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Strange Days
29/03/2005 03:31 pmIzzie is back in nasty netcafe land after her weekend adventures with the Preciousss Portkey.
It was a most peculiar weekend indeed. From the unexpected visit of Vernon and Petunia on Friday (and the subsequent abandonment of the Izzie's usual Good Friday rituals) to the very nasty icky sticky muggy day on Easter Sunday - it just did not feel like a proper Easter at all. Number one rule we guess is that the Gods laugh at those mortals who dare to make plans.
Already last Monday - after not having our beach picnic because we were too busy looking at all the amazing sculptures by the sea, the Iz decided that Easter Sunday would be a perfect opportunity to come back and make a day of it - picnic and all. The exhibition finished yesterday so we decided that would take precedence over the traditional Easter Sunday visits to our favorite lunatic asylum.
(PS - the silly site with all the sculpture stuff does not let you link to individual webpages in the URL. So you got to go to the Gallery to see all the best stuff from this year and previous years)
So after perusing the bus time tables and discovering that the connections to the ma's place were really rather good - it was only a matter of choosing between staying until 6.50pm or 7.50pm and getting the connecting bus at either 7.30 or 8.30.
And then - even before setting off to see those strange sculptures, we would first have to visit the ma's place to bring over the Precious so that we could play with it later in the evening.
Well. All those plans went out the window when we woke up on Easter Sunday to a miserable grey day. Not only dull and colourless but worst of all - icky sticky and horridly muggy. The sort of day where even staying in bed was too strenuous let alone pottering off to a beach somewhere.
So we decided - we will go to the ma's place with the Precious and her 3 bottles of Taylors reds and will not even bother getting an all day bus ticket but just a one zone - in the unlikely event that we might decide to potter off to downtown Dursleyville.
Since the usual bus does not run on weekends or public holidays, the Iz had a twenty minute walk to the ma's which goes right past our day job. Izzie could not help but think that apart from going in the opposite direction - this weather was uncannily like last year's Stinking Christmas. Actually - it was only about 32 celsius or such but infinitely more unpleasant than the 41.9 which we had on Wednesday. That was hot but dry and it was actually a very nice day indeed.
So, after arriving at Number 4 Privet Drive, Petunia and Izzie spent the afternoon doing little more than demolishing a bottle or two. Around 6pm Izzie finally perfected the incantations that transformed the Preciousss into a Portkey to Cyberia. Now that was worth another toast or two;)
So the next big adventure was downloading the mysterious x11 which for some strange reason was going to take a ridiculous 6 hours. It got stuck one third of the way through and when the storms started, it was time to cut our losses and run before the nasty green lightses tried to zap the Preciousss.
Next day - we had better luck and got the thing in its box in less than 2 hours. Dialup so sucks. But the alternative for Izzie is nothing at all or the eternal search for some wifi cafe.
After years and years of relying on Ministry machines and nasty netcafes where security issues were always some one else's problem, the Iz now has to learn all this stuff herself and be always in a state of constant vigilance. The most tricky thing is learning the art of organizing files and stuff so that the innards of the Preciousss does not resemble some nest of vipers. With Izzie's attempts to tame her newly acquired Open Office, a nest of venomous vipers is just what we have indeed. Everything we have tried works perfectly so far - fonts, italics, cut and paste and even lots of pretty shades of green but there is one minor problem. This little critter is not very co-operative when it comes to saving our preciouss documents where we wants them to go. It has it's own ideas and they seem most peculiar indeed. We will probably upgrade from 1.0.3 to the more civilized recent versions that save stuff without such fuss but any download bigger than 50mb, the Izzie looks on most unfavorably indeed.
Yesterday the weather was nice and sunny so we finally did go off to see those sculptures. Some looked like lumps of junk just dumped on the ground and others were stunningly gorgeousss. But the big event of the week is that the Izzie finally gets her old Thursdays and Fridays back as days off. So no more confuzzled and bemuddled serpents from now on - or so we hope.
