Ministry mumblings
24/08/2004 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIckle Iz is feeling extremely snoozie today and will soon be pottering off to the lair for a good night's sleep. But first had to make a token gesture to the Cornelius Fudge School of Ethics and write out the list of the newspaper articles and stuff that we have so far for some silly 'critical evaluation' assignment. Iz was supposed to have written up a couple of the reviews but got sort of sidetracked while worshipping at a certain Oracle. They want us to write the silly things on a weekly basis as the main aim is less to write brilliant reviews but more (well so they say) to serve as a record in development of thinking skills as the course progresses. They claim that if we do the whole thing in the last couple of weeks - they will know (Aside of course from the issue of the dates of the articles)
Iz thinks that is a bit of an arrogant claim as it is based on the assumption that we knew absolutely nothing about the subject before starting.
Well. What else is new in Izzieland. Both Saturday and Sunday the Iz was rostered on to do morning shifts. Normally that is a reason for great rejoicing as we then have all afternoon to go pottering, loitering, coffee crawling or sunset watching. It was sunny on Saturday but all the Iz wanted to do is lie out in the garden under the trees in the sun for a snooze. Originally intended to get up at 3 in order to have a cuppa and get the 4pm bus into town. Iz had some bottlies to buy.
The sunshine was so nice that Iz lounged a bit longer and got the 5pm bus instead. Was not impressed to discover that the bottle shop did not behave like a civilized bottle shop and close at 8.30pm but closed at 5. Most peeved indeed as that was the main purpose for going to those shops. So instead of getting a nice tasty Jacobs Creek Shiraz 2002 for 8 silver sickles (it normally costs $$10) had to go to Vintage Cellars and make do with some Tyrells Shiraz which was more expensive and not as good. Iz normally turns her nose up at Jacobs Creek but had some at a tasting the other week and was surprised how good it was. 2002 seems to be a very good year for reds indeed.
Sunday was all wet and windy and Iz got bits of drizzle while riding home on her broomstick. After a swim in the bath tub and some coffees and munchies - was time for yet more snoozing. Izzie's excuse was first - she was tired, second she had no interest in doing anything else - and certainly not reading managerial accounting text books and thirdly - it would be the first night for Iz to visit chatland in three weeks so she would need all that sleep in order to be able to stay up until 3 or so in the morning at the ma's place.
Since Kaasirpent's post about the most fascinating new Live Journal toy last week, Iz was so so looking forward to finally fiddling around with the thing. First step was to download .NET. In the Min it takes less than a second - not to download but for a screen to appear saying that such activities were not only Verboten but also not possible. And since Izzie's hacking abilitie are zilch, she had to take their word for it.
Well - being a dial up line, Iz was expecting it to take ages but never did quite expect it to be one whole hour (Mind you - downloading Netscape 7 back in Dec 2002 took more than four hours! That makes Firefox particularly impressive)
Iz did a test run on her bits and bobs journal which was only 23kb. It worked perfectly although we did not quite work out how to use the search gadgets or any of the geeky features. But the one big problem - this assumption that most people don't have to share their computers. Since one did not need to enter a username or password to look at the archive files - Iz was not going to leave any serpentine snippets lurking around for Dursleys to snoop at.
Did send a copy to Izzie's online owlery at gmail but figured that it might be pointless since one would probably need .NET installed to read the damned thing. Sure enough - there is some Visual .NET 2003 over here but while the content seems to be there in some strange form, it is certainly not userfriendly and pretty like in the version we had on Sunday night.
Today Iz had one of these newfangled shifts at work that everyone likes when payday comes around but no one particularly wants to do. 7.30- to 4 or 5pm is ok in an office when only your brain gets exercised but if you have a job involving lots of physical activity - especially after years where most shifts have been 5.5 or 6 hours - then it is just too much. The hardest bit is not having an afternoon to look forward to like you do when the shift finishes at 1pm. Iz was so so tempted to go snooozies but instead went and got some milk and bread and the weekly ration of net cafe cheapie hours and decided that Wednesday morning would be snoozies instead. (Yesss. Bad Iz just could not be bothered turning up tomorrow at 8.30 am for yet more insufferably boring squawking by that silly accounting lecturer)
But we will be at the min before midday because one of the lefty sorts of groups is showing "Roger and me" not free but very cheap. Iz enjoyed "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" so much that she wants another fix of Mr Moore. Izzie loves his wicked twisted iconoclastic sense of humour. A sort of Michael Leunig gone feral and on steroids.
And since the new shifts began last week, Iz does not have to be clock watching as she needs to be at work at 5pm and not 3pm like it has been for the last three years in the afternoons.
Came across a very interesting book in the supermarket with a title along the lines "Eat chocolate, drink alcohol and be fit and healthy" A title like that would make the Iz curious but the stuff is nothing but basic commonsense about moderation and that if it takes 10 years of a certain lifestyle to get to a certain level of fatness and unfitness, then it really is crazy to expect to be able to change in 10 weeks and certainly NOT in 10 days.
