homebase instead.

30 Jan

Snow is apparently forecast for next week - oh good! My train ticket dilemma has been partly solved friend Dickie invited to dinner with him one evening next week in London, and I'm not driving into the centre of the city after work, so I'll get the train, and if I get a weekly season ticket for next week, it will take me nearly all the way there anyway. So I'll drive the following week.

I see Tony Blair is suddenly expressing some remorse and doubt about his decision to go to war in Iraq. Strikes me as odd that he didn't make any of those doubts public while he was PM. This couldn't be anything to do with laying foundations for a campaign to run for European President could it? The man is so corrupt, he wouldn't know honourable if it got up and kissed him.

Apparently naked hiking has taken off in Switzerland and the authorities are keen to stop the practice. I can't see why, seems like a splendid way to spend a few hours to me.

Here's a YouTube video I like.

Lavatory God

Well this weekend I fitted a new flush mechanism in the upstairs lavatory, and fitted a new electric shower. I also replaced most of the woodwork in the bathroom, so it really only needs decorating now. I got utterly fed up with the lavatory project because the installation went fairly smoothly except for a tiny leak from one side of the cut-off tap I installed. It didn't really even need a cut-off tap, but I thought I might as well put one in the feed pipe so I didn't need to turn the water supply off to the whole house just to service the lavatory. I chose a compression fitting type, because I've never used the solder type before. Anyway, it leaked, about a teaspoon full overnight, and it was frustrating because all it needed was tightening, but I couldn't get a spanner to it properly.

I went to bed angry after two glasses of horrible cheap red wine, and woke up just as angry with a head ache. But I fixed the mother humper by swearing at it and attacking it with mole-grips, So all is well. When I replaced the shower I discovered that the cut-off tap or that doesn't work very well, but I was so pissed off with compression fittings by that time, that I didn't replace it. I really should have been documenting my progress with a camera, but the dragon took the camera to Taiwan, and though I do have a back up camera, it has no charge.

Lost, season five opened last night in UK. This season my cable company has actually resolved its differences with Sky tv, which is the only network showing Lost, so I don't have to download dodgy bit-torrent recordings as I did last season. This I am pleased about. Episodes one and two were shown together yesterday and were so complex I had to read the Lostpedia synopsis to get it straight in my head. I still don't know what's going on come to think of it. I have an issue with going to Taiwan next month. I think I'm going to be away for two Sundays, so that's two episodes I need to find from somewhere.

I'm having trouble sleeping. I think I miss my family. Last night I woke with a jolt thinking someone was in the house. I almost never dream. It wasn't a dream, but there wasn't anyone there.

Four Labour Peers have been accused of accepting money in exchange for changing legislation. The problem here is that the Lords are not accountable. They weren't voted in, and they can't be voted out. They can't even have their titles removed. Apparently the worst that can happen is that they are made to apologise. They can then go back to their seats and do it again. I say we throw them in jail for treason or something.

So, lets talk about infinity

Yesterday we had a discussion about infinity. Alan said that there is more than one type of infinity because there are an infinite number of even numbers for instance, and even though there are an infinite number, it's only half of all the numbers. He said that some infinities are "countable" and some are "uncountable". Alan is a theoretical physicist. So I said, if infinity can be expressed as 1 divided by infinity, does that mean there are multiple types of zero too? Alan was not comfortable with multiple zeros. George on the other hand, who is a hardcore pure mathematician, claims there are multiple types of zero and started talking about set theory. I lost it there and changed the subject.

Apparently a mathematician called Cantor actually went mad trying to grasp the concept of infinity. I think there are multiple types of zero by the way, because 1/infinity = 0, and so does 2/infinity, but they aren't the same number.

Mr Punk has asked how the Dragon got her moniker - duh, she was born in 1977 (right at the beginning), the year of the dragon, and is therefore a dragon. I was born in 1967 and therefore I am a stupid sheep. Clearly there was some admin cock-up as I am nothing like a sheep. I think it's to do with shifting time zones or something.

