Chris Hansen’s blog

Normally one assiciates getting a visa in a small Asian country with standing in line at an embassy for hours (probably in the hot sun) and paying lots of US dollars to them for a 3-day visa.

Well, I just discovered that I can apply for my Cambodian visa online! I was dumbfounded.

Starting through the application process, you fill out a first-page form and upload your passport photo–I quickly scanned my passport photo and uploaded it after trimming it to the right size. Then I pressed “Submit” and a few moments later, the website had gotten my photo and approved it (for size, I presume) and we went to the second page, where I filled out more personal details, passport and journey details, and contact details.

After I pressed “Submit” here the apostrophe in my address (St. Matthew‘s Court) threw the website; I think their web designer hadn’t protected the text from the program itself. Once I corrected that, the page led me to PayPal, where I paid US$25 for the visa and processing. Presto! It’s all done and I will be receiving an e-visa via e-mail once a human being approves it.

Other than the little glitch, it was painless and quite efficient. I am dead chuffed that a small country like Cambodia could make it so easy and efficient to apply for and receive a visa. My hat’s off to you, Cambodia! I hope that my visit will be as pleasant as applying for a visa was.

• 09:34 morning tweeters. clear and cold in london this morning. #
• 13:27 lunching on hot dogs. #
• 14:18 @MikeonTV : i presume that “Wog in a Box” is takeaway Italian food in Australia. #
• 14:18 @devinjay : why nervous? #
• 20:52 @mkrigsman : I think that if B&H is a stock company someone should report that writer to the SEC not that they don’t have other things to do #
• 20:58 while i’m glad i’m not in the stock or property markets, i’m sad that greed has led to this and hate what it will do to poor people. #
• 23:15 good night tweeters. the world i’ll wake up to tomorrow will be vastly different than the one i will go to sleep in tonight. R.I.P economy! #

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The events of today affecting the global economy will be well known to you all. What I would like to say is this: the world we wake up to tomorrow will be changed utterly. These are not the end times; we will dig ourselves out of this hole. However, the road out is going to be long and very steep for many. Some predictions:

1) With government ownership of much of the economy, we will have regulation up the wazoo. As one Repug congresscritter (paraphrased) said, “Joe SixPack isn’t going to stand for bailing out Wall Street”. The only way this is going to fly is through increased regulation of the banking and financial industry. This will dwarf Sarbanes-Oxley in its reach into the financial markets. Measuring, hedging, and containing risk will be a sought-after talent and well-compensated. Buying and selling securities will be low on the totem pole.

2) Our families and ourselves are going to suffer. Buy-to-let mortgagors will be wiped. Rates will go up, and as people sit tight, not wanting to move, rental prospects will dry up in the short term. Mortgages granted this month are down 98% on last year here in the United Kingdom! Amazing! See #3 for what will happen when the mortgages are finally sold by the governments.

Those who work in the financial area will be hard-hit. Layoffs and postponement of all but absolutely essential projects will mean joblessness for millions. We’ll see people selling their possessions on the street in order to make ends meet. Bankruptcies will go up, and the new laws that limit the banks’ exposure to personal bankruptcies will bite the ordinary consumer who borrowed prudently but, through no fault of his/her own, has lost his or her job.

Oh, don’t try applying for a credit card anytime soon. If you do, and you get one, don’t borrow on it. I feel like cutting mine up right now (we don’t carry a balance, thank goodness).

Those in the best position will be those who have money in the bank (deposits, I think, will generally be safe), who have little or no money borrowed, and who have little or no money in the stock market (at least in the short term).

