Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Six is Company?

I'm on my own this weekend*, as Claire's away being crafty. So, I was wondering about having people round for chat/games/music/whatever on Saturday. Anyone interested?

* - You're never alone with three dogs, a cat, an internet connection**, three phones, and a pile of CDs.

** - Although the internet may also be abandoning me on Sunday - they're doing work in my area that "shouldn't" interrupt service...***

*** - And now that the nested footnotes are way longer than the body text, I'll stop. Sorry.

Posted by graham @ 08:12 pm

Friday, February 19, 2010

Bridge over Politics

I suspect that for many students, their first serious contact with politics is being part of a student society, club, or union. These typically have all the trappings of democracy. Votes! Elections! Meetings! Debates! Speeches! Factions! Votes of No Confidence! In fact, far more democracy than you'd ever be allowed with something as unimportant as government. Some people get terribly excited by the whole thing, and engage in as many acts of democracy as possible. Often without noticing that the society/club/union carries on pretty much the same regardless, acting out of tradition ("We always meet on a Thursday") and with most of the work being done by those with the enthusiasm or organisational skills needed, whether they've been elected or not.

I do wonder what effect all this has on the average person. Are they put off by the arguments and factionalism, and engage with real world politics in a more mature, considered manner? Or do only those who enjoy the arguments and factionalism go into politics for real? I've bad feeling I know the answer to that one...

Gordon and I lampooned these tendencies quite deliberately when we founded the Glasgow Uni Bridge Society. Everyone who joined - all 20-odd of us - got a place on the executive, with their choice of title. You couldn't use the same one as someone else, but since no one did anything, it didn't really matter what you called yourself. Whatever would sound good on the "membership of clubs & societies" bit of graduate recruitment forms. We had a president, treasurer, secretary, social secretary, games convenor, tournament convenor, and many more. I can't even remember what my position was - probably secretary, as I did maintain the membership list (with titles), and wrote the constitution. This was largely an exercise in using the word "quorum" as often as possible, and ensuring that the complicated rules for a quorum boiled down in practice to "having enough to play Bridge". We did have lots of meetings (where we played bridge) and charged a pound for membership (which we spent on tea and chocolate to welcome the newest exec member). Ah, happy days.

(For the record, I was games society treasurer, bridge society secretary (probably), and try to keep real world politics at the far end of a ten foot pole...)

Posted by graham @ 08:21 pm

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Shiney and New

Claire and I have launched a new website for our collar-making business, Celtichound. This is a little side project for us, which grew out of Claire's hobby of making pretty much anything she can imagine. Celtichound isn't going to replace the day jobs in the near future, but it is raising a bit of money for charity, and there's an undeniable thrill to seeing a dog wander past in one of our collars.

I'm writing this on the other newness of the moment, a lovely Asus Eee Seashell. Claire bought it for me last week, just 'cos she could. Talented and generous - I'm a lucky guy!

Posted by graham @ 03:16 pm

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Lies, Inc.

I'm getting really pissed off with companies wasting my time and telling lies. Just in the last couple of weeks :

My neighbour's phone line broke. At first BT claimed there was no fault on the line. Then they didn't phone back when they promised to. Appointments were booked for an engineer to call, but no one arrived. Since she had no phone, her daughter and I had to do all the calling. After seven days, five hours of my time on the phone (plus however long her daughter spent), four missed appointments, two broken promises of "they'll get someone out today," and numerous missed callbacks, we finally got an engineer out, who spent two hours replacing the cable that had "no fault" in it. I need to check if my neighbour got any compensation for all this - I got nothing for my time they wasted.

Parcelforce were supposed to deliver a package on Tuesday. No sign of it, so Wednesday I phoned the sender. Parcelforce had told them they'd "tried to deliver, no one in, so left a card". The last bit at the very least is a lie. I called the local depot, to be greeted with an attitude of "it's at the local post office, you can pick it up whenever you want, why are you upset?" Complained to head office, who gave a vague apology, a vaguer promise to "talk to the people involved", and a stern "Parcelforce does not pay compensation".

