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The weekend

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We were in Leicester this weekend to have an un-birthday celebration for Katy. The drive down on friday was crap because of tons of roadworks and traffic and rain but we made it in one piece while enjoying some Pink Floyd along the way. We chilled out on saturday (well, they did – I traipsed into town to get a haircut) before Rita, Anna and Rhona came for tea and sweets. Anna is very quiet, especially when you put her next to her girlfriend, a loud and exhuberant scotslady who has a big thing for Canada. There was serious lobbying for us to get married there so they'd have a reason to go there :)

Katy, her parents, Rita and I went to see Goblet of Fire. I still maintain that the new Dumbledore is crap is ruins the movies for me. The look of the movies themselves are actually more edgy than the first two, but Richard Harris is a head above the new bloke. He sucks. Dumbledore is not supposed to be a manic, headless-chicken sort of person. Nor is he supposed to be a stoner giving out meaning-of-the-universe advice. Poo, I say, pooo!

Sunday was spent doing tech support on the computer we bought for Katy's parents for xmas. A bit of meatball surgery and I had all the files transferred from the old HD to the new one and then spent the next two hours or so patching and updating all the security holes in XP. The usual.

This week should pass quickly. I was working home today and I'll be working home again on wednesday when the car is supposed to be delivered. No real other plans, except that we're going to be doing a cleaning blitz next weekend because the weekend after that, we're on HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

woo-a-hoo.

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Not a bad day if I do say so myself!

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Da-yum! I wish I had more days like this.

I had to work from home today because the car was being picked up to get a bit of bodywork. Because of office politics, it was easier for me to get the day off, so I was home all day. Surprisingly, I did actual productive work. That has to be a sign that you love your job when you're home and you actually work!

I resolved two bugs that were annoying the hell out of me and that means that my code is almost ready to get released into the wild. Once that happens, I can get some screenshots, polish off the paper and send it off for reviews prior to submission. This makes me happy.

The impressive thing is that between the brilliant coding/debugging (hehehe), I managed to do two loads of laundry, half a week's worth of washing up and I even took out the trash.

In other words, I rock!

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A few tidbits

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I found this icon online and fell in love with it.


I think it's applicable to a few other people as well (hint hint [info]electricland)

Fed up of browsing journals whose styles you find, well, horrendous? try this:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/talisker/?style=mine

Addind that little bit at the end will override the journal style and use yours instead. Because, lets face it, you have much better taste than most people :D

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It's beginning to look a lot like xmas

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Except for the complete and utter lack of snow hereabouts… blergh. Only 18 days until I leave for Canadia, joy! Like Katy says, it can't come soon enough. It'll do me good to see friends and family again. Hopefully the shoulder from doom will be kind to me on this trip though. It's been acting up again and I've been waking up stiff as a board for the last two weeks. Not cool, not cool at all.

I've been reading an interesting book by Jon Grimwood called 9Tail fox. The bio reads:

Sergeant Bobby Zha of the SFPD is desperate to find out who murdered him. But he also needs the answers to some other questions. Like, why is he in another man's body? Why is someone trying to kill him, again… And why is he being haunted by a nine-tailed Celestial fox?From the shell-shattered ruins of Stalingrad in 1942 to the present day politics of San Francisco's Chinatown, 9tail Fox is evocative of place and crystal clear in its depiction of character.

It's not bad. There are bits and pieces that make prevent it from being excellent – one of which is that the author keeps thinking that you know the book and storyline just as well as he does, so he keeps making these hints that you think you should understand, but just don't and they're not explained so that just makes them frustrating. Besides that though, it's been keeping me entertained so that's always a good sign

Things at work are becoming interesting. In the span of 2 days, half a dozen people have contacted me about putting bits of the ontology lookup service I've been working on into their applications. Very gratifying. I'm almost done with the first draft of the paper I'm going to submit and it's being reviewed by my boss today.

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RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs

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(LOS ANGELES) The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that it will be taking legal action against anyone discovered telling friends, acquaintances, or associates about new songs, artists, or albums. “We are merely exercising our right to defend our intellectual properties from unauthorized peer-to-peer notification of the existence of copyrighted material,” a press release signed by RIAA anti-piracy director Brad Buckles read. “We will aggressively prosecute those individuals who attempt to pirate our property by generating 'buzz' about any proprietary music, movies, or software, or enjoy same in the company of anyone other than themselves.” RIAA attorneys said they were also looking into the legality of word-of-mouth “favorites-sharing” sites, such as coffee shops, universities, and living rooms.

You gotta love the Onion :)

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Jules Verne, writing the sea

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Pointe-à-Callières will be transporting visitors a thousand leagues from here with the exhibition Jules Verne, writing the sea. To mark the centenary of the famous writer's death (1905-2005), this international exhibition will introduce visitors to the fantastic world of the most widely read and translated author in French literature.

http://www.pacmusee.qc.ca/an/expos/en_cours/index.html

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12 days of xmas up 6,1%

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The price tag of the shopping list laid out in the classic holiday song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is sharply higher this year, hit by such modern-day woes as higher energy and gold prices and concerns about the avian flu, according to an annual survey unveiled Monday.

PNC Advisors, which has charted the cost of the gifts laid out in the song for the last 21 years, put the price of the items this year at $18,348 in 2005, a 6.1 percent increase over last year.

Some presents will be difficult to get at any price this year. The threat of avian flu has restricted the international shipment of birds, thus preventing the purchase of three French hens from France, although there are domestic breeders of French hens which helped keep that gift's cost in line. But all the fowl mentioned in the song cost substantially more this year due to the increased delivery costs from higher energy prices.

Oil isn't the only commodity raising the gift buying prices this year. The “five golden rings” given on the fifth day now cost $325, up 27.5 percent due to rising gold prices.

Even the good news on pricing is a troubling sign for gift givers, as the salaries of most of the workers detailed in the song — the maids-a-milking, lords-a-leaping, pipers piping and drummers drumming are the only gifts for which prices are holding steady. The maids-a-milking each got paid only the $5.15 minimum wage, making an hour of their time the cheapest gift on the list.

The only workers in the song to see increased pay is a modest 4 percent gain for the “nine ladies dancing,” based upon information given to PNC by Philadanco, the Philadelphia Dance Company. They also were the best-paid service providers on the list, earning $508.46 each.

Ordering the gifts over the Internet will cost true love shoppers a premium, again due to the increased delivery costs this year. The overall Internet cost is estimated at $29,322.80, up 5.7 percent from 2004 and a premium of $10,973.93, or nearly 60 percent, from shopping in the more traditional manner.

For the gift giver who goes all out and gives the repeated gifts for each day as detailed in the verses of the song will pay $72,608 for all 364 items, up 9.5 percent from the $66,334 price tag in 2004. That's a much bigger increase than the 1.6 percent increase last year.

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/28/news/funny/holiday_12days_pricetag/index.htm

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