3) When we come out of all this, in about 10 years, the financial markets will look very very different. Risk aversion will be the order of the decade. Only those who do not need money will be able to take out loans. The government will package up what is left of the mortgage d

• 07:32 morning tweeters. Back to Church Sunday! I’m preaching at St. John’s Larcom St. in case anyone is in the area… #
• 17:36 @jallen285 : interesting because today’s Gospel was about the sinners being more attuned to God than the righteous. Church is FOR sinners… #
• 17:37 @jallen285 : London is lovely. I’ve lived here for 15 years now and still find new things to do and places to go. #
• 17:38 @jallen285 : OMG, I’m sorry about that. Was he ill? #
• 17:39 back from lovely lunch with Thai Mark in Islington Thai restaurant. Then lots of conversation in Starbucks. #

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• 21:15 hi tweeters. sorry i was AWOL today–was becoming a member of the Order of the Secret Monitor up in Kenton, then walking with HWMBO. #
• 21:16 @BrianHeys : don’t worry; I’ve done the exact same thing. best to look at it a few minutes after setting timer–if it isn’t fogged up, FAIL! #
• 23:23 well, nighty-night tweeters all. #

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• 08:05 morning tweeters. managed to tweet before 10 am today! W00t! #
• 13:41 @devinjay : well, thank you for letting us into yours…hope to meet u when i’m in Sg in October. #
• 13:42 back from lunch; have to go to Vodafone and get my Blackberry fixed and a new SIM card… #
• 18:23 @jallen285 : sorry to hear it. i hope that you either keep your job or get a much better one. #
• 18:25 waiting for HWMBO for dinner. exchanged my SIM and sent BlackBerry off to BlackBerry Hospital. Hope they can revive him. #
• 20:51 @MrPandaBehr : i’m a diet coke/dr. pepper fan myself. can’t drink pepsi except in extremis. #
• 20:52 @besskeloid : BlackBerry Hospital is right next to St. iPhone’s Infirmary… #
• 20:53 i really need to start writing my sermon for Sunday now… #

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I posted my absentee ballot this afternoon. Went to the Post Office on the Walworth Road and waited 15 minutes in a queue to get the thing weighed and

Here in the UK, or in the US, the police used to ask for favours from shopkeepers as a way of augmenting their salaries. Those days are long gone, thank goodness; police now regularly get busted and fired if they try for such favours. However, in Sweden, if someone steals your trombone, you might want to stop by the bakery before reporting the crime to the police. Thanks to MadPriest for the tipoff.

• 09:52 morning tweeters. still no assignment from work. i sit at home waiting for the phone to ring or an email to arrive… #
• 13:45 subway GMT for lunch…yum #
• 14:25 @chrys: paste, of course. #
• 15:59 blackberry is now officially dead. I have to take it into a vodafone store to get it fixed and get my SIM card updated. #
• 16:25 @danvesma I’ve had mine for a year and it’s been fine up until this last weekend. some spew emails killed it, i think. also need new SIM #
• 18:04 @chrys : apparently the air traffic control software/computers are FUBAR. One plane taking off every 5 mins instead of every 90 secs. #
• 19:00 @thecliffy : what a kick in the head for SF. I wonder if the other paper will endorse Obama…i already voted for obama absentee… #
• 22:36 watching “Ugly Betty” but finding it difficult–hate watching people get stood up in restaurants. #

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…and this pig does not indulge in lipstick. It’s become a menace to an Aussie vegetarian, and needs to be dealt with.

In most cases, when you’re charged with assault and battery on a police officer, you’ve actually hit him or her with something (like your fist). Well, in West Virginia, you don’t have to hit him with anything tangible at all to be charged with assault on a police officer.

• 12:14 phone still screwed up; now it isn’t receiving texts… #

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• 14:39 sorry not been tweeting today. blackberry is majorly fouled up and I’ve lost calendar and address book; may get them back mostly but annoyed #
• 21:13 blackberry still farked up…the technician from Vodafone was very well-spoken tho so I hope I get him tomorrow too when I call. #
• 21:13 had a good Bishop’s Council meeting…lots of laughs and I got in a dig at bishops who junketed to the Lambeth Conference. Need laity too! #

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I got my absentee ballot from California, and joyfully voted for Obama/Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who is my Representative (and also Speaker of the House). No Senate race in California this year.

Tomorrow I will joyfully post it. I always have to put a big “To:” on the front and “From:” on the back (which has my name and address printed on it) as the posties normally send it back to me unless I do, even though the stamps are on the “To:” side.

