Chip's Place

For those of you who don't know, Celebdaq is a pseudo-stock exchange run by the BBC with trading of "shares" in celebrities and paying out dividends (all pretend money) based on their recent press coverage.

One of the "goals" (I use the inverted commas because there's no official structure to the exchange beyond what you want to impose) is to get millionaire icons - each time you get a million pounds, you get another icon, and these become an indication of how long you've been around playing the game. Every Monday morning, if you have more than a million, you get the appropriate number of icons and your bank account is cut back down to £10,000, and the whole thing starts again.

I currently stand at £2.81 million. Which is very irritating, as I won't quite make it to 3 million in the next 40 minutes. Oh well, another day, another dollar, as they say. And it's only a game. You win some, you lose some. Make hay while the sun shines. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...

I've also had a fairly good attack at doing no. 4 on my blog to-do list - I can now download my current account balance, chart position and other stats and put them into an HTML file. Next step - actually link them into this page so they can be seen by others.
0 comments

It's still not stopped snowing. I don't think I've ever seen a week where it's snowed so frequently and lasted on the ground for so long (except obviously when I've been skiing - there was weather one day in Killington I never want to have to live through again!). Especially with how warm the sun is. It seems to be snowing in the day and then freezing at night, which means it's only a matter of time till I make an unscheduled trip to the ground.

It's always seemed odd to me how I have the ability to bury emotions of the past so well I don't even register them for months and years on end, then they'll suddenly come bubbling up to the surface as strongly as ever at a chance event. There's so much going on in my head I don't know about most of the time it scares me.

We were supposed to be meeting tonight in a pub I've not been to for a while. This was very near where I used to live in another part of York about a year ago. I don't see the old group I used to go there with, for reasons which probably won't become clear. I was a little apprehensive about going in in case I saw any of them again.

I got there a bit late, so went looking round for the people I was meeting. Didn't see them. But instead, joy of joys, there, taking up an entire room of the pub were the 10 people I least wanted to see - the group I used to come to the pub with. I kind of froze in the doorway, pretended not to see them (very badly - some of them were, after all, less than 3 feet away and looking straight at me) and turned round and went over to the bar - fortunately for me it's out of sight of where they were sat.

I was pretty shaken - on the point of ordering a Guinness, and I'm teetotal. All the bad memories of the few months I'd shared a house with 4 of them, all the incestuous (not literally) relationships, the psychological manipulation, double meanings in everything anyone said, always feeling like the outsider because I didn't want to try to play by their rules, which just exacerbated the loneliness I was feeling from moving alone to a new town in the circumstances I did.

Luckily one of my actual friends turned up then, and I'm sure I sounded a bit weird asking him if we could leave immediately (since it was snowing pretty heavily at this point). I was still a bit wobbly even when we got to the next pub.

And I am even now. Damn it - this was meant to be cathartic.
0 comments

This title does not describe me, if all of the comedy nearly-falls I've made in all the snow and ice today are anything to judge by.

It seems to have been my month for ridiculousness at restaurants. This time Orgasmic were the culprits. It was one of my team members' birthday (hmm - that looks wrong, but I don't know if it is ... the birthday of one of my team members) today so we went out for lunch. Orgasmic do really nice pizzas and a good line in out-of-the-ordinary snacks too, and I've enjoyed eating there several times before.

It was not to be this time! The ordering system is a little quirky - you have to fill in the number of orders of each meal on a copy of the menu and hand that in to the bar, which we did - 9 of us ordering. 3 had special requirements, one of which took a bit of explaining to the barman (who apparently believed that lettuce came pre-dressed with balsamic vinegar and oil, and that these could in no circumstance be separated without heavy industrial machinery and training approved by an officially-recognised body). Still, everything seemed to go OK.

About 30 minutes later, 5 of the meals arrived. Those of us (of whom I was one) who did not get our food were not immediately concerned - the kitchen service area's quite small, so a batch of 9 meals would be expected to be done in 2 stages. Some 10 minutes later, other parties who'd come in well after us were being served, and still no food. So we went to the bar to ask what was going on.

The "balsamic-dressing" barman denied all knowledge and memory of the existence of the remaining 4 meals (one of which was the very same one requested, at some length, without balsamic dressing), and seemed quite surprised that we'd all ordered food, being such a large group. It was clearly our fault that we'd either failed to write clearly enough on the menu or, as seemed to be his favoured option, failed to even order our own food at all. The fact we were not totally accepting of this situation even seemed to irritate him somewhat.

