24th of June, 2003 POST·MERIDIEM 05:36

Asking only workman's wages I come looking for a job/ But I get no offers, just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue./ I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there ... ^[1]

I’m listening to a lot of S & G in the last few days, mainly so I can maintain a mood of zoned-out detachment on the bus, while reading John le Carré studies of the manners of another world. The more I work in this direction, the more I can balance it with the focus and energy needed for the job. Oh, and the waiting around on Abbey Street in the mornings for half an hour a day counteracts the zoned-out detachment too, but hopefully that’ll end.

I think I mentioned it here before, but I certainly didn’t mention its name. There’s a programme on the BBC currently called “Early Doors”; ^[2] is the only link I can get on it at the moment, which sucks. Anyway. It’s great, watch it, ignore that they sound like they’re in Coronation Street and listen to the dialogue, watch the reactions of the actors, pay attention to the plot, and bow and worship.

Ditto for Six Feet Under, but you knew that already. http://​www.​hbo.​com/​sixfeetunder/​

Still no sign of DSL here; no, we are not impressed with Eircom. But then we never were, were we.

[1] http://​www.​lyricsfreak.​com/​s/​simon-and-garfunkel/​6804.​htm

[2] http://​www.​bbc.​co.​uk/​radio1/​news/​entertainment/​030227_earlydoors.​shtml

19th of June, 2003 POST·MERIDIEM 05:35

Started the new job; tech job with small tech company, and I’m writing this over a phone line. Aaargh. I’m sort of into the job, so I seem to be tending to spend too much time here. I’m going to be shattered by Friday; I still have to write most of a short story, for Marie’s let’s-be-creative pact, and I am  going to do it. Absolutely. Oh, and I can finally crimp network cables with the best of them.

14th of June, 2003 POST·MERIDIEM 05:14

Ste, you are way  geekier than I am. I’m not geeky enough to attempt to read Marx or Che. (Well, okay, the Motorcycle Diaries, Real Soon Now).

I’m changing jobs—moving to a startup in Dublin City Centre—and I’ve resolved to work harder on getting the details of life right; shave more, sleep more, shower more, eat breakfast before leaving the house—because my short-term memory has gone to ѕhіt, and I’ve noticed an erosion in my ability to conduct a decent conversation. It’s really not useful in the long term to give people the impression they’re working with and talking to a psycho. Also, you need energy to focus on reading nonfiction, and that’s the area of most of my reading material these days.

The weather is beautiful here, probably as a result of Ste and Mackers leaving for San Francisco. I just spent a couple of hours reading Spike Milligan in a park, in the sun. Not something I’ve done for a long time, and very funkatronic in its way.

Scott Martens^[1] has a huge post that managed to make me miss Belgium; no mean feat, considering what a concrete Ballyjamesduff LLN is, and considering that my life here isn’t too bad at all. Go him.

[1] http://​pedantry.​blogspot.​com/​2003_06_08_pedantry_archive.​html#95563379

10th of June, 2003 POST·MERIDIEM 07:05

À ne pas rater ; la « Comité pour la réhabilitation et l’usage du passé simple et de l’imparfait du subjonctif, Monpazier. » Voir http://​www.​corupsis.​com/​index.​php?nav=12grevisse

So, Britain are staying out of the euro. I give them fourteen years, the time it took them (and, unfortunately us) to join the EU, and counting from 1997, that makes 2011. Ah well, more niche-market investment for us, as the English-speaking real Europeans. At this rate, we’ll be like Luxembourg or Singapore within twenty years—well, with a bit of luck and if our civil servants don’t fuсk it up.

Someday soon, I’ll move this to my domain and get some decent web design in place and a content-management system that, while still involving mailing-list legal text written within XEmacs, will enable searching, pseudo-static links to the archives, and links to friends. Oh, and comments. I don’t know why I’m writing this here, because it’s going to look really crap when I don’t do it. Anyway, getting the BSD partition booting and nearly shipshape over the weekend was a good start in this general direction; I’m actually pretty impressed by XP, but not impressed enough to spend my leisure time using it on purpose. So, yeah, plans.

