It's all a blur
Monday, February 6th, 2006 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanHello Kiddies, your hero is back in London and regular service is about to be resumed on the LJ front: brace yourselves for a resumption in pointless meanderings and outrageous exaggerations which stop just short of being downright lies1.
Yesterday’s trip back to London was the usual fraught engagement with public transport. I had intended to pop into the NWO ref meet chez![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashenkat and immerwahr, but missing the train at Shrewsbury by approximately 2 seconds2 ensured that never happened. Instead I spent a rather boring hour on the station followed by a very sedate ride to Wolverhampton in a train that stopped everywhere on the way. Any final thoughts about attending the meeting were squelched by the fact that there didn’t appear to be a single train between Birmingham New Street and Coventry, so the Intercity took an oddly circuitous route from Wolverhampton to Rugby avoiding anywhere even vaguely recognisable. I finally arrived at the Athenaeum Club just before 8pm, having been travelling since 2pm in one form or another.
Is it any wonder I am such a fan of public transport?
Late on last night, before deciding to watch the Superbowl, I thought, amongst other chores, that I would log in with my new laptop and download the necessary updates for XP. It took me about a half-hour of dedicated fiddling and generally faffing to confirm what I suspected from the outset: I have no idea how to set up a LAN, even when we have one. I had hoped that just by plugging the brute in and making the settings match those on my desktop, it would all work nicely.
It doesn’t. The term Plug and Pray may be less true these days, but in Bryan World it remains true as far as installing anything more challenging than a new mouse.
I shall say nothing about the Superbowl other than to observe that what I saw was actually rather entertaining, but that the Seahawks’ chances were clearly torpedoed by the fact that most of their receivers seemed to have forgotten how to catch the ball for long periods of the game. Of course, it didn’t help their cause that several exceptionally dubious refereeing decisions went against them, and that their returner had clearly been bribed before the match.
Fair catch my arse.
Still, there you go. I did appreciate the US commentator’s dismal attempt to be inclusive for his non North American audience. To paraphrase, ”Of course, European viewers will be familiar with that sight which is very similar to the scrum you often see in European rugby soccer”. What he was referring to was more like a ruck or a maul, but the good intention was there, bless him.
And on to today.
Today is an auspicious occasion. Not only is it Accession Day3 and Waitangi Day for our friends in New Zealand, but it is also the day I picked up my new, and first ever, bins.
I can’t see a bloody thing in them. Well, strictly I can, but it appears that the optician-standard comfortable reading distance and mine differ somewhat. If I look at the papers on my desk, they are refreshingly big and clear. The computer screen is more of a challenge and anything over two feet away has acquired a bizarre Doppler Shift effect, whilst anything a yard or more away is reassuringly out of focus. I get dizzy turning my head, because I still have good peripheral vision and that is not magnified the way everything close up suddenly is, and it is disorientating.
I doubt I shall wear these buggers over much. They seem to be making my eyes more tired than they would normally be.
On the plus side, I have discovered the art of the Giles Manoeuvre which involves polishing the lenses extensively instead of doing anything constructive.
1This is, of course, entirely untrue.
2The damned train pulled out of the station just as I got to the platform. Grumble.
3Fifty-four years and going strong. Gawd Bless Her Majesty, and all who sail in her.
Yesterday’s trip back to London was the usual fraught engagement with public transport. I had intended to pop into the NWO ref meet chez
ashenkat and immerwahr, but missing the train at Shrewsbury by approximately 2 seconds2 ensured that never happened. Instead I spent a rather boring hour on the station followed by a very sedate ride to Wolverhampton in a train that stopped everywhere on the way. Any final thoughts about attending the meeting were squelched by the fact that there didn’t appear to be a single train between Birmingham New Street and Coventry, so the Intercity took an oddly circuitous route from Wolverhampton to Rugby avoiding anywhere even vaguely recognisable. I finally arrived at the Athenaeum Club just before 8pm, having been travelling since 2pm in one form or another.Is it any wonder I am such a fan of public transport?