So the 4 of us walked out and got a hurried sandwich from Krusties. Spoiled birthday for Christine (who at least was one of the 5 who did get their food), no apology (as far as I could work out, that's because both we and the barman were expecting the other to apologise!), no money off the bill.

No return trade from us either!
0 comments

Or rather the lack of them. The two things I can claim to have done today that I'm bothered about are having worked out most of the piano chording for Keane's first song, This Is The Last Time, and having achieved a platinum medal in SSX 3.

These are the things you tell your grandchildren about.
0 comments

It's been quite a while since I posted last! There doesn't seem to have been a great deal happened over the last 10 days. February's always like that.

Have just returned from Leeds after a talk on deflators. These are a statistical way of coming up with a probability distribution for what interest rates will look like in the future. I probably could have done with a little background reading first, as I really didn't get the middle third of the talk, but things started to make sense again towards the end. I also got a rectangular CD with a fun spreadsheet on it.

It was a bloody nasty drive back - fairly thick snow and pretty poor visibility. Apparently driving in such conditions always reminds one of my passengers of Star Wars, because of the special effects when the Millennium Falcon goes to hyperspeed. It reminds me of watching Star Wars too, but more because it's really awful and not something I enjoy doing.
0 comments

Saw Donnie Darko last night. Didn't really think it was all that great - it was OK, but not the brilliant film everyone else seems to think it is. I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't seen it though, so this rant will be intentionally vague.

There seems to be too much left out of the film itself - for example, why do you have to buy the special DVD version to read the book that Donnie is given in the film? And why was absolutely none of this even alluded to in the film? I don't really enjoy watching a film where the plot can be summarised as "some fairly unconnected stuff happens - you'll have to pay Hollywood more if you want to understand it."

I have actually read the book (it's on the Net - isn't everything?) and as a person relatively well-versed in well-constructed sci-fi, this isn't a very coherent backplot.

And why is he almost named after one of Disney's favourite characters?

Oh well, don't let me stop you seeing it. I have odd tastes in films - I still like True Lies.

On the plus side, I didn't have garlic bread smeared all over my bed last night. I'm always thankful for small mercies.
0 comments

I went for lunch to Alley Cats today. It's somewhere I've been wanting to go to for quite some time - the building and the decor inside look really good, for a start, and I'd heard pretty good things about the food too.

Sadly, I was disappointed. We went as a group of 6, and the head waitress told us we'd have to sit at two separate tables. When we got upstairs there were 4 or 5 free tables for 4, so we did the sensible thing and started to drag 2 together. One of the waitresses came over to give us a hand. So we sat down and read through the menu.

About 5 minutes later, the head waitress came back upstairs to serve someone else's food, and said to us rather snidely "I'd prefer you not to move the tables. I told you you'd have to sit apart." To which my natural response was "Pardon?!" "I'd rather you didn't move the tables around." "Well we're hardly taking up much-needed seats, and your waitress gave us a hand, so perhaps you'd best tell your staff that too." By this time she was heading back downstairs - despite wishing to tell us off, she was obviously not happy about sticking around to discuss it!

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to continue my fight, as she never came back upstairs. (I also thought probably best not to antagonise her till after we were served!) I could really have done with a proper rant today too. As an aside, the food was pretty average - nothing you can't buy anywhere else in York, in many cases for much less.

I did have one good meal out today though. I just wish I could remember the name of the restaurant! It's an Italian on Micklegate (which hardly reduces the odds of picking the right one) and has recently been renovated - looks very white in colour scheme. Well worth a visit - if those directions are good enough!
0 comments

I'd heard tales of the problems people had obtaining furniture for new houses and flats, but I figured they wouldn't affect me when I moved, that they were just the odd horror story and not typical.

However, I've got one myself now! I've bought a bookcase from The Gift Company. I wanted it delivered. This was the easy part.

Firstly, "Head Office" was not accepting orders for this range of furniture at New Year, and I was asked to return at the end of January. Not necessarily the best company strategy, to turn away customer orders with no real reason.

Secondly, once I finally did place the order, the delivery date was dropped back a week because my bookcase was missed out of the delivery container.

Thirdly, the normal delivery guy they use wants to charge #40 to move the bookcase approximately 3/4 mile to my flat from the house. I refused that! However, I have to get the bookcase out of the shop as soon as possible, because it's blocking about 1/3 of their display area.

So I asked about alternative delivery people. Apparently there's one who'll do it for #12-15. This sounds better. However, he wants to check out the bookcase first - for what I'm not sure - before he'll guarantee delivery. And I've still got to find someone to help me carry it up the stairs to the flat - that appears to be above and beyond what I'm paying for there.

