So another film adaptation of a comic book. Ho hum. However, this one’s got Robert Downey Junior in the starring role - which should at least guarantee it’s watchable.

In fairness, Iron Man was actually OK. I’ve seen far worse comic-book adaptations (I’m looking at you, Hulk) but nor is it one of the best - not by a long chalk.

The storyline has a lot of bits that feel like afterthoughts, or “Oh yeah, we could do that” moments. Effects-wise it’s fantastic, and Jeff Bridges makes for a pretty good baddie - but all the same it’s let down (in my opinion) by a pretty ropy and by-the-numbers storyline that leaves too much stuff either a) up in the air or b) forgotten about.

Compared to the (currently re-showing on BBC) Indiana Jones trilogy, it really shows its weakness - Iron Man’s OK to watch once, but would I think “Oooh, good” if I saw it on TV in even ten years time? Absolutely not.

Most of the weekend’s been spent out in the garden, which has been really nice. There’s been some hard work - finishing off the extension to the woodshed, so it’s about another eight foot long and will take another six months worth of wood. (at least)

Over the summer, we’ll be ordering another trailerload of wood, so it can season properly- we’ve got enough for a couple of months once it gets cold again, but we want to have more in stock than that, and be able to have it used in rotation - some of the wood we buy this summer may not get used ’til Winter ‘09, by which time it’ll be good and seasoned. That’s the plan, anyway.

We’ve also been doing a buttload of weeding - it’s nowhere near completed, but we’re getting there and will continue with it during the week as well.

So that’s been the weekend, really. Not much else happened (except for seeing Iron Man, of which more in another past) but it’ll be good to go back to work for a rest…

At the end of the month, we’re going over to Ireland for a week’s holiday - and I’m really looking forward to it.

Getting there will be interesting - we’re taking Hound, and the car, so it’s going to be a matter of driving the 350ish miles from Norfolk right the way across the country to Haverfordwest, staying overnight there, getting up at stupid o’clock to get on the vomit comet ferry across to Ireland, then driving another 190 miles all the way across Ireland to where we’re staying near Glenbeigh, on the Ring of Kerry. All told, about 550 miles plus ferry crossing - and the same on the way back, of course. Bearing in mind it was only about 250 miles to get up to the Lake District, that really is going some.

As it is it’s looking like it’ll be a good week. We’ve got what looks like a stunning house lined up, and then plan to just spend the week going round the Ring of Kerry and just relaxing again. I foresee lots of photos…

I’m also planning on doing a bit of writing while I’m away - although I said that when we went to the Lake District too, and got absolutely sod-all done on that score, so we’ll just see what works and what doesn’t.

But I can tell you now, I’m just about counting the days…

I’ve just had it confirmed that I’ll be staying on with my current contract until the end of the month.

That’s two extensions now - and this three week one is for a completely new project, which is even better. The agency’s ecstatically happy, and I’m pretty pleased too. Considering the initial contract was for 2 weeks and 2 days (i.e. 12 days all told) it’s now been extended for a further seven weeks - and that’s all because they keep finding more stuff for me to do, rather than because of anything negative.

I must be doing something right…

Yesterday evening, I was working on fixing a problem by using a small bit of javascript, and I couldn’t get it to work. Annoying, but them’s the breaks.

Finally, I realised why I couldn’t get the thing to work on a browser, when I was sure I’d written it correctly - and double checked it when it didn’t work first time.

I’d turned javascript off in the browser to do something else, and hadn’t reactivated it yet.

[Edit : I forgot to add the thought in the next par when writing the post initially]
It’s the only time I’ve found so far where tabbed browsing is inferior to separate browser windows - if you turn it off in one place, you turn it off in all of them, which doesn’t happen (as easily) with multiple windows.

Grrr, twenty minutes of debugging and re-reading code - and all because sometimes I’ve got the memory span of a goldfish.

I’m just loving today’s XKCD comic.