And jinxkytn wants to know if the boy is bi-lingual, and I can confirm he is. He chats away in English and Chinese, and his mother even drops in a little Hakkenese and Taiwanese when talking to him. It's odd, but he doesn't mash the languages together. He speaks to me in English and his mother in Chinese. The dragon speaks fluent English and Chinese and is also conversational in Taiwanese and Hakkenese. Her sister is the same, but also speaks Japanese. No one else in her family speaks English except her cousin. Her Grandfather speaks fluent Japanese in addition to Hakkenese, Taiwanese and Chinese because Japanese was the language spoken in schools when he was young.

I remember one Chinese New year when we all sat round the dinner table in the Dragon's Grandfather's house. The older generation of the family tend to speak Hakkenese at home, but the younger ones tend to speak Chinese. There was some English going round too, because I speak only English and really bad Chinese, and the maid spoke only English and some Indonesian language that no one understood. The dragon's aunt was also there with her Japanese husband who speaks only Japanese, so there was a bit of Japanese going on too. Now that was a linguistic minestrone if ever there was one.

Parliament was due to vote tomorrow on whether to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information act. This is because the High Court ruled that MP expenses details should be published. And MPs didn't want us to know what they were spending our money on. However, the Tories and the Lib Dems both opposed the government's plan to keep expenses secret, and the government has backed down.

The atheist bus campaign continues to make news headlines. Today it seems that the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that the adverts on the sides of buses do not break any advertising standards ruling. There were 326 complaints, mostly arguing that the wording was offensive to people of faith, but also that the claim "there is probably no God", cannot be proven. The ASA ruled that it was an opinion that could not be objectively substantiated. So there you have it. I so hope that got up Stephen Green's nose. He's the militant nutter that runs Christian Voice.

All Alone Am I

15 Jan

I've spent half the day speaking on the phone to a colleague in Paris. He's very nice, but speaks so slowly, I keep wanting to finish his sentences for him. It's as if his battery is flat or something, or he needs winding up. I've never met him in person, but he retires next month, so I'm guessing he's 60-ish.

The Dragon is officially ready to fly to Taiwan with the boy at the weekend. I'll miss them. The boy knows he's going to see his relatives in Taiwan on an aeroplane, and yesterday he asked if Mummy and Daddy were coming too. Mummy had to tell him that Daddy wasn't going, and he said he didn't want to go without Daddy. I'm sure he'll have a good time though. And Daddy will catch up with them some time around Valentines day.

16Jan

I'd like to point out that on 21 Oct, I wrote here about the atheist bus campaign and predicted that if buses were to carry atheist advertising banners, that it wouldn't be long before a driver refused to drive one. Guess what, I was right. The guy seems to have got himself a lot of media attention. It's in almost all the papers. And his bosses have said that he doesn't have to drive buses with atheist slogans on if others are available.

I'm wondering whether this guy would have refused to drive a bus carrying an advert for a religion that denies Christianity, like Islam for instance. Would he have refused to drive a bus that advertised a Buddhist prayer meeting, or a Hindi festival, or an event at a seik temple? I'm guessing not, because he has respect for all beliefs (except atheism apparently).

Conversely, would an atheist bus driver have been treated with such understanding had he refused to drive a bus carrying an advert that promised that all atheists were destined to spend eternity burning in a lake of fire? I'm guessing not again. Yet it was just such an advert that prompted the atheist bus campaign in the first place. Thanks to friend Dickie for pointing that one out to me.

There is news to day of a cashpoint machine in Manchester that was loaded incorrectly yesterday, and for six hours it paid out twenties instead of tens. Not a great story in itself except that the cash machine belongs to Nationwide, who were apparently "disappointed" that people took advantage of the free money and didn't report the fault. Apparently a queue formed and some people were using multiple cards to draw larger amounts of cash. I can report however that Nationwide is the worst managed company I have ever had the misfortune to work for. They treat their staff and customers like crap, and the board would sell their own grandmothers for a fast buck. Had I known about it yesterday I'd have motored up there just for the pleasure of shafting them.

19 Jan

I know, I just haven't got around to actually posting anything. Indeed, I haven't really even finished an entry. I'm going to post this today by lunchtime, even if it isn't finished.

