Home again, home again

Left work at 17:00 last night, headed for Prestwick Airport.

I needed to be there for a 21:00 flight, which meant check-in at 20:00. I had nothing to do in town (I spent about 3 minutes drooling in Forbidden Planet, spotted about £70 of books I wanted and then ran away before my wallet leapt from my pocket and assaulted the nice man behind the counter), so I ended up arriving at 19:00, left with an hour and a half to kill before boarding.

I phoned Erin, chatted to her for a bit, but she had things to do, and I don't actually like long phone conversations, so I went off to eat.

Well, eating usually implies food, but the limp chicken-burger they sold me just reminded me far too much of a certain urban myth for me to actually enjoy eating it. I finished it anyway, and then lounged around for an hour, too uncomfortable to concentrate on my current book. I ended up buying a copy of Mojo, a special on 1000 days in the life of the beatles, covering their journey from mop-pop to psychedlia. All interesting stuff, but I'd have enjoyed it more when I was going through my "rabid fascination with what it is to be celebrity" phase about 4 years ago.

I really missed having a computer with me. I kept wanting to make notes on things, add livejournal entries and generally write, but was completely unable to. Phrases

I eventually hit Stanstead where my dad picked me up and drove me back to my parents house (which I keep wanting to call home, even if I do own half of the house I actually live in), and I collapsed into sleep. And then woke up at 7:30 this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep. The terrible things that work does to me... I fully intend to get back out of this habit by the end of next week, just in time to go back to work again...

Day

I've spent most of the day playing with my father's brand spanking new PC.

I put AVG onto it. I put Zonealarmonto it. (In the 4 hours since then, we've been probed 4 times). I put on Getright and Apache and PHP and MySQL and updated drivers and generally revelled in the sheer marvellousness of a machine that actually works and has a 17" flatscreen.

I'm going to say that again:

17" Flat Screen

Let it not be said that I'm not ridiculously jealous.

I'm also copying across a 1.6GB music collection from one PC to the other. By Disk. Fortunately they're ZIP disks and hold 100MB a time. Still, not recommended for a fun time.

The fun time will happen when I also get CIV 3 onto this machine. I may emerge later to type more.

I may not.

Even bigger than that

I've been having problems walking through doors in the last few days.

Rahaelisaid:
andrewducker is another person I randomly found, who has really insightful entries and posts geek stuff that occasionally makes me laugh, and occasionally makes me wince and say "I've been there." He's really, really smart.

Rahaeli is, of course, also smart, creative and interesting herself. My girlfriend Erin has so far gotten jealous of her twice, and I've been forced to tell her that I'm not in the 52% of the population that Rahaeli is likely to find attractive.

Anyway. hurrah for Rahaeli, who is overworked, underpaid and generally not appreciated enough.

Darn forgetfulness

Anyway, the reason for posting Rahaeli's comments (see below) wasn't to thank her, but to point out that people keep leaping to these conclusions about me that I'm somehow remarkably smart/fantastic/able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, when I'm actually not that godlike. Yes, I'm quite smart. Yes, I think. But I also make fairly frequent mistakes, forget things, am clumsy, dance like an epileptic chicken, have ridiculous hair and constantly get corrected by Erin, Joe and a whole host of others (actually, mostly just Erin and Joe, as I'm mostly likely to actually discuss stuff with them).

But anyway, the point is that I'm acutely aware of my failings, and am determined to slowly work through them and be a better person. Yes, I'm good at some things (excellent programmer, for instance), but it just feels wrong concentrating just on my good points.

When you get down to it, I'm a person, just like everyone else and I think it's important for me to remember that.

Hmm, I think I want to segue into the stuff I learnt from reading about celebrities (see post this morning), but dinner is on it's way. Maybe later.

And I try, and I try

I try to keep some empathy with ordinary people. And I try not to look down on people. And I try to not feel superior.

But when Will Young sells 800,000 copies of his single in one afternoon, despite being obviously completely manufactured, not having a single original idea in his head, and patently being nothing more than a method for record companies to make money, I say it's time to take off and nuke the site from orbit.