Terradyme: Trials and Tribulations

Saturday, July 31, 2004
My eyeballs have melted

As promised, I cancelled my Screenselect DVD-by-mail subscription last week, just in time to avoid being billed for a third month. I got my money out of it, renting 41 movies in those eight weeks (an average of two movies every three days) but it meant alot of time in front of the TV. I'm burnt out. Screenselect is as good a service as you'll find here in the UK, with a decent selection and fast turnaround, but here's how it compares with Netflix, which I used to belong to in DC:

                   Screenselect      Netflix
Monthly Fee:       �14.99 (~$27)     $22
Discs out at once: Three             Three
Library:           <22,500           <25,000
Turnaround:        One Day           Two Days

My personal experience was that Screenselect never had enough of the new, just-released titles. I had one item at the top of my wish list the entire time, and it was never sent to me.
11:04:00 PM

Friday, July 30, 2004
Dog bones

Last summer was the hottest on record in the UK in the past 500 years. This summer we've had a strange mix; not much sun, not much rain, mainly "unh." That's due to change with a string of 80+ degree sunny days that actually started midweek. Yesterday after work I realized, after about twenty minutes, that the bus was running very late. Even though I'm near the beginning of the route back home, I knew when it came by the bus would be hot and crowded, and I wasn't relishing the thought of being stuck in rush hour traffic in a tin can. So I walked home. It was actually not bad, mostly downhill, and I got to see the South Park and some scenes of Oxford (similar to my impressionist painting above) I hadn't encountered before. It was probably about 3 miles, a distance which I'm sure Todd will say New Yorkers knock out during their coffee breaks, but I probably won't make a habit of it.
11:14:00 PM

Tuesday, July 27, 2004
P.U.

Maybe my Monday wasn't so bad after all:

Traders in the heart of Oxford were furious today when 10 tonnes of reeking rubbish was dumped without warning outside their shops. The county council deliberately created the eyesore in Broad Street to highlight the amount of waste that goes into landfill sites in the county. It chose Broad Street as the dumping ground because it was formerly a ditch on the edge of the city walls, until 1674 when the ditch was filled in. Traders were disgusted by the stench after the waste was dumped by a bin lorry at 10.30am. It remained in the street for about an hour until county council staff returned to remove it. Sally Moss, the owner of The Buttery cafe and Oxford Campus Stores, said: "Our customers don't expect to smell rotting rubbish in Broad Street in the middle of the morning. Simon Kosky, manager of Flaggs clothing store, added: "Everyone can see the benefit of recycling, but if this was a publicity stunt, it wasn't very well thought out. This should not have taken place anywhere, because it created an unnecessary health hazard." Adam Symons, the county council's head of waste management, admitted shops had not been told about the stunt. He said: "The traders weren't given any warning. I'm not sure what other arrangements they could have made in the circumstances. "The rubbish is a bit smelly, but it's just paper, plastics, glass, other household waste and garden materials - there's nothing toxic in it. It was only there for a short time and then it was cleared away again, so I don't think there was too much disruption."

9:59:00 PM

Hello? Anybody home?

Mondays are normally rough for me, as I never can get a good night's sleep on Sundays, and because our unit has weekly meetings first thing in the a.m. By the time I get home, I am usually worn out and just want to nuke a ready meal & head to bed. Around 8:30 last night, as I relaxed in the easy chair and gazed over the remains of my dinner while looking at god-knows-what on TV, someone rang the doorbell. Who the hell is that, I thought. It's a pet peeve of mine, but I think my parents taught me it's impolite to show up without calling first, and I wasn't expecting anyone and wasn't particularly in the mood to chat with a neighbour or a pollster. The place wasn't very tidy, either. In fact, more than half the time, if the doorbell rings and I don't know who it is, I don't even bother to answer it. I peeked out the net curtain and saw it was someone in a blue polo shirt with a Sainsbury's logo on it. Great, he's probably lost: Since my house is at the T of an intersection, I'm constantly having people ask *me* for directions. I opened the door. "Yes?" I asked, perhaps a bit too testily than was warranted. "Got a delivery for you, mate." I had completely forgotten that Saturday I'd placed an online order for groceries.
9:16:00 PM

Monday, July 26, 2004
Isn't America Great?

Jackass: The Movie ok, WHY? (and why has it got 6 marks out of 10??)
9:09:00 PM

You got any ... drugs, man?

