Chris Hansen’s blog

The airwaves were full of alarm this morning about the coming decline and perhaps extinction of the fish stocks of the world. I am proud to say that I contribute minimally to this decline and I hope that, in the future, I will be remembered as one lone voice in the wilderness crying: “Stop eating fish! It works for me!”

…that intimated that my American accent was Midwestern. Unfortunately, someone found it difficult to read but wasn’t specific enough as to what was wrong; it looked OK to me when I pulled it up on my machine. I tried some reformatting the HTML but it made it much much worse, so I’ve just deleted it.

As a software test expert of 18 years’ standing, my advice to people who report bugs in LJ code is: take a screen shot of what you are seeing and send the screen shot to the person whose LJ it is (unless it’s something silly like too many carriage returns or something like that). I don’t know what was broken and trying to fix it just broke it for me too.

Bummer.

…to say that I’m doing OK and I should come back in a year. If I’m still ambulatory in a year, they’ll discharge me. So that’s OK.

I was looking at CVs for my employer last week, and I came across some real stinkers. One gentleman said that he was involved in testing “bug fixations”. Uh-oh. Another one said that he was performing “system test executions”, making me wonder whether he’d been working in the United States recently. A third one said that he had a “Degree in Honest Computer Software”.

I always get a bit antsy when I read a CV (resum

Got up, everything was fine. Left the house at 7:30, that was fine. Got on the Underground and got to Embankment, where I normally change for the District or Circle Line. Oops! Someone jumped in front of a westbound train at Temple Station, so no westbound trains. I walked up to Charing Cross and took a cab to work from there (GBP 8).

Now, two things irk me about this. First, why oh why do people use trains as suicide enablers? The poor train driver is traumatised, the entire network is affected, and it’s a messy death (which sometimes does not work!) And, of course, people invariably do it in rush hour–perhaps to spite the world.

Second, why oh why didn’t the Underground say something about it before I got on the train at Elephant and Castle? I could have taken the Northern Line southbound to Stockwell and changed for the Victoria Line there, thus avoiding the problem and saving

Well, I’ve had an odd week. Work is still work, even though there doesn’t seem to be much to do at the moment. I have been tasked with about 6 different things, none of which have as yet come about. I’ve discovered that they want me to visit Pune in India late in November to meet the testing team there who deal with the (insert name of big investment bank) account. I may also catch up with the gentleman from Quexst who made such a cock-up of my previous visit there. It looks like I shall have to spend two days a week in Brussels starting in January for a few months. I expect they will try to get me five days a week, but I have put my foot down on that, as the original commitment was 2 days a week in Nottingham. The customer, after we got the account, told us, “Oh, incidentally, the work is going to go on in Belgium.” Rats. The Test Factory in Peterborough is still holding fire: I am to spearhead it and don’t really mind that as it’s relatively commutable (the journey is 50 minutes and there is a bus from the train station). The quarters are quite palatial as well. Even a Starbucks in the lobby! How great is that? (And you Starbucks haters: please don’t write and tell me how bad Starbucks is; in a country where coffee as recently as 1994 meant instant granules in a cup Starbucks was and is a Godsend.)

I discovered this week that I have been voted membership in Philanthropic Lodge F&AM in Marblehead, where my brother is a Brother. I shall be returning to Marblehead in December to sign the bye-laws and take up the membership. I won’t be able to attend regularly, of course, but it’s a link with my hometown and my brother that will be valuable in years to come.

I have bought about 5 new bow ties this week and thus am prepared to wear them almost exclusively. I may get some more, but will stay away from Tie Rack bow ties as the one I bought is already starting to fray at the top where it sometimes rubs against my neck. More Rats!

Our toaster gave up the ghost on Wednesday: after about 7 or so years of daily service I put the bagels in it and it turned on for a moment, then silently died and popped the bagels up, untoasted. That afternoon I got a new one at Argos with seemingly as many controls as in a car. It shows an LCD reading of the doneness you want (we’ve experimented and settled on “2” as optimal). It’s silver and, most important, works.

Yesterday a workman came (quite late in the afternoon) and fixed the trellis on the wall in our back garden. I bought another USB PCI card and will be installing it in the Sun, moving the combined USB/Firewire card to the Dell.

Last night we went out to dinner with my friend Watty, who is visiting from New York. He is a member of the Ben Franklin society, and is on a tour with them of his haunts in London and Paris. Apparently the house he lived in here still exists and has been restored. Will have to take a look. They went to Freemasons’ Hall but were not shown the Franklin memorabilia they have there, just given the normal tour. Very dusty of the Brothers. Watty is a member of St. Clement’s, the church on 46th Street in Hell’s Kitchen that I attended from 1990-1991 before I moved to Chicago.

