I could do without the extra drama right now. I’ve been feeling somewhat run down.

I didn’t get enough work done during the week to meet my promised deadline of Monday, so thought i would have to pop into the office on Sun morning to get it packaged up and delivered.

Went out on Friday night to a Sam Smith’s pub for some great steak and a dodgy glass of wine. I felt really uncomfortable as I waited for Rachael to finish her meal, and when I got home I found great weals all over my body! Saturday morning we rushed out to get flea spray, thinking I’d carried something back from camping in the lakes but then my lips swelled up and I remembered that this looked a lot like what nearly killed my brother one Christmas many years ago. We headed down to the NHS drop-in centre for about 2:30 and were seen at 5:30 where I was pronounced to have a classic, textbook case of urticaria, and was helpfully informed that the sores itched like hell.

So that was nice. With one thing and another, discomfort, exhaustion and drowsiness, I never made it to Steve R’s BBQ though I did get as far as preparing a tropical salsa and boxing up all the percussion toys. Ho hum.

Today I got to the office around 10:30 and found I had no office keys and not enough fuel to get home and back so after all the extra faffing I guess I was here by about 11:10.

Now I’ve run the tests, updated the documents and built and run the installer, in between glugging piriton syrup and taking naps. Chances of an error-free release?

I think I’ll be popping in tomorrow morning in case things have gone horribly wrong, but sloping off again soon after to try and get a bit of sunday relaxation in! We’ll see what the bosses say.

Question #1

I decided to call myself sweavo after the lead character in “sweevo’s world” because I couldn’t get steve, stevec, steve.c, steve-o, steveo, or a billion other variants on yahoo or something. But I spelled it wrong.

The name sweavo is NOT pronounced sway-voe

Question #2

I constantly anticipate the imminent collapse of society: this is true, some part of my brain is always suggesting I should prepare for the collapse of society as we know it and be more self-sufficient.

I believe in God: This was not a fair option. I do believe in God, but not in the classic anthropomorphic way. I have a bigger problem with most religions. I guess you could say I have more faith in God than I do in People, and churches are really about People not God.

I believe you can only love one person. This is false, hence was the right answer. I believe it’s possible to love many people, though it gets confusing when you try to sort out the Jesus love, the thy-Neighbour love, the family love, the soul-mate love and the carnal sort.

My confidence is overcompensation for my shyness. True.

Question #3

When I am grumpy you can make me grumpier by:

Telling me it will all be all right: so what you’re saying is not only am I bewildered and worried but I’m WRONG too?! Right answer.

Ordering me to do something, Calling me Grumpy Chops, or Causing an emergency: All of these will usually cause me to snap out of it by giving me a sense of direction.

Question #4

Of the following, which is my greatest regret: that I
never learned to just get on with things.

That I didn’t marry my fiancee? This is in fact one of the very few things in my life I am 100% sure about.

Question #5

Which of the following holds the greatest fascination for me?

Vintage computers: you should get half a point for this

Running Water: the right answer. I could model an elastic band or a vintage computer in C and I could put images on the net. But not running water, it’s responsible for the landscape, it does amazing things to light, and the currents and eddies present in a rapid completely defy my attempts at mathematical modelling.

World Politics: this does not fascinate me, it repels me.

An elastic band: Give yourself 90% of a point, as an early school report of mine said “Steven will happily spend 20 minutes playing with an elastic band”…

Question #6

I regard Liberalism as: A desirable luxury with a cost

This question was a bit cruel since I think I come across more right wing than I really am. The responses bear that out.

Question #7

In my first house, what might have changed the entire course of my life?

The Fire Brigade: the fire brigade so nearly featured in my stay in that house, as I was threatened with being firebombed out of my home.

The RNLI: a decoy

A crossbow: This is the right answer. During my stay there I had lots of trouble with kids throwing stuff at and through the windows, harassment and burglary. After the failure of the police and council to ease the problems, my housemates and I came to the sincere and considered opinion that nothing short of a crossbow bolt through the knees would stop these kids. If I had had access to one I may have used it in my desperation and now I would have a criminal record.

A Hammond Organ: This option is here for the fantasy value. I did own a Hammond organ while I stayed there, but it was not going to change my life.

Question #8

What dance am I worst at

Rumba: the right answer. I only know a basic step.

Salsa on 1, Salsa on 2, Cha cha cha: These are so nearly the same dance that it’s impossible to be a beginner at one of them when you’re advanced in another one.