I've had chronic back pain for the last six or seven weeks. I have suffered every once in awhile, and usually a flare up will die down after a few days, but this has been going on and off for too long. I told my mom about it when it first happened, and she asked what I'd done to hurt it. I couldn't think of anything; it just happened while I was sleeping & I woke up and it was bad. My gran asked the same question when mom related the story to her: what had I done to cause it. Nothing she said, it just happened while he was sleeping. "Who with?" she asked. Actually, ibuprofen helps, when I remember to take it, but I suspect I need to get a different mattress too. Unfortunately, in the meantime I'm often irritable and restricted in mobility; the thought of sitting on a bus or a train for an hour+ into London, e.g. isn't appealing.
8:57:00 PM

One is Silver, the other is Gold

I turned in my new lease Friday, and paid the outrageous admin fee. Slept in Saturday, then chores. Sunday, I had a pint at the pub with the paper & then walked over to the Ashmolean Museum in Beaumont Street, which is the world's first and oldest university museum and Britain's oldest public museum, opened in 1683. I went particularly to see one exhibit there now, "A Treasured Inheritance: 600 years of Oxford College Silver," an impressive collection of salts, tureens, chalices, platters, cups etc. that have been commissioned and used by the University's colleges since about 1400. The collection was smaller than I was expecting, but just large enough to provide an afternoon's entertainment. Incidentally, my doctor's office is right across the street.
8:14:00 PM

Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Am I becoming a ... sports fan?!?!?

First Rugby World Cup, then Euro 2004, then Wimbledon, and now... I suppose it's not surprising, having just finished his first book, that I've been following Lance Armstrong's progress in this year's Tour de France. It looks like he's taken a commanding lead after today's time trial and is on his way to his record-breaking sixth Tour de France championship, which is remarkable in and of itself but even more amazing considering 6 years ago he was diagnosed with late-stage cancer. You've got to wonder what drives a person.

I haven't seen any of the Tour on TV (in fact I haven't seen a tv show in about three weeks) but I've been following it online. I was suprised to see in a short video clip how close -- and at times obstructive -- the fans can and do get to the riders, often waving flags or signs as they run alongside, patting the riders on the back, throwing water, and sometimes causing crashes. Said one of the french Tour organizers: "We trust the fans to behave correctly and to be responsible. The Tour is the Tour and the public needs to be close to the riders. If the Tour is all behind barriers, it is no longer the Tour.''
10:52:00 PM

In Love and War

To be fair, I will mention here that last Wednesday the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which had circumvented the normal legislative process of deliberation, failed to receive even enough votes in the Senate to end debate. In a rarely seen move -- particularly for a measure seeking to amend the Constitution -- the amendment had been sent to the Senate floor before the relevant committee and subcommittees had an opportunity to voice an opinion on the measure. Indeed, there was a lack of consensus among the Republican leadership on the exact wording on the measure to be voted on, with two potential alternatives offered to the original proposal. Also, there's some confusion, but it seems as if the Dept. of Homeland Security's CAPPS II airline passenger profiling system is dead. Secretary Ridge told a reporter as much last week but other DHS officials have said it will just be reshaped and repackaged.
10:34:00 PM

Saturday, July 17, 2004
Petit monde

My uncle, my mom's only brother, died nine years ago today. He had been poorly for some time but it was still awful to get that news. Thanks to my dad's generosity I was able to fly here from DC to support my mom and gran. It wasn't much of a holiday, and work was very accommodating in allowing me the week off. Strangely, it wasn't until I moved here last year that I learned that he was treated at the same hospital where I work now. Some of my colleagues may have treated him. Also oddly, I found out that one of the pharmacists has an american friend who is a teacher at a school for military dependents. In fact, it's the same school I graduated from, in High Wycombe, nearly 20 years ago.
10:56:00 PM