Now we wait to see what the rest of the country will do in November.

My BlackBerry is FUBAR. A website that I used to frequent sent out 200 nearly-identical spew emails to alert me about a man who went missing (he has since been found, I understand). Each email was bigger than the previous one because it contained one more picture of the guy. These emails started to appear on my BlackBerry (obviously) and took longer and longer to transfer. The BlackBerry became clogged with them and there was no way to stop it. I just got the rotating hourglass every time I tried to turn it on and use it. I managed to delete my calendar and address book (both helpfully recovered but not restored to the machine…)

I finally called Vodafone after two days of struggling with it, and got Liam, who was second tier support, who helpfully deleted my online account and then rebuilt it. I added my current email addresses, and all seemed fine.

However, when I turned data services back on, I got the hourglass again, but no alert emails. They are gone, but the hourglass remains. So, it’s back to Vodafone tomorrow and a demand that they get it right or give me a new phone and a new account. Liam sounds cute, so maybe I’ll speak to him again…

I told the website that spewed never to darken my door again (they had given me 5 free premium days to compensate me for the “glitch”).

• 15:26 forgot to tweet until just now. still jetlagged: my head feels like it’s on a stalk and will fall off momentarily. Stay tuned… #
• 15:26 @MikeonTV : and I’ll be in Cambodia Oct 27 thru Nov 1: Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. Looking forward to it. #

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• 05:40 In Heathrow Express station Terminal 4. Almost home! #
• 07:27 back home. hate the pile of post, all the unfinished stuff, the baggage handlers taking the pulls off my luggage zippers… #
• 19:35 still jetlagged. hate this hate hate hate this… #

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• 20:47 Am at Logan Airport waiting in utter pandemonium for my flight. #

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• 19:04 @boyshapedbox hey, man, your mom rocks! we had such a good time hanging out in Marblehead yesterday. Pics to come when I return to London. #
• 19:07 in Atomic Cafe in Marblehead reading emails, tweets, and blogs. OH, and lunching too! #

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I’m in the home stretch of my visit. I must confess that I’ve had a “senior moment”–I thought I was leaving Thursday night and arriving home Friday morning. Well, I got my dates wrong. I’m leaving on Friday night and arriving home on Saturday morning.

Normally this would just embarrass me. However, I had actually made a dinner engagement in London for Friday night with a LiveJournal friend, and I’m hoping that he’ll be able to reschedule for Saturday.

Tuesday evening I attended Philanthropic Lodge here in Marblehead; the work was initiating four men, who joined five men who were initiated Monday night. I had never seen an initiation here and found it very close to what we do in Goliath Lodge in London. Much closer, in fact, than the second and third degrees.

Wednesday was a lovely day. In the morning I finally met , the mother of . We spent a wonderful day wandering around Marblehead, having lunch on the waterfront, and generally enjoying the day. Marblehead is, of course, a very old town with a lot of history behind it. We visited Abbot Hall, where the famour painting “The Spirit of 76” hangs, as well as Fort Sewall, where the town defenses against the French and the English were concentrated. Unfortunately, there was a lot of mist on the harbour, which meant that fantastic views of the Neck and the lighthouse over there were impossible.

We did take pictures ( insisted that wouldn’t believe that we had met unless there was at least one picture of us together, so we took one. I will put them up when I get back.

Last night I met a friend who is the other owner of the Luti list for dinner–we went to the Outback Steakhouse (#2 for me this trip) and I ate much more sparingly than I did last week.

Today I will be dropping downtown to connect up with the Intarwebs and file this blog entry, and finishing packing up. I mostly got packed yesterday and felt very accomplished.

• 18:12 am in Marblehead in the Atomic Cafe, reading email and blogs frantically. hope everyone is twitteringly well and thriving… #
• 18:14 @helenroper sorry to hear it, many condolences from Marblehead, Massachusetts #

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• 02:19 tweeting briefly from Marblehead. read the blog on tinyurl.com/5kd97b
  for details. Meeting @momshapedbox on Weds-can’t wait! #

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Have been here for three days now but nothing much has happened yet. The trip over was rather interesting, though.

