Ah joy, it’s obviously a domestic day chez moi today. The washing machine’s on the go (I still love having one, after years of going to laundrettes etc., although I do miss hearing the local gossip as much), the shopping’s been done (and Christ I hate shopping, but it’s not too bad first thing in the morning (well, 10am on a Sunday) when most of the gimps are still asleep.

One of the big changes in my life once I’m driving (yeah, I know, I know, 30 and still not passed the test – hey ho) is that I’ll shop in the 24hour supermarkets, and do it at the most antisocial times (Insomnia has it’s good points, you just have to work to find them) so I don’t have to deal with crowds of cretins and their screaming bastard brats. *Takes a deep breath and calms down again*

And now I feel more relaxed, as my fridge is filled (god, I’m sad sometimes) so I’m going to read the paper, and vegetate a bit before doing other domestic stuff like hoovering and cooking. Maybe even have some breakfast. Now there’s a thought….

Relating to one of my own earlier (and very short) additions to this blog, and also to Gert‘s comment, I’m glad that these two have been jailed, him for 12 years, her for 10. Of course, with our wonderful jail system, they’ll both be out within 5 years – and she’ll still be of breedable age. She’s only 20, so there’s plenty more opportunity for her to do the same again.

I’m sorry, but when I read paragraphs like “It took two hours for pathologist Dr David Rouse to list all 64 of Ainlee’s injuries – which included 10 cigarette burns and scalded feet where she had been made to stand in hot water. ” I start thinking that maybe people who do this should have their reproductive organs removed as part of the punishment. I’m sure that’s inhumane, but fuck that, so was what they did to their own child.

I’m going to paraphrase from the BBC story, because the paragraphs (well, more accurately the content of them) infuriate me.

[She] had been cautioned by police in 1999 after neglecting another child…
By 2001 the social services file was closed on the family because [the parents] refused to co-operate…
two home visits by doctors had been made under police escort…
But there was no evidence of any ill-treatment towards the child up to the point when she was last seen in August 2001…
[The Head of Newham Social Services] added: “When you have families who are deliberately setting out to deceive you and manipulate the situation, unless you concentrate on the child, it is very difficult to protect the child and sadly we did not maintain these standards in this case.”

The other thing that really gets to me is this sentence : “The couple’s other two children are now in the care of Newham social services.“. So why did they pick on their third child? And the other children are now in the “care” of the same Social Services section that didn’t spot a child with 64 injuries. The same social services that “failed to protect” (by their own admission).

And this story got pretty much missed, as expected by Gert, because of Yasser Fucking Arafat, Milly Dowder, a countryside march, and rumty-tumty other things. I’m not going to link to them individually, but hell, if you want to read all that crap go read the news.

Yes, it’s Sunday, and yes (in reference to Green Fairy‘s comment yesterday, it’s not even half past seven and I’m awake.

Gee, thanks Insomnia.

Hope everyone else gets a decent sleep/lie-in.

OK, I’m back. The ADSL is back working – at last. No explanation of why it was naffed, or anything like that. And I discovered that “customer services” as well as “tech support” for Zen seem only to work Monday to Friday 9-5 – which must be nice, but it’s fucking unhelpful, to say the least.

Anyway, I was productive, and spent the time sorting out the logfiles my webspace provider nicely sends me every day, and I kind of look at properly when I can be bothered and/or when I’ve got nothing much better to do. Today being the latter kind of day, I sorted them out (*blush* – I need to get out less, I hadn’t sorted them since 1st July…) and ran them through an analysis tool.

And now I’m really pretty pleased. Little things, little minds and all that, but in the 7 months I’ve had anything at all on the site (I’d had it since September, but that was a moment of “like the name, now what the feck can I do with it?” until March) it’s had just over 65,000 hits. Not in the same league as yahoo or google, but for a little old site, I’m pleased with that. Of course, 46,000 of those have been in the last two months, since the blog really started, and that (I’m almost sad to say) is making me smile more.

Anyway, that’s been the majority of my day, with no internet access, and spent just naffing about with logfiles. Well, that and wanting to kill people in central manchester, but I’m always like that when I need to go shopping etc on a Saturday, particularly when it’s warm and all the fuckwits come out to play/shop/dawdle around uselessly/get in my way. So I came home and naffed about even more with websites and some new content. Most of which I’ll finish tomorrow.

And that’s it, the saga of another busy Saturday…

Ah, they joys of keffed ADSL. I’m with Zen ADSL, and it all seems to have gone tits up since about 9pm last night. What a bastard. So it’s back (briefly – FUCKING briefly) to dial-up access. Which is already making me want to scream.

In other news though, The Guardian has this story about a hermit-in-residence (Umm – hermit in residence? – isn’t that just a tad paradoxical?) who’s going off for a week to be on his own. Sometimes the world is weirder than we ever dared imagine.

OK, so I’m a techie – but I love this alarm clock. One of the better ideas I’ve seen recently.

Recently, I’ve been thinking of doing a course with the Open University – which is probably a good thing to do. I know I want to do some kind of course, but not certain yet just what it is I want to do. So I asked for a brochure/prospectus on all the courses, to see what’s around.

Filled in the online form, name, address, age (no idea why, but there we go), all the standard garbage. Get the message back “OK, you should get that in 5 days or so” (I’m paraphrasing). And nothing arrived. I tried again. Still nothing.

So I’ve just called them up, asked why I haven’t received anything. And I got asked “Did you live in Weymouth?” – which I did, about four years ago. I confirm that yes, I had lived there, once upon a time, but now I’d moved. Turns out “the computer system got confused” and has sent both prospectuses (prospectii?) to – you guessed it – my old address.

Now, I didn’t fill in the old address (obviously), I filled in the address I live at now. That’s where I wanted the keffing prospectus sent, so that’s the address I gave them. So why did it send stuff to my old address, just because that’s the one they’ve had on file for four years? Am I not allowed to move? Does the OU want people to stay put for their entire lives, just so it doesn’t keff their database?

And it doesn’t reassure me in the least about doing a course with them. I know I won’t be staying where I am for the next three or four years – it’s an absolute certainty that I’ll move at sometime in that time period. So what happens then? Will I lose the course materials somewhere along the line, because their system doesn’t register that I’ve moved? What’s the deal? And yes, I think there may just have to be a shitty letter off to the OU about the same thing.