We travelled down to Devon on Friday night so that the Dragon and the boy could say goodbye to mother. We didn't have a lot of time since we had to leave soon after breakfast the following day. We got back to Swindon around lunchtime, which gave the Dragon enough time to complete her packing before leaving for the airport.

I put them on a plane on Saturday evening. I won't see them again until mid Feb when I join them. It's not so bad, I have a list of stuff to do in the house, and the world is not such a big place when you have Skype. I called this morning from the train and it seems they landed safely and the boy is now struggling with jet lag.

Yesterday I had the house to myself, and rather than lie on the sofa in my underwear, drinking beer, eating pizza, and farting, I decided to make a start on the list of stuff I need to do around the house. I bolted the power sockets to the wall in the kitchen. They have been hanging by their cables since the tiling was completed. I also re-hung the door in the office, so it now closes, and I took a few mm off the bottom of our bedroom door with the plane so it now closes without scraping the carpet. Not a bad day's work. Next weekend I start work on the bathroom.

And Italy has banned atheist buses. No comment!

It's lunchtime, here it comes.

Chasing Paper

We uncovered a huge visa problem with the boy at the weekend. It seems that, although he is blessed with a Taiwanese mother, he can only enter Taiwan for a maximum of 30 days without a visitors' visa. The dragon discovered this on Saturday, and after some quick calculations, realised that we had 6 days to sort out a visa because she is taking the little chap to Taiwan on Friday for more than 30 days. How we overlooked this is beyond me. Ironically I don't need a visa myself, despite being British. I'm already a resident you see. The dragon and I are reluctant to get him resident status because it would mean that he is likely to get drafted into the army. See how complicated life gets when you involve politicians?

So, long one short, we spent yesterday buzzing round the city chasing paperwork. The boy was super good. We dragged him into town on the 9.30am train, arriving around 10.30, and didn't get him home until about 9.30pm. He had to suffer crowded tube trains, shouting people, pollution, car horns, and dodgy sandwiches. On the plus side, we did swing past the palace and wave to Her Majesty, and we had an excellent dinner in Chinatown. We did also find an hour to visit Hamleys in Regent Street and the boy thought he'd gone to heaven. A five storey toy shop is the stuff of dreams for a three year old.

I thought he'd be impossibly grumpy by the evening because he had no chance to sleep as we dragged him round the oldest underground system in the world. It used to run steam engines you know. But actually he was in remarkably good spirits, even on the ridiculously overcrowded train home. A gentleman gave the dragon his seat, and he sat on her lap (the child not the gentleman), but actually the train almost emptied at the first station, so I got to sit down next to her after 20 minutes. He finally went to bed around 10pm, and was still all cheery when he got up at 7 this morning.

Here is a photo diary type thing...

The underground at Paddington with iconic signage in background:


The eye wasn't going round, don't know why:


Westminster, what were we doing there?


Where we ate dinner in Chinatown:

Shoe Trees

I'm thinking about becoming a pirate...

Avast you scurvy dogs!

Do pirate ships have chemical toilets? I hate chemical toilets.

There is a good piece by Gerald Warner in the Telegraph today. It's about global warming. Even if you're not a hard-nosed sceptic like me you should have a look. Apart from anything else he makes fun of Al Gore, which is always a good starting point as far as I'm concerned.

Interest rates have dropped again to almost nothing. It makes you wonder what the government is going to do when they can't lower rates any further. They were forced to deny they were planning to print more money this morning. It seems to me that making borrowing cheaper is done to encourage spending on credit. That would kick-start the economy of course, but isn't debt what caused the problem in the first place?

Here is the interesting story of the day. A tree located near the A40 road near High Wycombe has for 30 years been regularly decorated with shoes. Yes, mysterious person, or persons unknown have been hanging shoes on this ash tree for three decades and no one knows why. But that isn't what makes this the interesting story of the day. No, the interesting part is that £265,000 from National Lottery funds was allocated to fund an investigation to find out who's doing it and why. Personally I can think of much better ways to spend a quarter of a million pounds of public money, but the really funny thing is that The Chilterns Woodland project managed to spend all this money over four years and still draw a blank.

