wow

Just have a look at this. Someone has gone to a lot of bother to produce this great advert for the NS-5 'the world's first fully automated domestic assistant'. And it is fully three laws safe, for those of us who understand these things.

the west wing

I have just seen my first episode of The West Wing. For some reason we have never been able to get our act together enough to watch it when it has been on TV. However, we bought the first two series on DVD in the sales after Christmas. It really is fantastic. I would vote for President Bartlett, in fact I am thinking of starting up a campaign to get him elected here in the UK. What a wonderful humane man he is. It got me thinking about George Bush. Is there a side to Mr Bush that we don't see in the UK, a side that is more apparent to those who live in the US? I have been looking at some blogs and it seems there are Americans who love Mr Bush and think he is doing a good job. My first thought when I see these is that they are poor deluded fools, but perhaps I am missing something...Anyway, I can't wait to return to the White House...

Talking of sales...I also got four series, all but the first, of Sex and The City on DVD today. They only cost £15 a series, which was too cheap for me to leave. Can't wait to watch them all again.

My viewing cup runneth over...

me at home, again

I went back to work yesterday after the Christmas break. Didn't want to go, but had to I suppose. The masters in their wisdom had shut down the switchboard, so we received no calls at all during the day. I just pottered around trying to pass the time. I have a few things to do, but just couldn't seem to work up any enthusiasm for any of it. Today I decided to do some work from home, but it has been a funny day so far. Haven't been able to do anything, but mess around on my computer. I am still sitting in my dressing gown, but I think I am going to get dressed and go shopping. Got some cash at Christmas and I want to buy a Bluetooth headset for my phone. It has recently become illegal in the UK to use your mobile phone while driving, in fact it is illegal even to hold your phone while driving. What is the world coming to when governments think they have to intervene to stop stupid people killing themselves and other, perhaps less stupid, people?

It always takes me a while to get back into working after Christmas and I suppose this year will be no different. Ah, well...

i am done...

I forgot to mention that I have now put all of my music onto my iPod. It took me over a month. I have 7300 songs which is quite a nice little collection. I am now doing the sad computer boy thing of working out how to publish my collection on the internet. I never thought I would ever stoop so low. I could never see the point of putting lists of songs on the internet, but now that I have all my music in digital form and have put away my CDs, I find that I need some way of easily keeping track of the music that I have. It might as well be online as anywhere else, I guess. I have found this fantastic little app called iTunes Catalogue which does the job in a stylish way.

Once I was able to see all of my music together, I was shocked to find that it is all white rock. I have always prided myself on having a fairly catholic taste in music, but I was clearly deluding myself. Oh, sure, I have the odd hip hop album, some classic soul and a bit of classical, but none of this can hide the fact that I am a victim of my upbringing. I really am white rock boy. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it was a bit of a surprise...

christmas is over

I love Christmas but I am always glad when it is over. It has been a hectic couple of weeks, but yesterday we lay around watching tv and now I feel able to leave the house in search of bargains. We had a full house for Christmas dinner. My brother did arrive bringing with him a Christmas cake that must weigh about 10LBs. He had a chef at one of his hotels make it for us. I like fruit cake, but what am I going to do with a thing this size. The dinner was a great success, even the pickled grapes. It all came together very nicely, although at one point I thought I was going to have to give them some crisps to tide them over between course because the meat just wouldn't cook. This sort of thing often happens to me. I have to do much of the preparation before we sit down because my capacity to organise and cook deteriorates with every glass of wine I drink. The only downer came when Mrs McMuffin's father, who hardly touches alcohol managed to get himself drunk enough to fall over in the bathroom and give himself a black eye. He didn't feel too good after this, and left a bit earlier than planned. I could see disaster looming when I gave him a bottle of fine single malt whisky. He decided that he didn't need another glass and poured a very generous shot into his empty wine glass. Mrs McMuffin then helped him on his way by accidently topping up his glass with some wine. He decided the whisky was too good to waste and drank the lot. He is 70 years old so you would have thought he would have learnt that kind of lesson before now. Apart from that, it was a lovely day, good company, nice food and drink, and lots of presents...

I have been neglecting my blog recently, but I am now trying to make up for that. I have spent the morning trying to make it look lovely again, but I have just messed it up some more, and have had to return it to its orginal state. Never fear, I will try again later. I am determined to get this site looking right.

what a day

Today has been a bit of trial for me and my beloved Mac. I got up this morning, switched on my machine, hoping to look at my emails, do a bit of surfing and the like, and I found that my machine had decided to scrap all of my preferences, my keychain, and god knows what else. I just couldn't get the thing to work properly. I was able to get on line, and on one of the forums found out that OSX has a nasty habit of scraping everything if you fill the hard drive. By coincidence, I received a warning telling me I had no space left last night. It has taken me a year, but finally I have found out how to break OSX. I have spent the day saving what I could, and have now completely reloaded the operating system. Unfortunately, I have not been able to save my bookmarks. I had automatically synced with .mac before I knew what was going on, and all I was left with was an empty file. It also did the same thing with my diary and address book, but I have them saved somewhere else. It has taken me a couple of years to build up those bookmarks and to organise them just how I liked. And to think, I was getting so good at backing things up too...A hard lesson, but one I am taking to heart. I am going to get myself an external hard drive and backing up everything from now on. The .mac automation is excellent, but is no good to me if it can't tell the difference between an empty file and one with data in it. My machine is running lovely now. Still a lot of work to do though. I still have to load on all of my apps again. But, for now, I am going to bed.

wheat beer

I just love it.

le pauvre

Had an interesting experience today with a very nice lady from another part of the divison. My team is moving offices, and because we are so so important, there has to be emergency cover while we do this, the nice lady and another nice man are going to deal with emergencies during the day. We got chatting and it turns out that she went to college with and briefly worked with Mr McMuffin. I mentioned his name and that he was my 'husband' (still trying to use that word without sniggering) and her reply was "oh.....you're so lovely'.

I don't think they hit it off. She hasn't seen him for many years, and I'm sure she'd really like him now, but what do we do when we're not keen on partners of people we like? Being a bit of a Pollyanna, I try to find some redeeming feature, but I have to admit that some relationships have foundered because I just don't like the people they love. I can't help questioning their judgement, and judging them right back. Now that's really lovely.

still experimenting...

I just can't seem to get this site to look the way I want it to. I am still figuring out how to do things with the design. So, occasionally some of the pictures look crap and the links don't work, but I will get there eventually...

mr mcmuffin

look at this

I was browsing some other people's blogs and found a link to this site. It is worth checking out. It features the most amazing photographs of Japanese city skylines.