An order from Dabs.com was showing on their website as "shipped" yesterday, with a note that they'd emailled me tracking information, but that the email might take 24 hours to arrive. Still no sign of the email this morning, so contacted dabs through their webchat window. "It hasn't shipped yet, you'll get an email when it does." They did offer me £5 off my next order, but I don't feel inclined to order again.

I'm starting to wonder if I can start suing for every time someone wastes my time or lies to me like this. I could make a freaking fortune.

Posted by graham @ 11:53 am

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Not Twitching, Honest

The rough weather has led a number of unusual birds to our back garden in search of food, or at least bird species we don't normally see. A couple of times I've managed to grab a camera, and got these just-about-good-enough-for-id-purposes shoots of a redwing (top) and blackcap (below).

We also saw a fieldfare at Claire's parents on the second, though I didn't get a picture. The visit to Claire's parents was fun and relaxing. I should have probably mentioned it in the last post, but it didn't seem to fit into the general theme of doom.

***

Strangeness of the day #1. Someone has been along the footpath outside our house in some sort of mini-halftrack, maybe three feet wide. It's left a trail of what looks like charcoal - not evenly spread, more sort of here and there. Is this supposed to be some sort of council pavement gritter? The stuff isn't melting the snow/ice, nor does it provide any traction (if anything it makes the surface more slippery). But if it isn't the council, who would have such a vehicle? Some sort of all-terrain mobility scooter? Odd.

***

Yesterday, we had a few friends round to play boardgames. Well, Battlestar Galactica. It was a disaster (from the human perspective). One jump in it was all a little dull. I'd become Admiral Vice-President Tigh, most of the dials were at full or nearly so, and there was little sign of a player-cylon. Tyrol had got brigged, but that was easily fixed - I had a presidential pardon card. Then it all went pear-shaped. Three successive crisis cards left only one cylon ship (a heavy raider) off the board. President Zarek declared himself a cylon, leaving Helo in charge. The next crisis card was the map to Kobol, pushing us over the magic 4 distance, so sleeper loyalty cards were distributed. I sprang Tyrol from the brig so he could repair the FTL and jump us out of there. He'd just got a "you are a cylon" card, and promptly defected. We made the jump anyway, got slammed with the super-crisis cards, losing Colonial One and gaining two centurions on board Galactica. With nearly everything at one or two (other than food, we had a tonne of food), we made one last jump, reaching one jump from Kobol before three heavy raider activations in a row (crisis card, cylon player, cylon player) stomped us under a swarm of centurions.

Was fun anyway...

***

Strangeness of the day #2. Earlier, I got an automated phonecall from Southern Electric, wanting me to phone back with the meter reading for the electricity account they'd taken over last month. In a bit of a panic - we're not planning to change electricity suppliers - I found a phone number for them. Turns out that it was actually Scottish Hydro wanting the gas reading for the account they're taking over today. Which we did know about, but hard to see how the phonecall could have been more misleading.

***

We've spent this evening taking down the Christmas decorations, and Christmas is officially over. I always feel rather melancholy on this day. Still, at least Alfie seems to be on the mend.

Posted by graham @ 10:07 pm

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Drowning

Not the best start to the new year. Alfie's pretty ill - everything he eats goes straight through. One emergency vet visit later, and he has a host of pills, powders, and pastes. Hopefully he'll feel better soon...

***

We saw in the new year at chris's. More a gathering than a party, but the company of good friends is a good start to any year. Several people failed to notice the bells - distracted by fireworks over edinburgh castle.

By the time we got home and walked dogs it was gone three. We were awoken after 4 hours sleep by the phone ringing. Both of us jumped out of bed in a panic - no one would phone that early unless it was an emergency... In fact, it was a badly generated voice saying, "You have a text message. Happy new year." all of which had woken the dogs, so I had to walk them, and didn't get back to bed. Good start to the day. Then Alfie became ill...