Getting on the plane was OK, as I had checked in beforehand. I chose an exit row as I thought I wanted more leg room. However, I was in the middle seat, and I have discovered that all your other room is pretty much limited when you’re in that particular middle seat.

The guy sitting to my left was German, and he complained very loudly and decisively when he was refused the alternative of sitting in Premium Economy. He felt that the bulkhead was in his way and that he didn’t like the fact that there was no window. Well, duh.

The cabin attendant got him a switcheroo with someone else, an Australian, who felt that the armrest was his exclusive property, and not to be shared with the poor doofus in the middle seat (me).

The gentleman on my right had a very small laptop that he wanted to work on. That meant that his elbows were poking me in the side for most of the ride.

In the row behind me was an extremely elderly couple who sounded like Henry Crum and Minnie Bannister. They had very small bladders and were getting up incessantly to use the loo but had trouble figuring out how to get there and interrogated eachother in high quavering voices.

Oh, the food was awful, by the way. You didn’t ask, but I guess it’s a given.

So when I got off I got into the queue for Immigration, and the officer was very brusque and rude. He asked me:

• What do you do?
• What is the purpose of your trip? When I answered “I live in the UK” he asked “No, I mean the purpose of THIS trip.” I said, “It’s a holiday.” and he then asked “What are you going to do on your holiday?” I replied, “Visit my family.”
• How much money are you carrying on you?
• Do you have any food with you?

I answered everything satisfactorily, I guess, as he let me through. I find it odd that they are allowed to so closely question US citizens returning to the US from abroad. He was not a happy bunny either and asked the questions very rudely. The posters on each station say that the agents, being the first face of America to people getting off planes, are under an obligation to greet you cordially and welcome you to the US. This guy had not read the posters.

Got my luggage, got through Customs, and got home. We all went out to Outback for dinner last night, and tomorrow, after church, we’re going shopping. I’m getting US currency to take to Cambodia, where it apparently is the currency of choice over the local stuff.

Sorry I haven’t been posting or Tweeting, but I do not have internet access at my brother’s place, as he stopped my uncle’s access after I left in July. I’m posting courtesy of my sister’s workplace.

Will try to post once again before I leave. Back in London at 0545 on Friday, God willing and the crick don’t rise.

• 07:13 morning tweeters. after breakfast, i’ll start packing for the US. Plane leaves at 4:15 pm BST. #
• 12:06 OK tweeters, byt for a week; I’m unlikely to be able to tweet much, if at all, from Massachusetts. Play nice! #
• 14:57 Am at Heathrow waiting for my flight to Boston, record 2 mind thru security. Tweet safely, all! #

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I’m about to pack for Massachusetts. In contradistinction to the previous visits I’ve made, I suspect my web access will be severely limited this time around. I could pack a laptop, but I’m thinking that perhaps I shouldn’t bother. Too much weight. So, you won’t be hearing a heck of a lot from me for a week (I might be wrong, I suppose; maybe even Marblehead has an internet caf

A couple of people in New Hampshire had a civil partnership. One of them is a reporter for a local newspaper which printed a cartoon illustrating the day. I loved it, and, I think, so will you.

• 08:24 @danvesma : well, we’ll find out in 6 minutes. #
• 08:39 well, we have not been consumed by a black hole…the LHC works. #
• 09:21 @danvesma : i suppose the black hole would have consumed your armpit as well, thus obviating the need for a doctor… #
• 13:47 back from foot clinic…my feet seem to be ok, now off to the post office after the last of the stew for lunch. #
• 14:31 just got a parcel from the Post Office: A relatively bix gox for one CD. Faugh. And the mailman didn’t even ring the bell yesterday… #
• 16:17 watching “Daring Squirrel” eat a peck of peanuts on the windowsill…the wood pigeon is watching like a hawk. #
• 21:54 back from the Southwark Deaneries Meeting (my idea, got a name check during the meeting, yay me!) may run for General Synod next time… #