Enough ranting. Just about finished off my project plan at work, and it'll be issued tomorrow, so things are looking a little more manageable now.

I'm also going to try to give up the coffee again - I managed about 2 weeks last time, then had a sleepless night and needed some to wake me up for a meeting. But I've now discovered a cure for sleepless nights though - ski socks! I've worn them the last 5 nights in bed and have slept 7 hours straight every night. Can't remember the last time I managed that.
0 comments

Another spectacular victory at the pub quiz, beating the Bile Beans (as ever a secondary goal), and winning by just a single point, just as we did last week. I'm now #3.12 richer too.

Still, 5 of 7 is good. Another 2 weeks of victories and we'll be a Star Trek character! It's technically 5 of 6 for me because I missed one week, but the less said about Athlete gigs the better.

Today is the third anniversary of the death of my dog, Bilbo. I miss having a dog around - can't wait to retire and have enough free time to spend with one again.
0 comments

Really lazy today. Completely avoided building the computer desk the packages of which have been taking up most of my hallway for the last 2 weeks. The apathy continues.

On the plus side, I did join the gym. First proper visit Tuesday, when I'll put my name down for squash, and see how good I am relative to the rest of the members.

I also managed to partially fix Lint's computer woes. I appear to have bought him a one-way network cable - the PC can see the Mac, but not the other way round. Either that or Windows ME is doing its usual wrongheadedness.

And my piano-playing is a lot better than I remember it!
0 comments

That's how often I try to go. I've just missed the last ... 100 or so.

To the gym, that is. I've finally got into the right frame of mind to start going again - I've got to do something to shake off this lethargy and apathy I seem to have had for months.

So it's off to Heslington I go tomorrow. Squash and tennis coaching too, the full package. I've got to the point with squash where I don't seem to be improving, and I think I ought to be able to, so a coach should help. As for tennis, anyone who's seen me play would not argue with my need for further development!

I just hope that this doesn't end up including me like it did last year!
0 comments

I thought I knew all the French cookery words. And then one turns up I didn't know. Because of this, I made a friend eat paper this evening. Sorry, Rich! (And now it's on the internet, it must be a true apology.)

A papillote is "an oiled paper or foil wrapper in which certain foods are baked." Quite logically (and as it turns out, correctly) I thought it was derived from the word "papillon", meaning butterfly. Sadly, I continued this chain of logic by assuming it meant the fish would be served butterfly-style.

When it came wrapped in, apparently, filo pastry, I thought "OK, wrong, but you can still eat the pastry wrapper." In my defence, the lighting was poor.

I should work on not sounding so authoritative all the time!
0 comments

I've got a cold. Again. And a cough. Again. Hope the voice lasts out this time. The idea that there are only about 90 variations of the common cold comforts me somewhat - I must surely be near that limit by now.

I've been wondering if this could have anything to do with the river being so high at the moment. Stagnant water is never good, and there are parts of the city centre not too far from work where the water's been sat doing nothing for 4 days now. And the drains are getting to overflow point in places too.

Alternatively, it might be a result of walking home from badminton last week wearing shorts while it was snowing.
0 comments

A question which, among others, has vexed me today. It's one of those "sort out the wheat from the chaff" interview questions that I just can't leave alone. Still haven't managed an answer yet, but I'll get there.

Another is, will my laptop be adversely affected by my sneezing on it?

And the final one - when am I going to find the time to finish off all those to-do list items?
0 comments

As I was cooking my typically spiced-up tea (take any food at all, and add one Scotch Bonnet chilli) this evening, I started wondering why chillies were hot. Not "what chemical makes them hot?" (any hot-head knows that's capsaicin), but "why did chilli plants evolve capsaicin-producing fruit?"

It's a given of Darwinian evolutionary theory that "features" of organisms evolve in order to succeed better in their environment, so I expected that capsaicin should confer some competitive advantage over non-spicy fruit.

The only website I could find (read the section on ants) suggests that hotness would deter mammals from eating the fruit (wouldn't work on this particular mammal!), and since birds are believed immune to capsaicin's effects, they would be attracted to the bright red chillies, eat them and then spread the seeds far and wide.

However, this seems an unsatisfactory answer, for two reasons :

1. Why limit your seed dispersal method to just birds? Mammals are perfectly suitable for that too (viz. tomatoes, apples, etc.), and they give you one more angle. Capsaicin seems counter-productive in this case.
2. Not all chillies are red! Green ones would be unattractive to mammals, as discussed above, and also to birds (relative to the red ones).

Anyone got any thoughts on this?
0 comments