In some ways, a very different birthday from last year's. In others, quite scarily, not at all!

Work. Lots of work. At least I'm not there for another 5 days now.

On that topic, I ended up having a bit of a rant about the same thing as I did last year (no. 1 on the list) - a year later, and people are still trying to make the same mistakes in the interests of being able to ignore "externalities." When your project is meant to encompass absolutely everything, it's not a great idea to start off designing your solution by excluding vast swathes of the present setup in order to make things easier. You do all the hard work up front, then you don't have to do it again. People never get this.

I managed to eat in 2 different places today. Really gorgeous meal this evening, of which more later...

Being serenaded by an animated pink hippo and yellow dog. Twice.

Shying back from the edge twice today. I can wait till the weekend for one of them.

Finding out that Wellington, Auckland and Chicago are all the windiest city in the world, and that Perth, Wellington, Auckland and Chicago are all the second windiest city in the world. (Perth is also third, an accolade shared by none of the others. They're all first and second only.)

Getting to use the "I remember my 20s like it was only yesterday" line I thought of in the shower, only yesterday. Sadly, the recipient doesn't often get my jokes. Still, I laughed. My "first rule of valuation" gag I thought of in Australia went down quite well, though.

Only one Logan's Run reference, followed by multiple overlapping explanations of said reference.

Proposing a head-and-beard-shaving event for charity. Only on a warm day in July, though.

Neooooooooooooooooo!

Thank you to everyone for all my presents. In order of delivery, I received :

A warning there was another exam paper on the way for me to mark.

A large latte, with one brown sugar.

A mug with pictures of lots of types of sushi on it, and 5 sachets of (we think) miso soup mix. Speculation that this was in fact some nanotechnology that, if opened, would start the proverbial grey goo scenario, is likely to prove unfounded.

More types of spicy food than I could shake a stick at.

A book of over-30s jokes.

A picture of me looking a little damp. (No. 1 on this list too. Actually, looking back at that link, item 12 seems a little bit academic now!)

A CD containing 20 tracks from the year in which I was born (although unfortunately not the actual no. 1 at the time I was born, namely

A Giant Poking Device™, which also served as the aforementioned stick to shake at the chillies, and also as an aid to walking, for which purpose I will be using it over the weekend.

A Nautical Beard, complete with strap that's much too small to fit over my head.

A gingerbread man.

The official book of the World of Beard and Moustache Championships, complete with entry form for the 2005 event.

Meltons Too for the meal. We ended up with quite a brilliant setup. We were in their top floor room, and we were the only ones there - plus a waiter all to ourselves, frequently decent music that we could actually hear (although my phone couldn't when I tried to 2580 one song), and that ever-so-slightly-freer feeling you get when you're amongst only friends (that's quite inappropriately derogatory towards the waiter, actually). The few downsides were

Tonight's Restaurant Malfunction (for there was one) will be going in to the chart at no. 3. Strictly, it wasn't as disastrous as the one it's ousting, but as it further reinforced the fact that Neal is possibly some form of restaurant malfunction catalyst, and also that Tom (Helen had earlier warned me that he gets upset when he's not got a detailed plan of when he's going to eat for the next day or so) didn't get his, it just has the edge over Christine's birthday. 17 of us, and they delivered 14 meals. A minute or two later,

However, given the quality of the meal, I was quite happy to overlook this! I had a Moroccan lamb tagine, which was delicious, although far too filling and also possibly served in a magical bowl that was refilling itself nearly as fast as I could eat. Sadly, I didn't have room left for the cheese plate, which, given the choice of cheeses, was definitely a bad thing.

posted by Chip : 23:59

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There are several things I'd have preferred not to have had to do yesterday, including spending most of the last hour at work with the worst headache I can ever remember having, and marking exam papers for 4.5 hours.

There's one I would definitely have preferred to do instead - namely, go to see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (idiosyncratic review here). This will have to wait for a bit now, as I doubt it will have percolated far enough north to be visible in Scotland.

Everyone else has had a go, so I might as well join in the party (so to speak).