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• 08:07 morning tweeters. starting to rain here…meeting at 11, meeting at 5pm and 7:45pm… #
• 12:46 just gave Deanery Synod material to our new Secretary, had leftover stew (still yummy 2 days later) for lunch, now back to work! #
• 15:26 @urbanbohemian : ad’s good–hope you get a response… #
• 15:27 @chrys : have fun. #
• 15:28 trying to keep two squirrels from fighting over the peanut bowl in the window…very difficult. #
• 15:28 have just turned Windows Aero on to see whether I like it or not, now that I’ve got the icon spacing thang licked. #
• 22:47 Coming hopme from Lodge of Instruction. About 1 hour to travel. #
• 23:50 night night tweeters. need sleep, tomorrow is my last full day in London before emplaning for Boston. #

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• 08:12 morning tweeters. grey day here in London, have to call work today to find out what I’m to do for 3 days until I go off to the US. #
• 09:38 @soveren : nobody loves you, i guess…only 54? #
• 09:39 @juzzywuzzy : the only answer to that would be: “Eat me!” #
• 13:09 just lunched, waiting for news from work… #
• 14:12 @MikeonTV : whistle and make indecent suggestions to women passing by the construction site… #
• 16:58 @helenroper : someone is cooking with coconut, i suspect #
• 17:00 just finished cleaning off the kitchen table, whisking the tablecloth off to be washed, and putting everything back. I feel accomplished. #
• 18:09 going out to meet Ann F. and her daughter for dinner tonight at Waterloo… #
• 21:42 Just back from dinner with a priest friend and her daughter both visiting from Wyoming-fish & chips (how British)! #
• 23:02 well, time for bed tweeters. Behave yourselves until tomorrow… #

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…comes this little DJ item that, perhaps, would go well with a well-known laptop of your acquaintance.

Those of us who are out, gay, and proud of it, or who have been able to take advantage of civil partnerships here in the UK, and marriage in other places, need to recall and honour those who suffered much in order to give us those opportunities. Ken Young, whose obituary is in the “Other Lives” column in the Grauniad today, is one such man. Read his story, and be amazed and humbled.

• 16:24 good afternoon tweeters. sorry i haven’t twittered yet today. church, then PCC meeting, then lunch, then Manhattan-on-the-rocks… #
• 19:01 @tug : this is the UK’s Northern Rock times 50, I think. Won’t bankrupt the Fed, but is better than insolvency… #
• 19:04 time for dinner. Yay for “Windows Vista Annoyances” I got one great tip by p.37 that would have saved lots of angst had I known it 3 wks ago #
• 21:23 just had a long heart-to-heart with a friend on MSN who keeps dating men he doesn’t really like…some kind of addiction and always LDR too! #
• 22:59 nighty-night tweeters. off to the land of nod (I hope). #

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• 08:10 morning tweeters. firefox just crashed. figured out why…dodgy website. #
• 11:16 @fonsus : no, unsure, it was a manga site of some sort. it’s long gone now… #
• 11:17 @fonsus : no, think of the missionary position (in reference to the joke) #
• 11:17 barbered, shaved, showered, etc. i’m now ready to face the day. off to buy drain cleaner. #
• 15:23 At Waterstone’s Books, computer section. Lots of computing for the over 50’s books… #
• 18:39 heating up last night’s stew for a return engagement tonight… #
• 18:41 have put up pics of HWMBO’s 10K Pride Run last month: tinyurl.com/63vxuo #

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We had a very leisurely day today. At 1 we went out to Leicester Square to meet M, and then go to lunch. After a bit of a tussle over “where” that reminded me of Douglas Adams’ three questions that denoted the three stages of civilisation:

• What should we eat?
• Why do we eat?
• Where should we go for lunch?

we decided to go to Jom Makan again, and this time we did much better. HWMBO gave it 7 out of 10 this time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We had no dessert, which was better as all the desserts are chock-full of sugar or sugar syrup. I took pictures!

