15 January 2014

Ten things which bug the bugs out of me...





1 Politics. Everything about it. Politicians in particular, every party.

2 TV. We have to pay for the privilege of watching a TV in the UK. For me, that’s three episodes of Sherlock once a year.

3 That the faceboo0k ‘page’ “I fucking love science” has a ‘fucking’ in it. Why? Is that really, really necessary on a site which thirteen year olds can (and do) sign up to? Science belongs to all age groups.

4 Adobe Flash. It sucks. It always has, and always will. But it’s everywhere. You might not realise this, but if a browser can run flash, it means they’re paying a fee to Adobe for the honour. Roll on html5 (which is open source and free to use)—come on developers get your finger out, get it sorted.

5 People asking dumb questions online when all they have to do is talk to God (his url is google.com It’s a direct line, okay?) When someone answers the questions, they’ve often gone to google to find out.

6 Global warming...climate change. It’s the scapegoat for everything. In essence, it’s become a way of theoretical scientists keeping themselves in work so they don’t have to do something practical or productive.  

7 Religion. Ohhhh, Just don’t get me started, right?

8 The girls who go to nightclubs in short-short skirts and low cut tops then are surprised when they attract the attention of drunken (and sober) males. Yes, rape is rape and there’s no excuse, but ohhh, come on girls...get fucking real, will you?

9 Big game hunting. Jesus H Jernandez. It still goes on. We’ve got disappearing species and populations of bigger mammals dying out—and people (can you call them ‘people’?) still go out hunting big game for sport? That isn’t sport. If they want sport, they should try hand to hand combat with a Siberian tiger. Or dodging high power bullets.

10 Lists of everything. Twenty ways of this, ten ways of that... they’re taking over. Aww man, whatever happened to real article writing?

06 September 2013

What a day...



A relevant joke:

The monks were having a game of darts and got the local Mother Superior to do the scoring. All was well, until one of the monks—who’d been too long in the wine cellar—came up to the ocky.

First dart, treble twenty.

Second dart, single twenty.

Third dart, hits the wire, bounces out and goes straight in the Mother Superior in the forehead.

And the monk shouted out his own score: “A nun and an eighty!”
 
Where’s that relevant? Well, following a trip to the doc’s yesterday, I had to whip the missus up the DVT Clinic at the hospital this morning. She had a DVT years ago, so any possibility of another one automatically means she needs to go for a quick blood test and scan just to be on the safe side.

It’s not a quick in and out visit, so I expected we’d need some cash for the cafe while we were there. I;ve gpot this thing about the cash machine at the hospital always seems to be out of order, so I stopped off at the corner shop to get some dosh.

Wouldn’t you know it—their machine was down.



Nikki, on the till, offered me cashback if I wanted to buy something, but I’m tightfisted, so I said, Nah, I’ll just use the hospital machine.

I mean, all said and done, I was just playing safe—I’ve only once ever needed to use the cashpoint at the hospital, and I was just getting ahead on the slim possibility their machine wasn’t working.

We were early at the hospital, so I went to get some cash from the machine so we could go grab a cuppa.

It was fine. There’s me slagging it off for nothing.

Card in—enter pin number (I always use 0000 so I can never forget the number)—select ‘cash’, hit ‘£40’... and it comes up with ‘Sorry, this machine unable to dispense cash at the moment.
Like it says on the box

Always trust the Force. I just knew that machine wasn’t going to work.

We went a little early for the appointment, instead.

While we’re waiting, there’s this old guy wearing just a hospital gown and he was giving the staff no end of trouble. (Let’s call him Billy, thought that wasn’t his name.) He was wandering off, saying he had things to do, and had his gown pulled up between his legs like a Ghandi-style loin cloth, and confirming, yes, all he was wearing was the gown.

They managed to appease him with threats of security being called, and he went peacefully.

We had the appointment, and Harri was sent for blood to be taken in another department, and told to come back in an hour and a half, giving time for the test results to come through.

As we were heading out to the other department, Billy was wandering down the corridor, saying he wanted to go to the canteen, and the staff were bringing him back with the help of security.

Harri had the blood taken, and we headed for the cash machine again. It still wasn’t working, and now there was an error screen on it, and a group of people (including the engineer) stood round saying, ‘It’s not working.’ [Well, yeah, I knew that.]

The cafe doesn’t take plastic and the little shop there doesn’t do cashback—I’m not even sure if they take cards, either—so we went for a smoke.

I know, I know, disgusting habit, but put that aside and appreciate the timing and everything else here.

 While we’re stood over at the smoking area (and we could have saved oursleves fifty yards walk and just had a smoke in the car park) along comes an old girl we haven’t seen for ages. She lived just around the corner from where we used to live over 20 years ago. Lovely old girl. Nice to catch up with her again.

Like it says on the wrapper
And while we’re stood there, a double decker pulls up at the bus stop, the driver gets out and comes over our way.

Bugger me, if it’s not Geoffrey  ’obson, a guy we haven’t seen for getting on ten years, at least. He doesn’t even live in this area anymore, he’s only down here working for a while, until a job comes up back up in the north where he lives, now.

A couple of minutes either side—enough for a cuppa—and we wouldn’t have seen either of those people. Everything happens for a reason. I don’t know what the reason is yet, but, sooner or later, we will.

Back inside, the machine was fixed, and giving out money.

