Warning: These are old.
Alan is plumbing the depths of his musical repertoire, I see.
Alan's parents departed. Much email catch-up. I have a megabyte of mail from the CVS commits alone. Something tells me that folder is is destined for mutt's delete-all facility.
The trains have finally become so bad that season ticket holders with Great Western are getting a 10% rebate. Does this mean that a tenth of them were late? Nope. One quarter of them were late. To put this into perspective, Great Western aren't even in the top five of most-complained-of train companies.
Watch that step!and
Oh. Look out for the - whoops.
Alan's parents completed the Saturday crossword that day. I am sulking now.
Apparently he also put out two or three -ac kernels. Since he was asleep or out for large parts of the day, I have no idea how.
Cricket rained off. Alan would have sulked, but instead found more programmes about the history of cryptography to watch.
This site designed for IE; netscape page coming sooncame back with
no such user.
Gave up trying to work out whether it was an afternoon or evening game and spent the afternoon watching a carnival pass down the road. It took half an hour to go past. We don't tend to have carnivals in Swansea, but it was a lot of fun. Lots of people came down from the hill behind to watch and the road was hugely crowded. And all the cars got diverted, which is always a plus.
Boggled at the crossword in the Guardian, which has added the periodic table and corrections to common dictionaries to the list of things you need to know to get started on the clues. (It's crossword number 22297 at the Guardian site for anyone who cares. If you get further than my meagre seven answers fitted into the grid, I am not sure I want to know. I shall only sulk.)
Swansea lost in the rugby. Boo hiss. Alan is much more interested in the cricket and kept flipping channels to check scores when I was watching the rugby. He is still alive, but only due to my incredible forbearance. Anyway, I can't work the five remotes that seem to apply to the telly. So he lives. For now.
So much for the beautiful ingredients from shopping. Worst cooking disaster for many years, comparable with the vegetable curry I made once before we married (a domestic by-word: Alan got lost hacking, arrived back home hours later than he meant to, and the entire lot went into the bin). We don't eat much meat these days, but I am reasonably sure neither of us have quite forgotten how to cook the stuff.
Alan appears to have spent most of the day watching cricket, that most boring of games. Apparently he did some hacking, too. But I cannot imagine when.
Having filled up the fridge and freezer with beautiful ingredients, made beans on toast for tea. Whoops.
More banging and drumming from up the road somewhere.
Lots of strange drumming noises from up the road in the evening. I suspect rehearsals for a parade which is taking place at the weekend.
Naturally, I now have all manner of things I want to print.
oh no, spilt coffee in the keyboardsort) happens. I am now getting very superstitious: the trains out were all delayed by a fatality at Reading. Horrifyingly, it seems this kind of thing no longer warrants a mention on the news, as on our return, I couldn't find any mention of it on the BBC. A London-based news site was the only place mentioning it. (The paper today said someone was in hospital, from which I conclude it wasn't a fatality after all, thankfully.)
Lots of different sorts of people at LUG, from people just off to university to business types who just can't afford licensing for a certain company's products any more. Went through installing distros for firewalls (Smoothwall worked, although there was subsequent discussion on the partitioning scheme; Mandrake worked, then broke in some manner I forget) and then retired to pub.
Now I have a fan for the Cyrix with the dying fan, the dying fan has shut up and is apparently still alive. So I didn't need to get Alan to look on Ebay (and thus end up with all those computers) after all.
Several people have now told me that the packaging material which looks like Cheesy Wotsits also tastes like them too. Oh dear.
Ended up at a local Indian restaurant before they said farewell for a long drive back.
Various builders, engineers and stuff to the house today. Much
peering at walls and rubbing of chins. Alan's ebay prizes also
arrived today. Much peering at boxes and rubbing of eyes. (Nope,
didn't work, I can still see them
) Beautifully packed, in
the usual plastic foam twists. It occurred to me that they looked
far too much like a snack called Cheesy Wotsits for comfort. They
smelled a little like them too. Alan tried to tell me that sometimes
they even came in the same colour. I scoffed at him. Then we opened
the second box. Guess what?
I wonder whether they're made in the same factory.
I am in disgrace. After we'd finished eating, Alan went upstairs
to fetch something for me. I put the plates in the washing up and
threw away the remainder of the food that was still in the kitchen
from dishing out. He came back downstairs and oh dear: But
I was going to eat that!
Oops. Bad Telsa.
Alan normally browses the web or sits on IRC when he is compiling. I fear he found Project Gutenburg again. Now, in between Nautilus test-runs, he is producing streams of parody poetry on IRC. The version of Kubla Kahn about Mono was bad enough. Tonight, we were treated to Tennyson's Charge of the VC Brigade.
and then it reloads the font, and then it unloads it, and that takes a second and a half, and..at lunchtime.
Fortunately, he did tell people who knew what to do about this, as well.
Finally: the end of the fish-fingers. It's just as well, because I am sick of them. Alan got the pizza. Defrosting soon, and then I can restock. But no more fish-fingers. Not for at least a year.
Alan appears to have tired of kernels and is messing around with nautilus and a home directory with thousands of files. The combination of strace, sed and dc is scary.
Not only that, it's raining in a drizzly half-hearted sort of way. Whilst coming back to the house after dark, Alan and I counted over fifty slugs and snails on the pavement and walls. In a ten minute (half a mile? a mile?) walk. Ugh.
Booked for
Blackmore's
Night show which is occurring locally soon. Surprised to be
asked Will you be attending in costume? If so, you can have
these seats...
. I can't say we had thought of attending in
costume, despite the mediaeval atmosphere to some of the music.