M and HWMBO:

My lunch: Hainanese Chicken Rice and Gado-Gado salad:

I’d eaten a bit from the left side of this!

HWMBO had Nasi Ayam Percik (“Grilled chicken with sweet spicy coconut sauce served with steamed rice, fresh salad, and prawn crackers”)

and M had Nasi Goreng (I think):

Afterwards we strolled to the White Cube, where a forgettable exhibition called “Lesser Panda” had its last day today. The top level was full of people watching a movie about the psychologist for the Munich police during the 1972 Olympic Games (you may remember, that was when Black September took Israeli athletes hostage), and the bottom level had some rather geometric and abstract paintings incorporating things which might or might not have been rings.

Then to Waterstone’s Piccadilly, where I bought an O’Reilly title: “Windows Vista Annoyances“–which have been much on my mind of late.

We parted from M there, he to Leicester Square again to enquire about a movie, and us home via Boots, where HWMBO got an “alice band” for his hair.

We had stew for dinner, and HWMBO was mightily annoyed that I hadn’t eaten some cottage cheese which expired yesterday. I think it’ll stay until tomorrow night, when I won’t really want to eat much.

Now to reading about Windows Vista annoyances…it does seem that the book isn’t quite thick enough to accomodate all of them.

I promised a few weeks ago to post pictures from HWMBO’s 10K Pride Run last month. He has been hectoring me for a month, so I’ve finally gotten around to it…

The starting line…you can’t see HWMBO in it, unfortunately. Some famous guy whose name I didn’t catch was doing the starting honours.

And they’re off!

Here’s HWMBO at the first lap:

Here’s a closer look:

Here’s HWMBO on the second lap:

Welsh gay flag on the sidelines:

At the finish line:

Queueing for his medal:

With the goodie bag, which contained a lovely towel in addition to various things to eat and lots of literature:

With M, they form the Two Musketeers:

A great time was had by all. was there but we didn’t bump into each other knowingly.

…and many happy returns of the day!

• 09:10 @fonsus : drunk comes across man doing pushups and says, “Say, fella, someone stole your girl!” #
• 09:11 @legalmoose : goodness…Bell’s Palsy? (joking of course) #
• 09:12 morning tweeters. cold and dry so far in London, and a bit grey, but rain is in the future, saith the forecasters. #
• 11:11 @tug : i hope that all the packaging is recyclable, anyway… #
• 13:36 need to eat but my luncheon campanion hasn’t arrived yet… #
• 16:31 just finished lunch wth my favourite co-worker and her sweet 1.5 year-old… #
• 16:32 also got material for beef stew for tonight, but i won’t be eating until very late as i’m now full. #
• 18:17 well, the stew’s in the pot, cooking; i’m reading my livejournal flist, thinking about making a manhattan… #
• 20:31 @urbanbohemian : ended up sticking with red wine…had to drink up what i didn’t put in the stew. Maybe Manhattans tomorrow! #
• 20:32 @BrianHeys : fun eating a nice homemade stew, not so much fun making it. And no manhattans tonight…maybe tomorrow. drank red wine instead. #
• 20:33 the stew was good; didn’t boil it until the vegetables disintegrated (maybe that’s the key to a good stew).. #
• 23:44 just finished watching Bergman’s Winter Light. Very powerful, rang a bell with me who looks at readings and has trouble writing a sermon… #
• 23:45 so night-night tweeters; hope that those who are having a libation hoist one for me… #

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• 08:48 morning tweeters. sunny this morning but clouds on the horizon and rain on the way… #
• 10:03 waiting for my co-worker to call me back so i can formally hand over the steaming pile to him… #
• 22:50 well, night-night tweeters. just watched a bergman film “The Silence” with HWMBO…very spooky. #

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• 10:09 morning tweeters. chrome doesn’t do it for me as it doesn’t render my lj friends page well at all…my punishment for not using blogger. #
• 12:21 just had donated chili bean stew and cornbread for lunch. yummy…thanks mark! #
• 13:13 @tug : we’re doomed! #
• 14:59 getting everything settled for my trip to Cambodia/Angkor Wat… #
• 19:17 waiting for HWMBO to come home from after-work drinks so we can have dinner… #
• 20:38 Waiting at The Well for our Chinese takeaway. 🙂 #
• 22:22 listening to PDQ Bach’s Sanka Cantata…takes me bach, it does. #