Question #9

Ah, question 9, soon: val

This is an in-joke. val originated when someone hit Return instead of backspace in a chatroom and quit unexpectedly with only half of a goodbye message. Val now stands for “… and when you take into account the context, the sentence so far, and the relative irrelevance of what I’m going to say, there’s no need to finish this val”

it will be question 10, it will be over, you can go back to work: All true enough, but superfluous, hence “val”.

Question #10

Of the following, which is my greatest regret:

Not having been born in south america: not that bothered on balance, though I’d love to visit places where dancing and drumming are a part of the culture.

Being born into the 20th century: I’m one of those people who often wish they were born in an earlier age. However, I reasoned that had I been born in the eighteenth century, I would have lived my life preposessed with the idea that I ought to have been born in the sixteenth.

Waiting till 33 to start getting into latin music: nah, this is among the smallest of my regrets.

Spending ages on this quiz instead of doing something productive: At the time of writing, I was really regretting having set myself 10 questions to think up!

Oo, do me! do me!

Create your own friendquiz here

This is my variant on Jerk Chicken, with a smoky, slightly toxic flavour, that I made tonight.

Ingredients:

• Thyme
• Garlic
• Spring Onions
• Vegetable Oil
• Chili pepper
• Allspice
• Cinnamon
• a Towel
• Nutmeg
• Black Pepper
• Ginger
• Lime Juice
• Lots of water
• Metal Saw
• Bay Leaves
• Axe
• Angle Grinder
• 1lb of Chicken Breasts

Put the spring onions, oil, lime juice, ginger, herbs and spices in a blender and mix to a paste. Place the chicken breasts in a shallow dish and spread with the marinade. Place aside to marinade for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, answer the phone to a freecycler who is coming round to look at your bed. When freecycler arrives, show her the bed. Attempt to manhandle bed down the stairs with assistance of freecycler’s manly friend. Get stuck at the bottom of the stairs. Take bed back up the stairs.

Rotate bed.

Attempt to get bed down the stairs and get wedged again. Try brute force, and put a sizeable hole in plasterboard, making it impossible to slide the bed back up the stairs either.

Realise that the previous owners must have cut the bed in half and repaired it after taking it upstairs, and peel off all the duct tape holding it together.

Discover that it’s not just the duct tape but also a long metal spiral holding it together.

Give up and send freecycler and manly friend home.

Figure that an angle grinder will buzz through the metal spiral quite quickly but find that you have misplaced safety goggles. In order to preserve eyesight, apply angle grinder to bed while looking away.

Stop grinder and look to find the bed is now on fire.

Realise that bed is now on fire and is also still stuck halfway down the stairs!

Blow on flames. Realise that blowing doesn’t work on anything much bigger than a candle.

Get towel and plant spray and put out bed fire. Get past bed somehow to deactivate smoke alarm.

Put away grinder.

Attempt to saw through the metal with a rubbish metal saw.

Get axe and wood saw from shed and begin cutting/hacking up the wooden frame.

Notice a terrible smell and find that the fire has continued to smoulder inside the divan and has caught again.

Rip a big hole in the divan and liberally spray with water.

Taking the axe, and care not to hack walls, legs, etc, hack the corner off the bed to allow it to slide the rest of the way down the stairs.

Put bed in garden, and observing that it is still alight, liberally douse with water from the garden hose.

Open all the windows.

Shower.

Take the chicken to your friend’s barbecue, where you will be haunted by the smell of smoke until you realise you are at a barbecue.

Discover that the chicken tastes great, and have a great time at the barbecue.

Wow what a great afternoon/evening/night!

This was at the tynemouth festival in North Shields. I had expected ACAS to be slower, listening music, what with them featuring some ex- Buena Vista Social Club members (the oldest band member was 81!) But actually they kicked butt, after an opening number slightly weakened by the sound engineering, which took half a song or so to get the levels right and put the guts into the sound. But I get ahead of myself.