Well, mediaeval in that lots of the
publicity shots
are of Blackmore
and others in fancy clothes. I'm not totally convinced the music is
so authentic: but I like it, so I don't care. Despite the sniggers of
the people behind us in the queue, contemplated this costume idea.
It occurs to us that we know quite a few people who would probably
play along with this, and it could be fun. Thing is, some of the
people we know will probably want to wear their swords...
Managed to get to the theatre after all. Not bad.
I am pretending to be animated and caught mid-discussionby providing said discussion. It was a most disconcerting experience. He nearly had to get up and go and check something after one of my remarks and he looked unhelpfully blank after most of the rest.
Around 9pm, disaster. Noticed the theatre tickets for the evening sitting unused. Sniff. Went to tell Alan and seek solace. Found him in an unusually cagey state. Realised immediately something was amiss. I should have known it would involve Ebay.
My sweetheart has bought five more computers. By accident.
It's very embarrassing when an Australian who works in the US knows their way about London better than you do.
Trotted through London to the Tate Modern, and loved it. We only had an hour before they closed, so I am going back there and taking Alan one day. Next year, probably. I've been to London twice this year, which is enough for anyone.
Returned home to discover Alan had failed to dispose of fishfingers.
Coward. He attempted to redeem himself by announcing he'd found me a
fan on Ebay. What else?
, I asked. Oh, probably nothing
,
he replied, People will out-bid me on everything else
. I left
the mention of everything else alone. This was a mistake.
I have a bet on with a friend about who can report ten valid bugs in a beta first. I am handicapped by being away tomorrow, but he maintains that this is fair, since he has work and a toddler. So tonight, I am going to attempt some jobs I have not done before and see what happens.
Popped out to town with Alan, booked for the local theatre's idea of high culture: a whodunnit. Yes, this is high culture compared with endless tribute bands and the penis puppetry show which caused all the complaints. (They managed to sell all the tickets for that one, of course :))
Endless fans in the computer shop, but none fit for my dying machine.
Having heard the noise, Alan now agrees it needs a new one, and out
of the goodness of his heart has offered to spend time on Ebay looking
for a fan for you
. Uh-huh. I know exactly how long he spends on
Ebay already, and this is not nearly so altruistic of him as it might
sound. For the next six months or more, I am going to be told I was
looking for your fan, and I found this instead
as he bids on all
manner of junk. Thank goodness he is always out-bid. I have no idea
what he was planning to do with a dry-ice kit for generating smoke on
stages (I don't believe his protestations that it was for a birthday
present for someone else for a minute). I am however quite sure he would
have thought of many, many things to do with it had he got it.
The latest Ebay prize is a barometer which has provided him with endless hours of amusement, even though it arrived damaged in transit: the attached thermometer was broken. So in addition to getting a barometer, which made him happy, he got to cause chaos with the post office, which made him even happier. It had arrived with some form of insurance, so he rang up the post office, announced it had been broken en route, and asked for the repair costs. They wanted it and the packaging sent to them first, to check that it was broken and that it wasn't the fault of the packaging.
However, the post office have a list of things you can't send through
the post. I would provide a link to the list, but it seems the Post
Office don't have a website browsable with Mozilla yet. (Instead, I
go there and am greeted with
a jaunty message that a Netscape compatible version will be available
shortly
.) Luckily, Alan knows the list, and it would seem that
broken glass thermometers with mercury leaking out of them are not
the Post Office's most acceptable objects. And they wanted the damaged
article posted back to them. So he got to cause chaos by pointing
their own rules out and asking them now what should he do? Short of
fixing software, I think interpreting rules in unfortunate ways is
one of Alan's favourite games. He will argue the toss until the cows
come home.
So the barometer was a most successful purchase from his point of view.
If nothing exciting happens on the net, I suspect I know what his next
game is going to be, and it's going to involve How does one
dispose of mercury safely
and several phone calls to an unlucky
city council. Failing that, I foresee many more hours on Ebay under
the pretence that he is looking for a fan for me.
Red Hat employees who have anything to do with X will be delighted to know that the failing fan is attached to the Media GX chip which features so often in my bug reports. If anything hinders Alan in his quest to keep this machine alive, I shall know exactly whom to blame.
empty freezer of contents in order to defrost itplan is proceeding apace. But I am getting very tired of fish fingers. However did we end up with so many?
Wandered through town to sit in Castle Square and watch the skateboarders practise (one kicking the skateboard every time he didn't get it right) to the dulcet tones of some evangelist. No buskers. Boo. On return home, set burglar alarm off. It is loud. Ow.
The fan is dying in one of the computers. Waah.
Discovered some sorbet in the freezer which should have been eaten three months ago. Sampled it anyway. Decided that best-before dates are to be heeded. Oh well.
silly mid on: someone fielding there got hit by a ball travelling very fast. This is a well-known risk if you stand there, hence it's
silly... (No, I am not a cricket fan. I just like the sheer surreality of the fielding position names and the fact that there is a rule for everything, including, according to Alan,
if the ball splits into two halves whilst in play, then.... Before you ask, I have forgotten what happens then. Ask Alan, because he professes to know.)
Put the eat everything from the freezer
campaign into action
so that I can defrost it. I fear we are going to get very tired of
fishfingers soon.
Found that several friends who went to the London Linux Expo had
also received junk mail, via email and post. One had even had a phone
call about it. Strangely, none of us can recall leaving the please
spam me
box checked. Not impressed about this at all.
Up extremely late.
Alan returned, a mere hour late. Thank you, trains.
Junk After the Expo..
post (through the letterbox, not via
email) which I strongly suspect is as a result of giving my address
out in order to get my tickets sent for the Linux Expo in London
last month. Not impressed, because I always tick the No, I do
not wish to receive marketing
boxes.
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.)