Chris Hansen’s blog

• 10:35 Would you believe this is about faucets/taps? RT @edricliew: @soveren of course. I screamed and told him no no no no no no no. #
• 11:42 @oletalk faucet = US “tap” #
• 11:46 @oletalk it’s usual that USans don’t understand UKisms and vice versa, so I took it literally. Sorry, didn’t mean to make your humour fa … #
• 14:39 Today’s Mr. Stupid Bank Teller story: is.gd/32cIT #
• 17:53 Off to Lodge of Instruction imminently. First after the summer hiatus. #

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…a review of the sister to a restaurant he knows well.

For those who are reading this who are not Americans or not aware of the news from America, here’s the background.

A few weeks ago President Obama arranged to have a speech to schoolchildren televised to every school across America. He was going to talk about their experience, and encourage them to strive to do their best in their studies. This from a guy who was in a single-parent family for much of his early life and, overcoming that experience, went to to become a successful lawyer, academic, community organiser, legislator, and President of the United States.

Well. Republicans and Neanderthals all over the country were up in arms. The President was out to indoctrinate their children. Perhaps he’d be encouraging them to urge their parents to support health-care reform. This belied the fact that Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush the First had also made similar televised addresses to schoolchildren.

Some schools decided to record the speech and, after reviewing it, would decide whether to show it to the children or not. I suppose that most home-schooled children didn’t see it. But, after reading it, I can’t see anything in it that is in any way indoctrinating children, unless urging children to do their best in school to prepare for a better life is indoctrinating them. I don’t believe that even George Bush the Second could object to any of it. You can judge. Here it is, behind a cut.



The President: Hello everyone

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• 03:31 Having a hypo…not pleasant at 3:30 am. Drank some OJ, ate a banana…still a bit shaky tho. Has my pancreas started to work again? #
• 03:32 You mean “Gordon Brown”! RT @scorpiojerm: interesting word of the day “Cockalorum” means a little man with an unduly high opinion of himself #
• 03:35 @DanielJUK thanks…i’m feeling a bit better already. will take 1/2 hour or so to be certain, then back to bed. #
• 08:45 @besskeloid deleting cookies? I eat them…too many of them… 🙁 #
• 09:32 @soveren i suppose i should listen to him once just for the sake of it. i always listen to radio 4’s Today. #
• 09:38 @soveren i need news and talk in the mornings, not music. and Wogan just makes me think of drunken presenter of the Eurovision Song Contest. #
• 22:26 @MartinFaulks nice to meet you this evening. i had a diet ginger ale when i got home. no tea because of caffeine… #
• 22:29 @DanielJUK the real charge was “driving while black” i think…sorry to hear about your friend’s experience. #

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• 07:32 @JoexEd oh, thank you! 😉 #
• 07:33 @phillip0125 Flying? Your arms must be awfully tired… 😉 #
• 07:34 good morning all. quiet day today, I think. no preaching this week, but next week I’m back at St. John’s. #
• 07:45 @SundayProgramme if dioceses want to keep their retreat houses, they need to market them aggressively. people won’t come otherwise. #
• 07:56 @SundayProgramme would have like to have heard about the 7 US bishops who had a meeting with Rowan Williams this week about the Covenant. #
• 13:50 good afternoon all…hope you’re having a good Sunday. Started the day by tweeting to @SundayProgramme and found myself quoted immediately. #
• 15:11 Futurism is uninteresting for the most part. #
• 15:38 @rhys_isterix except when the bishop IS a queen… #
• 15:51 Only exhibition I’ve ever been to where there was no piece entitled “Untitled”. #
• 17:06 @rhys_isterix The hills are alive, and it’s really frightening. #
• 17:11 back home, finishing up coffee, looking for my Mark Mason ritual book, which of course can’t be found 🙁 i’ll find it when I buy a new one. #
• 20:24 @MrPandaBehr nice designed mouse, but it looks kind of like ankle restraints…will google ’em. #
• 23:39 @MrPandaBehr OMG, it was quite expensive here in pounds. Perhaps I’ll look into it a bit more… #
• 23:41 @MrPandaBehr was it that filthy? #
• 23:42 @MrPandaBehr well, my current microsoft mouse isn’t giving me much joy… #
• 23:42 well, peeps, it’s off to the land of Nod I go, I hope. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone. See you tomorrow. #

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…and many happy returns of the day.

