So I got David Foster Wallace's meisterwerk, "Infinite Jest". Blimey. 980 pages, with another 60-odd of "notes and errata". For a novel. Small typeface, not many paragraphs. Going to take a while. And a stronger pair of reading glasses, I shouldn't wonder.

In the same package was Carcassonne which, being very behind on what's been occurring on the board game scene, was new to me, despite being 10 years old and a Spiel des Jahres winner. We're now at a point where games with reasonably simple mechanics suitable for 8  are well within Johnny's reach so I'm starting to add to our portfolio (I should take a look in the attic to see if there's anything there that would be suitable, come to think of it). The inevitable tantrum occurred after the first game, which I won more or less randomly, but he's been back for more, culminating this afternoon in a victory of crushing proportions. Nicely presented and surprisingly subtle, as is often the case with German games.

Current Mood: grumpy

At least, on my worky/techy mostly Excel and ranting about Lotus Notes blog I do, where DFW came up 8/10, with Asimov and Agatha Christie once each.

Here, I appear to have a rather less easily-identifed style: a sample of this year's posts gave the following (one each):

• J K Rowling
• H P Lovecraft
• William Shakespeare (so I can now honestly say that my writing has been compared with Shakespeare¹)
• Raymond Chandler
• Chuck Palahniuk
• James Joyce
• DFW (again)

I have to confess to being entirely unfamiliar with Mr Wallace's work. So I've ordered some. Or perhaps I should just go back and read my own stuff?

(edit: This post takes the Chuck Palahniuk score to 2)

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¹ It could always be compared thus, I suppose, but not necessarily favourably.

Current Mood: grumpy

I guess one upside of the World Cup is that the English players got an extra week of holiday without the Germans grabbing all the best sunbeds.

The family PC has been creaking under a heavy load of photos (over 20K files now, because Pam likes to (a) shoot with the continuous mode and (b) keep everything "just in case"), videos, MP3s and Windows side-by-side greed. The machine only has a 160GB hard disk. "Only" - hah. Worse, it's a small(-ish) form-factor machine and I have yet to figure out a way to get a second drive into the cage without applying a hacksaw. (I'm assuming there's a crucial screw or two somewhere but I have yet to locate them).

Rather than get into Ghosting and whatnot, I decided to go the home server route and invested in an Acer H340 device. So far so good. Easy to set up, it sits in a corner outside the office, cable-connected to the ADSL modem/router. I got the family machine talking to it without incident and this morning it was already happily running a backup on that machine.

I'll start investigating use of the shared folders tonight. Paranoia dictates the taking of an independent external copy of all the media files before I start removing stuff from the clients.

Form factor is acceptable: it's about a 12" cube. Takes up to four drives - I have 2x1TB, which ought to be enough for now.

Good grief. "Ought to". "For now".

My first job in computing was on an IBM 370 with four 330MB (yes, "mega") hard drives; I remember enthusing to people about the monstrous capacity we had available.

Current Mood: grumpy

Runner-up from the Vile Puns section of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:


Elsewhere, a colleague, outraged since February at the (to him) inequitable distribution of promotions (me one, him nil) has finally managed to find himself a job in another area of the Bank. His obsessive attention to the most inconsequential of miniscule minuscule details, to the detriment of the important and relevant, will no doubt be as much of a joy to them as it has been to us. Down-side for me is the end of having looked good by comparison.

Now I'm faced with the problem of deciding whether or not to bid to take over the project he's been screwing up for the last 9 months. One the one hand, there's a potential big win, but it's one of those "if I wanted to get to there, I wouldn't start from here" things. Having examined the code, I'd scrap the whole (meagre) thing, an approach that may be resisted by "invested" management.

Current Mood: grumpy

Broadgate Circle, 23-Jun-2010 A few office workers took a late lunch in the sunshine this afternoon. They had assembled to watch their football team finish second in their qualifying group to the mighty USA. Germany looms in the next round for the plucky Brits, barring a peculiar combination of outcomes in tonight's fun. Given the number of peculiar results seen already, Germany might well loom off again.

