Warning: These are old. Very old.
Came back, did shopping, did more shopping, messed about, noticed it was 4pm, wondered if he was actually going to get up. I suppose it is Saturday, but it is rather hard to come up with meals that serve as breakfast for him and tea for me.
Rearranged all the penguins for something to do. Either Alan rearranges them when I'm not looking, or they're alive. They're never in the same place twice or doing the same thing.
Bumped into an old mate in the bookshop (spending Alan's money again, yes). Why is it that even catching up with old news and gossip degenerates into a "Hey, I want to install Linux, whilst you're here, what do you know about..?" session these days?
Diverted friend with bagatelle board. He beat me.
There have been a lot of bangs, thuds, thumps and crashes from above. I see from Alan's diary (where else do you look to find out what your husband is doing?) that his earlier summary of "I'm just moving a few things" was a bit of a fib. I also see that the new little computer is "not real work". In the interests of Linux development, I shall make the great sacrifice of hiding it from him until the "real work" is done. The fact that I hear it has a crossword solver on it is of course entirely unrelated to this offer.
One of the Guardian reviewers has already mentioned the true irony of Shooting the Past. It's all about the battle to prevent a photograph library from being destroyed or broken into smaller collections (sound weird? It was, but it was wonderful). And it's shown by the BBC. Whose archives are notoriously prone to the occasional equivalent of rm -rf on random directories. Ah well.
Other fun of the day: discovering from the BBC website that we shouldn't have worried about water on the tracks, the wrong kind of carriage, and so on (I wait for the 'wrong kind of passenger' in anticipation, that'll be me, then): the signal wiring is so awful that apparently (allegedly, it is so reported, etc) engineers are told not to touch it in case it disintegrates.
Went to the London conference thing with Alan. Thanks to trains, got there in time for at least the end of it. When we said we'd had some problems with the tube (last in a series of idiocies), the person we spoke to said "Oh. Circle line?" instantly. It was.
Missed the talks I wanted to hear (but got promised an account of one), met lots of fun people, stayed for Eric Raymond's "Which talk would you like me to give? You have a choice of three.." talk (he fitted two topics into the one talk..) in the evening, quailed at the number of people attempting to get food. Feeding of the five hundred. At least. Peeled off from the main group and trustingly followed first Russell King into the underground and then Alec Muffett into Chinatown and Wong Kei's which was a good move. Yum.
Next day, to Alan's parents for the massively delayed "Christmas visit". (This isn't too delayed, come to think of it. The company he used to work for is having its Christmas meal next month.) Back now, to face 250 emails from 3 days. Daren't think what's awaiting Alan.
Having given the world far too many (sez me, missing the point of quick turnaround completely) kernel revisions the previous night, Alan not up until 4pm. Lots of tidying went on before that. We seem to have the packing materials from the weeks' parcels downstairs (grr!), but they'll be handy for something, I'm sure.
Discovered to my delight that Babelfish translates _everything_ on a page. Wondered what Alan was talking about in Austria, fed the relevant German page through Babelfish and whilst looking at it, was enchanted to discover that someone else there is from the "University of Complaining ford" or some such. Little things please little minds, yes...
Went shopping with Alan. Turned out we both got things under the impression it was our turn to cook. Alan won (er?) and cooked. Major disaster in Swansea: no more Jolt left in the sandwich shop. Went looking for another drink that's sort of similar in its effects (although the day I looked up all the ingredients on the web I discovered I was alleviating any possible chance I had of prostate trouble, which, being female, will doubtless be a great help in later life..) and none of that, either! Argh. Alan without Jolt will be impossible to wake.
Alan spent twenty minutes checking someone's address over IRC, which then crashed mid-check, without even realising that I've had it on paper since they moved house. Silly man. He then hied off to drink whisky and watch Jackie Chan films at Dick's house whilst I settled down with a bottle of booze, a beanbag and a book. At about 11pm. Just beginning to wake up properly.
On the sleep front, I can see that Alan without caffeine is going to be worse than Alan with the stuff. I am going to enjoy waking him for all those train rides. Those giant speakers and the 'at' command have possibilities.
Justin came round, and once he was prised off the bagatelle board, he and Alan happily discussed all manner of appalling "Well, if you drill this part of a chip and solder that part" ideas. I quite liked some of the results they thought they might achieve, but all the same, I'm seriously tempted to hide the soldering iron. That, or insist that as it's my soldering iron, I get to do it. (Alan's is wrecked as the result of a previous escapade, the details of which elude me still, as I muddle them up with the reasons why one of his screwdrivers has a melted tip.)