Today we’re going to the Velasquez exhibition at the National Gallery, courtesy of my former roommate Mark, who is a warder there. Very nice perk for us both.

So ends another week in London.

Thanks (I think!) to comes today’s recipe, which would be guaranteed to kill me almost instantly were I to eat even a little piece of it.

If I wanted to off myself pleasurably, I would go to the Krispy Kreme on High Holborn, buy some of their product, make this recipe, and eat the entire thing. I guarantee that I would be walking up to St. Peter within a few hours.

Even better than dying in the saddle, I’d say.

Thanks to for this look into the sex life of the turtle (or maybe they’re tortoises, I don’t know…) The sound at the end is worth the price of admission.

I’ve heard some sad stories, but this one is about as sad as it gets. As it’s the Daily Mail, it’s surprising that all the grisly detail is in it (I believe the Mail is Lady Thatcher’s favourite newspaper, but it’s possible she can no longer understand what she reads). Safe for work, unless you’re having lunch.

I think that we need a big flock of these, stationed in Trafalgar Square.

Today’s spam haul included the following. Please note the paragraphs bolded and italicised:

BANK OF AMERICA (ASIA)LTD.
17/F DEVCON HOUSE
979 KING’S ROAD
HONG KONG.

Dear Friend,

I am Mr.Graham R.Layton, credit officer of Bank of America (Asia) Ltd, Hong Kong. I am an Australian by nationality working with the Bank of America Asian Branch.

I have an urgent and very confidential business proposition for you.

On october 6, 2002, an American Engineer/Consultant with the Chinese Solid Minerals Corporation, Mr. Steinmetz Horst made a (Fixed) Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at US$40,500,000.00 (Forty Million Five Hundred thousand United State Dollars only) in my branch.

Upon maturity,I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder and finally we discovered from his contract employers, the Hong Kong Solid Minerals Corporation that Mr. Steinmetz Horst died from a recurrent heart disease.

On further investigation,I found out that he died without making a will, and all attempts to trace his next of kin was fruitless.

I therefore made further investigation and discovered that Mr. Steinmetz Horst did not declare any next of kin or relations in all his official documents, including his Bank Deposit paperwork in my Bank. This sum of US$40,500,000.00 is still lingering in my Bank and the interest is being rolled over with the principal sum at the end of each year. No one will ever come forward to claim it.

According to the Hong Kong Law, under china’s foreign and defense affairs, at the expiration of 5 (five) years, such funds will revert to the ownership of the chinese Government for financing military operations, such as purchasing of arms and ammunitions for the military.

In order to avert this negative development, i will like to seek for your permission as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to Mr. Steinmetz Horst so that the fruits of this old man’s labor will not be use for financing weapons which will further enhance the courses of war in the world in general.

The money will be paid into your account for us to share in the ratio of 60% for me and 30% for you and 10% for expenses incurred in the course of the transaction. There is no risk at all as all the paperwork for this project will be done by my attorney and with my position as the credit officer guarantees the successful execution of this project. If you are interested, please reply immediately.

Upon your response, I shall then provide you with more details that will help you understand the transaction.

You should observe utmost confidentiality,and rest assured that this project would be most profitable for both parties because I shall require your assistance to invest my share in your country.

Awaiting your urgent reply.

Thanks and regards.
Mr.Graham R.Layton

(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)

So we should be scammed in order to prevent this “money” being used to fund Chinese military operations! What a world, what a world!

Chicago has a Brown line; it now seems that southeast England has its own Brown Line as well…

Saturday note: They seem to have captured the miscreant, who is “of no fixed address”. I suppose he may have have difficulty finding a public convenience…

Decided that rather than go to the gym today (it was raining most of the afternoon anyway), I would buckle down and get the computer reconfigured. So I disconnected everything, took it into the living room, vacuumed it out (so much dust…) and then took a good look. Pulled out the DVD and the CD-writer, discovered to my surprise that there are SATA controllers on the motherboard, put in a DVD-writer and a memory card reader, then put some cable tidies around what was up to that time a veritable worm convention.

In addition, I got the Sun keyboard/mouse adapter installed and connected up to the KVM so I can control the Sun or the PC with the same mouse. However, there is one problem: the Microsoft Optical Wireless IntelliMouse has only a USB plug, and the KVM is PS/2 mini-DIN only. So I plugged in one of those USB to mini-DIN converters. It works OK except for one thing: every once in a while, for no reason, the pointer jumps to the bottom of the screen. Anyone out there have any ideas? It’s only while moving the pointer somewhere else on the screen (I think). I shall try some of the fora to see whether anyone else has seen this.

Maybe I have to buy a new mouse.

