Friday, November 26, 2004
Return of the Mac
(Return of my iBook to the Net, that is.)
Hmmm. An enforced abstinence, this one, as opposed to having nothing to write about, which for once is definitely not the case. I'll leave the explanation to item 4 below. Here's the fortnightly round-up. Perhaps these things will become a little more frequent in the next few weeks. Perhaps not.
1. Finally booked my flights! Now I've just got people nagging me about not being here in January and February (and in two cases, about not having selected appropriate dates for my going-away party, which I didn't know I was supposed to be holding until they complained).
2. I know this is the same as point 1, but I'm going skiing while I'm in Canada. Lake Louise - looking forward to it lots. Can't wait to strap the planks on again - it's been a bit too long...
3. Relatedly, I have a new job finally on the horizon - I'm going to be stuck in the office till my birthday each year, unfortunately (and hence, unlikely to be going skiing much!), but at least I won't have to talk to the gnomish one any more.
4. Net withdrawal symptoms. I went over to my parents' house 2 weeks ago, and when I came back, the Net wasn't there any more. Long story short - after over an hour of calls spread over 4 days to my ISP's helpline, they finally tracked down the cause to "an error on the radius server record on the rack I connect to". (I'm reasonably up on IT terminology, but I have no idea what that means!) And as of an hour or so ago, I'm back. So I can order my going-away stuff online now, instead of having to tramp round shops.
5. Having a 6-hour bitching session till closing time in the Ackhorne, when most of us had intended to be home and in bed by 6 pm!
6. Starting to finally relax a little on the work front. Partly because of no. 4, but partly because (and in no little part because of the assistance of Sarum) we're finally on top of everything. And I think people may have noticed.
7. Spending an hour and a half in 3 different pubs on the PTH thinking Lint was an awful lot more fiendish at setting puzzles than he actually is. Between us, Jenny and I covered about 6 sheets of paper with all kinds of variations on Caesar Square ciphers, anagrams, Roman substitution ciphers, everything we could think of. We should have realised...
8. Discussing various methods of buying a house for GeeDee and a car for Jimbobjo with the criminal mastermind and ever-reliable fount of bizarre conversational directions, Iasonas.
9. (and the final one for now) They've put the coloured lights back up on the Minster! Yay! This is one of the best light displays I've seen (and I grew up near Blackpool) because it seems to fit so well with the Minster itself. I might have to pay a few more visits than usual to Colm's desk over the coming days. One hope is that it lasts a bit longer than the 3 days they managed last year. Well, I'll just have to get my fill in over the weekend, just in case.
OK, not quite the final one, but this doesn't merit a number. Congrats in particular to Newbury (6th time's the charm!), but also to everyone else who's just passed any actuarial exams.
6 comments
Hmmm. An enforced abstinence, this one, as opposed to having nothing to write about, which for once is definitely not the case. I'll leave the explanation to item 4 below. Here's the fortnightly round-up. Perhaps these things will become a little more frequent in the next few weeks. Perhaps not.
1. Finally booked my flights! Now I've just got people nagging me about not being here in January and February (and in two cases, about not having selected appropriate dates for my going-away party, which I didn't know I was supposed to be holding until they complained).
2. I know this is the same as point 1, but I'm going skiing while I'm in Canada. Lake Louise - looking forward to it lots. Can't wait to strap the planks on again - it's been a bit too long...
3. Relatedly, I have a new job finally on the horizon - I'm going to be stuck in the office till my birthday each year, unfortunately (and hence, unlikely to be going skiing much!), but at least I won't have to talk to the gnomish one any more.
4. Net withdrawal symptoms. I went over to my parents' house 2 weeks ago, and when I came back, the Net wasn't there any more. Long story short - after over an hour of calls spread over 4 days to my ISP's helpline, they finally tracked down the cause to "an error on the radius server record on the rack I connect to". (I'm reasonably up on IT terminology, but I have no idea what that means!) And as of an hour or so ago, I'm back. So I can order my going-away stuff online now, instead of having to tramp round shops.
5. Having a 6-hour bitching session till closing time in the Ackhorne, when most of us had intended to be home and in bed by 6 pm!
6. Starting to finally relax a little on the work front. Partly because of no. 4, but partly because (and in no little part because of the assistance of Sarum) we're finally on top of everything. And I think people may have noticed.
7. Spending an hour and a half in 3 different pubs on the PTH thinking Lint was an awful lot more fiendish at setting puzzles than he actually is. Between us, Jenny and I covered about 6 sheets of paper with all kinds of variations on Caesar Square ciphers, anagrams, Roman substitution ciphers, everything we could think of. We should have realised...
8. Discussing various methods of buying a house for GeeDee and a car for Jimbobjo with the criminal mastermind and ever-reliable fount of bizarre conversational directions, Iasonas.
9. (and the final one for now) They've put the coloured lights back up on the Minster! Yay! This is one of the best light displays I've seen (and I grew up near Blackpool) because it seems to fit so well with the Minster itself. I might have to pay a few more visits than usual to Colm's desk over the coming days. One hope is that it lasts a bit longer than the 3 days they managed last year. Well, I'll just have to get my fill in over the weekend, just in case.
OK, not quite the final one, but this doesn't merit a number. Congrats in particular to Newbury (6th time's the charm!), but also to everyone else who's just passed any actuarial exams.
6 comments
Comments:
Re 7: Bear in mind that the thing you mistook for a code was designed to be solvable by very drunk people. Best to not make it too hard... (unlike the rest of the quiz :-) )
Possibly not totally worthwhile given that one was a griddler and one was a picture. And that I'd already said it was Rolf. However, the answers would have been something like:
Australia,
Thomas Harris,
Kangaroos,
Animal Hospital,
Stairway to Heaven,
The Haywain,
and the phrase "Can you tell what it is yet?"
Why not do a Jeopardy and guess the questions?!
Australia,
Thomas Harris,
Kangaroos,
Animal Hospital,
Stairway to Heaven,
The Haywain,
and the phrase "Can you tell what it is yet?"
Why not do a Jeopardy and guess the questions?!
Well there goes a good puzzle. And perhaps Bert hasn't read what you wrote in enough detail to remember it - I didn't.
Since the griddler was a dead giveaway and the picture was the exact opposite (a live takeaway?), I wasn't actually going to use either of them.
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Since the griddler was a dead giveaway and the picture was the exact opposite (a live takeaway?), I wasn't actually going to use either of them.