We grabbed some eats and a drink, and took our time boosting the sugar levels. When we’d done, we had a few minutes left, so went for another smoke.

Yeah, I know, another?

Listen: everything happens for a reason. While we’re out there, Billy—now wearing a pair of PJ bottoms and a teeshirt—is hoofing it, barefoot, past the bus stops and car park and legging it out of the area. I stopped a guy who looked like he might be security (but could have been a brain surgeon) and let him know. He wasn’t security but he went back inside to report it.

Just to be extra sure, when we got back to the DVT Clinic, I mentioned it at reception, and the nurses were going, ‘Oh, god...’

See? But for the timing (and the evil ciggies) we wpouldn;t have met up with two old friends or put out an alert on Barefoot Billy. Being a little early, the machine not working, how long we took for a cuppa and cake...all the boxes ticked for things happening the way they did.

Still, the good news was the blood tests suggested no DVT. But. Said the DVT girl, blood tests have missed them before, so Harri will still need an ultrasound scan, next week.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, she has has to have a self-administered (i.e. by me) daily injection in her belly just in case. Better safe than sorry, and I’ll be shouting ‘A nun and an eighty,’ for the next few mornings. (See—I said it was relevant.)

What happened to Billy, we might never know. As we were coming out, men in HazMat suits were running across the car park with taser rifles at the ready, and the dobermans off the lead. A chopper was circling in the sky, and sirens wailing in the distance, so I figured they had it in hand and left them to it.




03 September 2013

Oh, the irony...

From the Independent (http://goo.gl/dTLvLj), an article about how a Tory (spit and turn around three times) MP is saying schools need to teach more about sexting, online porn, etc in sex education instead of just focusing on the mechanics of reproduction. (I almost half agree.)

Part of the article reads: "The NSPCC report that led to her comments also said that many girls feel they have to “look and perform like porn stars” in order to gain boys’ approval." 

The Indy, not exactly the most risque of the main stream papers, has an link to another article about Vanity Fair's 100'th birthday issue, featuring a scantily glad, provocative bit of shagworthiness to demonstrating that in order to celebrate, you need to get down to your undies and 'look and perform like a porn star'. 

[I know, I know. Marilyn Monroe wasn't a 'porn star'. She was just a very naughty girl.]

Not that I'm complaining about the image; I just thought it amusing it should be right next to the crux of the argument. 


02 September 2013

01 July 2013

Afternoon outing.




Almost a clear drive through to Cambridge. Long tail back on the A11 at Mildenhall on the way there, (and lots of plane activity to the USAF base) and a tailback at the Elveden lights on the return.

I’m not sure they’ve got any further with the Elveden bypass. I think they’re just shifting sand from one side of the road to the other and back.

A nice day for driving, no (other) idiots on the road, and nothing to get stressed about. I’m really not used to this. What’s the catch?


The highlight of the trip was Addenbrooke’s multi-storey car park.

Addenbrooke's carpark (photo: Gogglemaps)
Last time we were there, we tipped off that if you go higher there are heaps of parking spaces. It’s dumb trying to find a space on the first two floors when 5 and 6 are almost empty.

But beware if you don’t like heights. The lift waiting area is ground-to-ceiling window. What a view. Must take my camera next time.

 And because this is THE hospital, they don’t have a lift, they have a molecular transporter. Seriously. You step in the lift (we were on level 5) and press the button for ground floor. The voiceover says, ‘Doors closing’...the doors close...and almost instantly the voice says ‘Ground floor’ and you’re there. If Scotty had been in charge of beaming us up and down, it would have taken longer.

It takes a moment or two for your blood to start circulating around you body again, and you feel one inch taller1, but wow.

[* 1 – on the return transportation you’ll feel an inch shorter, meaning no overall height change.]
[Warning: before stepping into lift for the upward journey, wait for people making the downward journey to drop of the ceiling.]

11 June 2013

A word about prisms...





For anyone who’s been following the Ed Snowden whistleblowing story, I can;t help being suspicious of anyone intelligent who claims a Powerpoint presentation is proof of anything. 


A bit of digging brought this up. An interview from 2008 for a ('factual') book, The Shadow Factory. 

Turns out, the whistle was blown way back then.


“And that’s what happened. NSA began making these agreements with AT&T and other companies, and that in order to get access to the actual cables, they had to build these secret rooms in these buildings.
So what would happen would be the communications on the cables would come into the building, and then the cable would go to this thing called a splitter box, which was a box that had something that was similar to a prism, a glass prism. And the prism was shaped like a prism, and the light signals would come in, and they’d be split by the prism. And one copy of the light signal would go off to where it was supposed to be going in the telecom system, and the other half, this new cloned copy of the cables, would actually go one floor below to NSA’s secret room. So you had one copy of everything coming in and going to NSA’s secret room. And in the secret room was equipment by a private company called Narus, the very small company hardly anybody has ever heard of that created the hardware and the software to analyze these cables and then pick out the targets NSA is looking for and then forward the targeted communications onto NSA headquarters.”



Why the media would want to pick up on this now is beyond me. 

Something to do with the Bilderberg Group Meeting going on at the same time? 

Something to do with the new push to tighten laws against digital piracy and internet porn?

Who knows. But Powerpoint slideshows, for all their prettiness, do not make evidence of anything except people can be so gullible.