It was a most peculiar weekend indeed. From the unexpected visit of Vernon and Petunia on Friday (and the subsequent abandonment of the Izzie's usual Good Friday rituals) to the very nasty icky sticky muggy day on Easter Sunday - it just did not feel like a proper Easter at all. Number one rule we guess is that the Gods laugh at those mortals who dare to make plans.
Already last Monday - after not having our beach picnic because we were too busy looking at all the amazing sculptures by the sea, the Iz decided that Easter Sunday would be a perfect opportunity to come back and make a day of it - picnic and all. The exhibition finished yesterday so we decided that would take precedence over the traditional Easter Sunday visits to our favorite lunatic asylum.
(PS - the silly site with all the sculpture stuff does not let you link to individual webpages in the URL. So you got to go to the Gallery to see all the best stuff from this year and previous years)
So after perusing the bus time tables and discovering that the connections to the ma's place were really rather good - it was only a matter of choosing between staying until 6.50pm or 7.50pm and getting the connecting bus at either 7.30 or 8.30.
And then - even before setting off to see those strange sculptures, we would first have to visit the ma's place to bring over the Precious so that we could play with it later in the evening.
Well. All those plans went out the window when we woke up on Easter Sunday to a miserable grey day. Not only dull and colourless but worst of all - icky sticky and horridly muggy. The sort of day where even staying in bed was too strenuous let alone pottering off to a beach somewhere.
So we decided - we will go to the ma's place with the Precious and her 3 bottles of Taylors reds and will not even bother getting an all day bus ticket but just a one zone - in the unlikely event that we might decide to potter off to downtown Dursleyville.
Since the usual bus does not run on weekends or public holidays, the Iz had a twenty minute walk to the ma's which goes right past our day job. Izzie could not help but think that apart from going in the opposite direction - this weather was uncannily like last year's Stinking Christmas. Actually - it was only about 32 celsius or such but infinitely more unpleasant than the 41.9 which we had on Wednesday. That was hot but dry and it was actually a very nice day indeed.
So, after arriving at Number 4 Privet Drive, Petunia and Izzie spent the afternoon doing little more than demolishing a bottle or two. Around 6pm Izzie finally perfected the incantations that transformed the Preciousss into a Portkey to Cyberia. Now that was worth another toast or two;)
So the next big adventure was downloading the mysterious x11 which for some strange reason was going to take a ridiculous 6 hours. It got stuck one third of the way through and when the storms started, it was time to cut our losses and run before the nasty green lightses tried to zap the Preciousss.
Next day - we had better luck and got the thing in its box in less than 2 hours. Dialup so sucks. But the alternative for Izzie is nothing at all or the eternal search for some wifi cafe.
After years and years of relying on Ministry machines and nasty netcafes where security issues were always some one else's problem, the Iz now has to learn all this stuff herself and be always in a state of constant vigilance. The most tricky thing is learning the art of organizing files and stuff so that the innards of the Preciousss does not resemble some nest of vipers. With Izzie's attempts to tame her newly acquired Open Office, a nest of venomous vipers is just what we have indeed. Everything we have tried works perfectly so far - fonts, italics, cut and paste and even lots of pretty shades of green but there is one minor problem. This little critter is not very co-operative when it comes to saving our preciouss documents where we wants them to go. It has it's own ideas and they seem most peculiar indeed. We will probably upgrade from 1.0.3 to the more civilized recent versions that save stuff without such fuss but any download bigger than 50mb, the Izzie looks on most unfavorably indeed.
Yesterday the weather was nice and sunny so we finally did go off to see those sculptures. Some looked like lumps of junk just dumped on the ground and others were stunningly gorgeousss. But the big event of the week is that the Izzie finally gets her old Thursdays and Fridays back as days off. So no more confuzzled and bemuddled serpents from now on - or so we hope.
