It’s Saturday afternoon.. So far today I’ve managed to get up and get dressed, I’ve got the grass in the back garden cut. After watching the qualifying for tomorrow’s Grand Prix I did the weekly shop and now, after eating lunch I’m couch potatoing.

Sometimes it’s so nice not to have any plans at all. Later today I’ll probably wander into town and see if I can get the latest Terry Pratchett book cheap in Borders or W.H.Smiths. Then again, I might not bother.. the choice is all mine.

All that washing of my car last week were all to no avail. The starlings which seem to use my TV aerial as a perch and/or latrine have managed to hit every panel on my car except the rear driver’s side door.. but they obviously tried, as there’s an indication of a missed impact on the tarmac beside the door. Maybe I should stick a van-de-graaf generator on the aerial and zap those little birdies. The stuff they got on the windscreen wouldn’t even wash off with the help of the wipers along with the washer fluid.. I think they must be using some sort of superglue or polymer resin.

After yesterday’s hotbed of LJ postings and comments it seems everyone’s run out of steam today.

Maybe there’s only a finite flux of comments and yesterday’s huge outpouring emptied the whole reservoir and now we’re having to wait for it to refill.

Anyway, who cares? 🙂

Today’s been a pretty dull day in more ways than one. Firstly, it’s been a day of not very interesting work and the weather’s dreary too.

Still, tomorrow afternoon there’s a Sun Technology Seminar over at the Computing Labs which includes a free lunch and (gosh) information which is not for general release on upcoming wonders of Sun marketting, sorry, technology for which I’ll have to sign a non disclosure agreement. This will be, of course, a software technology ‘cos in the hardware stakes Sun is dropping behind on the raw performance side.

If you were strapped for cash and needed a computer to do lots of number crunching, would you:-

1. Buy a Sun Blade 1000 with twin 900MHz UltraSPARC III processors (which under benchmarking show that they are a third less efficient than the current x86 processors per clock cycle) and 1GB of RAM for around £10,000.
2. Buy a dual Athlon MP 2000+ machine with twin processors, 1GB RAM and more disk than on the Blade 1000 plus a complete set of spare parts for £5000 which is basically twice the raw computing power.

Hmm.. tricky, eh? The Sun is more reliable, yet the Athlon box is almost disposable but you can maintain it yourself for half the cost.

It seems that I’ve been given the honour of a special community by kickadee because, unlike Ian I didn’t have one already. How nice of her. Still, I’m not sure being in the shadow of Ian is such a good idea. 🙂

Jen’s entry in her journal yesterday has got me thinking a great deal too.. both about the ephemeral nature of life and of word contruction. It’s good to think.

PS. Here’s a link to the community.

It seems quite a while since my last entry. I think it’s a little under a week, however.

What has happened to me in that time?

Let’s see, Jerry suggested that the weekend just gone would be a good time for them to visit me, so they turned up Saturday lunchtime, we had a fun day and they left Sunday just after lunch. It was a pitty that Jerry had a bad stomach on Saturday though.

That and the night out to celebrate Arwen’s passing her DPhil (PhD for anyone outside Oxford) viva on Friday evening and having to pay 17 quid for a meal which I would have concidered a mere snack are the only two anchors on the week.

The visit of Jerry, Em and little Laura had other effects, such as lots of cleaning on Friday night and a bit on Saturday morning in preparation for their visit. A mad rush on Saturday morning trying to do things I had to do before they arrived etc.

At least yesterday I managed to have what seemed the first relaxing day in ages. I even managed to wash the car and wax it!