Now to try the Sun SPARC Ultra 10 to ensure that it works with the MB and mouse. Then I’m in business!!

Later note: It does! The mouse will need some tweaking, but the keyboard and monitor switch seamlessly from one to the other!

Well, it seemed to go OK today; the substitute substitute priest showed up and made Jesus, and I preached. Here’s the sermon in case anyone’s interested.

22 October 2006 Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity Sermon delivered at St. Matthew’s at the Elephant, 10 am. Readings: Isa 53:4-12; Heb 5:1-109; Mk. 10:35-45

In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.

A little boy was saying his bedtime prayers with his mother: “Lord, bless Mum and Dad, and God, (stage direction: shouting) GIVE ME A NEW BICYCLE!!!” The mother said: “God’s not deaf, son.” To which he replied “I know, Mum, but Gran’s in the next room, and she’s deaf as a post!

Prayer is something that we do a lot of in the church. We pray for the Church (because it’s in a mess these days, as always), we pray for civil society (it’s in a mess too), we pray for our own parish and our friends and relatives; we pray for the sick and the dead.

We pray a Collect at the beginning of the Eucharist, we have a Eucharistic Prayer in the middle, and prayers of thanksgiving at the end.

I’m not even counting our private prayers, or even the “Oh Lord!” we might say as the Underground train stops for the third time between the Elephant and Kennington.

What are we doing when we pray? Usually, we’re asking for something from God. Health, a new job, money to pay off our creditors, something, anything.

Sometimes, if we’re thinking about it, we pray for others: the health of a much loved friend or relative, peace in the world, or any number of things.

We’re asking for something.

James and John ask to be sitting one on each side when Jesus comes into his glory. And they don’t just ask for it, they demand it in tones that imply that he’d better actually come through with the goods. “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” How bold is that?

We need to think very seriously about this. You see what Jesus tells them after they ask for this: “You don’t know what you’re asking for.” It’s not just the glory of being the closest to Jesus in heaven. It’s the glory attached to being the servant of all, and dying in the service of all.

It’s been said that “Prayer doesn’t work on God, it works on us.” That may sound rather agnostic, but it conceals a real truth. What did such a question do to the disciples? The rest of them got very angry with James and John, who I am sure didn’t like it one little bit. This prayer separated James and John from their fellow disciples. I imagine they themselves were ashamed that they’d asked such a question (in another Gospel, they are so scared of asking the question that they delegated their mother, also Jesus’s aunt, to ask it for them).

Prayer works on us in many ways. A prayer about something scary can have the effect of helping us to get through that scary bit. A prayer for something good sets the stage for prayers of thanksgiving if the good thing happens and prayers asking for courage if it doesn’t.

So what did James and John’s prayer do to Jesus? It seems a little bit like that old joke: “Why do you always answer a question with a question?” “Do I?” Jesus asked them an innocuous question in response: whether they can drink the cup that he drinks or be baptised with the baptism he was baptised. In retrospect, we know he was talking about his death but James and John don’t. Perhaps they imagined that they’d be drinking fine wine and be baptised in water as John the Baptiser did.

Instead of this Jesus tells them all, not just James and John, that the only way they will be great will be as servants of all. Not what they expected at all.

Presumably, as tradition tells us that James and John bore witness to Christ throughout their lives, Jesus’s answer had a profound effect on them, while not directly producing the result they wanted. So they asked for the wrong thing. And they weren’t rebuked for this pretty enormous request; putting themselves in the favoured position next to their Lord would be a high spot indeed and something that ordinary people could not hope for.

Should there then be any limits on what we can request in prayer? Keeping in mind that prayer works on us, not on God, I don’t think there can or should be limits on our requests in prayer. Does your situation seem hopeless? Take it to God in prayer. Have you a sick friend? Lift your friend up to God in prayer. Are you anxious about your finances or the direction your life is taking? Pray about it. Does the lack of peace in the world upset you? Say a prayer for peace.

On the other hand, will all these requests be answered? God is not in some heavenly Answer Shop, constantly providing answers and solutions to the problems that people pray about. God doesn’t stay on the other end of a celestial telephone line, writing down your requests on a memo pad for future reference and then fulfilling them as soon as possible.

Your requests are very important to you and, as you are uniquely loved by God, to God as well. But if every request were fulfilled exactly as we wish, would be necessarily be any better off? Fantasy stories have been written about the man who gets to make three wishes. The first wish lands him in trouble, the second wish gets him deeper in trouble, and only when he uses the third wish to set everything back to what it was before does his life get back on track.

This is also not a uniquely Christian theme. Does everyone remember the Greek myth about King Midas of Lydia? He was the ruler who asked for and received the favour that everything he touched turned to gold. He turned masses of items in his palace to gold and gloated on how rich he now was. Sitting down to dinner, every morsel of food set before him turned to gold as soon as he lifted it to his mouth. And finally his daughter, seeing him, ran to him and embraced him, and was turned to gold herself. Be careful what you wish for.

