By the Hair on my Chinny Chin Chin

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Some time back (22nd November 2004 actually - isn't the Blogger search wonderful) my razor refused not to raze. I couldn't turn it off. Then it went all dicky. Worst of all it would drop dead in mid shave, leaving itself hanging of my face by the hairs on my chin, which is as painful as it sounds, if not more so.

I've been meaning to take it to bits and fix it. So, having chosen my time carefully, at 11:30 pm last night I took the darned thing to bits. And now it is completely broken. So today I have just nipped out and bought another shaver. This one is very posh, and can be washed under the tap (although the instructions suggest that you don't have it plugged into the mains at the time).

It seems to work fine. I now have a face as smooth as a middle aged babie's bottom.

In Search of Easy Money

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There is a five pence piece on our bathroom floor. It has been there for the last couple of days. I think it fell out of my pocket some time back. Nobody has picked it up, which is interesting. It may be because everybody in my house is so rich that they can affort to do without it. Or it may be because they are scared that if they take it I will become angered and demand it back. Perhaps I'd better grab it now. Or I could leave it there as a sign of afluence I suppose. In fact, with inflation being the way it has been, perhaps a floor covered in money is now cheaper than actual carpet. Colder though (unless you used notes - which would be wildly impractical unless you live in certain parts of the world)

Like a God to Four Year Olds

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David is a bit cross with me. Apparently his four year old son, having been asked to identify the most important people in his life, drew a picture with "Big Rob" in the middle. I've been trying to work out what, other than my acknowledged personal magnetism, could have brought about such an attitude.

I think it is mainly that we have not met very often and he therefore hardly knows me. And that last time we met I gave him some ice cream and let him play with my four lane car racing set. And I've never told him off, or made him go to bed early. And he didn't have much time to talk to my kids about what I'm really like......

Pub Full of People

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Went out the the pub last night. Not that pub, the other one. Our regular was full of folks watching a football match on the big screen. You know you are in trouble when you walk into a place and your glasses steam up instantly (especially if you are not wearing glasses). I have never seen the pub that busy. Whenever you go into something like that you first have to check that your jumper doesn't match any of the teams playing(fortunately it didn't). And cheering when the wrong team scores (or not cheering when the right one does) has been known to decrease the quality (and perhaps the length) of your life so I'm told. Although actually they seemed a friendly enough bunch (some of them might even have been in one or two of my lectures at some point).

Anyhoo, in order to get the peace and quiet we wanted, as well as a place to sit, we relocated the "Preston Foster" meeting to another, less boisterous hostelery just across the road. Fortunately where we live you are never more than a stones throw from at least two pubs, not that I spend my evening throwing stones at pubs. The conversation was as wide ranging as usual, but Ian made the mistake of admitting that he had stopped reading my blog. For shame. I want him to start blogging now, so that I can not read his.

Running on Rails

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And so to London. As to prove conclusively that it does exist early in the morning, the universe treated me to a fantastic sunrise, viewed through the train carriage all the way from Hull to Peterborough. Wisps of cloud lit golden by the rising sun were like streaks of fire across the dark blue of the sky, whilst on the ground the trees that rushed past were swathed in rolling mist.

Unfortunately I'm having to use inadequate words here because I couldn't get a photograph, darnit.

London was, well, London. "Full of Sound and Fury, signifying nothing" (I think I took the lyrical pill this morning).

David and I gave a conference paper which seemed to go down OK. However, you would think that with all my years of marriage I would have learnt to keep my big mouth shut. But no such luck. Someone said something about how horrible programming is, and how unpleasant it is to learn it. They even went as far as saying they gave a "Welcome to Hell" speech at the start of their programming courses. Wah! As someone who puts programming in a category of self expression alongside writing poetry and drawing pictures, I take strong issue with this. And done properly and with commitment from the person being taught, learning to program is actually quite fun. I said as much and was in the process of being shot down for saying this when someone called time out. Just as well I suppose.

The trip back was made slightly more interesting by a points failure just outside Selby which meant an extra half hour on the train. Ho hum.

(extra note: The Blogger spell checker is wonderful. It suggested "featherbrained" for Peterborough)

(extra extra note: The quote above is from Macbeth. Just to prove I have a literary side too...)

