Archives for: 2007

Sunday afternoon at the end of October in Scotland. Is there anything you'd rather be doing than sitting in a raft with colleagues from work, paddling until your arms ache while being drenched with cold, muddy water? A group from work (DC, DV, EC, KMcK, LD, NT, SF, and I) went white water rafting at Grandtully at the weekend.

I wasn't thinking much about the actual time we'd spend on (or in) the water when I arrived at Grandtully. I'd inherited organising the event from SF when he handed in his notice at GBU. Had all the payments and paperwork gone through? Was DC going to have any difficulties driving the masses north? I was nervous something would go wrong, but the worst disaster was that the "vegetarian alternative" to the bacon rolls available on arrival appeared to be chocolate bars.

We donned damp wet suits (we'll have no comments about how to make it warm, or why it was wet in the first place) and along with the other teams were taken about six-miles up river to Aberfeldy to be introduced to the raft and given instructions on how to paddle, how not to fall into the water, and what to do when you do fall in. Okay, now I was getting worried.

The first half (or maybe three-quarters, or maybe four-fifths, or maybe a lifetime) was paddle fast and hard: a race. The only white water came off the back of the paddles (opponents and our "friends" in our own raft) as the race part is a contact sport. One of the teams seemed to give up early on leaving us competing against a raft of anorexic youths. We won. I don't know if that was because the other team's instructor deciding to lose it for them, or thanks to the motivational yells from the back of our raft. How do they have the lung capacity for yells of "keep it up", and "we need to try harder"?

By this point the worries of six miles ago had been replaced with simple exhaustion. I'd even considered "falling" into the water for a bit of a rest. However, as we waited for our turn the instructor reintroduced the fear: a rock called magnetic (because everything is drawn to it), when he tells us to "get down" we really are to get our bums as low into the raft as possible, and a repeat of what to do if (when) you fell out.

How long did the final white water section last? Thirty seconds?

Back at the hut the wet suits came off, showers were taken, and more rolls and coffee were consumed. I have to admit those bacon rolls with the limp, grey fat hanging out looked rather appetising.

If I was ever to have children...

xkcd.com

A visit to DCN: forty minutes in the waiting room; a chat; Foreman and Cameron are asked for their thoughts and I suppress the need to say, "Lupus". I'm supposed to keep healthy, keep within boundaries, and not go swimming alone ... incase I slip and hit my head, or something.

It's The Simpsons, so it's going to be funny. Just not funny for 75-minutes. By the end the writers have become as bored as the audience, wrap-up the story, and we all go home. A double-episode of The Simpsons that lasts 15-minutes too long.

As Homer says, "I can't believe we're paying to see something we'd get on TV for free".

What if I was a character in The Simpsons?

www.simpsonsmovie.com

White van man -v- "terror"ist: which scares you more? Even ignoring the fact that white van man may be carrying gas cylinders, nails, and have fuel in their white van ... let's say white van man's driving an empty white van ... which scares you more?

White van man has competition. I've got my driving license back in my hand.

A letter arrived from the DVLA telling me they're re-issuing my driving licence. Strangely, "if you object to this decision you may be able to appeal".

The official time says I ran the 26.2 miles in 4 hours and 50 minutes. Sean ran it in 4:26 and A in a fantastic 3:40.

It was wet and cold waiting for the 9am start on Princes Street. As usual, Sean turned up wanting safety pins to attach his number to his shirt. One day I'll learn, but that wasn't the day. I gave him two of the pins hold my number.

Did the start go well, or badly? It went badly. Okay, I was glad when the race actually started. As I said, it was cold and wet. Add to that a guy next to me bouncing up and down and Sean telling me to smile. (Has anyone ever smiled when they're told to?) The race started, Sean set of at a fast pace, and I kept up. There was the problem. I shouldn't have tried to keep up. It didn't even worry me when we caught and passed the 4:15 pace setter. So much for being mature. I kept up with Sean's pace for as long as I could, but I gave up and let him run off after we'd left Port Seton.

Past Port Seton? I don't know why, but I'd got it into my head that we turned around and ran back to Musselburgh at Port Seton. I became more and more demoralised the further past Port Seton we ran. The course actually turned around just beyond Gosford House.