So James and John wished for something that would ultimately consume their lives: the opportunity of serving others from a position of strength rather than weakness, and having their lives ended by martyrdom. (A side note: according to tradition, while James was martyred by Herod Agrippa, John died a natural death on the island of Patmos-we account John an honourary martyr in part because of this passage.)

Jesus has given us a different definition here of what it is to be a slave or a servant. In Roman and Greek times, slaves were often people who were taken captive during a war. They were treated as things, not as people. They had no rights, and unless they were freed, they could be killed without penalty by their owners.

Thus saying that the person who wishes to be first among the Christian community must be the slave of all resonated very deeply within people in the early Christian community. That person would be available to the entire community, for whatever purpose they wished, even death. And yet that person would be the greatest of all.

I hesitate to apply this lesson to the modern Christian community, where bishops and archbishops (and even some Rectors and Vicars) have domestic help to cook and clean, secretaries to look after their correspondence and keep their diaries, and chaplains to ensure that their religious obligations are kept up to date. We live in different times, and being a servant does not necessarily mean being servile-as I say of my employer when the work gets tough and they make what I see as excessive demands on me and my time: “Lincoln freed the slaves!”

Being a servant in the Church means being available to your Christian sisters and brothers in whatever way you can be: cooking at the Christmas Fair, assisting at the altar, bringing someone to and from church when they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get here. All these are ways of serving the community. And we need to put those people doing this first, because they are the most important members of the community.

I would end with that old joke about the man who kept praying to win the lottery, but it has been told from this very pulpit (not, I hasten to add, by me) so many times that you would all finish it for me before I started. Let’s pray for the courage to ask God for what we need in our prayers, and for the peace that comes with accepting what we get. Amen.

Last night we went to bed around 11, but the noise from the guy in flat 5 was just horrible. He is a paranoid schizophrenic, and keeps the TV on all day and all night at a relatively high volume. The poor lady in 6 and the people in 3 suffer worse than we do, but even two floors away one can discern the voices on the TV (if not what they’re saying). That kind of noise at night is the worst kind of noise, as your brain wants to understand the words but cannot.

I’ve complained to the housing association, and they are going to send him a stern letter and get his caseworker to get after him. I have told him (the last time I saw him) that I can hear his TV in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t seem to have believed me. Next step is to tip off Sky that he’s using an illegal box, I suppose…

My first task today was to take the morning service at St. John’s. The Vicar called me last week and said that there was no one to take the Mass of the Presanctified Saturday morning and could I do it. It involves a service of the Word and then distribution of communion from the reserved sacrament. No sermon, thank goodness. So I did that; it was very nice really that he thought I could do it for him.

When I got back I was looking at my email and planning to dismantle my computer area, clean it up, install a new DVD writer in the computer and take out the two older drives in it, get the KVM working so that I can control my Sun Ultra 10 and my PC from the same keyboard, mouse, and monitor. A satisfying day, one thinks.

The phone rang.

The Rector of St. Matthew’s is away this week for a “study and reading week”. Not that it will do much good, but one lives in hope. A priest with Permission to Officiate lives in the parish and comes to St. Matthew’s, so he was going to take the Eucharist for the Rector.

This priest was on the phone. He said, “I’m stuck in Armenia.” He’s a professor of Law at South Bank and is advising the Armenian justice ministry on reforming the judiciary. Yerevan Airport is fogged in and no planes were going in or out. He might make it for tomorrow’s service (at 10 am) but probably won’t.

I called the Area Dean and got another priest to take the service, but it was unfair to expect him to preach too, so I had to write a sermon.

All my plans for hardware revamping were put on hold. In the afternoon I took a nap (after finishing half the sermon) and then we went to see the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. Very interesting: HWMBO gives it 6.5 out of 10. Then we walked to New Oxford Street from the South Bank and had dinner, then bused ourselves home. I finished my sermon while HWMBO made himself beautiful.

Now I’m trying to rest and relax.

…Zhu ni sheng ri kuai le, !!!

…so here they are. The first one is our stuffed animal collection, on the bed waiting for us to put the pillows back on. Aren’t they cute? The one to the extreme right is the Columbia Lion, and there’s a Winnie the Pooh, a Paddington Bear, a duck, several dogs, a lobster, and a panda bear who is HWMBO’s special favourite. HWMBO doesn’t like the lobster very much, and once managed to get the lobster entangled in our sheets in the washer, leaving it a bit…um…bedraggled. The lobster is the red blob just to the left of centre. Click on this link to see a larger photo.

