Thursday, October 31, 2002

PS - does anybody know where gert has gone?

posted at 9:02 PM

Googlism: tammy has nothing of interest to say. On the other hand:
tammy is the best
tammy is gormlis
tammy is freakin me out
tammy is coming to life
tammy is busy with both corporate and school motivational appearances
tammy is now swimming in 27 degree water
tammy is in excellent form and confidant of reaching the end
tammy is on the beach and has been met by a crowd of spectators and a local piper
tammy is legendry for her leadership in the nail business; there is no one better to lead us into the next millennium
tammy is now healthy and spayed so she can never again be used for indiscriminate breeding
tammy is the boss of everyone
tammy is exploring new material
tammy is also a breeder of schipperkes
In my real life I have mainly been learning to wallpaper and going to work. Yesterday was a strange day - a rather unlucky electrician cut through the power cable to the data centre at work, resulting in the network going down for most of the day. It turns out that most of us can't work without PCs anymore, and most of us got sent home in the middle of the afternoon. Complete result - I thought it would be several months before I got home from work before dark again!

posted at 9:01 PM

Friday, October 25, 2002

It's been a bit of a pain this afterrnoon with blogger being hacked. I had my url changed, and then tried to sort out out just as blogger was being taken down "for repair". It's obviously back up and all fixed now, or this post would have disappeared into cyerspace :-)

posted at 8:13 PM

Thursday, October 24, 2002

Since I last posted:

I've had dinner with 3 different sets of friends (featuring announcements of engagements and pregnancy, although not on the same night) and been to a birthday party. I've hemmed and shortened half the net curtains for the spare bedroom, stripped yet more wallpaper off walls and filled in loads of cracks using polyfilla. I've also caught a cold and been feeling very grotty. And 5 people have been to my blog looking for pictures of women wearing the kind of footwear you had for jumping in puddles when you were much smaller :-)

Tomorrow I will be going to work, then going to Homebase to buy some supplies before relaxing with some pals. On Saturday my parents are coming over to teach me how to wallpaper (while oin buggers off to play Halo all day with the boys - how is that fair? :-) On Sunday, my mother-in-law will be joining the rest of us for lunch. Please bear in mind here that we will be cooking lunch for 5 people armed with a 2 ring electric hob and a microwave. I suspect it may be some time before I post again.

No wonder I'm tired :-) I've forgotten to leave time for sleeping in the schedule again!

More for my own amusement than anyone elses, I give you my favourite search engine hits to Squodge from the last couple of weeks:
"people caught cheating - pictures" - people caught cheating at what, precisely?
"obscure and random pages with lots of ranting about cereal" - two words: what? and why?
"how radiators work for planes" - I'm intrigued by this one. Do planes have radiators? Please let me know!

posted at 9:09 PM

Saturday, October 19, 2002

Chemistry taken one step further: Theodore Gray has built a Periodic Table. And is filling it with samples of elements. This is so cool it even won an IgNoble Award.

More lego - a fully working harpsichord this time. I remember hearing some time ago that LegoLand California was going to build a giant Yoda. I can't find anything written after it was supposed to be built! Has anybody seen any pictures? Did it actually get built? Does anybody other than me care?

Not impressed? How about a lego MP5. Complete with lego ammo.

To round off, if you haven't visited Lego Death, check it out :-)

Did you hear about the woman who thought she'd won a Toyota, but was awarded a Toy Yoda? (She sued!)

How cool is this: yesterday, a man tried to climb Canary Wharf. What is particularly cool is that a friend (who lives with snowcat) sent me and someone else I work with these photos, taken by somebody he works with. We forwarded them on, and they ended up in the hands of the press! They followed the e-mail trail back, and actually paid the guy who took them for publishing them. Result :-)