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• 10:25 Morning tweeters. In between assignments now so working at home. #
• 11:07 our “pet” squirrel is busily feeding from a cupful of peanuts–i think she’s nursing her pups. #
• 23:21 goodnight tweeters. booking my tix for the trip to angkor wat in october while I’m in singapore… #

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• 09:01 morning tweeters. time to start work again…working from home is sometimes depressing. #
• 10:24 @soveren : hardly seems like 11 years, does it. #
• 12:37 working after lunch; off to lodge later on this afternoon. #
• 22:24 @soveren : it’s now illegal by EU rules to serve fish and chips in newspaper. the ink is toxic. #
• 22:26 back from lodge. ceremony was good (i’m now a Royal Ark Mariner & a Mark Master Mason) but the wine at dinner was corked! Fie! #

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• 07:54 morning tweeters. foggy at the Elephant, thunderstorms on the way. #
• 20:42 @helenroper : we just had a thunderstorm here in South London… #
• 20:43 discovered that Hearts of Space no longer works with Media Player 11 through Firefox. Have to use IE crapware… #

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• 09:35 @soveren : what’s up in london? want to meet up for a drink? #
• 15:53 Just left Tate Britain East show. Disappointing. Walked to Battersea Park, going for coffee & tiramisu. #
• 16:35 Nice tiramisu, now waiting for a 344 bus for home. Beautiful day in London! #
• 23:02 night, tweeters. got my sermon done, got the lawn mowed & lots of album covers into iTunes. God’s in heaven, all’s right with the world. #

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I’m sure that most of us refrain from eating while in the bathroom. However, if you go to this restaurant, you might find it a bit, um, uncomfortable.

• 08:07 morning all tweeters…TGIF. hope to finish the work for the current assignment today. #
• 14:47 Working a( home reviewing docs … #
• 20:05 On bus from gym to go to dinner with M at the Well for Chinese food. #

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• 08:06 morning all…i may be within sight of a solution to my RAID problem with Vista…we will see shortly… #
• 11:03 the phone guy came and fixed the phone. short circuit between the green box in the road and the exchange. #
• 11:04 @juzzywuzzy : we don’t feel very good but we don’t have much choice as cameras aren’t made for lefties. #
• 13:53 a driver download from Intel has (I think) fixed my drive problem. Hooray. Now to fix everything else … #
• 21:21 just back from drinks at Freud’s and dinner at a new Malaysian restaurant next to Natl Gallery; I liked it, HWMBO said it wasn’t authentic. #
• 21:23 (more) unfortunately I forgot the name…we dined with our lj friend iejw who does not tweet. #
• 21:45 @tug yes indeed that’s the one. Very nice. Download 25% off voucher and try it. #
• 22:45 well, goodnight tweeters. vista SP1 has now successfully installed itself. I wonder what new woes this means for me… #

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I am really sad; the pioneers of the lesbian and gay justice movement in the United States from the 1940’s and 1950’s are passing away quickly. Del Martin was one of the greatest of them–with her wife Phyllis Lyon she founded the Daughters of Bilitis organisation in the 1950’s and thus spearheaded the more radical organisations of the 1960’s and 1970’s. This is her New York Times obituary, and while I’m sad that she has left us, and send my condolences to Ms. Lyon, I am happy that she lived to be legally married to Phyllis and in that she was yet again a pioneer.

May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

(reposted from gaygeeks)

You may remember that I posted a few days ago about a problem that I thought was related to Vista having to do with my hard disks failing in RAID 0.

Well, this morning I got a message from the Intel Matrix Storage Manager that a new download was available that might fix my problem. It was one of those “Windows thinks it can solve your problem” messages.