Heading for the Big City

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Going to London tomorrow. Capital city. Seat of government. Place of residence of the monarch. And I'm pretty sure that there is a Starbucks there somewhere too. I now know that the streets are not actually paved with gold, so I won't be taking the shovel this time. Or the smelter. But I will be taking the train. At 6:18.

This is not a nice time to be rising. Or indeed doing anything else. As far as I'm concerned (and I am quite concerned) the universe doesn't actually have a need to exist at that hour of the day, since I'm not usually around at the time. But then again, I hope it does. Actually, thinking about it, the world doesn't actually have to be there when my eyes are closed. BLINK. Hmm. Anyone else spot that?

A Watched Pot...

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As she was leaving the house this morning my wife pointed at the duvet and said "You know Rob, those bedclothes won't change themselves". I think she might be right. I've been watching them for the last hour and nothing has moved. It has just dawned on me that I'm wasting my time here. I've set up a webcam and time lapse photography stuff so that I can make absolutely sure. If anything happens I'll post pictures.

Pain in the Third Degree

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Three degree ceremonies in one day. Now that is what I call hard work. The good news is that Andrew was along to take the strain at the last one. But even so it is a long time in a suit and academic gown + silly wobbly hat. I still like doing the job though. The graduands really enjoy the day. One chap had flown in from Bahrain for to get his degree and was flying out again at lunch time. We had to move him into an early ceremony so that he could have his moment of glory with the Chancellor and then catch his flight back. Great fun.

Then I went to see a movie. Meet the Fokkers. My advice: It's too late for me. But you can save yourselves.

Don't Give Up Without a Fight

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People, I'm not going to be beaten by someone just because they are funnier and more witty than me. It is not like me to give up without a fight. I'm more likely to not bother in the first place, or perhaps be somewhere else at the time. So here we go.

I rang someone up on my mobile phone but I didn't hear anything. I think I may have it set to "silent". The person I called was shouting "You've got it set to silent you idiot". On the other hand I suppose I could have just asked them to pass the salt. Then it dawned on me that I don't particulary like salt anyway. It reminds me of the sea. I had a bad experience there one day when I forgot the boat. Do you know that sharks have to keep swimming, otherwise they drown? I wonder how they know? After all, no sharks are going to come back and tell them. Perhaps there is a shark school somewhere. Or is that Wales. Only been once. I thought I'd find out what "the size of Wales" really means. Apparently it depends on the scale of the map that you use. On mine it was the size of a beermat, or a compact disk cut to the size of a beermat. I tried this and ruined my copy of "Brothers in Arms". The follow up "Sisters in Legs" didn't do anything like as well. But that's the music business. And you know, I feel a lot better now.

I Hate This Person

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You know how it is when you work at something, think you might be getting somewhere and then you come across somebody else who just does it far better than you, and with far less apparent effort. Well...take a look at the blog here:

http://topicdrift.blogspot.com/

Effortlessly funny. All of the time. And so much of it. I feel like the Wright Brothers would have felt at Kittyhawk if, after their maiden flight, they were buzzed by Concorde. I don't know who this person is. I'm hoping they are a crack team of scriptwriters with too much time on their hands. But anyway, read, enjoy and thank me later.

Slow Turnover

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The engine in Ye Olde Car is getting slower to start. That is, it usually fires up quite quickly, but rather than going ur-ur-ur it goes ur----ur----ur before going vroom. I'm starting to wonder if there will come a time where it goes ur. And nothing else. I should probably consider buying a new battery.

Only in my car the battery is in with you (in fact I sit on it - but with a chair in between to make it more comfortable and less potentially painful). And it is not full of water, but instead uses jelly. Although I've no idea what flavour. This makes the battery very expensive and special order only. And so up until now the expense and the fact that when I disconnect the old battery and plug in the new one it will probably break the central locking and stuff has put me off.

But then again after over seven years I'm probably due a new one. But I will resist the temptation to open the old one and find out what flavour it really is.

Crisp Strategies

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Here are the facts, ladies and gentlemen:
  • I take a packed lunch, including crisps, to work every day of the week.
  • There are five days in a week.
  • There are four packs of barbecue flavoured crisps in the 24 pack Walkers Variety bag that we buy each week.
  • I like barbecue flavoured crisps best of all.

