I’m in. Like a ghost town here. Half the open-plan office is dark. Bored.

Still, may be joining unemployedtrackworld soon!

I am heartily sick of 2013.

Partner has been suffering depression all year, as a consequence has lost job. His parents are old and his dad has Alzheimer’s and we have just (yesterday) had to take his car from him. In the middle of fantastic weather my back gave out (first time ever! agony!).

For me, hopefully 2014 will be:
1. Improved roadie-ing/much more commuting on my SS.
2. Much more MTB and stop being afraid of every fricking route.
3. More organised.
4. Keep job (work with a certain IT company that is getting rid of a load of people, but to be honest it is horrible at the mo).
5. Become a man whore. 😀

Already booked to go to Afan at Easter so things are looking up (not the whore-part 🙂 )

Depends on my mood. For a blue cheese Roquefort is hard to beat.

For a hard UK cheese I’m an very fond of Black Bomber or the Wookie Hole cheddar.

I had a nice Camembert baked on Christmas Day. With crudités. Got HWMBO (He Who Must Be Obeyed) some cheddar with whisky in from Aldi and he says it is nice but sweet. Bleugh.

Mr Pond, on the other hand is a bit of all-right.

He’s one of those “I fancy but I’m not exactly sure why” people.

Going to in-laws tomorrow for tea. F-i-L is an old extreme right-winger who has got the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He’s just been told he needs driving lessons if he wants to keep his license.

Cue rants of “I’ve been driving over 50 years!”.

Tomorrow is going to be a right bag of laughs. 🙁

Thor?

Ah. Dreamy. 😀

Pah, these are nothing!

I was at my sisters t’other day where she has Sky and I watched a film on the Syfy channel:

‘Robocroc’

It was so utterly awful I laughed so much I weed a bit. Unfortunately I had to go to bed else I could have stayed up and watched ‘Ghost Shark’.

Sorry gwj72, Emsz is right. If it was all money he’d be going on one of those nice chat shows for loads of money and saying it there, and upping the price beforehand.

Unless of course the chap in the video was a robot or something?

Regardless, if it helps young LGBT people who are getting crap at school then it can only be for good.

I’ll most get a PS4 when inFamous Second Son comes out if they do a bundle deal and it gets OK reviews (loved the other two inFamous games).

Mate has just got one and he likes it. Though it may be best to wait, see if X-Box 60Hz/50Hz issue is resolved, especially if you watch footy.

I could be a fluffer, I suppose…

Otherwise a blacksmith or a carpenter/joiner.

If only I wasn’t completely cack-handed!

(Hi Emsz! *waves*)

Emsz: Nail, head.

I’ve had similar experiences to Emsz and still get an awful lot of pee-taking at work. Tom is only 19 so it is good for him to be out so young so he can go for who/what he wants instead of hiding.

Beware! Skyrim sucks all of your life into it. Well it did mine! I still haven’t finished and have racked up > 200h on the damned thing on my PS3!

Wow, footflaps, you compare someone who writes books and give lectures to someone who murders and blows up people based upon their religion? 😯

I’ve read ‘The God Delusion’. I found no ranting. Just measured arguments. No ‘shrill’-ness either. Perhaps you meant WBC?

Grum: could you point to one please? I have a copy on kindle; if you shout I can quickly check.

I’m reading “Abaddon’s Gate” by James SA Corey, which is the third/final book of the ‘Expanse’ series (“Leviathan Wakes”, “Caliban’s War” being the others). They’ve been cracking reads so far!

Dagnabit. I NEED just one more! Think of the kiddies and N+1 rule!

Edited because I’m thick.

If I knew it was going to be under-tens with their parents/guardians coming round for sweets then no problem. I’d get a tub of sweets and say hello.

Unfortunately it tends to be the 14-15 year olds that just want money.

MS needs to increase the AppContainers protocol to ‘normal’ windows programs (not just Metro). I think MacOSX has had sandboxing since Lion and they got really strict on it in Mountain Lion.

AFAIK the new iPad mini retina has the A7 processor in it so will be a fair bit faster than the iPad mini, which is based upon the iPad 2 processor.

Mini is good for taking out and about. I’d be careful with the iPad Air as it costs so much 🙂

Causing others pain isn’t normally my bag but I’d have to consider the case of Richard Littlejohn, especially after the death of Lucy Meadows.

‘Abaddon’s Gate’ by James SA Corey, third book in the ‘expanse’ trilogy, so far they’ve all been cracking.

Just started ‘The Man Who Folded Himself’ which is strange but good.

‘Quantum Thief’ which is a very dense read.

Snowden: brave yes, intelligent yes, cute, err. yes. 😀

Just to add some info, I see an interesting page from fullfact.org that examines the profitability of electricity companies in the UK.

fullfact.org

I have found two issues so far.

Logic Express 8 – the time line draws black when traversing the tracks. A refresh of window (minimize/maximize) fixes it but while the line is moving it blacks things out.

Two fingered swipe on windows sometimes stops. I think it’s when I try to backswipe a page on my trackpad – it sometimes freezes and everything works apart from the two-finger scrolling.

Just finished installing and will take a peek. Looking forward at least to the finder tabs and tagging as I can’t abide loads of windows open.