The run back towards Mussleburgh was a mixture of pain and fatigue. I passed two water stations and found it amusing that I hadn't drunk the water I'd collected from an earlier station. That's not amusing. That's a sign you're not thinking straight. I think the picture on the right was taken towards the end and that's the bottle that wouldn't empty.

I crossed the finish line 4 hours and 50 minutes after crossing the start line. Did I feel I'd achieved something? No. I was just glad it was over.

Sean's aunt gave us me a lift home. Thank God for that. I was having difficulty walking. I got home, removed my running clothes, and found my chaffing shorts were bloody. Ouch. Pain and blood.

Would I do it again? I've got a bad feeling that I might be going through the same thing next year.

Oh look, I've got a Facebook profile.

Quite probably the most conclusive sign that I have reached the bottom.

Please.

Marathon Photos take pictures of you when you're running a race. Running a half-marathon seemed like an achievement worth spending money on a memento, so I forked out and bought the two pictures of me. Keen to make use of them, I sent them to a few people in the office.

NT responded, "is that man alive?"

"It looks like the runner in the background (719?) is concerned for me."

"Sean just said the same thing. You look like you aged 50 years. Is that near the end?"

"That one was at the beginning. This one was near the end."

"I think you should give up now, some people are just not built for endurance running, you're going to kill yourself."

"And let Sean win?"

"Ok, who wins if you drop dead. How bad did you feel that day, how bad have you felt since, have you been able to train properly? You should take a leaf out of that young girl's book, stick to max 10K, that way you can keep fit without being stupid. Male f~king pride!"

"Um ... bad morning?"

"No not at. Just a bit concerned by the look of you in those photos."

Thank you for your support.

Some men accept the passage of time. They cut their hair shorter and accept that success comes from the use of their mind.

Then there's that group of men who ignore the passage of time and the collection of their past behaviour that now hangs over their belts and claim, between mouthfuls of crisps, that the young temp' is "gaggin' fur it".

Finally, there are those who think that decay can be reversed by surgery, or simply outrun.

The Edinburgh Forthside Half-Marathon. My first (and surely my last) attempt to run just over 13-miles. Completed, without slowing to a walk, in 1 hour 51 minutes and 24 seconds. If the report of the timing seems more precise than required - I won a £5 bet that I would have lost had I been a mere 90-seconds slower.

You didn't think I was going to opt for shaving my head and maturity, did you? Maturity!

I was watching television early one evening last week. A movie trailer came on during the adverts. Two pre-pubescent children in some kind of ET movie. Dull. Dull until the name of the movie was given.

The Last Mimzy.

So, we've got two children who "find a mysterious box of toys" including a rabbit in a movie called "The Last Mimsy". You say Lewis Carroll, I say expect to see a lot of disappointed men in raincoats leaving the cinema.

"Ticking? That means it must have a timer. What you've got to do is stop it."

Champion.

Thank goodness the start of the Formula 1 season is approaching. I don't know how I manage to survive the winter months. To keep myself sane I have to look at the circuits on Google Maps.

Maybe it's my age, but the greats, the characters seem to be retiring, or moving to other series. Still, it could be an interesting season. With so many key drivers switching team, it's difficult to say who could win the championship.

I'll not be answering the telephone, or going out on the following weekends:

Melbourne, Australia, 18 March

Sepang, Malaysia, 8 April

Sakhir, Bahrain, 15 April

Circuit de Catalunya, Spain, 13 May

Monte Carlo, Monaco, 25 May
If I was stunningly, stunningly rich then I would not watch this race from a small, dim flat in Edinburgh.

Whether deliberate, or accidental, Michael Schumacher's parking of his car during qualifying in 2006 gave a bitter note to his final season. Perhaps he'd even have won the championship if he hadn't attracted the punishment and been sent to the back of the grid.

Montreal, Canada, 10 June
However, I'm not stunningly, stunningly rich.

Indianapolis, USA, 17 June

Magny-Cours, France, 1 July

SilverstoneGreat Britain, 8 July

Nurburgring, Germany, 22 July

Hungaroring, Hungary, 5 August

Instanbul, Turkey, 26 August

Monza, Italy, 9 September

Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, 16 September
Spa's back! I'd love to visit Monaco during a Grand Prix weekend, but if I had to choose one favourite spot on one racetrack then it would have to be Eau Rouge.