Thursday, July 15, 2004
OK, I'll go to work tomorrow

Our unit is having its Quinquenniel review this fall, and as a result we're all busy preparing & getting our ducks in a row, as well as trying to perform the usual daily tasks. My lady boss has been extremely busy and as a result I have not had much face time with her, but I've been able to get on with what I need to do. Stress levels are very high among staff but I'm handling it OK. In fact I've had many nice kudos about the help & assistance I've been offering the last few days. In addition, one of the consultants in the unit has a sixteen year old son who is working in the office as a summer hire. I've put him to work conducting a hardware inventory and entering the data in a database. He seems to be getting on with it just fine, and like any Playstation 2-generation kid, has an aptitude for computing. The thing is, I remember when I was a sixteen year old kid and I was working in my dad's office through the military's student summer hire program. I used to hate getting up at six in the morning to ride the half hour into work with him, only to be given the crappiest jobs - buffing floors, washing cars, raking leaves, moving furniture, and cleaning bathrooms. I got paid $2.90/hr before taxes, and at the time thought I would much rather have been sleeping in until 10 and then playing with friends. I dunno, maybe it built character or something.
9:44:00 PM

It's getting pretty heated

I watched my first movie of the year last night, Fahrenheit 9/11. I thought it was excellent cinema, and deserved the accolades it received at Cannes. It is unashamedly biased against Bush and the administration. There were only a few items that were brought up that I hadn't already known about by keeping up with the daily paper, but when all the facts and criticisms are presented together in such a well crafted argument, it's difficult not to challenge the idea that America currently has the best leaders. In case you don't see the film, Moore's assertion is that Bush illegitimately responded to the events of September 11 by invading Iraq. We killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and over a thousand coalition troops have died so far so that Bush's family and friends' Big Businesses can become filthy rich off Iraq's rehabilitation and exploitation of its oil reserves. I agree with him.
9:25:00 PM

Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Oh aye, I'm an Irishman

If you don't want to hear a rant from the Loony Left, skip this one. Once in awhile, as I've mentioned before, I've been asked why I left America (the Land of Milk and Honey) and moved here. The U.K. of course has its share of problems. In fact, a the results of a poll recently published in the Daily Express indicated that a third of Britons are thinking of emigrating, fed up with soaring crime, escalating house and gas prices, the crisis in the NHS and long working hours. What I haven't mentioned before is how distressed I am at recent trends in the U.S. I have never held strongly political views before, but Did you know, for example:

Just 45 days after the September 11 attacks, with virtually no debate, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act. Many parts of this sweeping legislation take away checks on law enforcement. For example, without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now has the power to access your most private medical records, your library records, and your student records... and can prevent anyone from telling you it was done.
The Senate is due to vote tomorrow on whether to pursue a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, endorsed by the President, would be the first ever to mandate discrimination against a group of Americans.
The proposed airline profiling program -- Computer Assisted Passenger Profiling System II -- would make every American a suspect. This program would give the government a new role unprecedented in American life: running background checks on Americans who fly, and giving them a ?risk score.?��It would be secretive, would lack due process protections for people who are unfairly or mistakenly tagged, and yet would be easy for terrorists to circumvent,
Last month, in an open letter, a group of retired US diplomats and generals condemned the foreign policy of the Bush administration as ideological and callously indifferent. ""Our security has been weakened," the former ambassadors and four-star commanders said in a statement read to a crowded Washington news conference. "Never in the 2 1/4 centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted."
In a press conference announcing the release of the U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence's report last week, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the chairman of the committee, stated, "[O]ne fact is now clear: before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and, if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. Today we know these assessments were wrong."
"That doesn't matter," said Bush yesterday during a stop in TN: As a result of getting rid of Sadam, he said, "the American people are safer" -- a refrain he used seven times in a 32-minute speech. Last week: "Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons, I believe we were right to go into Iraq," Bush said. "America is safer today because we did." Safer?! Hmmm...just the day before, in fact, Tom Ridge et al were saying that Osama bin Laden and his top guys were planning a terrorist attack in the US sometime before the November presidential election. How's that for safer?

Since I'm ranting, let me tell you how pissed off I was to hear that "Dick" Cheney, the man who is only a choked pretzel away from having *his* finger on the big red button, lost his temper in the Senate Chamber a couple of weeks ago and told Sen. Leahy to "go fuck yourself." I'm going to go see Fahrenheit 9/11 tomorrow night with people from work. This post is why I started blogging again.
7:07:00 PM

Sunday, July 11, 2004
Die, slugman, Die!