You can’t really complain with free though, and I guess the technical improvements will help laptops as opposed to my iMac.

@Bamboo – you haven’t got a time machine disk set-up?

When I make a mistake all I have to do is to wait to notice the shadow. Of the ten tonnes of bricks dropping on me from a great height.

When MrAdamW makes a mistake there is a sheepish grin and an ‘oh well, never mind, eh?’. 😕

We screen our calls now – we get about 5-6 PPI/crap calls a day and we’re sick of asking them to stop calling. And the TPS is absolute bobbins as the calls tend to originate abroad.

robdixon – the distribution companies must have a long-term plan for their part of the network and also budget set aside for it for any new developments and maintenance. Continuing increases in costs do not show a plan but just money grab.

Please also note that the national grid is not the local distribution companies, that’s Centrica/National Grid company. It will charge for transfer across its network but that network does not belong to, say, BG/E.ON/EDF etc.

I’m also quite curious that this ‘investment’ has been ongoing since Mrs T privatised the industry with no end in sight. And the cost will be £30b : upgrade (Independent paper) which will be met by a price increase of ca. £20 per consumer and reduced dividends for investors. That’s a *long* way away from constant ‘investment’ which never appears to occur.

Rob – the line loss factors vary depending on the distance to the substation and also the prevailing weather conditions. This is sent out to each electricity company each day and usually incorporated into their EAC/AA systems, the major one that was in use was the one written by Logica in the late 1990s. (EAC/AA = estimated annual consumption/ annualised advance).

The LLFs are related into the payment that each customer generally pays, when the non-half-hourly data is aggregated each day (also a system that was written by Logica at the time: NHHDA) which then feeds into the ’98 systems to produce the final bill.

Hence my electricity is generated down the road (I can see my station from my house) and my LLF will be less than someone at the other end of the country. There will be different LLFCs depending on transmission distance and line voltages.

Also, regardless of the above – this isn’t investment, it is regular maintenance and I happen to know what happened to the local distribution company when it was purchased by a number of different companies. The word ‘investment’ did not occur. The word ‘redundancies’ did.

EDIT: just remembered too that the DUoS component – Distributed Use of Systems, charging other companies for transmission through the local network – actually *IS* a good little earner.

Hold on a sec – weren’t all those price rises in gas & electricity due to gas wholesale prices and the costs of continuing investment?

Looks like the privatised power companies should be starring with Bernard Cribbins on Jackanory.

[and edf are doing it because they will make profit – there is no debate about whether this will cost us more in the long run.

have they established how we pay for the clean up/decomissioning?]

funded by developer/ operator

Which I guess will be a distinct legal entity which will for some reason go suddenly under just before decommissioning. Leaving us to pick up the tab…

Ha! 4×4 is nothing.

I’ve got a 5×5. So there!

DrJ – I guess so. I try not to drive everywhere as I have bikes. I have a small-sized Yaris. For my car this would mean filling twice a week which I don’t do – once every three or four weeks for me. But it is a 998cc car. For a larger car it would depend on fuel efficiency.

And there are basic assumptions in my calculations: 100% conversion, density of octane at 0.703g/ml and assumption of 100% octane fuel. Burning is rarely 100% efficient and you’ll end up with benzenes etc.

Maths is easy though based upon number of moles of octane per litre multiplied by eight to give number of moles of carbon dioxide multiplied by weight of CO2.

No, I look at the thread title and see if it interests me. I can always learn new stuff from seeing what others have written.

Though I’m doing my best to avoid political/religious threads now. It’s all been said. Hard though, especially after a glass of Armagnac. 😀

As a side comment, a while ago I did some simple maths on how much CO2 would be generated from a full tank in my little Yaris and was quite surprised.

On the assumptions that the fuel was 100% octane and that it burned completely to give carbon dioxide and water it was over 100kg per 45 litre tank.

Makes you think, when you consider how many cars are on the road, for a start, and then the power stations etc.

I’m with Hora.

Not *literally*, mind.
And when I say I’m with him I more or less mean I’d like to be man-whoring he-bitch but for some reason it never seems to happen. 🙁

MrAdamW is without work at present so we’re doing the £20 challenge – make as much as you can with £20. Charity shops, paintings, drawings, music, food etc. Use intelligence and all will be fun. Oh, wait…. 😀

I know someone with one. Not me, before you ask, as I’m not into piercing. 🙂

Apparently it is fairly painless to do and you’d be fitted with your first ring. You have to be careful with this as it will be fairly thin. You’ll be encouraged to clean it for a week or so then play with it, in order to stretch the hole. After a while you go back and get a larger one fitted. The weight eventually stretches the hole for you. You continue stretching/replacing until you reach the width of ring you want.

You have to be careful with the first ring as it will be thin. Wear briefs or combines (everything safely gathered in!) as you don’t want the ring to act as a cheesewire. 😯

The benefits I hear are two-fold. More sensation for you and more sensation for him/her. You’ll have to refrain from sex for a while after piercing to avoid infection. One drawback may be being careful with teeth and breakages thereof 😛

And it *doesn’t* set off airport metal detectors if you’re worried about that.

06:00 Alarm
06:02ish Shave
06:15 On bike
07:30 Arrive at work; quick shower
07:45 Desk