The second one is me. You’ll note I’ve changed my userpic, as I think the self-tied bow tie is probably worth memorialising.

I hope these have now discharged my picture obligations.

I realise I haven’t been updating as often as I really should. The new job has taken up much of my time, of course. I’m posting from work in an experiment.

I installed a Netgear wireless card in our living room laptop last night. The one we had (not Netgear, but another model which shall remain nameless) only gathered a Low or Poor signal from the router in the study. The Netgear immediately got a “Very Good” signal and continued in that vein. Success!!

The only trouble with these wireless cards in general seems to be that the native software controllers that come with them do not generally work very well on this laptop. They can’t control the card even with the correct keys and the like entered in. When I change them to be controlled by the Windows software, everything falls into place and it works.

Now I might find this to be a conspiracy from Redmond to make its own software triumphant over all. However, I’m wondering whether other people have had the same problem with their laptops and wireless cards (if any). Anecdotal evidence supporting (or to the contrary) would be welcome. If it’s the laptop, we can ditch it for a better one, I think. If it’s just a general problem with wireless network cards and their idiot software packages, then we just live with it.

I’m well on the way to getting my Sun Ultra 10 working on the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse as the Windows desktop in the study. Leg room is severely limited under the desk as the Sun is to the left and the Dell is to the right. Will try to work on that over the weekend. I’ve got a patch box on order that will take the Sun KB/mouse plug (one 8-pin mini-DIN) and split it into two 6-pin mini-DINs that are the same as a PC. This will let me ditch the Sun keyboard (which is pretty much a pain) and the mouse (which looks like a bar of soap on a steel plate, as it needs a dedicated mouse pad to work), and not have to change the kb/mouse combo when switching boxes.

One final thought: I was complaining that my online time had shrunk compared to my jobless bliss before 18 September (I’ve been employed one whole month now). I have successfully contracted my online life so that I can barely keep up with it. I need to contract it a bit more (but probably not livejournal) and I’ll then have time to have a real life.

Troutgirl.com has some interesting thoughts on the power of prayer. Unfortunately, they weren’t syndicated until today but were written in April. No matter, though–I think she’s on to something.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 53 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Of course, there would be 54 except I emigrated.

Ever wondered how Microsoft came up with the talking paperclip? Imagine trying to find an alternative.

I decided a few days ago that it might be interesting to buy a bow tie and learn how to tie it. This is one of those urges, like the urge to throw a snowball at someone with a tall hat, that really can’t be resisted very well (at least by me). So I bought one.

Then I looked on the Internet for instructions (not knowing that there were instructions in the box, but heigh ho!). I found lots of instructions. There were diagram instructions, video instructions, picture instructions, even a mirror-image picture instruction so you can look in the mirror and see how to do it without having to move your eyes down to the paper.

I looked at the instructions and started to tie, and failed miserably.

However, all was not lost. Several of the instructions said that some men say: “Tying a bow tie is just like tying your shoes.” but went on to rubbish the statement in favour of their own methods. I thought, “Well, I’ve got nothing to lose.” So I tried to tie it as if I were tying my shoes.

And it worked.

I thought to myself, “Well, you’ve done something new yet again! Another triumph. Have a plum as a reward.”

So I did.

Pictures sometime soon when I actually tie one on a shirt and venture out the door.

I think I’ll be buying more of them in the future.

I’m still finding it difficult to adjust to 5-days-a-week 9-to-5 working. I have cut down my online presence to the bone, even to the extent of removing Overheard in New York from my friends list. Very sad, as I always get a laugh out of it.

Last night I started looking at my friends list, not having done so since Tuesday evening because of my Lodge meeting Wednesday night. I had four pages (about 200 entries) to plow through. So, I have to figure out what to do. I fear that some friends may have to be temporarily sidelined. But, I cannot continue to spend all my non-work time on the computer, then watch the 10:00 news and fall into bed. I will continue to adjust until I get the balance right.

Farewell to those whom I’ve friended but will have to un-friend–you’ll mostly be those who are syndicated from other blog sites or whom I haven’t encountered in a while. No hard feelings, I hope.

On another note, I decided to walk to Subway for lunch this noon. I was going to get my favourite, a BMT, and decided impulsively while on line to get a foot-long as I was hungry.

The person taking orders gabbled something at me out of which I got “free drink”. “Gabbled” is the only word I can use. He was not a native English speaker, I believe, and his accent was quite heavy. So I said “OK”. Who wouldn’t? I just wanted my sandwich.

As they put the meat on it, I realised what I’d agreed to. Double meat. OH. MY. GOD. When you get double meat it makes a pleasant, filling sandwich into a cholesterol bomb that is, really, so unpleasant to eat it makes you ill. But I didn’t realise it until it was too late to stop them.

