Adventure Rocket Ship

An opportunity for bar-propping at the tail end of September: http://www.bristolcon.org/

After last week's jabbering about pushbikes, Tuesday was a bit grim and unfortunate. Boo.

[FX: Stares into space. Space stares back.]

Damn. Mind's a blank. There was something I was going to have a pontificate about, but both it and its moment have passed. Not unlike a grim-faced bus driven by a grim-faced geezer and filled with grim-faced passengers who all want to go to different but equally terrible places.

Buses don't go to nice places. Trains do sometimes, ferries usually manage the task, in a car the nastiness can start as soon as you get in the thing.

Oh!

Right. I remember: what's the elemental drama particle? The Angstrom? This is LJ; someone must know.

In poking around randomly on that Wikiwiki site (theme song 'Jam on it' by Newcleus), vaguely looking for Hymeks as it turned out, I discover Cotswold Rail, who keep a loco named 'John Peel'. It was the work of mere seconds to idly speculate about the wisdom or running a London -> Whitby special, to enable the drinking to begin on platform 33 1/3rd and continue until the return.

Were it not for the fact that no-one would be able to agree on the departure and return dates, the bogs would be ankle-deep in toxic lager piss and hair-dye slicks by the time you hit Watford, you'd have to travel via odd places (Brum, Sheff) in order to get the numbers up, several hopless bastards would set the smoke alarms off due to sneaking into the septic bogs for a cancer-stick, there'd be mithering about the cost and the people I'd like to have along would touch the idea with someone else's bargepole and/or aren't fithy g*ths... It would be a top thing to think about.

Hey ho. I'm not sure why I mention it. Devilment, probably.

Just before steaming out of the door to go for a run around work, the mobile goes. It's some oik from Communications Direct, trying to scam me into 'upgrading' to whatever shonky contract they're trying to push. I am somewhat short with the fellow. To the extent that there's a whispered 'bloody hell H-R' from the next cube.

It's always nice to know I can strike fear into people without raising my voice or swearing.

Later, somewhere around mile two, the mobile goes off again. This time it's the people who sold me the thing. Much better. Yes, I would like a free upgrade. No, I'm not planning to change networks. While I had the young woman on the phone, I briefed her about my experiences with CD and pointedly asked who'd released my number. Vodafone or them?

Half a mile later, she's back on the phone. (Maybe there was some residual artillery officer in my tone. I'd like to think that she just wanted to be helpful.) It appears that in the month leading up to the end of your contract, Voda release the number to... I wasn't clear if it was 'selected partners' (in which case they keep rubbish company. On the other hand, at £22bn down, they need all the friends they can bribe.) or 'anybody who'll pay'. Oddly enough, I can't find any details of this filthy behaviour on their website. Mind, it's equally likely that some spotty Herbert in a Top Man suit was making stuff up to keep a colleague happy. Mobile phone shops aren't the bastions of rigorous scientific enquiry one might prefer them to be. In my day, people selling HF wireless kit at least knew which way round the accumulators went.

Perhaps I will change networks after all. O2 are too bloody useless to manage anything that sneaky, and they're far cheaper outside the UK.

(No, really)

Yesterday, I was handed a (working) full-height 5.25" Micropolis HD with a quite startling (for its age. 1992) 1.53Gb capacity. I can't remember what amount of storage I was using in 1992, but it wasn't that ludicrous sort of figure. There are probably some Apollo boxes here, too. Not that anyone would want one. The last one that fell into my hands was quickly rendered down into components, and all the parts were cast aside save the panel on the back of the power supply, which made a vaguely wieldy bottle-opener.

Y'all might like to read this. It's very good and I wish I'd written it. (although the HTML on the site appears b0rked. I'm quite glad I didn't write that.)

I need to do something spectacular and fitting with my old boots. (Yes, I guess I need to fuck them in some way...) Preferably dangerous.

Hm. Uninspired and short of words. Don't know why and don't much care for it.