Wednesday, June 22, 2011

On the upside, the technician said it was the cleanest motherboard he'd ever seen.

No, we're not starving to death.

We are, however, on a slight hiatus because the millions, one could even stretch so far as to say billions, or even trillions of dollars spent on developing the microprocessor and all its attendant uses and attachments were still not nearly enough to solve the problem of water-proofing.

A lovely little water-bottle with Charlie's name joyously stamped on the side obviously was not the beneficiary of the millennia-old global research cloud which has developed and made available the knowledge which allows us to contain water over a period of time. Instead, this poor third-cousin, this unlicensed knock-off, this pretender vessel only revealed the depth of its true deficiency when it was provided with the opportunity to snuggle up with my computer in the seclusion of my backpack.

I can't recall another occasion when a single drip of moisture has caused me such anguish, falling as it did from the cooling vent in the side of my laptop.

The PhD is safe. The photos have been salvaged and recovered. The music is safe, the playcounts are not.

The Epic shall continue, but you may have to be a little patient.

6 comments:

  1. As someone who has lost play counts before
    ...(and not lost from a hardware failure but instead from a "simple" backup and restore between two machines - yeah thanks Apple; you'll never convince me you are better than PC now!)...
    I feel your pain.

    A special type of pain that comes from the first song in all your songs (sorted alphabetically) being "the theme from the A-Team". Which - due to a few overzealous and careless clicks of the play button; post-newly-reset-play-count, combined with a (normally) useful filter that syncs songs to my iPhone based on play count and download recentness (that's a word now) - seems to now mean that I will be burdened to have this song on my media device for the rest of time.


    Unless I delete the song.


    Which I wont, 'cos it's the Muther-F**king THEME FORM THE A-TEAM!!!


    ToOS out.

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  2. In the previous life where I was able to choose the time and method of my poota-upgrade, I totally managed to H4xx0r my way into transfering my playcounts from PC to PC.

    Now I just need to go back in time and get that xml file from my dry laptop ...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was wondering what a play count was, now I know. Gotta watch those water bottles. You may think you've closed the top, but if you didn't hear the click, then watch out. Also, never put one in with your laptop or camera.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Just ask Mele, I'm one of those slightly OCD bottle-tighteners and this lid wasn't going anywhere. Like a political zoophilia scandal, it was a cheap rubber seal that brought everything crashing down.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Been there. Twice. Nothing for it but swearing, crying and more swearing. Then a big sigh, a sought-after cuddle and some chocolate. And wine. In any order.

    Looking forward to your next review. Here in Geneva it's only a variation on bread and cheese. Sapphire said, "It's all just pizza ingredients done in different ways here." She'll have an accurate but shortlived career as a restaurant reviewer in Switzerland....

    ReplyDelete
  6. I had to resign myself to depression and book reading.

    I love Sapphire's review! Although, yes maybe some further exploration is needed. And food packages from home ...

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32