Current Mood: grumpy

Goodness, how did I miss The Beatles Complete on Ukelele? Before you cringe irrevocably, it turns out to be considerably distant from being crap, although one might quibble over the amount of uke audible on many tracks.

They've only done 71/185 so far, too - July 2012 is the scheduled completion date.

My immediate reaction on discovering the site was to wonder how (and if) they'd approach Revolution Nine. Turns out they already have. I like it better than the original.

Current Mood: grumpy

If you count my previous (1996-7) employment in a different function, department, profit centre and indeed company within the same group, then I have spent more time being paid by Deutsche Bank than anywhere else. Even not counting the earlier time I'm only seven or eight months away from the all-time record (5 years).

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that, although the rate at which they're pumping money into my pension plan is comforting. My feet seem to be - for me - unusually non-itchy. I think a factor may be the group in which I've been working since 2006: fairly stable, diverse (I'm the only native-born English member) and overall the smartest with which I've ever been directly associated. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's a proft centre, rather than corporate (or "enterprise" - pah) IT, a function I 'm grown to loathe over the years.

The money ain't bad either.

Current Mood: grumpy

... Stanley



The ongoing will-they-won't-they discussions, Birks' latest commentary and this excellent representation of the various parties' failure adequately to address the spending deficit in any useful way have me feeling that my normal emotional state has seldom been more justified.

Remember the bankers who knew (or suspected) mortgages were risky but dealt in them anyway because they'd have been thrown out by their shareholders if they weren't making the same profits? And who in any case figured they wouldn't be singled out because if it all went pear-shaped they'd all be in the same boat and anyway, as long as they didn't invest their bonuses in banking stocks they'd be OK if it only worked for even a couple of years?

I'm smelling parallels.

"We can't talk about the real cuts before the election because we won't win. Having won, we can't implement the real cuts because we won't win again in our lifetimes."

They only wouldn't win if they failed to explain the realities to the electorate. Having won, they're in a  bit of a bind: educating people to understand and accept the necessity might introduce some difficult trust-related questions. It'll probably all come down to spin, sadly.

I'm beginning to think the unacceptability of the policies that will be needed may be the stimulus toward a moderately functional coalition. If what follows is every party's "fault" (we can include Labour even if they aren't involved because the perception will be - or already is - that they started it) then they are all equally unelectable and we either all vote Green/UKIP/Loony/BNP for a few decades or we just carry on as before.

When the dust settles, we'll see if any good came out of it. At the moment I'm mostly working on suppressing the idea that Greece really may be the first of a long line of dominos and that by the time the UK goes, there won't be any money left from anywhere. EXcept maybe China. I wonder what's the going rate for childrens' Chinese lessons?

Current Mood: grumpy

It looks like Best Buy have made it across the Atlantic. First store looks a bit on the small side, though...

Current Mood: grumpy

gunga_galunga asked, very reasonably, "How come you only post when grumpy?"

Some people have a religion on which to fall back; lacking one, I require an alternative pyschological crutch. I think grumpy rather suits me. It's more than a transient state of mind, it's a way of life. I mean, consider my current state of existence:

To pick a few of the more prominent issues of the moment, I am:

• past 50. OK, not by much, but the decline is noticeable and annoying
• balding - how could one be happy when a barber does that "show you the back" thing with a mirror and all you can see is the pinkness?
• overweight by definition, having arrested the gradual gain about 0.4 from obesity. The task of reaching a "normal" weight is going to be long and tedious, more so since the unfortunate piza-related incident at the weekend. And last night's superb curry
• broken. The back's still playing up, better than it was but keeping it under control looks like it's going to involve a long-term and increasingly tedious exercise regime
• broke. This is nonsensical, and I wouldn't dare to argue otherwise - I'm insanely well-paid, my raise this year was my entire salary when I was 30, but Mr Micawber would still be unimpressed. I just feel broke - and I try to stay in touch with my feelings
• still unable to execute the late-cut shot after almost 30 years of trying

I think I'm doing rather well to hold it at "grumpy", all things considered, there are plenty of worse states: here's an even dozen I'd like less: aggravated, angry, annoyed, bitchy, cranky, depressed, distressed, enraged, gloomy, infuriated, morose, sad.

Current Mood: grumpy