There was some very interesting comments about how often lethargy, lack of enthusiasm, grumpiness and tiredness etc are often caused not by depression but crazy fluctuating blood sugar levels caused by a crappy diet. Izzie had to admit that it all sounds terribly familiar.
Iz thinks that is a bit of an arrogant claim as it is based on the assumption that we knew absolutely nothing about the subject before starting.
Well. What else is new in Izzieland. Both Saturday and Sunday the Iz was rostered on to do morning shifts. Normally that is a reason for great rejoicing as we then have all afternoon to go pottering, loitering, coffee crawling or sunset watching. It was sunny on Saturday but all the Iz wanted to do is lie out in the garden under the trees in the sun for a snooze. Originally intended to get up at 3 in order to have a cuppa and get the 4pm bus into town. Iz had some bottlies to buy.
The sunshine was so nice that Iz lounged a bit longer and got the 5pm bus instead. Was not impressed to discover that the bottle shop did not behave like a civilized bottle shop and close at 8.30pm but closed at 5. Most peeved indeed as that was the main purpose for going to those shops. So instead of getting a nice tasty Jacobs Creek Shiraz 2002 for 8 silver sickles (it normally costs $$10) had to go to Vintage Cellars and make do with some Tyrells Shiraz which was more expensive and not as good. Iz normally turns her nose up at Jacobs Creek but had some at a tasting the other week and was surprised how good it was. 2002 seems to be a very good year for reds indeed.
Sunday was all wet and windy and Iz got bits of drizzle while riding home on her broomstick. After a swim in the bath tub and some coffees and munchies - was time for yet more snoozing. Izzie's excuse was first - she was tired, second she had no interest in doing anything else - and certainly not reading managerial accounting text books and thirdly - it would be the first night for Iz to visit chatland in three weeks so she would need all that sleep in order to be able to stay up until 3 or so in the morning at the ma's place.
Since Kaasirpent's post about the most fascinating new Live Journal toy last week, Iz was so so looking forward to finally fiddling around with the thing. First step was to download .NET. In the Min it takes less than a second - not to download but for a screen to appear saying that such activities were not only Verboten but also not possible. And since Izzie's hacking abilitie are zilch, she had to take their word for it.
Well - being a dial up line, Iz was expecting it to take ages but never did quite expect it to be one whole hour (Mind you - downloading Netscape 7 back in Dec 2002 took more than four hours! That makes Firefox particularly impressive)
Iz did a test run on her bits and bobs journal which was only 23kb. It worked perfectly although we did not quite work out how to use the search gadgets or any of the geeky features. But the one big problem - this assumption that most people don't have to share their computers. Since one did not need to enter a username or password to look at the archive files - Iz was not going to leave any serpentine snippets lurking around for Dursleys to snoop at.
Did send a copy to Izzie's online owlery at gmail but figured that it might be pointless since one would probably need .NET installed to read the damned thing. Sure enough - there is some Visual .NET 2003 over here but while the content seems to be there in some strange form, it is certainly not userfriendly and pretty like in the version we had on Sunday night.
Today Iz had one of these newfangled shifts at work that everyone likes when payday comes around but no one particularly wants to do. 7.30- to 4 or 5pm is ok in an office when only your brain gets exercised but if you have a job involving lots of physical activity - especially after years where most shifts have been 5.5 or 6 hours - then it is just too much. The hardest bit is not having an afternoon to look forward to like you do when the shift finishes at 1pm. Iz was so so tempted to go snooozies but instead went and got some milk and bread and the weekly ration of net cafe cheapie hours and decided that Wednesday morning would be snoozies instead. (Yesss. Bad Iz just could not be bothered turning up tomorrow at 8.30 am for yet more insufferably boring squawking by that silly accounting lecturer)
But we will be at the min before midday because one of the lefty sorts of groups is showing "Roger and me" not free but very cheap. Iz enjoyed "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" so much that she wants another fix of Mr Moore. Izzie loves his wicked twisted iconoclastic sense of humour. A sort of Michael Leunig gone feral and on steroids.
And since the new shifts began last week, Iz does not have to be clock watching as she needs to be at work at 5pm and not 3pm like it has been for the last three years in the afternoons.
Came across a very interesting book in the supermarket with a title along the lines "Eat chocolate, drink alcohol and be fit and healthy" A title like that would make the Iz curious but the stuff is nothing but basic commonsense about moderation and that if it takes 10 years of a certain lifestyle to get to a certain level of fatness and unfitness, then it really is crazy to expect to be able to change in 10 weeks and certainly NOT in 10 days.
There was some very interesting comments about how often lethargy, lack of enthusiasm, grumpiness and tiredness etc are often caused not by depression but crazy fluctuating blood sugar levels caused by a crappy diet. Izzie had to admit that it all sounds terribly familiar.
