Time flies

Looking at the BBC’s “On this day in history” page, I hadn’t realised that it’s now 16 years today since the shootings in Hungerford. It’s also 12 years since Mikhail Gorbachev was ousted. Isn’t it scary, the way time just disappears?

They’re back

Many happy returns (and pardon the pun) to Sarah at NYTOO and Anna at Little Red Boat after breaks that have felt too very flippin’ long indeed.

Doctor Acronyms

There’s a wonderful piece on the BBC about the acronyms doctors use to describe patients. Maybe I’m just sleep-deprived, but the DBI (Dirt Bag Index) certainly made me laugh. Take the number of tattoos, multiply by number of teeth missing, and get a rough indication of how many days since the patient last washed. Other joys are “handbag positive” and “pumpkin positive” – you’ll have to read the article to find out the definitions…

Shattered – revisited

Yes, the weekend was great. I’m still knackered, having had a lousy night as well, so my grand total of hours asleep since 6am Friday morning comes to… Six. At most. Needless to say, I feel lousy and caffeine of industrial levels is being inflicted on my body.

The absolute killer of yesterday was – of course – the trains. On Sundays, the service between Nottingham and Manchester is – theoretically at least – an hourly one. Fair enough, that’s not too bad, and is in general fairly acceptable. What isn’t acceptable is having two trains cancelled, with no reasons given, so that some poor bastards had been waiting in the station since half past four for the train that finally left at half seven. (On this one, I’ll note that I’d only missed the half-six train, and reports of earlier ones being cancelled was reportage from other travellers)

So of course it was utterly rigid for most of the journey. It’s times like that when a little MP3 player is an absolute god-send.

Shattered

Note to self : when out for a weekend with friends, getting three hours sleep in three days is not a good idea. In fact, it leaves one unable to type anything of consequence. So I’ll write more tomorrow…

Routine, part 2

Another facet of routine (in my current workplace anyway) is the locks on the external doors. They all have a keypad and a number code – until recently, the code for them was based on a formula so it was easily memorable. For example one was 3618 ( 3 x 6 = 18 ) – but in the last week they’ve changed, and no longer run to this kind of formula.

It’s caused real hassle – people just don’t seem to be able to remember the new code. I’ve seen so many of them with it written down or having to keep on talking to their colleagues about it (including while they’re outside tyring to type it in) and so on. Utterly farcical. And is it a difficult number to remember? Hell no. It’s along similar lines to remembering 9876 (obviously it’s not that, but it’s equally easy to memorise).

Now, I acknowledge that I’m a techie, and thus possibly more disposed to remembering PIN numbers etc., but surely remembering a new code isn’t that difficult? I realise I’m probably a rairty in that I’ve got different PIN numbers for everything, and also tend to remember my customer nuumbers, Internet banking log-ins, passwords, and all manner of other gubbins, but is it really all that hard to just remember a new four-digit number? And what do these people do when they get a new bank ATM card or whatever, and have to memorise a new PIN? Oh yeah, they write it down in their diary or wherever. *Sigh*

Death where is thy sting?

As my father used to say, “Life has a way of letting you know when your time is up“. Being crushed by a car falling on you while sunbathing isn’t just “time’s up”, but also forms a pretty good indication that St. Peter is going to be pissing himself laughing when you get to the Pearly Gates.