Well, yes, it’s Monday!

Work’s been full of firefighting little things and telling the dept. admin
about my jury service. She took it all in her stride and said, “I guess we’d
better give you some time off then.” 🙂

Yesterday was a resonably successful day in that I got rid of an old Sun SPARCstation 4 down the tip and got the car washed.

Well, earlier I wrote that I was going to see the Harry Potter film in High Wycombe as it was probably the safest bet. So, I get to the cinema complex with plenty of time to spare and try to buy a ticket… no-go! The showing was full.

I now have one more chance to see the film tonight, 19:45 at the Magdalen Road cinema in Oxford. I’ve checked the web to see if there are tickets available and there are at the moment. So, I think I’ll leave home at 7pm, which means I should be at the cinema by about 25 past. If I don’t get in then I’m going to give up and wait until it comes on the telly in three years time.

Yopu know I said I’d say if anything interesting happened in my life. Well, be careful for what you wish for. This morning through the letter box flopped a letter calling me up for jury service on the 3rd March.

Well, that’s 2 weeks out of my life I have to give to the state and I’m not begrudging it that time. After all, it’s part of the contract between myself and society, so I’m going to take it as being an honour to serve.

I bet I’m going to annoy the hell out of all the other jurers who will be in those juries as I’m a stickler for fairness, searching all lines of possibilities given the data provided to make as sure as I can that I make the “correct” decision.

Anyway, on to other things. Last night was quite fun. After happy hour John, Kate, Paul (John’s friend) and myself went out for an italian meal and thence to a pub where John was to go salsa dancing. However, due to finanical logistics (there was an entrance fee) things didn’t turn out quite the way planned so Paul and myself went off to meet Sam at an out of the way pub in the city centre. I got home again at about midnight in the end.

This afternoon I’m (hopefully) finally going to get to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I’m not going to take any chances and go to the UCI multiplex at High Wycombe for the 4pm showing. Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong this time.

Let’s
see.. I went to a Sun technology seminar thingy yesterday but can’t tell
you about it ‘cos of the NDA I signed. All I can say is that the Sun engineers
have a mexican food fixation.

Oh yes, and why do freebie t-shirts only come in extra large when the majority
of the population are in the range Small to Large? I had to give wawy the
freebie Sun t-shirt as I’m in the small size category and hence it would
be useless to me other than if I wanted it as a tent.

My other gripe is due to a letter I got from my morgage lender telling me
of their unilateral change to the conditions of my house insurance. The amended
terms rule out any loss due to any chemical or biological contamination by
anyone who did it deliberately or the government destroying things incase
they’re contaminated. OK.. so it’s more weazel words to make sure that they
never have to pay out, I can understand that. (Insurance is there for the
insurance company to make money, not for them to actually pay out for a loss.)
What amused me, however, was a sentence which was a quick summary of the
new rules which had appended a phrase stating that, of course, none of these
things were actually covered before anyway. Erm.. so, they’re amending the
rules to exclude something which was already excluded… so why did they
need the extra wording? Erm.. looks like someone’s trying to bullsh*t out
of responsibility, just incase.

Seeing as it’s a Friday, I might as well detail what I think my weekend plans
are going to be. Saturday includes getting a hair cut, going shopping and
hopefully getting to see the Harry Potter film. Sunday involves getting the
car washed. This is the total degree of planning so far.

If life gets at all interesting I’ll remember to tell you.

Last
night I went and saw the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for a second time
with a bunch of friends. Before this, however, we went to a glorified pub
in Gloucester Green called the Goose to have food.

Well, let’s say I’ll not be going to that pub for food again. The “Smothered
Chicken” was expensive for a smallish dish of tomato sauce containing two
rashers of bacon and two of the the smallest bits of chicken you’ve ever
seen with a bit of melted cheese on the top. It was very much cuisine a la
microwave.

Anyway, back to the main feature of the night, The Two Towers. On a second
viewing, trying to get the book out of my mind, it was a decent film though
the subject matter could have been done a whole lot better in a few ways.
eg. The Helm’s Deep battle could have been shortened to allow more of the
events leading up to it and the desparate rear-guard action to be shown.
Also, a lot of the Arwen parts were unnecessary at this point and detracted
from the flow of the film. (This is ignoring the plainly BAD idea of getting
elves to show up at Helm’s Deep as the elves still don’t trust or support
men at this point in any form other than support of the Rangers in the northern
lands. Oh, and where is Fanghorn forest?)