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• 07:43 @badrobot68 Don’t worry, if you ignore your teeth they’ll go away… #
• 07:55 @alexgeana jean shorts obsession? Wearing them, or looking at those wearing them, or perhaps buying lots and putting them in storage? #
• 08:01 An absolutely heartwarming blog post! RT @ErnieAtLYD: bit.ly/EbJ1R !fb #
• 09:21 @urbanbohemian how much gin, how little tonic? hope your hangover is minimal. #
• 09:30 good morning all. pleasant time at the opera last night, although the venue was colder than a…well…you-know-what’s you-know-what. #
• 09:57 I thot it was an animal you’d acquired after the dog. Wikipedia helped. RT @jonk: Picked up a grigri – Photo: bkite.com/0bvMf #
• 10:02 @kevjumba You think “sex” is a taboo word? Just try being a gay Asian & saying “I’m gay” to your parents. It’s even worse–no grandkids? #
• 13:53 @disappointment what a lovely picture of your nan. May she have many happy returns of the day and get telegrams from the Queen… #
• 13:54 @MrPandaBehr perhaps it’s because they don’t want to give the impression that peeps wearing it are ready for an exorcism? #
• 13:57 I’m glad I’m not swimming in Wales: is.gd/2UXaQ #
• 13:58 @urbanbohemian sounds good to me. It’s coming to whisky season though; not quite hot enough here to have a gin ‘n’ tonic. Enjoy! #
• 13:59 @kristainlondon looks like a fish knife, kinda. perhaps i’ll go next time we’re off somewhere. #
• 14:03 Am having a Hearts of Space day, it seems. This week’s show is a Tangerine Dream retrospective–just lovely. Listening to archive now… #
• 14:06 If it were warmer I’d be out in my garden! RT @DanielJUK: twitpic.com/gk6fj – Relaxing in the sunny garden with tea 🙂 #
• 16:34 Those wacky pollsters: is.gd/2VdWc #
• 16:36 @MisterDude hugs… #
• 16:42 @chienleng I’ve never been to a hotel or resort that was big enough for me to buy it dinner with an ulterior motive. #
• 17:05 @chienleng i’m a size queen and won’t consider any hotel that doesn’t have 10,000 rooms or more. 😉 #
• 17:33 Today’s Heartwarming Story: “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” is.gd/2VkeO #
• 17:56 Today’s Hansen namecheck (hint: it’s under the fridge picture) is.gd/2VmCK #
• 18:06 @therealgokwan you should refrain from laughing and look for a pint glass somewhere. #
• 18:07 And I’m glad they do … RT @hygienestudent: this is a point in my life where i want to be a lesbian. boys suck. #
• 18:08 @hygienestudent how old was he? To the nearest decade, of course… #
• 18:13 @hygienestudent he did need help finding something, i think. i’ll bet it was just below your waist. Help the Aged, remember… 😉 #
• 18:25 Funny, it only takes 9 months the ordinary way … RT @willfrancis: Human Brain Could Be Replicated In 10 Years twi.la/p3rwy #
• 18:28 @therealgokwan we feel your relief… #
• 20:27 @MartinFaulks now following you on twitter. looking forward to your advancement in RAM on Monday … #
• 20:59 @therealgokwan keep ’em coming. we all need an uplift. but you don’t have to wee on OUR account… #
• 21:23 @therealgokwan FABULOUS! #
• 21:24 Not bad for a miscreant DentonPolice: twitpic.com/gm0rx | 17 yrs | NO DRIVER’S LICENSE | SPEED/FAIL TO CONTROL SPEED #
• 21:26 @therealgokwan Yawnin, stretchin, try to come to life. Jump in the shower… #
• 22:17 @MrPandaBehr holy jumped-up Jesus. I’ve never seen that. could it have something to do with the ad above?? #