Just discovered (off his website, of all places...) Alan's thinking of heading Londonwards. I haven't been to London for a year or more. Mmm.
Alan doing the late-night thing again: to bed at 6.30am last night (this morning). Dragged him to cinema to see Zorro. I should have remembered he'd done some fencing and found something different. He also claimed he'd spotted a really obscure error. I checked afterward on IMDB, and was amazed. How did he see this? (Search for Mask of Zorro and goofs to find it.) I loved the film, so I don't care.
Last April, Alan received a rather large monitor. It took the two of us a lot of effort to manoeuvre it through the door (with a millimetre to spare either side) and then through the inner door (which is significantly narrower) and then up the stairs and into him room. I am only just recovering. Now I have found out that it's going to go back. Through all those doors again. This should be good for a laugh. I hope it hasn't expanded in the heat or anything.
I see Alan's still not quite up to grips with the north/south divide. Ferrets down your trousers indeed. This is purely because he went to Gateshead once and couldn't follow the accent.
By the way, there's no entry for the previous day because I hardly saw him.
Alan has packed up the horrible giant monitor that got stuck in the doorway and it's going back soon. This means getting it through the doorway again. After I attached things to the wall in that area. I am less happy.
Alan has filled the soon-to-be-space on the desk with the contents of another giant package. Speakers. Three of them. (That makes lots). They're.. effective, certainly. Wince.
Alan is reluctant to get involved with any attempt to make a coffee-maker switch on via the computer now because he seems to think I will eventually switch it on with no water in and start a fire. I'm not the one who welded tinned spaghetti to the non-stick saucepan. Or set the wok on fire. More than once. Once with fifteen guests in the house. But there we are.
I live in interesting times, yes.
Alan cooked. The spice got stuck in the jar. He shook it. Half of the jar fell into the pan. He told me this after he fed it to me. Alan has also confiscated all the penguins in the house after discovering them _all_ in the bedroom at about four am when he finally finished hacking.
Found (eventually) the httpd logs and realised in horror where all the bandwidth had gone. _How_ many hits? To add a note of true geek style, Alan's diagram of which computers are which also showed up in the logs: it was getting six times as much interest as the picture of Alan sitting at them. I am very amused about that.
For the last couple of months there has been a running battle over where the cuddly penguin wants to be. Today it was being held onto by another two penguins sitting proprietorially on my beanbag. I can only assume that Alan ran out of his usual compile-time amusements.
I have failed to break the camera so far, and some of the pictures even came out. So - natch - I decided to brave the scanner hardware. The software was broken instead (cries of "Alan! Fiiiiix!") and the attempt to render a colour picture on the screen initially produced three black and white ones instead. Some of the results escaped the censor.
Alan has got a truly stupid new vanity domain name which I propose to ignore utterly.
Rearranged bedroom. To Alan's disgust, we now have space for another bookcase. Went shopping, and discovered that even though we have identical debit cards, the supermarket says I can't have cashback but doesn't argue with Alan when he wants it.
Found the Coffee mini-HOWTO. This looks promising! Bugger 2.2; I want a coffee-maker working, and when I asked Alan to write a driver he promised to find me one that's been done. This only leaves the wiring to do...It can't be that hard, surely?
More visitors. Alan was up for the evening ones and was almost up for afternoon. Almost. Out for meal with the usual "hackers and palmpilots at one end of the table, wine at the other" arrangement. Hic. Since it's 3am, I'm off to bed. He, however, is still going strong, but what he's doing, I have no clue...
Many visitors. Alan got up for the afternoon ones. Went to see Star Trek XI with people. Best line: "Sorry, sir, we're fresh out of warp cores." Much fun, although explaining why something is unethical shouldn't really need doing three times, surely.
It took me an awful long time! I don't mind compiling things, but oh, finding where Alan has hidden various files that the sample configuration file thinks are elsewhere is a pain. He does it deliberately, I'm sure! And he deletes manual pages that he doesn't need. Bah.
All worked, and I have the new improved version to break now, and promptly abandoned everything to go to a number of new year's eve parties. Alan stayed home to work. (And watched telly, and played, and had a take-out in my absence.)
But what, pray tell, is a 'file tree walk'? A tree walk? Sounds like some kind of Ent. I do hope it's called Treebeard.
I've been asked for a more obvious feedback route. So there you are! But please note: This should be clear from the above, but: I am not a kernel hacker. I am not an anything hacker. "Is this diary true?" will get answered. (It is.) "I have a problem compiling the brainsplat module under the pre-sliced option terminator; I am using the mutability framewedger on the standard infernalisation build" will not. (Well, it might be answered in a similar vein, but for a real answer, look elsewhere. It's much safer.)