***

I did get to see Doctor Who almost live, and before seeing any spoilers this time. I rather enjoyed it. I loved that the regeneration happened for noble rather than heroic reasons. I liked that John Simm got more to do. I liked that the Master drifted towards "amoral schemer" and away from "I'm mad, so I'm evil!" I loved Bernard Cribbens. I liked that the plot more or less worked, and that the solution to the dilemma followed obviously from the whole set-up. Sure there were flaws - not least the long, dull last fifteen minutes - but overall quite enjoyable. And as for Matt Smith, from the couple of minutes he got at the end, he looks rather good. He's got an intriguing alien quality that Tenant always lacked. Looking forward to seeing what Moffat has in store for him...

***

Anyway, I've had about 14 hours sleep between the last three nights, so I'm ging to crash soon. Hope your year so far has been better than mine, and that everyone's gets better.

Posted by graham @ 09:12 pm

Thursday, December 31, 2009

So That Was Christmas

So, we managed to get through Christmas without anyone getting stuck in the snow. We did chicken out of heading into Edinburgh to meet friends on Christmas Eve. We got as far as getting in the car, at which point a snow storm started, and we quickly retreated home...

Our parents were round at ours on Christmas Day, then over to Mum's for Boxing Day to see my sister and her family. Anne and I had bought Mum a Wii/Sports/Wii Fit Plus combo. Yep, Mum got a games console before I did. My own presents were largely of the pile of books/CDs/DVDs variety, plus the Battlestar boardgame, and various edibles. My nephew is turning into quite the gamer, though being ten he's mainly focused on yugioh (or however it's spelt...) I'm slowly weaning him on to real games. So far, Dragon Dice and Lord of the Fries seem to be the successes.

***

I didn't get to see Doctor Who until a few days after Christmas. Thanks to everyone who needed to post spoilers all over Facebook and blogs... I thought it was alright, so far. Much will depend how good the second half is. Oh, sure, it suffered from the usual Davis problems - bad guys who lack any motivation beyond being "evil" or "mad", an unjustified fascination with its own continuity, failure to lay pipe, and a "shock ending" that was telegraphed 15 minutes in - and John Simm's maniacal laugh isn't much cop, which is a shame given how little else he was given to do. But I enjoyed it anyway. Hopefully the second half will pick up the pace, and not descend into techno-babble...

***

I've been witness to two violent incidents since Christmas, both on the street outside our house. The first occurred in the early hours of Monday morning. A group of four or five blokes having a drunken argumetn woke me up, but the noise didn't last long, so I went back to sleep without looking out the window. Turns out that one of them had thrown a bin across the road, someone had staggered off bleeding, and someone else had been knocked over before staggering off in a different direction. The police seemed to be taking it all pretty seriously, spending most of the day going door to door collecting statements, despite not appearing to know the identity of any victim, or indeed whether any of those involved was particularly innocent.

The second was Monday evening. The driver of a pickup truck (going well over the speed limit on an icy road) got annoyed at a bus with right of way turning into the road some 300 yards away. He showed his annoyance by turning on full beam lights (including stupid flood lights on top of the cab), blaring his horn, slamming his brakes on, skidding, and shouting abuse at the bus, which completely ignored him and carried out the turn calmly and safely. The pickup driver then reversed, blocked the bus into the bus stop (using a parked police van to do so), got out and started abusing the bus driver. The police officers (who'd been gathering statements from the previous incident) turned up at this point, and despite having a witness (I was walking Alfie and saw the whole thing) merely nodded their heads at the guy's ranting, then let him drive off. Presumably charging the guy for dangerous driving, breach of the peace, and possibly driving under the influence would have required too much paperwork...

***

And so we reach Hogmanay. No idea what we'll be doing for the bells. There's a couple of parties, but we haven't decided which to go to, or whether to do something else. Still, tomorrow is clear for recovering, and I've done all the shopping that needs done before next week. Have a good New Year when it reaches you.

Posted by graham @ 11:40 am

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