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Well, I’ve arrived in the Marblehead Reporter again. Fraffie Welch, who writes the “Up For Air” local interest column under the name “Dawn Bucket” (a local Marblehead joke that is too long and complicated to explain here), wrote about a cluttered refrigerator door a few weeks ago. Ours is only full of refrigerator magnets, but I told her about it and she asked for a photo.

Lo and behold, it ended up in the column, which you can see here.

This is the third name check for me in that column in the past 5 months or so. People will start to talk if I’m not careful.

Note that in the picture caption she mentions that she doesn’t think the door is cluttered at all; in fact, I have room for an art gallery, in her opinion.

I just emailed her and said, “If you will note the lowest magnet on the door, picturing a building with a tall chimney. That is Tate Modern, the largest modern art museum in the world. So, I already have an art gallery.”

I’m a member of several panels, so a few times a week I get a request to fill out a survey online. Don’t mind that, really. But sometimes there is an odd twist.

Yesterday I got an email from one survey organisation (that will remain anonymous to protect the silly). It said that as I’d filled out a survey about Organic Frozen Food a while back they would like to ask me more questions about it.

I was happy to oblige, and clicked through to the survey. I don’t know what kind of software they are using to drive the survey, but the introduction threw me, as it said that the survey was about my attitude to “hotels and resorts”. Oh. I see. Well, I’m game.

It rapidly became clear that the survey organisation had screwed up royally, and had put the wrong text into the questionnaire. I suspect that it still wanted my attitudes toward organic frozen food, but everywhere that the text “organic frozen food” should have appeared the actual text that showed in the questionnaire (in a different font size and colour, to boot) was “hotels and resorts” or “hotels or resorts”.

So I was asked how much I agreed with the following statements:

• “I often buy large quantities of hotels or resorts at one time and store what I’m not using.”
• I read a product’s label or packaging carefully before making a purchase of hotels and resorts.”
• I like to touch and feel hotels or resorts before buying them.
• I like to buy hotels or resorts in bulk.

After this, I just filled out anything to get the survey finished and then emailed the survey company to tell them, gently, that they may have made a mistake.

Then I went online to purchase some hotels or resorts in bulk. After all, you never know when you’ll run out.

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I decided Wednesday night that it was time to ditch Eudora for my email. First and foremost, it occasionally decided not to show images in emails, which is nowadays a major pain in the arse. Second, it seemed to crash a lot. Third, as Qualcomm ditched it, there will be no bug fixes and no enhancements. Enough was enough. I had heard some good things about Thunderbird so I decided to try it.

These kinds of migrations have to be planned, however. I had understood that Eudora was kind of flaky when it came to things like standards for .mbx files. So, I searched out a program I’d heard of called Eudora Rescue, which purported to create files that Thunderbird could import more easily and accurately. For example, Thunderbird does not carry over the status (Read, Unread, and the like) from Eudora. This could be disastrous if you have a full inbox.

So, I installed Thunderbird, found and printed out the Eudora Rescue readme file, which is a good example of a readme file that contains exactly the right kind of information to perform a complicated transfer like this. I followed the instructions to the letter, created compatible files from Eudora that Thunderbird was likely to be able to read, and let it rip while I was asleep.

I discovered after breakfast this morning that the import had only gone around 1/2-way. After some futzing around I discovered which file was creating the problem (must be a stray control character) and removed it from the import, restarted the import, and got it finished. But the fun was just beginning.