Fuji Speedway, Japan, 30 September
Such a shame that it won't be at Suzuka.

Shanghai, China, 7 October

Interlagos, Brazil, 21 October

Reported by the Evening News as a web hit, a time lapse movie of Edinburgh, Koya Moments seems more interesting as a demonstration of the dynamic nature of water vapour. Maybe that is Edinburgh. I take my hat off to the dedication of Ewen Meldrum, the man who filmed it, but I recommend you watch it with the sound off.

When Batman and Robin aren't engaged in homoerotic banter they sit wearing headphones. There are three options if you need to talk to them. Shouting is the most obvious and the least, internally, rewarding. Sure, they respond to the shouts, but ... it just doesn't satisfy.

If I know the answer that I want then I'll pause after asking a question and then answer myself, "I'll take that as an affirmative."

Again, it's not satisfying, but it does allow me to take actions I want rather than actions that I know are correct.

"Hey, I asked you!"

If I don't give a damn about the answer, but I want to demonstrate that I think we should be communicating then I'll raise my hand. Ask the question, get no response, raise my hand and stare at the person.

"Permission to speak, sir."

Batman wasn't in today, so Robin sat at his desk, headphones on, and foot tapping ... something.

"WAN FAR THAY MAHNAY!"

Cool. I'm sure whoever original performed whatever it is you're ... um ... singing ... I'm sure whoever originally performed whatever it is you're singing must be terrified. That, or they're just as angry as I am.

An e-mail arrived from one of the partners. Attachments, but no explanation other than, "Robin said forward these to you."

"Robin, why's Shug sent me these files?"

Robin's foot thudded out thud, thud, thud on the floor.

"Is there a problem?"

Thud, thud, thud.

"Okay, I'll take it that means there isn't."

Thud, thud, thud. Thud, thud, thud, but there's a problem and the problem is that the problem's on my desk. I raised my hand and stared at Robin.

A few moments later he pulled off his headphones and shouted out, "WHAT?"

"Permission to speak, sir."

Your upstairs neighbour puts in laminate flooring, but doesn't put in an underlay. Laminate flooring straight onto his concrete floor / your concrete ceiling. That's a nuisance. Now he seems to have got a girlfriend who wears heels around the flat. Well, I think it's his girlfriend ... I mean ... "her" footsteps are a bit heavy.

Oh well. Laminate flooring is so yesterday.

WTF?

Sunday morning at 6am I went down for a swim. The noise told me there was a party going on in the pool area. Often I'd turn around and come back later, but that morning I wanted to swim. I went in to find about ten yoots. Okay, they weren't pleased to see me and they were loud, but for most of the time we ignored each other.

Then one of them decided to try intimidating me. Just ignore him, that's the best response, right? Clearly not. The intimidation escalates until ... I won they lost. One of the benefits of being a grumpy old man is that virgin yoots are scared of you.

Oh, you shout abuse and turn the lights off as you leave? Oh, aren't you big and tough!

Allez-allez!

Monday morning saw me coming down to the pool area to find that night's party was over. The contents of the toilets had obviously been used for fun and games. WTF? Who would get pleasure out of throwing crap around? I mean, infants might enjoy it, but would anyone old enough to recognise their image in a mirror want to see their face knowing they've touched shit?

WTF?

Oh look, someone vandalised one of the cameras today. Oh look, someone wrote graffiti on the wall at the weekend.

WTF?

Wait for it ... wait for it ... you can hear the landlords preparing their complaints, "why is nothing done to prevent this abuse!"

I don't know. You tell me.

I work in amongst users on a Thursday and a Friday. Quite how I'm supposed to do development while sitting amongst people discussing tonight's episode of Coronation Street, their child's digestive tract problems, or (related?) the sausages they made last night. Regardless, one advantage of getting out of the IT room is that I don't have to listen to Robin "singing" to Barry White. (I'd rather listen to Gollum sing Barry White.)

The official line is that sitting in with the investment management back office allows me to work only on their problems. Practice proves this to be nonsense. I mean, I'm sitting in a room full of telephones and my computer has a mail client connected to the network. In themselves not reasons, but there's a behaviour at GBU that makes any kind of planning redundant. I'd been in the office less than an hour this morning when the first deadline hit my desk. Reading the e-mails JP forwarded, they'd known about today's deadline on 15 January, but only chose to tell me today.