6th of June, 2003 POST·MERIDIEM 03:54

Whee, another week over. There’s a new issue of the Exile available over at http://​www.​exile.​ru/​, I’ve got a stack of reading material with which to occupy myself over the next few days, and the opportunity, desire and need to do some decent food shopping.

I like oranges. Oranges taste good. Do you like oranges? Mail to oranges@parhasard.net.

Looking at http://​www.​iraqwar.​ru/​iraq-read_article.​php?articleId=2590&lang=en , is “rubric” actually a word in English? It certainly is in French, and I can imagine a Russian reasoning “if we borrowed it from French, then they almost certainly certainly have it in English” ... ah, okay, the OED has it, that’ll do me.

5th of June, 2003 ANTE·MERIDIEM 10:39

Working on the assumption that the disturbance of the previous entry was related to actual illness (the concept’s pretty foreign to me; other people catch debilitating bugs, I don’t) I got home after work yesterday and went straight to sleep. At 4pm. So, I got up this morning at 5.30am, and I’m feeling much better, thankfully.

Around half seven yesterday evening, I was woken up by my housemates all being there and making noise, as you do. The sun was streaming through the window, my phone said it was 19.35on the 4th; but today was the third, wasn’t it? And it can’t be half-past seven in the evening; it’s far too bright, and my housemates are only ever all here in the morning before work. And I was sleeping on my mobile phone, so maybe it was turned off and on again. So, five minutes straight of sheer panic, then I realised that a) my alarm clock said 7.35 and b) it’s June, so it’s allowed be bright at 7.30 in the evening.

NB; if Bush manages to get Israel and Palestine to behave like civilised human beings, he has my respect. And if, as it is rumoured, Blair supported the invasion of Iraq to get this happening, he has my awe.

3rd of June, 2003 POST·MERIDIEM 04:12

In my head, being an adult is drinking too much, blacking out, getting sick, passing out, getting up next morning, and the first thing you do, before even being properly sober again, is clean up after yourself. Annoyingly, I got a chance to prove this to myself again this morning. Didn’t make work either. But as Conall just put it, I’m showing my support for the French civil servants and their right to inordinately high pensions for the rest of their lives.

Thought I could handle Erdinger. Obviously not seven on an empty stomach.

2nd of June, 2003 POST·MERIDIEM 01:59

Mr. McKay has revamped http://​www.​illyana.​com/​ , and devil a bit did I hear of it until this morning. It’s amazing how productive at sad nerd crap the absence of a woman seems to have made him; the site puts all the rest of us to shame, with our “it’s not lazy, it’s minimalist” posturing and general lack of Cool Ѕhіt. Clare (and Boston) abú, and stuff.

Mr. Whyte is departing for the land of working public services and fine beer, and the best of luck to him over the summer.

Least gripping proposed bumper sticker ever, from http://​www.​richardherring.​com/​warmingup/​warmingup.​php?id=194 ;

“Unless of course we are in a traffic jam or very slow moving traffic in which case it would be ridiculous and annoying for you to maintain a thirty foot distance. Clearly you should consider the circumstances and the weather conditions carefully and make a common sense judgement as to what would be the safest distance to be at. You probably know this already. I suppose it’s slightly arrogant of me to give you advice about your driving. You don’t give me advice about my rubbish and ultimately illogical sense of humour, so I should just leave you alone. In the event of you rear-ending me you will take liability for the accident, so you realise that is in your interests to drive sensibly. To be honest, if you’re the kind of idiot who likes to risk everyone’s life by driving too close at high speeds, then a humorous sign telling you not to is going to have no effect (except possibly to make you deliberately drive even closer), so I think I’ll just shut up. Just pretend I didn’t say anything”

So, yeah, today is a bank holiday and the phone lines are very quiet; tomorrow will be a general strike in France, so the phone lines should be dead quiet. Life is good, except that http://​ftp.​heanet.​ie/​pub/​NetBSD/​pub/​NetBSD/​iso/​1.​6.​1/​i386cd.​iso really should be bootable on i386, and if it were I’d have had a working Unix box at home a week ago.