Mentally Slow
Posted: Mon 17 October, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »It’s 9.15, and already I’ve been in this tutorial for 45 minutes. However my body clock is still insisting it’s an hour earlier, and thus it’s not even vaguely conscious as yet.
I can see the benefits of Ruby on Rails, and can see the speed with which stuff can be created, but both my brain and laptop are seriously lagging. I want to do more with it, but this tutorial is being done by a guy who really knows his stuff – I’m going to have to play catch-up once I get home, and work on it a bit myself.
Oh joy, another new language to get my head round. Still, it looks petty easy. Ha, I’ve said that before…
Fuckers
Posted: Wed 12 October, 2005 Filed under: Sweary, Travel 1 Comment »I was supposed to be going to see Alabama 3 at the London Astoria last night. I’d got the ticket, and was looking forward to it.
Then I got to the ticket office.
“You do realise we’re not running any trains from London after 9pm tonight, don’t you?”
“No, no-one’s mentioned that, even on trainline.com, or on your *cough* helpful notice board”
“Yeah, no trains tonight – there’s some maintenance work we need to do, so there’s no trains”
Fucking great.
I did try finding out whether trains would still run from Paddington to Reading, where I could then get one back to Bracknell, but once the woman in the ticket office tried telling me I’d need to go via Guildford, and might get back to Bracknell by 1.30 if I was lucky, I just though Bollocks to it.
So – another concert missed. I’m beginning to wonder if this year is cursed for gigs. Better not be, as we’re seeing Faithless at Brixton Academy at the end of November…
Travelling to Disasters
Posted: Mon 10 October, 2005 Filed under: Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »While I can – kind of – empathise with people who are worried about their relatives/ family in situations like the earthquake in Pakistan, I really don’t understand what it is they think they can achieve by travelling out there.
It’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed more recently, and particularly since last year’s Boxing Day tsunami, where the news seemed to cover a lot of people doing this. Yes, sure, some of the people travelling over will have uses (on the news this morning I saw bits about doctors going over with supplies, that kind of thing) but the majority seem to be people saying “We’ve not heard from x, y and z so I’m going over to see if I can find out anything”. Why? Surely it’s best to stay at home, rather than adding to an already disastrous area by going over and getting in the way while looking for one’s family.
Frankly, to my mind I can see better priorities than going over there yourself. But hey, what would I know?
Anti-tourism
Posted: Thu 6 October, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel 4 Comments »Reason #3,401 to not visit Florida. 20 foot long Burmese Pythons that try to kill and eat an alligator.
OK, not a great result for either of them, but still – definitely a reason to avoid the everglades in my opinion…
Incompetence
Posted: Tue 20 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Travel Leave a comment »Yesterday was almost amusing on the trains into work. Over the weekend, the line between Reading and Ascot was having engineering work done on it, so the train service was replaced by buses. Hey ho, all part of the joys of train travel – but at least it now affects me far less than it used to.
Monday morning and the local news (both BBC and ITV) were reporting that buses were still replacing trains, due to engineering work. OK, that slightly chuffs my morning travel, but thankfully not too much. Get to the station, the ticket machines have been turned off, and there’s a sheet of paper across each one saying that due to engineering works there’s no trains, and for some godforsaken reason known only to the train operating twats, you can only buy tickets from the ticket office itself. No good reason, it just must’ve seemed like a good idea at the time. Or something.
However, getting in to the ticket hall itself, there’s people waiting on the platforms. Eh? So when I get to the Ticket Twunt behind his little bulletproof glass shield, I ask where we’re supposed to be getting the bus from, and why are there people on the platforms? “Don’t know what you mean, mate – trains are running fine today” Turns out that the fuckwit cunts have a) forgotten to take the paper off the machines, b) turn the ticket machines on, and c) tell anyone that the train service is back to what passes for normal.
Still, it made my travel that little bit easier, not having to get a bus instead. But Jesus Christ, it’s really not that difficult to sort out, is it?