The problem is that staff at GBU have found from experience that they can do this. In the past they've given the IT department un-meetable deadlines that've been met, so they don't feel any need change their behaviour. There lies the solution. Their behaviour works, so there's no need to change it. If they found that imposing artificially tight deadlines resulted in failure then they'd tell us about problems earlier rather than after it was already too late.

"In the past, we've told them on the day and they've done what we've asked. Why bother ourselves telling them earlier this time and having to keep on top of them?"

I stumbled across this comment I'd left in some source code in 2005:

What can I say. They've known for months that they'd need this data, but they only contact me when they need it "by the end of the day."

Shite program reflecting the lack of planning from above.

Whoever is maintaining this: have a nice day ... and get yourself a better job.

The Ubiquitous came to me soon after JP with a problem that didn't have an impending deadline. I spent today concentrating on her work. I'll be finished it by lunchtime tomorrow. Way, way before any deadline. Then I've got a small job for MAL. I reckon I'll be starting JP's job 36-hours after she brought it to me. That'll already be 12-hours past the deadline. If I do the work properly rather than rush then it'll be Tuesday before I'm finished. Is that the best way to change their behaviour by showing them that it doesn't work?

It seems to be difficult to get away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The situation's improving, but there are still web pages that don't work with alternative browsers like Firefox. Most can be ignored, the site's are rubbish, or I can access them at work where I still have access to IE. Unfortunately, GBU's own remote desktop requires you connect using Internet Explorer. Waiting until I'm next in the office to use the remote desktop kind of defeats the purpose of it being remote.

There are a number of options: dual-boot, and having a virtual PC being the obvious two. My home computer does have both SuSE Linux and Windows 98 (!) installed, but I'm too lazy to reboot out of Linux and into Windows. Having a virtual Windows box seemed like a perfect solution, but my computer's a little underpowered and changed from slow to grinding with Windows running inside Linux.

Sérgio Lopes comes to the rescue with IEs4Linux. In essence: download, run an installer, run another installer, and you've got a working copy of Internet Explorer available in Linux. Okay, I had to fiddle with file permissions and run the second installer again, but that doesn't sound so good.

I'm not against sitting in a darkened room feeling sorry for myself, but I can't tolerate it in others. You feel like the world's against you? Wow, it must be tough being so important. The building containing the flat you've bought as a second home isn't being serviced by the residents' association committee to the standard you expect? Wow, that must make you really angry.

Life is neither fair nor unfair. No-one owes you anything. Trying to get healthy doesn't mean you will get healthy.

A 419 e-mail arrived for me today. This one's got a funny twist. The money's being offered to me to use "for the good work of the lord, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows".

You have to laugh at that one.

I'd decided to eat something close to proper food tonight. The packet of Quorn fillets suggested browning the fillet then cooking it in a mix of vegetable stock and pesto before stirring in creme fraiche. It was okay. Given it took only 30-minutes: okay is good.

Poor I cooked Penne with Vodka. The flame lasted for only a couple of seconds. Very disappointing.

Poor The pain at the back of my ankle might be my Achilles tendon sending me warning signals.

Better Two ibuprofen seem to have helped.

Bad Woke to find I'd had a seizure. The second, to the best of my knowledge, of my life. This is bad. Very bad. Let's ignore the fact it demonstrates my body doesn't work properly. While I may have been allowed to walk away after fainting at work, I'm certain I'll lose my driving license for a year after this.

I've found a bus to race: the number 3. A couple of days ago I did quite well. The bus passed me at the beginning of Nicolson Street and then stuttered its way from bus stops to traffic lights and back to bus stops. I hadn't caught it as it crossed the Royal Mile and that should have been that, but the driver kindly stopped just before Princes Street and waited. Waited until I passed him. Then waited some more.

I need something to drag me the next step. A bus in the distance may not be cool, or professional, but if it gets me to run another block then I'll use it.

Today was different. The bus passed as I reached Clerk Street. The driver waited again before Princes Street, so I did pass it for a couple of stops. That bus must just sit there for 10-minutes.