• I’ve got a shedload of Eudora filters, none of which were imported along with the mail. I am now faced with creating filters for the next couple of months until all of my mail that I want filtered actually is. I will give them this: the filter-creation mechanism is easy to use. However, each filter works only on one particular mail host. Probably won’t cause a problem, but it’s surprising.
• When moving an email from one mailbox to one in the sidebar, you drag the email to the top folder, and it then opens up to reveal the folders underneath it. You can then move the email to the one in which you want it to be and drop it there. No problem. However, once you’ve dropped the email, unlike Eudora, the mailbox tree remains expanded, and you have to contract it manually. Kind of counter intuitive.
• It was a Cecil-B-DeMille production to configure the mail hosts for smooth downloading and sending of emails. But, now that I’ve got your attention, I can reveal that I’ve not tried to send emails from all the mail hosts, so I only know that the christianphansen.com address is working for sending. I’m sure that lovely problems await.
• I believe that, while all my attachments are around, the ones imported from Eudora aren’t immediately present. I know they’re in the “Attach” subdirectory of Eudora Mail, but where they are in Thunderbird beats the hell out of me.
• When you open an email to view and the email has pictures in it, Thunderbird asks you whether you want to show the images and you have to OK a silly window before you can see them. Thunderbird says it’ll only be shown the first time you open an email from that sender. Pah! I don’t know whether to believe them. After a couple of days, I think I believe them.

(Update early Saturday morning (00:01, to be precise)

I’ve been using it for a couple of days now. I have figured out the difference between the “Forward/Back” buttons and “Previous/Next” (first set gets to the next/previous mailbox, while the second set gets to the next/previous unread email). To get to the previous email (that you’ve already read) you have to press “B” on the keyboard, and to get to the next email (that you’ve already read) you have to press “F” on the keyboard.

I’ve sent mail from my gmail account (when gmail is up and running) and that seems to work OK. Will have to test the other ones, possibly later on today.

So that’s it for Eudora. So long, Eudora! We’ve been friends for 15 years, but the time has come to part. It’s not au revoir, it’s don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.

• 14:17 Eggcorn alert: “Should be a good read for children of all ages 5 to 95 years in fact I guess everyone but a few fuddy dudleys.” #
• 14:37 #followfriday @JoexEd @se1 @pinoyboy @urbanbohemian @pedroissexy @naoij @DentonPolice @therealgokwan @AlanCarr @episcopalcafe #
• 14:37 The @DentonPolice posts mugshots of the people they’ve just picked up. Some of them are worth a look, like: twitpic.com/geo06 #
• 14:38 @masonictraveler if only we had that problem: we need blankets and have done all summer except for a few days. #
• 14:45 oh, well, what can we do. England is cold… #
• 16:22 @cemab4y have a good flight. #
• 17:15 @JoexEd sorry…i hope things get better. hugs. #
• 19:47 @jonk what’s a PSL when it’s at home? #
• 19:50 @BrianHeys oh, as long as it wasn’t a 4-some you’re OK. #
• 21:37 RT @Liturgy There are 2 important things to remember about twitter. (1) Don’t give away all your ideas at once #