(PS Double meat, even though it gets you a free drink, also costs you nearly double the regular price:

From a CNN news story about the breakup of an iceberg in the Antarctic due to a storm days earlier in Alaska (really!) “We think that B15A was in the right position where these waves would be fatal to it,” MacAyeal said. “The iceberg shattered like a gracile wine glass being sung to by a heavy soprano.”

Eighteen years ago this evening I stood before the Rt. Rev’d. Stuart Wetmore and was received into the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. Better late than never!

I’ve never tried to embed a video in my lj, so this may not work. However, if it does, you’ll see an amazing clip from the Koren “Queer as Folk”. This from a country which is heavily Presbyterian or Confucian with a history of being gay-intolerant.

From the “Liberty Post” (whatever that is), retold in Private Eye, comes the following:

‘Mario Visnjic called me on his mobile phone, and asked me for help,’ a member of the beach staff in Valalta, Croatia, told reporters. ‘He wouldn’t tell me over the phone what the matter was, but when I found him sitting on his deckchair, his problem was obvious. He’d gone swimming naked in the cool sea, and had then sat down on his wooden chair to relax. Because his testicles had shrunk with the cold, they’d slipped easily through the wooden slats, but as he relaxed in the sun, they’d expanded back to normal size, and he’d become stuck.

‘We tried everything. We coated his scrotum in coconut oil, and poured ice-cold water on his testicles. But they wouldn’t shrink, and we couldn’t pull them back up between the slats. In the end, we had to saw the entire deckchair in half to release him, and by then he’d attracted quite a crowd of onlookers.’

Skinnydippers of the world, beware!

They say that the signs on escalators here “Dogs must be carried” means that everyone who doesn’t have a dog is technically in breach of the London Underground bye-laws. Well, a motorist has discovered that she’ll have to keep her dog in the car when she drives, because of his appetite. I don’t envy her investigating things taking their natural course, though.

I don’t suppose anyone over the age of 45 or so will forget the song “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”. Well, the composer of that classic has died.

Our Baby Boomer heritage is slowly but surely ending up 6 feet under…

NOTA BENE: Actually, we have now been told that this gentleman was fibbing and someone else (who is not dead) wrote it. Oh well…

HWMBO got a call from his brother in Singapore last night. His cousin, a young woman with a 2-year-old, dropped dead yesterday after a meal in a restaurant. Only 32 years old. The cause of death is undetermined as of now. HWMBO saw her here about 6 months ago when she was here on a business course.

I know that those of you who are not retired or in school will think I’m a real cry-baby for complaining about going back to a full-time job after 18 months of mostly not working. I’m really sorry about that, but I think the most difficult part of this is the work-life balance.

Working for a consultancy does not help, as the company expects one to be available almost all the hours God sends. This is illegal (just) here, but really ends up destroying your life, if you let it. I will have to:

• Give up most of the active work I’ve devoted to Freemasonry, as it will more often than not happen at times when I’ll be tied up at work;
• Give up a lot of the work I’ve devoted to the Diocese of Southwark, although I’m going to fight for this on the grounds that it’s charitable work, which the company encourages;
• Give up going three times a week to the gym–I think I’ll be lucky to get there once or twice a week.

Now what to do? I’ve pared my Internet activities back, getting rid of lots of syndicated stuff from my Friends list (but no individuals, I hasten to add!). I’ve cut down the Usenet groups I read to the barest minimum.

At the end of the day, I think that I will have to give it my best shot, without losing sight of the things which I enjoy doing. After 3 to 6 months, I’ll re-evaluate. Perhaps at that time the market will be a bit more transparent and I can try something else. Or maybe I can shift my career into its final phase, trying something else that will give me the freedom I want while allowing me to make money with the experience I have.

…is food for thought as the holidays (Christmas in the UK, and Thanksgiving as an extra added attraction for the United States) sneak up on us. The local supermarket already has a small shelf of Christmas items on sale; by the beginning of October they will have 1/3 of the store devoted to the joys of an English Christmas.

Once you’ve been footloose and fancy-free for a while (a year and a half in my case) you find that adjusting your online life to your real life is very difficult indeed.

I have filled my livejournal friends page with lots of syndicated stuff that I need to stop reading, because I no longer have time to do so. I don’t think that I’ll have to delete any real friends, but all the syndicated stuff is going out the door, I guess.

I cannot take two hours a day anymore to read mail, USENET, and live journal before taking a leisurely shower and toddling off to the gym.

Right at the moment, it’s cheesing me off; however, I believe that once I get into the swing of things at work this will cease. At least, I hope so.

Otherwise, I’ll have to play the lottery more often in order to be able to live in the style to which I wish to become accustomed.