Sometimes they’re a bit hit-and-miss, but this one’s worth the effort.

It’s possible that today we will be finally re-allowed to use mains water for drinking and cooking. It’s not certain yet, because they’re doing ‘final’ tests today to decide. (Of course, if we still can’t, it won’t be final tests, but there we go)

We’ve been on bottled water since 17th April.

In that time, we’ve had a dropped off leaflet about why we couldn’t drink the water, and one letter - addressed to the previous occupants, who moved out at least eighteen months ago. And that’s it. It really hasn’t been Anglian Water’s finest hour (three-and-a-half weeks. Whatever) in terms of customer service.

Any information that’s been acquired has been gained by us calling them. In fact, we wouldn’t know about today’s tests if I hadn’t spoken to Anglian Water’s customer services people on Friday. And because they couldn’t be bothered to tell us, it would’ve meant that all the access to the back of the house (where there’s an outside tap they could use to test the water) would have been locked, so they couldn’t test our place.

We also took the opportunity to get them to deliver more bottled water to everyone on the road, as on Friday there were two six-packs of bottled water left on the pallet dumped on the roadside a couple of weeks ago. For a bank holiday weekend. As it is, I’ve been dropping off some of those six-packs of water to the older people on the road (and bear in mind that a good 50% of the people on our road are at least sixty) rather than them having to try lugging bloody heavy loads of water back to the house.

All told, it’s been a total farce from start to finish. And once we’re actually back on the mains service I’m going to be having a serious conversation with Anglian Water about why the hell it’s been such a fuckup. That’ll be a fun conversation, for sure.

Following on from a stomach bug (food poisoning, viral thing, whatever) there’s a stage in the recovery process that is a real throwback to childhood, but that has a joy all of its own - and far out of proportion with the actual import of the event.

That event is the first post-illness solid dump. There’s a true happiness about this, coupled with knowing that you can finally drop your guard a bit, and not worry that every single occasion involving that area is going to necessitate a run to the closest loo.

Or, to quote a friend…

Thought I was going to fart.
Was wrong.

Well, what a Bank Holiday weekend it’s turned out to be.

On Friday night/Saturday morning I developed a dollop of what we think was food poisoning - it might’ve been something viral from somewhere, as Herself has also gone down with the same thing today, but we’re not sure - which led to explosive levels of fluids being expelled from the body. (No, I’m not going to go into details, I’m sure you’ll figure it out)

It meant that all our plans for Saturday went tits-up from the start, and the rest of the weekend followed suit. Herself knew I was feeling really bad, because I went back to bed and slept twice on Saturday - all told, about four hours. That’s just something I never do. Coupled with that, any time I stood up, Gravity took over, and caused a quick dash to the nearest toilet. Yes, for 24 hours I was Gravity’s Bitch.

Sunday wasn’t much better, although was better, and today’s been OK (so far) for me, although Herself picked up the same complaints last night and is currently crashed out in bed still.

About the only good thing that’s come out of it is that at least I’ve been ill on a weekend, and thus didn’t lose out on any money coming in. And that’s a pretty poor silver lining for any cloud.

I forgot to say last week, but the garage visit for the car to get a new wheel fitted went fine. I decided I didn’t need a new tyre as well (as suggested by Blue Witch) as the car had done about another 3,000 miles since the incident that dented the wheel itself, so I figure the odds of it having a blowout are pretty well reduced by this point - well, a blowout caused by weakness induced in the pothole-incident, anyway. It had also passed it’s MOT while on the dented wheel, and the tyres were classed as fine at that point too.

With the new wheel, things have become a lot better. I still notice a small judder in the steering/wheels at certain speeds (oddly, around 60mph for whatever reason) but even that is nowhere near as bad as it was on the old (dented) wheel. I should take the car and get the wheels properly balanced again (or tracking aligned, or whatever the hell it’s called) and I’ll probably do that in a couple of weeks time, once this current contract comes to a close.