Yup, they took the money and over four years discovered nothing. I don't know how often shoes are hung on this tree, but I'm pretty sure I could find out what's going on in a matter of weeks with some cheap video equipment, or even staking the place out for a while. It's not rocket science is it?

Steven Green, the nutter that fronts Christian Voice, has got himself all worked up about the atheist bus campaign. He's made an official complaint to the advertising standards authority suggesting that the slogan breaks rules on substantiation and truthfulness. It'll be interesting to see where this one goes since there has recently been a Christian campaign suggesting that atheists will burn for all eternity in a lake of fire.

And finally, here's an odd story; Britons are panic buying incandescent light bulbs because the government has decided to ban them because they are inefficient. I don't understand why the government has decided to ban the things since they represent such a small part of the nation's energy consumption, banning them can't possibly make any measurable difference to our national energy consumption. But actually, I can't understand why people are getting worked up and panic buying either because the low energy versions appear to be just as good. I know they're more expensive, but they also last longer and cost less to run. I was slightly worried that I couldn't find any bulbs to fit our living room lights, but I can confirm they do exist, so I don't care.

Lot of it about

Heard in the office today:

"That's the thing about history, there's there's an awful lot of it."



The list of huge high street names going bust is getting longer every day. Today the last of the Woolworths stores closes, Adams has closed over 100 stores, Zavvi has gone into receivership, MFI has closed its last stores, and Wedgewood is the latest casualty. Soon only Tesco will be left. Marks and Spencer and Debenhams have both announced losses, and M and S is closing stores. I just read also that Barclays is laying off hundreds of people in the city.

It's snowing again by the way. I nearly killed myself skidding across an icy pavement as I walked (glided) to the station this morning. My greatest fear now is that the trains will stop due to snow and I won't be able to get home. Actually it's not going to happen. There is just a little dusting on the ground, and it's not coming down hard. I'm seriously considering changing my travel policy and reverting to road transport. Petrol is cheaper now and train fairs are up 6%. I bought a season ticket for January at 2008 prices, but the new price is not only going to be 6% more expensive, they are also talking about removing the 10% discount I currently get for renewing my season ticket, so it could be a huge rise altogether.

Great Balls of Fire

5 January

Here's a good story that carries a warning to all men who are thinking about having an affair; an Australian man has died after his wife set fire to his genitals because she believed he was having an affair. According to the report, the wife doused her husband's love spuds in meths and set fire to them while he slept. Upon waking and noticing that his bollocks were on fire, he understandably panicked and knocked over the bottle of meths which made matters worse. I know we really shouldn't be laughing, but that's a Laurel and Hardy classic right there. The wife's defence is, "I only meant to burn his penis". I can't see her getting away with it myself.

It's snowing, and I hate snow. Yeah I know, bah humbug. But it's cold and wet, and for me snow represents only potential disasters; sliding out of a junction in front of a juggernaut, slipping arse over head down 200 concrete steps, getting stranded at work because the bleeding trains aren't running. The only good thing about snow is the fact that it comes in the middle of winter and I know it can only get better from here.

So, Adel-a-drie wants to know what the boy and the Dragon got or Christmas; I'll tell you. The boy got a motorised car thing that he can sit on, a space hopper, a Thomas Tank Engine game (which had to be returned with a fault, so we still owe him a present there), two of Thomas' friends to go on his Thomas railway set, and a stocking from Father Christmas with lots of nice little things in. The Dragon also got a Father Christmas stocking, which I had great fun assembling. I also bought her a really expensive cardigan, made of Mongolian yak hair or something, but that had to go back. To be fair, she debated for a long time before returning it, and I wasn't offended. I also bought her a pair of bright pink sparkly slipper socks which were a bit of a joke really, but actually she seems to like those. And she got a book of cockney ryming slang and another little book from her son about how great his mummy is. There were probably other things, but that is what I remember for now.