My friend Louise’s mother died two weeks ago, of complications from motor neurone disease (=Lou Gehrig’s Disease in the United States). She still had her mobility, and could drive, but had lost the ability to speak and to swallow easily. She wrote on her notepad a few weeks before she died: “I can’t spit, swallow, or lick. My sex life is shot.” (she has been widowed since the late 1990’s). She was obviously a very good mother and a fun person to be around, and the family was grateful that she had not lost her mobility when she died.

In any case, after the funeral there was the usual collation at her house, and lots of old friends from my first job here in London were there. While it wasn’t a happy occasion, it was rather jolly in many ways, and I’m glad I went.

It got me to thinking about my own funeral, (yes, I know it’s morbid, but what else are funerals for but to make the living think!) The hymns that Louise’s family picked were her mum’s favourites (All Things Bright and Beautiful, Guide me now, Thou Great Redeemer, and He Who Would Valiant Be) All very nice hymns.

I want one from the US Episcopal Church Hymnal: Number 293, I sing a song of the saints of God. It was written by a woman named Lesbia Scott (1989-1986) as a hymn for her children. The tune is Grand Isle, named after a place in Vermont. It’s a difficult tune to sing because until you’ve heard it, you don’t know where the notes and the words match up unless you can read music. It’s not generally known here in the UK (at least I’ve never heard it sung here) but I WILL have it sung, if it kills me.

I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green:
they were all of them saints of God and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and his love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus’s sake,
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
and there’s not any reason no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.

They lived not only in ages past,
there are hundreds of thousands still,
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’s will.
You can meet them is school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

After doing a web search, I came up with this webpage, giving the history of the hymn. It is known here, but not in the places I frequent.

Every time I hear or even read this hymn I break down. I have heard it at numerous funerals in the United States: many gay men choose it because of the fifth line of the first stanza.

And from comes a year-old post from soc.motss giving one gay man’s take on this hymn from beyond the grave.

…for two reasons. First, HWMBO returns from Singapore tomorrow morning very early indeed. I’ve been pretty lonely but thanks to the many friends who’ve gone out to dinner or lunch with me, especially c-in-b and , as well as Mark. It made it easier. Not sleeping, of course (especially when alone with only the stuffed teddy bears and dogs for company.

Second, I begin work tomorrow morning at 11 am. The contract that they said was “in the post” is still in the post, thanks to Royal Mail in SE1. But I have confirmation that I should turn up at 11 am. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work full-time again.

…is attributed to Hermann Goering at his trial for war crimes in Nurenburg:

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and its always a simple matter to drag the people along… All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. It works the same in every country.”

I think that Herr Tony might have seen this quotation somewhere or other…

You may remember a few days ago the report of a woman who strangled an intruder with her bare hands as he tried to kill her with a hammer. Well, there’s a new twist to it: her husband is alleged to have hired the intruder to kill his estranged wife.

There is a movie in all this…I know it.

Donald Duck and Daisy Duck were spending the night together in a hotel room and Donald wanted to have sex with Daisy. The first thing Daisy asked was, “Do you have a condom?” Donald frowned and said “No.”

Daisy told Donald that if he! didn’t get a condom, they could not have sex. “Maybe they sell them at the front desk,” she suggested. So Donald went down to the lobby and asked the hotel clerk if they had condoms.

“Yes, we do,” the clerk said, and pulled one out from under the counter and gave it to Donald. The clerk asked, “Would you like me to put that on your bill?

“No!” Donald quacked, “What kind of a pervert do you think I am?”

…is a sober discussion of British influence on the Emerald Isle. Warning: do not drink hot liquids while watching this. Your keyboard and monitor may be at risk if you do. You have been warned!

…Eris, the name of the Greek goddess of discord, and its moon is named Dysnomia, the spirit of lawlessness, according to the BBC, here. Fitting name for a heavenly body that sparked such discord among astronomers.

Your SAT Score of 1420 Means:

You Scored Higher Than Howard Stern You Scored Higher Than George W. Bush You Scored Higher Than Al Gore You Scored Higher Than David Duchovny You Scored Higher Than Natalie Portman You Scored Lower Than Bill Gates Your IQ is most likely in the 130-140 range Equivalent ACT score: 32 Schools that Fit Your SAT Score: Amherst College Dartmouth College Williams College University of Pennsylvania Columbia University

Well, they got that right (I am looking at my Columbia College diploma right now as I write). And I was one of the few Columbia College graduates who could actually read his diploma (it’s in Latin!)

Salvete, omnes!

…but in my excitement about getting a new job, I made an entry and marked it “Private” rather than “Friends Only”. So, I’ve remarked it and in case your Friends page has missed it, you can see it here.