Who should I vote for? v2

Your expected outcome:

Conservative

Your actual outcome:

Labour -27
	Conservative 38
	Liberal Democrat 13
	UK Independence Party 32
	Green 37

You should vote: Conservative

The Conservative Party is strongly against joining the Euro and against greater use of taxation to fund public services. The party broadly supported the Iraq war and backs greater policing and ID cards. The Tories are against increasing the minimum wage above the rate of inflation, and have committed to abolishing university tuition fees. They support 'virtual vouchers' for private education.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Hmmm. That's not exactly the result I got the other day! I was strongly pro-UKIP and anti-Lib Dem on Saturday! Either I'm a lot more floating (and less decided) than I thought I was, or I'm poor at aiming the mouse.

Iasonas' birthday party was ... varied on Wednesday. La Tasca's food was pretty good (esp. the honey and pine nut cheesecake!), but there really wasn't much else on the menu I could have eaten, so I'm not sure I'd bother going back again. Conversation in the restaurant was, by turns, scintillating and excruciating, with a fairly clear delineating line between the two. Other headlines :

Had a fairly involved discussion about me with Helen (no, that word order isn't jumbled) which was ... interesting.

Wondered whether GD was still wearing elasticated ties or whether he could do Windsor knots by himself now.

Failed to remember which way round a sheep's head and body should most correctly be coloured.

Learnt about the frequency of fishcakes on Government websites.

I'm wondering whether to try something a bit edgy tonight. "It's my party and I'll", and all that. We'll have to see.

posted by Chip : 00:20

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This past fortnight has been a bit of a bumpy ride. Not really having much fun at work at the moment - all the bad things about last year seem to be repeating themselves, only more so (and in some cases, in triplicate). I expect several people could have legitimately used Elaine's typical put-down.

However, two things went right today. I still haven't worked through all the logic of why yet, but I ended up with a right answer. I can't remember the last time I managed to do that at work! I also had a bit of a chat that was a lot more helpful than I suspect the person it was with realised.

In a karmic netting-off, however, something also went wrong, in that I had to skip the Idlewild gig I was invited to attend while I was in Melbourne. Oh well - had a bit of a tinkle along on the piano with American English when it came on the iPod earlier on, so that'll have to do.

Meltons Too this Friday. I've been wanting to go for quite some time, and now I have an excuse. Tom recommends the paté - I think Dom may not be surprised if I follow this suggestion! Not sure about tomorrow night's venue for Iasonas' birthday though - La Tasca does a lot of garlic-based foods, so there's a fair chance I'm going to end up hungry!
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Last night's OWS quiz has prompted me to post a little game.

Two of the questions asked for people whose names sounded like commands or orders - e.g. Charles Dance or Mary Decker (and as I type this, Jimbobjo's real name has just come to mind!)

Can anyone think of any others? The funnier the better! We came up with quite a few more last night, but I can only remember Kurt Russell.
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Had a reasonably successful last few days for quizzes.

Last night, Bert, Lint, GD and I went to the Ackhorne, a quiz we've previously won, but one we've also done disastrously badly at before too. Our first half went fairly averagely, despite a little help from the quizmaster (I think we also cheered GD up no end with the comment "Short is good"), and the second half was more of the same. We expected to have acquitted ourselves adequately, but not really a sterling performance.

Until we lucked out with the team to whom we gave the paper to mark! I came up with one of two theories for their marking. First, they were very very very drunk. Second, they weren't listening to the quiz guy as he read the answers out, they were instead assuming that where our answer agreed with what they'd put down, we must be right.

I'm at a loss as to how to explain it otherwise. They gave us 6 extra marks (out of 40), and marked one wrong which was correct (we put vernal equinox, which is the technical name for the spring equinox, the answer the quizmaster had). This gave us a mark of 34 (whereas we really only had 29), which was enough to win by a single point. Shamelessly, we took the money!

Tonight's usual OWS quiz was very successful. We had a near-perfect second round, missing only 2 questions (both with numerical answers, where we were out by 1 in both cases). If only I'd known when Kelly Holmes' birthday was, or known when Madonna was born.

Overall, however, it was quite close. Another team got the same number of questions right as we did, but the bizarrities of Ian's scoring system meant we carried the day, winning a pleasant £8.90 each.