6 January

So, twelfth night then. Actually I got fed up with the decorations last night and took them down anyway. Is that bad luck? I know that leaving them up after twelfth night is very unlucky. I'm always quite glad when Christmas is over.

It's really cold here now. The temperature is forecast to drop to -10C in some places tonight. The snow that came yesterday is now lying as ice waiting to catch people out and kill them in the streets.

The dragon has been in UK for just about 3 years now, and that means she is eligible to apply for a British passport. She doesn't want to be British, but we're both fed up with the stress that comes from her not being British, so I think we will be applying for naturalisation. She has said that she won't do it if she has to give up her Taiwanese nationality. I respect and understand that. I think she can keep both, but we have to check before we make the application because a cock up may well result in us losing the fee, which is £650. Yes, another £650 just for the privilege of allowing me, a British subject and taxpayer, to live in his own country with his wife and child. At least it's £100 cheaper than last year's bill, and we don't have to submit hundreds of items of mail to prove where we live this time, at least I don't think we do. We do have to submit our marriage certificate, and her Life in the UK exam pass certificate. I have no idea why they want to see those documents again. God knows how many times they have been sent round the country, stamped, and returned. At least it should be an end to the battle anyway.

We can't start the application until end of February because the Dragon is going to be out of the country. She is going back to Taiwan in a couple of weeks with the boy. I'll join them in mid Feb and we'll come back together at the end of the month. See how complicated governments make life.

And finally, the Atheist Bus campaign that I mentioned a few weeks ago has begun. In case you missed it, the British Humanist Association backed a campaingn to raise money for atheist adverts to go on the sides of buses in London. The goal was to raise £6,000 to pay for the ads, but they actually raised about nine times that amount and the ads are now set to go nationwide from today. Whatever your point of view, I think this is a great thing. It stops people and makes them think, and that can be no bad thing.

Something Weird

I'm trying to work, but my laptop is doing something weird. It's thrashing the disk and everything is going ridiculously s l o w l y. It took about 20 minutes to update my virus definitions. I can type in notepad, but the letters seem to come out about 5 seconds after I tap the keys, which is fun. I'm not completely tech illiterate, but I'm at the office and therefore I don't have admin rights to anything. I suspect it's trying to back up over the network, but I can't stop it.

It has been positively eons since I wrote anything here. I broke up for Christmas on 22 Dec, and I really haven't had time to sit down at a keyboard for more than about 30 seconds since then. You'll be pleased to know that the festive season went well for me and my family. I received many good things including a harmonica, a shark-skin wallet, soap making kit, and a ukulele. Actually I bought the ukulele myself, but I used money sent to me by my aunt, so technically it was a Christmas present.

My brother bought us a bread making machine. We've been talking about buying a bread making machine for months but never actually made a decision. It's great though. You just chuck stuff in the bucket and press the button and out pops fresh bread. You can even set the timer so that it arrives just as you wake up or get home. We've made three loaves so far (but no fish).

Hey look at that, whatever my laptop was doing, it appears to have finished. I should do some work. Actually, no one else is in my cube, and the office in general is distinctly quiet. I may defer work for another few minutes.

I just reminded myself about soap. Remember I made soap from dangerous chemicals at the end of November? Well it's ready to use now and it really works. I was quite surprised at how good it actually is. I was slightly scared about trying it because I did use caustic soda and you really wouldn't want to apply that to any soft pink bits. However, I'm pleased to say that the trial run was successful.

I've found an awesome ukulele site for people learning to play here. That link probably won't be of interest to most people come to think of it. I've had the instrument just a few days and I've already managed a few chords. My aim is to play this. I'm working on the assumption that my fingers are about half the size of the Big Kahuna in the video, so it shouldn't be a problem for me. Maybe I'll post a video when I get good enough. Or maybe I'll be so embarrassingly bad that I won't.

Ukes seem to be quite cheap. In my local music store they start at around £15, but they also have them for £25, £55, or about £100. I went for the £25. I considered the £55 model, but came to the conclusion that if I turn out to be crap at it, I just wasted £25. On the other hand, if I'm good at it, I can still go back and get a better one.

I have more to write, but I really should pretend to work.