Why the difference? I'd drunk IPA and then gone home to pizza last night. I was dragging more than my usual quantity of fat along the road and felt sluggish. As I approached the end of the run, I turned to take in the three extra blocks I've added to my route, did half a block then turned around and headed home.

Not all feeds are bad: Tapestry Comics provide feeds for Dilbert and Get Fuzzy (including the Sunday comics).

The caller wanted the task done on Thursday, but asked, "are you okay with Thursday?"

"Uh-hu, why not?"

"Well, it's your wedding anniversary and I just thought..."

"You think I'd be any less grumpy?"

Since any actual facts have been declared confidential, let's say the rumour the part of GBU is to be split off are true. Let's say that approximately 19% of GBU's staff are to leave to form an independent company. To many in GBU that will have little impact. Much like an earthquake in Scotland, there'll be those woken at night by the event, but little more than talk the morning after. While these people may share the same clients as the newly formed company, the immediate effect will not be a loss of clients (although, of course, that may come later).

There are those within the firm who will lose clients. These are the management-speak clients of internal services - the people who move mail around the office, stock stationary, maintain the office equipment, and (oh yeah) those in IT. These people are going to lose about a fifth of their clients. They will surely find themselves overstaffed with a potential for job losses.

To be honest, the IT department at GBU is already overstaffed. There are four people in a department that should only need three.

A week of announcements at GBU. Thursday's rumoured announcement ended with a paragraph explaining it was confidential. A bit late - rumour has it that one of the associates was told by his friend (not a GBU employee) that he'd been called in as a consultant while they were making this decision. Edinburgh's like that.

There was also an announcement that the firm is going to move building at some time in the next two years.

Today I arrived at work late to the sound of grumbling. Today's announcements was about holidays. It seems we must all take a full week off between Christmas and New Year. Sounds good, but we lose part of our holiday entitlement. Same total number of days off work in the year, but fewer of them can be taken when we choose. That shouldn't really have any impact on me. I mean, every year I find myself trying to use up my holiday entitlement before I lose them at the turn of the year.

Latest rumour is that someone who left might be coming back. Just goes to show you shouldn't put much faith in rumours.

The last time I was at my sister's her sprogs were watching a trailer for Disney's Ratatouille. Towards the end of the trailer a fat rat says, "you know, if you can sort of muscle your way past the gag reflex all kinds of food possibilities open up."

I can't remember being taught that as a child.

I woke this morning with that "I can't face it" feeling. I had to get up, go for a run, go to work, feign surprise when the announcement that another part of the firm is being split off is made, work through the noise, come home to a fridge without cheese...

Oh, the life of a First World male at the start of the 21C is tough!

...and then go to bed recognising that nothing's different from yesterday and tomorrow's just going to be the same. It was dark, cold and lightly raining outside. Bed was comfortable and Chota was using me as a pillow. Getting up and facing the day ahead seemed too difficult.

The important thing wasn't to face the day. The important thing was to get up. Just get up. I got up.

Sure it looked miserable outside, but that wasn't important. All that was important was putting on my running clothes. Nothing else, nothing after that mattered. I wasn't going running, I was putting on the clothes in which I run. I put on my running clothes.

Next, go outside. I wasn't going for a run. I was just going outside. Maybe I'd come straight back inside. I went outside.

Start running. It didn't need to be a set route. The goal was just to start running ... just get to the end of the Meadows ... just get to that downhill section a couple of blocks further ... just get to the next downhill section ... just get to Princes Street...

Right, now the goal is to change into my work clothes, "you're not going to work. You're just changing into the clothes you wear to work."

I used to have the disk of my work PC partitioned into two drives: a C-drive for "code" and a D-drive for "data". Yeah, I am that [b|s]ad.

Batman's now imposed "Desktop Authority" on those in IT. That has a number of impacts: 1) logging on to the network now takes two minutes; 2) we're being watched; 3) the D-drive isn't as easy as a double-click to access. Accessing the D-drive isn't difficult. It's just not as easy as it should be.

My computer had problems before Batman forced "Desktop Authority" upon us. I installed XP on that machine in March 2004. Three years ago? That's probably some kind of record. The machine had problems and one of those problems was the size of my partitions wasn't right. I had a C-drive that I struggled to keep even 1Gb of space free and a D-drive with tumbleweeds. I needed to take some of the space I'd given to my D-drive and add it to my C-drive.

