Well, today was our big monthly shopping day, when we spend the generously large pension our bountiful Government showers upon us.
We drove to Dumfries; I headed straight for Waterstones. A few weeks ago, B won some book tokens in a crossword competition; he didn’t want them so I got them. So I was expecting to have the fairly novel experience of going into a bookshop and getting brand new books. I was after two books in particular – Jay Griffiths’ Wild, which a friend keeps recommending to me and which our local library can’t seem to get a copy of; and a CSS handbook, preferably The CSS Hanbook, or anything thorough that at least mentions CSS3.
But I was to be disappointed. The Jay Griffiths book was out of print until May; and the computer books section was absolutely feeble, with CSS only covered in a single general web design book.
A good quarter of that tiny section was devoted to large-format, large print books with titles like “The Internet For Seniors” and “Computing For The Over-50s”. As an over-50s myself (I loathe and despise that horrid imported US term ‘senior’) who has been using computers for nearly two decades and who has built the machine she is writing this on, I get incensed by the attitude that we’re all terrified technophobes who have no idea about computing. “Now, dear, this is called a ‘mouse’ – no, it’s not a real mouse…..” Ugh. Without those “Look, Granny, this what you can do with a computer!” books taking up the already limited shelf space, the shop might have been able to stock some really useful computing books.

Oh well. Then it was off to Morrisons and Lidl. Lidl is a pretty peculiar shop in some ways. Every time I go in, I have this odd feeling that I’ve stepped through a space-vortex portal and landed in Mannaheim or Jarlsberg. It’s a German chain (I think), so it has loads of stuff from Europe and all the labels are in at least six languages, and all of it very cheap. There’s piles of strange-looking tinned and packed foodstuffs that are presumably staple fare in places like Belgium or Denmark. Plus, it sometimes sells very strange general goods that I wouldn’t expect to see in any supermarket. For instance, for about two months last year, it had lots and lots of horse stuff on sale – harness, blankets, tack, riding gear etc; this in a town where the closest the locals get to horses is when they’re shouting at the screens in the bookies. Then they tried selling lots and lots of indoor exercise stuff, to a customer base that thinks that an evening popping open cans of beer constitute adequate exercise.
This month, they’re selling home-security equipment – cameras, alarms, random-light switches and so on. They seem to be getting their customer based sized up at last.

Then it was home, though some appalling weather, to an unlit fire and aching legs….. I had some work to do on the comp, but now I’m wickered…..

Nighty night…..

…As I have written before, I enter a lot of online competitions. I spend two or three hours a week on it, entering maybe up to a hundred or more. So I’ve seen a wide range of prizes – cars, electronic equipment, computers, laptops, books, DVDs, CDs , kitchen equipment, furniture, mobiles, holidays, days out, cash…..
But this prize made my jaw drop:Clear your debts with an IVA from Debt Lifeboat. If you need proof that the debt crisis is bad, this is it, I suppose….

I don’t remember sitting for this portrait:

From

What Would It Take To Make You Feel Comfortable?

It’s extremely stressful spending all day pretending to be normal. Often we need to give ourselves the personal accommodations that we need to be comfortable in our worlds, and avoid being over-stressed — regardless of whether or not others think the stresses or accommodations are “important�.

Living in a beautiful tourist area, we are unfortunately used to having visitors chuck their rubbish over our roads, verges and pristine open spaces.
For instance, last summer we took a drive out to Loch Dee. This is a lovely little inland loch in the Galloway Forest in the middle of hills, fields and woods, with the nearest house miles away. By the waterside, we found the remains of a fire, piled with cans and plastic bottles; also, bizarrely, an electric kettle. There was simply no excuse for this; even if the louts had come on foot (which was unlikely – who packs an electric kettle in a rucksack?), the empty cans and bottles would have been much lighter to take back than than carrying them here.
We frequently visit the loch and its surroundings, and this rubbish-dumping is all too common there. Some of the dumpers make the effort of putting their garbage into rubbish bags and leaving them at the roadside; they evidently think that the council rubbish trucks come round there every week (the rubbish is actually taken away by hard-working volunteers two or three times a year, or by the local farmer if the sheep are likely to get at the bags).
There are times – such as when I found a load of takeaway food cartons chucked into a local gateway 200 yards from a rubbish bin – that I indulge in rich fantasies of tracking down the vandals to their homes, knocking, on their doors and asking if they’d like their rubbish back.
If only! Last month, I found no less than three little bags of dog turds on a single stretch of roadside verge; the owner(s) had been responsible enough to put their pet’s poo into special pet-poo bags (a good idea in farmland and wild places, as it keep parasites out of the general animal population), but weirdly had just left them there for somebody else to pick up.
This morning, I found similar example. I climbed the hill opposite our house to take some photos. It was hard work for me, even though I took the gentle route winding up through the woods. At the top, completely puffed out, I sat on the bench there. And looked down.
And found myself looking at a torn condom wrapper.
Now I’ve nothing against outdoor recreation of any sort. And I’m all in favour of safe sex. But, having been responsible enough to use a condom, why the **** didn’t these people take their responsibility a little bit further and carry their rubbish away with them?

…Tried installing XAMMP yesterday. Couldn’t get it to work – the Apache server wouldn’t run and MySQL threw up dozens of cascading error messages that filled the bloody screen. Looking for answers on the various forums proved complete arse – post after post filled with nerds-delight jargon. It was like getting a new car that won’t start and being told by mechanics to “try adjusting the differential median torque” or “have you tried spronging the ignition wazzock?”
Argh. I’ve uninstalled it and I’ll try installing it again, but not using the installer this time.
If that doesn’t work, I might just try XAMMPP-Light. This was the version I installed just before my last hard drive went by-by. I strongly suspect the drive’s MBR was trashed by a virus; XAMMP-Light was the last thing I downloaded and executed before everything went tits-up, so I’m leery about trying it again. However, before the drive died, the program installed almost without problems – just a very minor bit of tinkering and it ran perfectly well.

….that 1 day all kittehs will b jugdz not on ze clr of der furr butt on ze cntntz uv der fudbowlz…

moar funny pictures

….indeed, it was so gusty last night that it kept me awake. The windows and doors were rattling and it sounded like soggy sheep were being randomly tossed against our walls.
It was almost totally dark as well, with only the muted light from the hallway leaking into the bedroom. That, together with the noise of the weather, made me feel very uneasy. There are certain specific conditions that can trigger off a panic attack for me, and this was getting to be one of them. I could feel the anxiety prowling in the pitch-black corners, waiting to pounce. I lay for a long time practicing relaxation and controlled breathing, keeping the beast at bay.
Then, as I was looking at the window, the entire sky lit up in a dazzlingly bright electric blue flash that was over in an instant. Simultaneously, the house circuit-breaker banged and the hall light went out. Oh goody – a power line, perhaps a whole pylon, was down and the electric was off.
And the darkness spread, the beast prowled closer. I grabbed the wind-up torch that I keep at my bedside for just such emergencies, went downstairs and checked the electric meter in the porch – it was out. I opened the door a little – the wind nearly took it out of my hand. The rain was lashing sideways, the trees were screaming. I’d intended going out to the roadside to see if the streetlights were on in the village, but this was no weather for any sort of venturing outside.
After checking that the doors and windows were secure, I lit a nightlight, took it upstairs with me in a holder and left it in the hall, just outside the bedroom door. Leaving the door ajar, I could see a faint glow spread across the floor. There was no beast prowling there, so I concentrated on that pool of light until sleep came again.