posted at 6:35 PM

Thursday, October 17, 2002

I had a bit of a nightmare journey home today. I've been putting in quite a few extra hours this week, so I actually knocked of "early", as in only 3/4 hour later than I'm contracted to be there. I thought I'd surprise Owen by getting home at a reasonable time. Obviously a stupid idea. Due to a defective train at North Greenwich I had to wait 15 minutes for a Jubilee Line train. I managed to work my way through the stampede and made it onto the first tube that came, which was pretty full to say the least. I only do one stop on this tube line, so I don't mind getting squashed for the short journey. I got to Canada Water at the same time as a bunch of running paramedics carrying lots of kit and a stretcher. I have no idea what was going on, but all passengers were being diverted to one end of the platform, which therefore had twice as many people crammed in as usual. The tube rolled up, we all piled on, and stage 2 of the journey continued smoothly. I reached New Cross Gate. . The train turned up late, and was packed. A rather large number of people tried to fit into a small amount of space. Then the driver made an announcement. A "road vehicle" had crashed into a railway bridge. We were going nowhere. At all. After 15 minutes of being told absolutely nothing I decided to try and join the crowd attempting to catch a cab outside the station. Unfortunately, New Cross Gate is about the only bit of South East London I can't get a bus home from :-( The woman in the cab office was superb. I have to give her full credit. She didn't lie to anybody, but was honest about the wait being 15 to 20 minutes, and did a great job of checking where everybody was going to sort out cab shares. In conclusion, having left the office half an hour earlier than I had done all week, I got home a good half an hour later. That will teach me :-)

On the positive side, our cleaner started today. I came home to a clean house. Very cool :-)

posted at 8:56 PM

The Russian census forms are in. People were asked what they considered their nationality to be. Answers included Hobbits, Elves and Middle-Earthers :-)

Ever thought about shooting the remote control to change channels if you can't be bothered to go get it? Apparently this is not a good idea. Stray memory - back in student days we had an old telly that often required a good thump to produce a picture. Being lazy, we used to keep a stack of juggling balls ready to throw at the box when it played up. I actually became rather accurate at chucking a ball over the course of that year :-)

posted at 8:26 PM

Sunday, October 13, 2002

Utter genius: some people who obviously have two much time on their hands have constructed esher's "Ascending and Descending" out of Lego (courtesy of b3ta). Also, check out dilbert & co. Can I have some lego for Christmas please?

This reminded me of something I came across ages ago before I was blogging. A chap who's built a lego robot to solve the Rubik's cube.

posted at 12:11 PM

Saturday, October 12, 2002

October is probably my least favourite month. All of a sudden it's getting colder. When my alarm goes off during the week it's dark now. It gets dark again in the evening around 7pm, so it's hit or miss as to whether or not it's still light when I get home. I begin to suffer from a mild case of the winter blues and before I know it I'm in the grips of insomnia. This is normally a time of the year when I am completely lethargic, and find it hard to get my head together to motivate myself enough to do anything.

However, this year I have tackled October head on. Despite the lack of sleep and the overwhelming desire to go stick my head under the duvet and stay there till spring, I have been busy. Since I last properly posted I have: stripped the wallpaper from the room that will be a kitchen (with some help, and we're not quite finished yet but I'm still counting it :-); been on a hen night (which was a lot of fun); bought a dishwasher; chosen a fridge and an oven (although we haven't ordered them yet); hired a cleaner (more later); celebrated marc's blog-birthday down the pub; tackled a massive mountain of paperwork (which is currently the size of a small hill); celebrated a colleague's birthday in the pub; spent several hours tidying the house so that it no longer resembles a bomb-site.

This is quite impressively productive for me at any time of year, particularly as I've spent a fair amount of time in the office too :-) I'm going to be very busy for the next few months - our new kitchen will be delivered and fitted at the end of November, and the room has to be ready when it arrives. Along the way we've got a full social calendar involving evenings out with a variety of friends and relatives, another wedding (hence the hen night :-) and several Sundays of family commitments. It's just as well I can't sleep at the moment - there's just not enough time in the day.

Time to get back to it - I've got a fairly heft list of jobs to do this weekend yet, but I'm hoping to free up enough time to come back here at some point :-)

posted at 3:15 PM

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

Quick - I have 5 minutes of unallocated time. Better blog before I self-destruct! My life is a little on the full side at the moment, and all of a sudden I realise it has been a full 9 days since I last made it to my PC with time to type :-) I'm still here, and I'll be back over the weekend. See you then ;-)

posted at 7:59 PM

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