Third and final quiz (for now) is one done through work. Someone's been very busy creating anagrams - I like anagrams. 10 each of actors, actresses, football teams, criminals and famous historical people. I somehow plucked Cowdenbeath (football team) out of thin air - I didn't know it was a football team, and am only vaguely aware of its existence as a real place. Still got a few left, but I haven't really concentrated on the historical people yet.

(Cowdenbeath reminds me of the time when one of the secretaries at my old job got quite scared - she gave me 4 anagrams with a common theme. I looked for ages at it, and said "All I can get from this one is Hufflepuff, and that's not even a word." "Oh well that's obvious then isn't it?" she said. "Erm...no." Her jaw drops - "you've never read Harry Potter?" "No, not really interested." (This was before the 3rd book was out, I think, so just the time he was becoming really popular.) "How on earth did you get that then?!" "I...don't know.")
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It's been a year yesterday since several of us started playing CNPS, and I achieved my (albeit oft-revised!) goal of 200 spots before the anniversary - even beat it by a day. So only another 4 years to go! At least I'll finish before I'm 34.

I've managed an average of about 0.55 cars per day. (That jumps up to about 0.63 if you adjust for my inability to spot anything during Jan and Feb, but I know Lint doesn't like me saying that. Mind you, he also thinks it's against the rules for me to own a car.) Recent spot rates, since I got back from holiday, have been more like 1 a day (I've got 55 in 58 days), so if I can keep that up (unlikely!) I could be finished a lot sooner than 34.
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I think the heavy bout of studying has really hit Iasonas hard. It took him nearly 30 minutes to start off down tonight's oft-expected-yet-somehow-still-unforeseen conversational path (e.g. as in previous such evenings) before ending up in a metaphorical mire.

Tonight's topic started relatively innocently with him asking Lint and me for advice on how to buy porn. Ever helpful, between us we suggested the SEX shop on Gillygate, how to purchase the selected porn item or items (allowing for whether the person behind the counter was male or female), how not to buy anything with rabbits on the front cover, and how whatever he bought would cost £12.40.

Things then took a slight turn for the worse, as we discussed how, when he was "little", he used to prefer to read the articles in his friends' magazines, because it was much more interesting. There was also a small interlude where I mistakenly thought he was telling us about some sort of pork-based Star Wars fantasy he'd been having.

Moving downhill now much more rapidly, we were regaled with tales of the Greek porn he'd "enjoyed" while at Uni, much of which involved men and women being chained to rocks, with the chains being attached to areas of the body other than the more customary hands and feet. It was never made fully clear what was quintessentially Greek about this (Actors? Language? The olives? I thought it might be that when they were ... erm, finished, they'd throw plates on the floor.), and sadly (since www.greekporn.com doesn't resolve to a real web site) we're going to have to wait till he retrieves his old PC from his parents, on which we were assured that the links to said websites still reside.

Fortunately, however, some face (quite a bit of face percentage-wise, now a lot of his is covered with an incipient beard) was saved by explaining that his penchant for Xena Warrior Princess cancelled out the rock porn.
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It snowed today!

I'm a little prone to giving in to the stereotype that Americans are stupid, so as a slightly early 30th resolution, I'm going to try hard to stop believing in it. I am instead going to maintain a list of individually stupid Americans, thereby remaining entirely unprejudiced. It's absolutely fine to mock people as long as it's purely on a personal level.

I'm going to start with Mr Ed Markey, a senator from Massachusetts. You may read his story here. Particular attention should be paid as to his lack of plans for any of the following :

slowing the rotation of the Earth.

putting a really big mirror in a geosync orbit above Boston (never mind that you can't do geosync anywhere other than over the equator).

making clouds illegal.

attempting to land on Europa and while doing so, accidentally knocking a small black cuboid into Jupiter.

Alternative methods of increasing the number of hours of daylight during the day are encouraged.

posted by Chip : 23:35

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Things I've enjoyed saying today.

"Erroneous erroneous complaint complaint."

"As long as you don't inflate it until you're outside the plane..."

"My new job's easy - you're the one who's got to emulate a short ginger Welshman!"

"A purple one, please."

"But it includes a water feature."

posted by Chip : 00:18

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