Late on last night, before deciding to watch the Superbowl, I thought, amongst other chores, that I would log in with my new laptop and download the necessary updates for XP. It took me about a half-hour of dedicated fiddling and generally faffing to confirm what I suspected from the outset: I have no idea how to set up a LAN, even when we have one. I had hoped that just by plugging the brute in and making the settings match those on my desktop, it would all work nicely.
It doesn’t. The term Plug and Pray may be less true these days, but in Bryan World it remains true as far as installing anything more challenging than a new mouse.
I shall say nothing about the Superbowl other than to observe that what I saw was actually rather entertaining, but that the Seahawks’ chances were clearly torpedoed by the fact that most of their receivers seemed to have forgotten how to catch the ball for long periods of the game. Of course, it didn’t help their cause that several exceptionally dubious refereeing decisions went against them, and that their returner had clearly been bribed before the match.
Fair catch my arse.
Still, there you go. I did appreciate the US commentator’s dismal attempt to be inclusive for his non North American audience. To paraphrase, ”Of course, European viewers will be familiar with that sight which is very similar to the scrum you often see in European rugby soccer”. What he was referring to was more like a ruck or a maul, but the good intention was there, bless him.
And on to today.
Today is an auspicious occasion. Not only is it Accession Day3 and Waitangi Day for our friends in New Zealand, but it is also the day I picked up my new, and first ever, bins.
I can’t see a bloody thing in them. Well, strictly I can, but it appears that the optician-standard comfortable reading distance and mine differ somewhat. If I look at the papers on my desk, they are refreshingly big and clear. The computer screen is more of a challenge and anything over two feet away has acquired a bizarre Doppler Shift effect, whilst anything a yard or more away is reassuringly out of focus. I get dizzy turning my head, because I still have good peripheral vision and that is not magnified the way everything close up suddenly is, and it is disorientating.
I doubt I shall wear these buggers over much. They seem to be making my eyes more tired than they would normally be.
On the plus side, I have discovered the art of the Giles Manoeuvre which involves polishing the lenses extensively instead of doing anything constructive.
1This is, of course, entirely untrue.
2The damned train pulled out of the station just as I got to the platform. Grumble.
3Fifty-four years and going strong. Gawd Bless Her Majesty, and all who sail in her.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 12:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 12:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 12:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 12:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 01:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 02:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 12:41 pm (UTC)Welcome to the brave new world of the enhanced human *g*. You realise that you now have to acquire such skills as using the specs to emphasise a point, and (for the higher levels of mastery) utilising them as an alternative coffee stirrer.
Oh, and have fun with the out-of-focus peripheries
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 12:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 01:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 01:28 pm (UTC)I forgot that one.
Plus the knocking off specs whilst rubbing an eye, etc.
oh, and beware the pinching on the bridge of the nose
There's always a comment from Romney...
Date: 2006-02-06 03:39 pm (UTC)Your ritualised behaviour will now include looking for the glasses for which the absence of the glasses will make increasingly difficult as you grow more dependant on them over time.
You will then develop the associated ritual of fishing the glasses out from behind the bed/dresser/sink/cooker/coffin/museum exhibit.. Over time, your glasses will learn the most inconvenient and embarrassing moments when to hide themselves of fly off into the most inaccessible places.
The ceremony of lifting the sofa cushions will be performed, and you will learn the little Mantra of the Bespecled that is spoken whenever a potentially-expensive "crunch" is heard when placing ones foot on them, or knocking them flying towards the hardest surface within reach.
Get a supply of little tiny screws and minute screwdrivers in now and carry them with you always; the expense and inconvenience is the only way to ensure they will not be needed.
Re: There's always a comment from Romney...
Date: 2006-02-06 03:44 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that I intend to wear them enough to become overly dependent on the buggers, but I do take your point about inanimate objects' abitity to disappear into the void.
I shall chain them to something.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 07:13 pm (UTC)Kneeling on them whilst drying your hair, along with steaming up on entering a room, and a variety of other nonsense is the preverve of the short sighted. The fact that they're always stuck on my face therefore can't be lost is the only advantage of short-sightedness, so you are glasses-win in many ways.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 07:26 pm (UTC)Have you met me?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 08:48 pm (UTC)Yes, I get that.