This means that I have to endure a day without my favourite crisps (and for someone with a life like mine this is a big deal, believe me). So, given the above facts do I:

  • Take Cheese and Onion on Monday (deferred gratification)
  • Throw a dice - if I can find a five sided one- to decide which day I take the BBQ crisps(hand of fate)
  • Take Cheese and Onion on Friday (suffering on the happiest day of the week)
  • Take all four packs to work on Monday - since other family members have been known to eat them (forward planning)

Turns out that the last solution is the best. The only problem is that I might eat all of the crisps on a Monday......

Long Distance Photography and Evil Squirrels

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I've just got some lenses for my new camera. I got them (like just about everything else I seem to buy these days) from eBay. The plan was to buy some second hand, older style, lenses as part of a job lot of camera and lenses, and then pop them on the new beast.

As a plan it has worked very well. I can now zoom in on things from a reasonable distance and get good quality output. I was framing up some nice pictures of the squirrels in our garden when I remembered that:
  • squirrels are vermin (basically rats with good PR)
  • squirrels are evil (if you don't believe me - just type evil squirrels into Google)

Derek is not happy with squirrels either. They have taken up residence in his loft and he can hear them munching through his infrastructure during the night. We have discussed different ways of disposing of the unwanted guests. I'm for the General Norriega approach on this one, where you play things like Barney the dinosaur loudly through special speakers in the loft. Then again, perhaps this might not go down well in his neighbourhood.

(By the way, just found out that the word Google is not in the spell checker here. Who'd have thought....)


And This Wire Goes Where?

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Went out home entertainment shopping with Dad today. If there's one thing I like more than spending my money it is spending other peoples'. Dad is buying a big plasma telly and so we reckoned he should get a new DVD player sound thingy to go with it. I think they caught as at a weak moment because they also persuaded us to buy a special video cable to deliver the super quality video signal to the big screen, which cost an amount I'm kind of embarrased to relate. They must have a big, high security, vault they keep them in. I can imagine scenes as new forms of heist are planned:

Fingers: "Now, you and Nobby distract the guard whilst I go in for the SCARTs"
Nobby: "Are you gonna get the Amstrad composite ones too Boss?"
(SLAP)
Fingers: "Have you learnt nothing...."

Then we went back to his place to wire it up. In the bad old days you got a big thick manual with ten pages of english and then the rest in every language known to man, plus a few I'm sure they made up when they were bored. Nowadays though things are much more flash. Everything was immaculatly presented, with a big thick book all in our mother tongue. We spent an hour or so assembling speakers and pushing wires into holes and then we let it fly. Nice sound. Good thing his place is detached. And if it wasn't, with this thing it probably soon would be....

Mystic Pizza Delivery

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Because we are cash poor and also time poor we get our shopping delivered from Tesco. Each week on Friday a little van tuns up with all our vittals for the week. Except that this time the frozen stuff didn't arrive. I rang the support number and, while I waited, they rang the van and found out what had happened. Apparently their had been a "complete Horlicks" ((c) HM Government) at the store and no frozen stuff made it out onto the road.

Around an hour later a chap arrived with nearly all the stuff and, if I'd played my cards right I could have ended up with a bonus pack of Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummers. But, for some reason, I didn't.

Open Day Blues

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Had our first Admissions Open Day today. Went OK but I made the mistake of using the wrong slide deck. It was very slightly out of date. I don't think anybody spotted the pictures of Model T Fords and computers full of valves. At least I hope not.

But seriously folks, thanks for coming and I hope you enjoyed the visit. And a special surprise prize for an attendee who lets me know the subject of "the joke that dare not be told..."

Dragons' Den

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They had this program on the telly tonight called "Dragons' Den" or somesuch. A bunch of steely eyed entrepreneurs get given the chance to be rude about pitches from people who want backing for an idea or product. Most interesting. The thing that struck me was that the people presenting didn't seem to be that good at sounding keen. Maybe it is the british reserve coming to the fore hear, but hardly any of them really sounded impressed by their own stuff. Maybe they were distracted by the big piles of money all round the room. I think my pitch would along the lines of "I'm thinking of beginning a lucrative career in theft, starting now". Then I'd grab one of the bundles of cash and make a run for it.