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• 09:15 @edricliew why did u take one now…did u need it? 😉 #
• 09:19 that’s ok, then…no need for a cold shower otherwise then… #
• 09:32 @edricliew the Circle Line at the moment is kind of like an Arc Line… #
• 09:41 RT @jenny8lee: npr interviews daniel liu, an asian ameican supermodel in the making? bit.ly/ZHkck #
• 12:23 changing email programs is almost as traumatic as jumping from an airplane with no parachute. #
• 16:14 if i ever say that i’m going to hook up the upstairs computer to the wireless network please shoot me first. #
• 17:05 Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the Great Fire of London. Read about it in Samuel Pepys’ diary blog: is.gd/2Q74O #
• 17:08 @legalmoose Elmer T. Lee bourbon–it’s the best. #
• 17:16 @legalmoose Once you’ve tried ETL, you’ll never go back! I use MM for Manhattans, ETL for drinking straight over ice…I want one now! #
• 18:08 @legalmoose my friend Brett who is a liquor/wine/food maven, lives in DC. I’ll ask him where it can be gotten. #
• 20:30 why is it that whenever my iPhone rings its in another room from where I am? #
• 20:39 RT @JeremyJacobs @JonSHarvey: NHS & McKinsey: another report bites the dust – read why here – tinyurl.com/mlkgok #
• 20:44 when i was travelling in india in a van it stopped short and my laptop flew off the seat into the front. still works today tho. #
• 20:57 RT @Glinner: Oh, Kurt, you could really say something sometimes. sivers.org/drama #
• 21:02 @JonSHarvey anytime… #
• 22:06 @therealgokwan sure! we’ll take as much as you want to give us! #
• 22:17 @therealgokwan yeah, as many as you want! #
• 22:19 @therealgokwan that sounds great. We can build a campfire on the internet and toast virtual marshmallows… #
• 22:28 @therealgokwan i love all this, but is it possible that you’re tweeting while tipsy?? please keep it up… #
• 22:31 @therealgokwan yup, all ready. Give me what you’ve got! #
• 22:38 @therealgokwan my hands are getting pins and needles. Can I put them down yet? #
• 22:45 @therealgokwan dure! the more the merrier. #
• 22:50 @therealgokwan …as the actress said to the bishop. #
• 22:51 well, tweeters mine and facebookers too, time to retire. I hope that @therealgokwan will continue. #

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• 10:58 @Liturgy no, the spammers do searches that focus on keywords and when you tweet a keyword they latch on and spam you. #
• 15:05 @hygienestudent good luck with that; hope it turns out OK. #
• 15:10 RT @edricliew: Talking about Alzhimer’s in class brought back memories… #
• 15:18 RT @AIannucci: Ecclesiastical joke. I’ve actually been a Trappist for four years now but I don’t like to talk about it. #
• 18:02 @franktheman1 twitpic.com/g7lvs – yes, smoking hot… #
• 18:06 Now I know what would happen if I got too exasperated at an errant child: is.gd/2O2Mn I love small children, properly cooked. #

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• 07:27 @jonk knights templar and masons are fine: I’m a mason. Don’t worry about it. Don’t read too much Dan Brown. #
• 07:29 @jonk I might be a turncoat but I get totally free medical care and medications. Paris is worth a mass, you know… #
• 07:32 @jonk good to hear. soon you’ll be saying “zed”, spelling like “colour”, and eating bangers and mash. #
• 08:14 @jonk bangers and mash is wonderful. I wouldn’t mind some American-style hot dogs, though…hard to get here. #
• 08:15 @devinjay i’m here. hello! #
• 10:03 @Naoij and hello to you too…hope your twitterverse prospers. #
• 11:38 @soveren it moved down here for a while… #
• 13:43 @therealgokwan Gladly…anytime… 😉 #
• 17:27 did my ritual memorisation work, beef barley soup bubbling on the stove, listening to Radio 4. Not a bad afternoon. #
• 17:40 Today’s Religious Video: bit.ly/3pYdkW . USans in particular will get more out of this… #
• 17:56 @seismic007 well, you could call it “Holy Mole” but it would be confused with about 5000 other Mexican restaurants worldwide… #
• 18:00 @seismic007 google “‘Holy Mole’ restaurant” and see how many hits you get… #
• 18:01 @littlepigy fabricated love is better than no love at all, no? #
• 18:08 RT @texasnate: Gay Panic in Cowtown: THIS is how it goes down in Texas tr.im/xEh5 #
• 18:11 @littlepigy well, i wish you real love real soon… #
• 19:07 RT @orrh: LOL! Hilarious Thai ads. Don’t wake your family up by laughing too loud. bit.ly/4159fs #
• 19:48 @seismic007 he’s negotiating for another job, i’ll bet. #

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This will only make sense to people who know U.S. history (although they got a few facts wrong: Washington was at least a nominal Christian, and had a pew at St. Paul’s Chapel in Manhattan).

(Careful: the tune’s catchy)

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