In the meantime though, it all appears to be fine, and isn’t causing me any problems. So I’d say that was £55 well spent.

“Gordon Brown says it has been a “bad and disappointing” election for Labour“

In light of the recent governmentary cockups - 10% tax rate, house prices going down, oil (and just about every other) price going up, fuel price exploding, multiple strikes etc. - is it really any surprise to see that people are finally getting sick of Labour?

And when we then get told that £50bn of our money is going to help out the banks (and is thus at risk of being lost, if those banks collapse in the credit crunch) while the 10% tax rate is abolished (as Ian Hislop put it on Have I Got News For You, “the government has taken from the poor and given to the rich”) it’s just another nail in the coffin of Labour.

A “bad and disappointing” election? Only to the people in Labour. Most of the people with any common sense see it as the beginning of a very well deserved end…

Regular readers may remember that last year I had issues with my P60 disappearing when it was sent out by the incomparable twunts at Parasol, the umbrella company I’ve been using. (And thank God that period is coming to a close)

It’s P60 time again, and at least this year I’ve received it. Which is more miraculous than one would suppose, considering it was posted to:

Lyle
[My House_Name]
[The Street_Name]
[Postcode]

(Obviously I’m not going to give out the address details on here, but you get the idea)

Yep, no town, no county, nothing. Just house name, street name, and postcode. Luckily, that’s all the address data that is really needed - but it’s hardly the best way of getting essential (and non-repeatable) documents to a person, is it? And particularly when I’d gone through all the hoops for making sure my address data was accurate on Parasol’s records. As insisted upon by bloody Parasol!

I called them up to find out why.

“Oh, well, we’ve found out that actually payroll use a different system for the addresses to what’s on our own records, so there have been some problems with people who’ve changed their details. The IT department are looking into it.”
But I reported this problem last year, when Parasol screwed up sending out my P60.
“Well it’s been reported by a lot of people this year now, so we’re looking into it.”

The day I leave them just can’t come soon enough. (9th May, I’m looking at you here)

I’ve just had an email from an agency (that will remain nameless) describing…

This highly sort-after role

Of course, you know what they mean is sought-after , but that’s the joy of spell-checkers.

Maybe when someone writes a spell-checker that can work semantically from the words around it, and understands phonemes and the like, we might get somewhere closer. Thing is, that’d involve lots of AI, fuzzy logic, and nightmarish rule structures.

Or just, you know, education.

So it turns out I didn’t get the job I interviewed for last Friday. I got the call last night to let me know - and as expected, the main reason was because I didn’t have certain bits of experience that were on the list. I’m not a project manager, and my experience is techie-based rather than communications-based. (which gives some clue about what the role might’ve been - but that’s the only clue you’re going to get)

Still, they were impressed with my interview, presentation, and technical skills - and apparently I came about third out of the eight people interviewed. So overall, could be worse.

I’m not surprised I didn’t get the job, really. It would’ve been good to have, but I’m sure something else will come up. Among other things, it’s quite possible they’re going to want some techies at the same place before long - and I could certainly do that job.

Just have to see.

In the morning, I usually have a glass of orange juice. (Exciting, huh?) It’s just one of the things The other day, while shopping, I saw a ‘new’ fruit juice variety. Orange and Banana.

Now, my brain went “Oh god, that sounds revolting” and my taste buds responded “Yeah, probably. But I still want to try it. It sounds foul, but they wouldn’t be selling it if it were that bad, so maybe it works”. And so I bought it.

And Oh My God, it really is fucking revolting. I’m all for new experiences and new tastes, but this one is just utterly abysmal. It takes the sharpness of the oranges and that cloying overarching taste of banana. And even worse is the texture - it’s like a smoothie drink, almost velvety in texture, like drinking crushed velvet.

Never, ever again will I buy this muck. But at least I now know for sure that it’s fucking disgusting, rather than just expecting it to be.