Days: it’s a blog thing
Since August, 2001. Surely it can’t last…
Wednesday, January 09, 2002 ↓
SNIFF COUGH SPLUTTER
I have a runny nose. And a cough. And a sore throat. I’ve had night sweats for the last two nights, and I slept through a big chunk of yesterday. Which was good, because when I wasn’t sleeping, I felt crap. Fortunately this morning I feel a little better, which is just as well because I have to head south for a meeting of the Semiconductor Businesses Association at Oxford Semiconductor in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
Back in a few days.
Monday, January 07, 2002 ↓
AND HERE IT IS…
The new iMac.
Looks like Time Canada wasn’t kidding after all, when they (slipped up and) published photographs the other day. Interestingly, the dateline on this article (at least at the time of posting this entry) reads January 14, 2002!
FILE UNDER THE “BASTARD!” CATEGORY
I was distracted from posting yesterday.
I have two cars. One of them, though now getting a little old, is a seemingly all too desirable example of the kind of vehicle that in Britain we refer to as a hot hatch. Over and above the car’s already potent production specification, the engine control unit has been “super-chipped”, enhancing its “goes like shit off a shovel” reputation.
Now this car has sat immobile in its parking place outside my house for some months, as it’s in need of a repair that I haven’t quite got around to arranging yet. During that time, the battery has gone as flat as one of the tyres, and I expect a lot of the mechanical and electrical bits will benefit from a good clean-up before I can expect it to start again.
While it’s been resting, and usually while I’m out, a few of my neighbours have noticed various unknown individuals strolling in from the street and on to our property to give my car the “once over” — in fact, a few have been seen to give it a very thorough examination. And a couple of guys have left messages expressing interest in buying it, even though it’s never been advertised for sale.
Yesterday morning, however, somebody took it a bit further. At about 9:20 a.m., a neighbour rang me to say that she had just seen some character with a suspicious polythene bag tucked under his arm come in off the street, walk directly up to my car, and disappear down behind the driver’s side out of her view. A few seconds later, he popped back up again and was at that moment walking off our property. When I went out to check what was going on, the mysterious stranger had legged it out of sight, and I found the lock on my driver door had been burst. All in broad daylight. Despite wrecking the lock, he hadn’t succeeded in getting the doors open. Perhaps he’ll come back again to make another attempt.
I suspect that because the car has stayed in the same spot for a while, the retarded members of our criminal community think that it is unloved, uncared for, and most of all, unwatched. Clearly yesterday’s villain had observed the car for a while, and came prepared to do — something.
But that’s my real source of frustration: what did this dumb-ass hope to gain? If he had applied the solitary brain cell he was born with, he might have concluded that the car was extremely unlikely to start, so outright theft was a no-hoper. Never mind the problems of driving it away with one completely flat tyre (did he intend to try blowing it up first?). He couldn’t have stolen the alloy wheels, because (since one of his “brothers” tried to do that before) they have special locks on them. There is nothing of value inside the car; even the stereo is one of those jobs with the removable control panel which I have, of course, removed. So what was his plan?
So now, as well as the outstanding repair, I’ll have to get the door lock and any other attendant damage fixed. That’s if I get a chance to do it before the bold boy tries again.
Bastard.
A “VERY TROUBLED YOUNG MAN”
The authorities all seem to agree that Charles Bishop, the sad, misguided teenager who flew a light aircraft into a Tampa bank building, was acting alone. I doubt many of us seriously thought otherwise, despite the sympathy he expressed in his suicide note for Osama bin Laden.
It’s especially tragic that one so young driven to suicide should do so in a manner that might well have taken others with him. We can only be thankful that the tragedy wasn’t compounded in that way.
There is another factor I find rather disturbing in this case. This boy was apparently quite legitimately in the process of learning to fly. In the UK, even with a licensed and experienced driver present, no-one under the age of seventeen is allowed behind the wheel of a car on the public road. What on earth is any country doing allowing a fifteen-year-old to fly an aeroplane, with or without an instructor?
APPLE TEASE
Since I started using a Mac more than a year ago (at which point, and for some months, I’m sure my friends think I became a classic “Mac bore”, extolling its virtues over the PC/Windows platform, in much the same way as someone who has only just stopped smoking becomes an ardent anti-smoking evangelist) I’ve naturally become a little more interested in Apple products. But I can’t see the point in the flurry of speculation over what innovative product Steve the Mac God will announce at Macworld. The discussion and rumour have been rife on the Web over the last several days, perhaps fuelled by Apple’s teasers on its home page. It’s rather like a bunch of kids fantasising in the weeks before Christmas about what Santa Claus will bring them.
Cool it people; we’ll know soon enough…
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