Unfortunately, I had sitting next to me a bunch of japanese teenagers who
chatted in japanese throughout the film and were generally annoying.

Well, after the film I got home at about 11:20pm but didn’t feel like sleeping
so I watched the episode of Star Trek: Enterprise I’d set my video to watch
for me earlier in the evening. It was a character based episode, ok as something
to watch but nothing worth watching again.

Once I got to bed at about a quarter past midnight I lay awake for a while,
still not sleepy. I’m not sure what time I got to sleep in the end.

So, now it’s morning. I’m in work. I feel sleepy. I think that says it all, really.

Talking
on Bullet this lunchtime about rac trying to clear a paper jam on her printer,
Grim and piglet decided to make a playful set of inuendo about screwdrivers
and pressing knobs and buttons followed by piglet saying:-

piglet: insert tab A into slot B

This prompted the idea of sexual origami to pop into my head.. sort of the karma sutra meets Paper Play.. I just had to spread the meme a little further. 🙂

This evening I had planned to go and see the latest Harry Potter film at one of the main cinemas in Oxford along with a friend, Paul. I had thought that seeing that the film’s been on release for more than a month now that there’d be no problem getting a ticket on the door. How wrong we were!

When we arrive we find notices plastered up all over the cinema “All showings today fully booked” with the names of all five films being shown at the cinema being listed.

The last time this happened I was told by the bored person on the ticket desk that the Oxford language schools had block-booked all the cinemas in Oxford as a going-away present for their students at the end of the their course. I’m guessing that’s what has happened again.

If you ask me, this is wholey anti-social.

Anyway, I’ve now still to see that film. Maybe I’ll just wait until it comes on Sky Premier in a couple of years or so.

So, to continue the story, we came back to my house (via Tesco’s for comestibles.. ok.. nibbles) and watched Shrek on DVD as he’d not seen it yet.

As for the other things today. I did manage to pick up a heatsink and fan for my Celeron 300A processor though it was a close call. ONly one stall had such a thing and that only had 3 of them in battered boxes. Oh, and it cost me 1 pound more to get into the computer fair than it did to buy the things I wanted. It cost me 7 pounds in total, so you can work out how much the entry fee was using simultanious equations.

I also ordered a new sofa bed to replace the two pine single beds in my spare room/guest room/machine room.

Anyway, the day’s not been a total loss, as you can see.

Well, I’ve made it through the week. Well, almost.

Due to someone not being here this afternoon I can’t get on witht he job I wanted to do so I’m feeling a bit bored.

The plans for the weekend are becoming firmer. I’m not, after all, going to see the Harry Potter film this evening as I’m going to go tomorrow afternoon/evening instead. However, this evening Paul will be popping around so I can give him the key to the dept. annex which I have been given by the dept. administrator to give to him so that he can move his stuff out of his current office and into a storeroom in the annex.

Tomorrow’s firmed up. The Computer fair is on this weekend so I should be able to go searching for CPU fans. I’ll then probably go shopping in Sainsbury’s as fast as possible and return home. Hopefully, this will be in time for me to wash the car before lunch. I’ve still got to discover the times at which the Harry Potter film is being shown so as to meet up with Paul to see it.

As for the rest of the weekend, well, it’s doing the washing, fitting the CPU fan (if I find one) and not a lot else. I may go out for a walk somewhere if the weather stays fine, though after all the rain recnetly I guess it’s goingto have to be some paved route.

I’ve just got back from the dentist where I had three fillings replaced.

I now have a completely numb and paralysed lefthand side of the face and
a partly numb right-hand side. The left hand side is affecting my eyelid
now and starting to deaden my tongue.

I doubt I’ll be able to eat or drink anything tonight as although I can swallow I doubt I can keep anything inside my mouth.

This
morning, while eating my breakfast, I got bored with the BBC Breakfast News
program and changed over to CNX where “Batman of the Future” was on.

The evil characters this morning were a woman made of ink and a crime boss who was radioactive.

I cought myself thinking.. “How does she eat and drink?” and then stopped
myself… it’s only a flippin’ cartoon.. it’s not supposed to be logical!

Oops. 🙂