Well, I downloaded the new version of the Storage Manager, installed it, rebooted (and endured an almost endless CHKDSK full of funny errors), and logged back in. The Storage Manager icon was still there, demanding attention. However, when I opened it and right clicked on the “failing” disk, it said that I could “Mark it as normal”, which I did. On rebooting (again), no problems came up.

So the difficulty that I thought was Vista corrupting my disk seems to have been related to the Intel software that runs my RAID controller.

While I’m not out of the woods yet (lots of other things are turning up), I’m grateful for all the suggestions (and, yes, I got my Stephen Gibson SpinRite money back today) and also grateful that the disk problem was repairable and now is also explainable.

Well, sorry I haven’t been keeping up with life except with twitter compendia, which have turned off at least two of you. Sorry about that. I shall make up for that.

First, it looks like my assignment in Hinckley (via Nuneaton) is over. The trains are not running correctly for the next two weeks, so I shall complete my deliverables this week. It’s been a real roller-coaster. My life felt like Groundhog Day (the movie).

Up at 6 am (as usual), out of the house at 7:15, to Euston Station, get on train for 8:17 departure, work on train with my data card until I get to Nuneaton, Warwickshire, at 9:21. Sandeep’s Taxi to Hinckley, where I worked until 4 pm. Reverse everything: taxi to Nuneaton, train at 4:35 pm to arrive at Euston around 5:47pm. Then crash most days, unless I went to the gym with M or we went out to dinner.

It does take a lot out of you.

The work, on the other hand, was interesting. I can’t talk about it, but I learned a lot about the UK gas network.

Sandeep was pretty talkative, which was a bit off-putting, but I managed to get some solitude in the back of the cab. Hinkley itself is a real deadspot. There is little or no traffic through the centre, the only decent restaurant is a Subway (although there is a KFC and various other delightful places to dine), and the local constabulary advertises itself as the Last Chance Inn where miscreants are housed for the night.

We had a lovely day on Saturday. It proved to be the only really decent day on the Bank Holiday weekend. So, it was a day for a picnic. We gathered up our friends Mark, M, , and his friend Anna and went to Hampstead Heath on the 168 bus. The food was rather eclectic (I think that and Anna brought a much snazzier class of food than we did) but nice, and I noticed for the first time that Dr. Pepper Zero is available here. It was quite nice.

We had trouble with children running around screaming, being breastfed, and the like, but tried to ignore the noise. Here are a few pictures from the event:

And Mark drew our attention to a cloud that was sailing past (one among many). He thought it was “penis-shaped”. I think it has more to do with his mind…

A good time was had by all, I think. We arrived home and slept the sleep of the just.

Sunday after church we took a walk across Southwark Bridge and along the Embankment to Villiers Street, where we had a Starbucks moment.

Monday we did bugger-all. Just relaxed at home. This is a very good thing when you’ve been commuting 110 miles morning and evening for a month.

The rest of this week I’ve been working at home, finishing up bits and bobs for work.

Tuesday night we went out to dinner with , who has been doing some exchange work here in the UK. He is in customer service for public exhibitions, and did a month in Cornwall at the Eden Project and seems to have loved it. We went to Balans Soho, which is probably the trendiest eatery on Old Compton Street. They did make a good Manhattan, but my burger, which I had ordered “medium”, was well past medium by the time I got it: grey and dry and unappetising.

I am really through with restaurants that, for our own protection, cook beef to the point where it is unappetising. The danger from BSE has pretty much ended and the need (if there ever was one) to cook burgers until they are dead, dead, DEAD! is over.

After that we walked off our food in a circle, walking to Charing Cross Road, Oxford Street, and Dean Street, ending up back on Old Compton Street and having coffee in Caff

• 07:02 morning tweeters. The sky is grey and my phone’s still out. Balans was lovely last night, great Manhattan! Not so good burger–avoid it. #
• 09:23 Working at home is lonely… #
• 13:45 sitting at home doing a flowchart of how releases need to be done for the customer. ick ick ick ick ick #
• 18:43 made baked beans for dinner in the crockpot; HWMBO thought I wrote “naked beans” #

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