The gig was at tynemouth priory, within the ruined castle on a rock sticking out into the sea. The weather was fantastic and we spent the afternoon loafing on the grass listening to live “english folk” from Bellowhead (it was more afro than that, and featured some interesting orchestral jazz stylings from the 3? brass and 4 string players) and something more identifiably folkesy from Liza Carthy & the Ratcatchers. Next up was Natacha Atlas, which was advertised as “world” music but was more modern than that moniker suggests. It was essentially RnB with wailing bellydancing vocals. The performance was a little lacklustre it has to be said. I enjoyed the bits I listened to while I nipped out to the car to get a coat. All the bands were introduced by a terrible compère. We decided she was called Carol and was responsible for “community events coordination” at the council. She wore black office trousers and a spangly jester top, and seemed to pause after everything she said for us to say “uh huh”… perhaps she’d been coached about public speaking and been told to pretend she was just talking to one person.

After a long pause while the sun went down and an authentic glamorous rumba washer-woman* distributed about 10,000 towels around the stage, we got the Afro-cuban allstars. 4 singers, 3.1 percussionists (one of the singers played guiro off mic), something like 6 or 8 brass, piano and trés made up the ensemble, and they had a great presence on stage: the singers wore coordinated suits and danced some great cuban salsa basics in the B sections. Their “last” number coincided with an enormous fireworks show across the far side of the Tyne, visible beyond the priory ruins. Great! After that there was a percussion solo or two and then a final number from the band.

It were bermilliant! Rachael and I danced to the wrong sort of music on the wrong sort of floor with the wrong sort of shoes and didn’t care. After all that sea air the trip home involved a red bull and Rachael attempting to keep me talking to keep me alert, though it quickly descended into a sort of sleep-talking thing…

* I can’t find a decent image of this kind of outfit online. this from here is the best I can do.

I cheated. The challenge was to take a photo for converting to monochrome, but I set the camera to monochrome and took this. It was by way of a warm up but I never got round to the warm part of taking a colour photo for black and white-ising.

The view from the office window on a summer’s day.

So that’s it then. Looks like in the World vs. Rachael, I’ve chosen Rachael. Would be nice if the World got used to the idea but there we go. This is where you find out who your true friends are I guess.

Stu exhorted us to Get In There so I had a go.

Kim Giving Me a Puzzled Look:

My Office:

My Office:

My Office:

I like wearing a suit. Makes me stand up straight. They’re expensive and inconvenient but when you put it on you know that you mean business. Or wedding. Or whatever you put the suit on for.

I like being casual. Dressing for comfort, light, airy clothes, minimal encumbrance.

On my impending client visit I have to go somewhere between these two extremes. Smart, presentable, but not powerdressy or too formal… Best help so far was in the Van Heusen place in the outlet mall. I asked her to make me look all German and Softwarey. The lady got all maternal and dressed me up in a glossy brown number with pale blue shirt and diagonally striped tie. I looked pretty good, actually. But I decided the suit wasn’t much better than the brown suit I already have, at least not £175 better. Tonight I’ll try the shirt and tie with the suit I have and will know whether to spend the £175 tomorrow lunchtime before flying out to Deutschland in the afternoon.

Don’t know why I felt compelled to share that.

Somebody (I wish I remembered who because they’d get my vote) was talking on the radio the other day and resonated with something that’s been at the back of my brain (an engineer’s brain) for some time. There was talk about legislating something better, like the NHS or the Police forces or somesuch. This person said we don’t need any more legislation, we need to better implement what we have. This is right on the button.

Some examples:

When I phoned in a statement, the officer read it back to me and I had some changes to make. At one point, the officer had to stop me because when I added a word, the last word on that line fell off the end or the line and he needed to type it in at the start of the next line, and a word fell off the end of that line and then … etc.

When I phoned in an abandoned car, they took a couple of hours to get back to me and ask me were the road was that I’d told them about. The answer was: opposite York police station. The trick here was that although I’d dialled the York number, the call had gone to Northallerton, and the switchboard had no idea that the call was made to the York number. When I later mentioned this to the staff at the front desk they said they have the same problem. They don’t know whether they are calling their own switchboard or someone else’s.

A friend had a bunch of stuff stolen which later showed up on ebay. When explaining this to the police, the police officer said he would have to look at home because they weren’t allowed to use the internet at work.

So here is my (software guy’s) sweeping manifesto for Plice reform

• Give them text editors with word wrap! Notepad is better than what they were forced to deal with!
• Give them and us phones that go to the places they say they’ll go, and give the person picking up the phone a clue about where the person is calling from!
• Allow them to police the internet!

It’s what I see right across the board. Education, health, and policing need some time to implement and refine their tools and processes - time spent with the government NOT putting its oar in and taking up resources in steering groups and fact-finding missions etc.