The problem was none of my Windows tools would allow me to change the way I split the disk. It wouldn't resize the partitions during a reboot and (prompted by the interweb) looking for faults on my disk didn't help. Maybe it was the fact I had so little space left on my C-drive, but more likely it was the fact I hadn't re-installed XP in three years ... think not changing the oil in your car for that long.

I need to change the partition sizes on my disk, but all I was getting was errors. Thankfully, there was a pointer to an alternative. I already had a Knoppix boot CD and everything important on my D-drive was backed-up, so I had nothing to lose. A reboot, select qtparted from the System menu (rather than, as suggested, the terminal), and resizing the partitions was as easy as dragging and dropping.

Okay, Linux had nothing to do with it. I just needed a boot disk with a tool for playing with partitions. I could've used MS-DOS (and, by God, would that have booted fast).

I have a terrible memory. I must write everything down. PINs - how many of them do we have? There's the one for our current account, the one for our credit card, the one that opens the door to the office, the one ... um ... I don't remember, but I'm sure there's more. Disobeying the first rule of password protection, I had those PINs written down. In my defense, I used a Caesar Cypher, but that's about as strong a defense as saying, "the dog ate my homework."

Anyone with a couple of brain cells and about 10-minutes could've taken my note and emptied my bank account.

Want to know how my PIN is now written? OEPW.

Go ahead and break it. Okay, there are only a thousand possible combinations, but at least letters I've written down don't give you a clue. On the other hand, I can turn those letters back into digits in about 15-seconds.

How does it work?

Choose a word, or phrase with at least ten distinct letters. A poor example would be "ABCDEFGHIJ". A, slightly, better example would be "THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE".

Throw away the spaces and take the first ten distinct letters: "THECOMPL" plus "W" then "R".

Now assign the digits 0 to 9 to those first ten distinct letters. For each digit in the PIN simply replace with the letter assigned to that digit.

Not well explained? Okay, here's a worked example:

1) We choose a phrase with ten distinct letters ... um, how about, "CHOOSE A PHRASE WITH TEN DISTINCT LETTERS".

2) Throw away the spaces to get "CHOOSEAPHRASEWITHTENDISTINCTLETTERS".

3) Assign the digits 0 to 9 to the first ten distinct letters:
CHOOSEAPHRASEWITHTENDISTINCTLETTERS
012.3456.7...89

4) Replace the digits in the PIN with the assigned letters: a PIN of 2468 would become OEPW.

Oh yeah, when I said OEPW was my PIN ... well, you didn't think I was actually going to give you my PIN did you?

The Office Of National Statistics have provided a personal inflation calculator that allows you to compare your spending's inflation rate against the official rate. I don't think such a brute force calculator can work. It ignores the fact that what we buy changes over time.

Not that many years ago I would look at sandwiches in Boots and concentrate on the price sticker. Could I afford the sandwich costing almost £2, or should go for the £1.20 one? These days the price sticker isn't the most important factor in my budget. These days I'm budgeting on the nutritional information: can I afford to consume this many calories? Today I bought a "Bugsy" sandwich costing £2.20. I really wanted the Cheese and Onion one costing just £1.40, but it cost 150 calories more.

Yeah, I know. If I'd saved 6 pints of Baltika then I could've bought all the Cheese and Onion sandwiches I wanted.

Saturday arrived in Lothian Road style - one of the building's cleaners asking me to go to the binstore and wake someone who'd chosen to spend the night. Then a quick cycle to my sister's to find that rucksack full of components and CD I'd brought to fix her computer failed to include the one item required.

Every month, or so I meet up with MarkD for a couple of pints on a Saturday lunchtime. It's usually a quiet event: two grumpy old men sitting, nursing their pints, and moaning that things aren't the way they should be. This Saturday was different: 1) a different pub with different beer. I ended up drinking something called Baltika that, after a couple of pints, the barman told me was, "quite strong."

I think that may've been polite barman talk for, "don't you think you've had enough?"

Difference 2: I hadn't eaten all day. Even a couple of pints on an empty stomach is a bad thing, but on Saturday I had six.