I spent the whole day at Gran's yesterday. She'd asked me to bring some old clothes as there was work to be done in the garden, but I hadn't realized just how much work. Essentially, I spent about two hours pulling up all the plants in her back garden, mainly dead poppies and foxgloves. There were some Elephant Ears which she called a "nursery for slugs" which she asked me to get rid of too. I hadn't realized just how squeamish I am around slugs, particularly the MONSTER, FOOT-LONG SHELL-LESS BEASTS PUMPING OUT MILLIONS OF OFFSPRING, but a garden fork and hoe soon made short work of it. After, we had lashings of tea and a meat pie & spuds and had a chat about rationing during the war.
5:58:00 PM

Thursday, July 08, 2004
How to make a fast quid

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as I was going to call my property manager myself sometime this week to find out what was going on, but I received a letter Saturday indicating my lease is about to run out (the last week of September) and asking whether I wanted to renew my lease for another year. Otherwise, enclosed were checkout procedures and instructions. Of course, if I were interested, then and only then could they actually check with the landlord to see whether she wants to rent out the property for another year, and to determine what the monthly rent will be. Oh, and by the way there'll be a �68.75 (~$125) administrative fee to change the "date" fields in the lease and print out a new one.
8:01:00 PM

Parlez-du atinlay?

It just struck me how diverse the staff I work with are. I suppose I just took it for granted after having worked at the Bank for eight years. In my unit now we have:

two Indian women and four Indian men
two Greek women
a woman from the Ukraine
a woman from China
a French woman
a man from Jamaica
two women from New Zealand
a Swedish woman
an Irish/American man, and
a man from Portugal

There are a few Brits about, too. All this made for very interesting conversation during the Euro 2004 soccer tournament and Wimbledon, both of which just finished up over here. I surprised myself by becoming interested in the soccer matches, and saw all three of England's matches before they spectacularly crashed out in the quarter finals.
7:43:00 PM

Monday, July 05, 2004
Almost as old as dirt

I've been meaning to take the bus in to London for the past few weekends, but each Saturday something has transpired against me. This past Saturday I instead decided to make a run for it during a break in the weather & visited Oxford's Museum of the History of Science, which is next door to the Sheldonian Theatre & across the street from Blackwell's bookstore. It's one of those places I'd yet to visit even after living here almost a year. The Museum of the History of Science houses an unrivalled collection of historic scientific instruments in the world's oldest surviving purpose-built museum building. There wasn't enough to capture my attention for an entire afternoon, but it was interesting to see very old astrolabes, sundials, telescopes, microscopes, cameras and other equipment.
8:42:00 PM

Booking Confirmation

Monday 11-10-04 Easy Jet departure from London Gatwick at 0955 Arrive Prague at 1300. Non Stop Monday 11-10-04 Accommodation: Apollo Hotel 1x Double Room. 3 Nights Buffet Breakfast Thursday 14-10-04 Easy Jet departure Prague at 1340 Arrive London Gatwick at 1445. Non Stop Thank you for booking with Rise Travel.
8:35:00 PM

Bored

Last Sunday, I couldn't sleep so at 1a.m. I got up and shaved my head, all over, with a razor. I'd never done it before, but I had it shaved quite close with an electric razor by the barber. It felt strange and was way too much work to keep it up, but I'm glad I did it once.
8:29:00 PM

Sunday, July 04, 2004
Screenselect = Netflix

I signed up for Screenselect, a DVD rent-by-mail programme, in the middle of May, but will probably cancel it this month as there's not too much I've missed. Here's what I've seen so far:

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Marion & Geoff Series 1
Camp
The Mikado
Bend It Like Beckham
Terminator 3... The Machines
Stuck On You
Russell Watson... TheVoice - Live
A Mighty Wind
A History Of Britain (Simon Schama)... Disc 5
A History Of Britain (Simon Schama)... Disc 2
American Pie: The Wedding
Taboo
A History Of Britain (Simon Schama)... Bonus Material
Matrix Revolutions... Bonus Disc
Office, The - Series 2
Robbie Williams... At Knebworth
Matrix Revolutions
Sarah Brightman... In Eden
Down With Love
Finding Nemo
Pet Shop Boys... The Videos
Jeeves And Wooster... Disc 1
Jeeves And Wooster... Disc 2
Love Actually
Human Remains... Disc 1
Punch-Drunk Love
Human Remains... Disc 2

10:48:00 PM

...aaaaaand we're back.

Thanks for tuning in, and Happy 4th. I slept 'till 3, started some laundry, made dinner. Tomorrow's an early work day as I have to power off servers to prepare for an electric outage.
10:29:00 PM