Posting late at night is always dangerous!

Don’t try burgling Susan Kuhnhausen’s home. You may find it a very dangerous place indeed.

In fact, there is even more to this story than met the eye! Addendum 20071003

When my grandfather was very elderly and I was staying with my grandparents, one day my grandfather asked me to come with him on a trip to the store. His eyesight was kind of dim, and he asked me to navigate for him and make sure that no cars were coming. At least he could see something (the fact that we were going to the liquor store as he had run out of his favourite tipple also factors into it). A gentleman was caught driving dangerously a while back, but gave the officer quite a shock when he removed his sunglasses. His eyes had been removed after being damaged in a bomb blast in Iraq.

Despite the miscreant’s being blind, however, the judge’s sentence included a ban on driving for three years and the requirement that if he ever were to apply for a driver’s license, he was required to take an extended driving test.

The excuse was that the law required that sentence, even though the man was obviously unfit to drive, ever.

One wonders what he’ll do when the 3-year ban runs out.

Even here in the Old Country we’ve been inundated with stories about the tragic death of Steve Irwin, the Ozzie Croc guy (he used to be omnipresent on Discovery channel during their “Croc weekends”). Some Ozzies have been taking the law into their own hands, though…and a tribute game seems to be egging them on.

If you’re driving, keep your eyes on the road, and don’t do what this guy did. As the story points out, he had “head injuries”…no shit, Sherlock.

Well, there’s good news tonight: I finally got a new job. I was offered a job as an Associate Consultant with Tata Consulting Services here in London. The salary, along with benefits, pension, and bonus, is in total a bit more than I was getting at Searchspace. The job itself will involve travel, unfortunately, but what can one do? It will be a good opportunity to use my test management and process skills AND will make HWMBO very happy as I’ll be earning money again. Tata Consulting is a worldwide organisation headquartered in India but with many thousands of consultants here in the UK and Europe.

Went for the interview last week and the company was impressed, but wasn’t happy to offer what I was asking for. However, today I spoke with the big cheese, the head of the Testing Consultancy Group within the company, and he was impressed enough that he met me halfway in the salary I was looking for. The compensation includes a mobile phone and a laptop as well.

I start either on 18th or 25th September.

I spoke with my chum Steve of Electromind, and he was not surprised but was a bit sad that I was moving on. However, as I explained, having a regular salary had become something that I just needed. I feel good that in the last year and a half I’ve made money for not only myself but also Electromind; Steve is a good egg (as my sainted mother would say) and will be extremely successful in the consulting biz in years to come.

Of course, just before I went in to the interview a customer texted asking whether I could take an ISTQB course next week. Now the answer will definitely be no! I wish they’d asked last week about having one this week: a bit of extra cash is always welcome.

To top everything off, on the way to the Well Chinese Restaurant for dinner I found a penny on the ground! That’s supposed to turn up before the good luck, not after!

Cheers to everyone!!

If you’re an Arminian, watch out!

I’m sure that no one who reads my LJ ever uses such items, but you may want to tell your acquaintances who perhaps do indulge that it may be dangerous to your health to use that plastic dildo. Greenpease said it, so it must be true.

I suspect that the church supply companies will be having a run on those 2″ by 18″ beeswax numbers…

Apparently when BBC correspondents and staffers move on, their mates at work produce some sort of spoof tribute as a sendoff present. But the one they did for a co-worker who was off to Al-Jazeera seems to be a bit over the mark. My TV license fee at work.

I’ve seen a similar spoof front page tribute to a magazine editor, proudly framed on his wall. The difference is that my TV license fee didn’t pay for it.

A man walks up to the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter says, “You look like Einstein, but you have no idea the lengths some people will go to, to sneak in. Can you prove who you really are?”

Einstein ponders for a few seconds and asks, “Could I have a blackboard and some chalk?”

Saint Peter snaps his fingers and a blackboard and chalk instantly appear. Einstein proceeds to describe with arcane mathematics and symbols his theory of relativity.

Saint Peter is suitably impressed. “You really are Einstein! Welcome to Heaven!”

The next to arrive is Picasso.

Once again Saint Peter asks for his credentials.

Picasso asks, “Mind if I use that blackboard and chalk?” Saint Peter says, “Go ahead.”

Picasso erases Einstein’s equations and sketches a truly stunning mural with just a few strokes of chalk.

Saint Peter claps. “Surely you are the great artist you claim to be! Come on in!”

Then Saint Peter looks up and sees George W. Bush. Saint Peter scratches his head and says, “Einstein and Picasso both managed to prove their identity. How can you prove yours?”

George W looks bewildered and says, “Who the heck are Einstein and Picasso?”

Saint Peter sighs, “Come on in, George.”