I walked home from the pub (not bad, considering), walked into Sainsbury's to buy some food (a little late, but still positive), and danced my way around the aisles. At the time I thought the woman in the queue was laughing with me, but on sober reflection...

BoE's interest rate is to rise to 5.25%! This is shocking! I look like a complete an utter idiot, 'cause I thought the BBC was saying they'd hit 5.25 in February. OMG, what a shock!

If you can't afford the loan then would you take it out? No.

If you can't afford the loan if interests rates rose 1% ... forget the recent 0.75% ... then ask yourself how likely it is that rates will rise by 1% AND DON'T TAKE THE LOAN OUT!

One word: flagged.

(Oh yeah, bought a house on the coast? DON'T F~CKIN' MOAN WHEN SEA LEVELS RISE!)

I went for the first run of the year. Yeah, that doesn't sound like much (especially since it was only a 25-minute run), but it was important. A's left Edinburgh and Sean's too busy (something about the end of the tax year). I didn't think I could do it on my own. This morning's run was just to prove to myself that I could do it alone.

The hardest part was getting out of the flat. Being passed twice by the same woman on my loop of central Edinburgh wasn't too pleasant either.

What did I learn today?

1. I can run without A, or Sean (but I'd prefer not to).
2. Even in the cold and wet, Scott's plastic pants have no use other than housework.

I limped into work with my right leg crying for mercy.

Sometimes I feel there must be more to life than being a drone. Don't get me wrong: I don't want to cure a terrible disease, write a great work of literature, or go off to some Third World country to help people. I just want the to see a purpose rather than slow decay. At times like these I find watching a non-Hollywood movie is as good as taking two pills and going to bed, so I went off to watch a movie about a middle-class French couple being sent video tapes of their own life. A film that won numerous awards.

Okay, I went to see a film that had Juliette Binoche in it, 'cause she's hot and I'm one step from buying a raincoat.

"...recognises that a garden wall is of little practical use."

It was a Sunday afternoon, so I'd hoped the cinema would be near empty. Instead it packed around me. People were arriving, trying to find seats, even after the film had started. Why do people arrive late at cinemas, forced to look for a seat here and there?

The film was too long for my short attention span.

"...the briefest flash of insight."

"Fine, you've shown the audience that they're unaware what's the film and what's film within the film. Now let's move on. Um, is that a camera up there?"

Perhaps it's to hide the message, but I found some of the film too blatant. I mean, we returned to the corridor, but the camera angle was reversed. In an action movie we'd surely smirk at the director's mistake, but here it can't be mistake ... ah yes, the observed is also the observer. Perhaps we should have watched another hour of his grief.

"...a demonstration that those brought up on Willis and Chase need more than subtitles."

That's not to say I didn't walk out of the cinema with questions unanswered. Why does the observer sit between us?

What are we to learn from this movie? That the past cannot be Stalinised? That we are alone even when together? That while we may grow older, the new youth will use our bitterness against us? Or that I should stick to watching Bruce Willis movies?

Everyone stayed seated while the credits rolled.

Back to work after almost 2-weeks holiday. There's a good side to not taking your holidays until the last time possible: you appreciate the time off. There's a bad side: you go back to work and realise it's a year until you're next off. Okay, that's an exaggeration. I carried 5-days forward and have to take them by the end of March.

So, what's happened at GBU in the 2-weeks I've been off? Another of my plants has died. Not really surprising since I only went in to water them once.

Pay reviews are announced at the end of January, but the CEO's already sent out a "difficult year" e-mail like he did last year. Are we looking at another sub-inflation pay rise?

My Staff Representative (as close as GBU allows to a union rep') has reached the end of her term and a new rep' had to be found. I'd done the job before and was considering standing again. (The shame, the shame, I've played the part of a union rep.) Fine, but the CEO's e-mail also included an announcement that my area now had a new Staff Rep. We do? Did I miss the election? Who stood against the winning candidate? A quick talk to an incumbent revealed that members of staff no longer select their own Representative. Surely you must give people the impression that they have some control. Staff Rep's never had any power, but the employees chose them.

It could be worse: B&Q have prospective employees dancing before they're interviewed.

Word around the water cooler is that LMCK's been asked to come back.