Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s motion picture premiere was Primate (2025) in which some humans who live with a chimpanzee for vaguely explained reasons get upset when the poor chimp develops rabies. I’m not sure this was an entirely realistic film, TBH. For a start, the (dead) mother who introduced the chimp to the family home was a professor of linguistics, and the father is deaf and communicates by sign language but is apparently an ecologist who writes books. How do these people have an unbelievably luxurious home in Hawaii? But they do. And if the father has to leave because he’s on a book tour and can’t be home that night, why is he able to get back home within an hour of realising something’s wrong? If I was signing books in a shop that close to home, I wouldn’t bother with a hotel. Anyway, the poor sick chimp gets all the blame even though it was the family’s fault it got bitten by a rabid mongoose (are mongooses native to Hawaii?) but I reckon they shouldn’t have had a chimp living there in the first place. If Alison from Monkey World heard about them, she’d come and take it off them no matter how many words it had learned on its iPad

And then a rewatch of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) because one should watch the most incredible film ever made from time to time

Finally, the end of S1 of Silo in which it becomes clear that when you get a contract for a second season, you need to introduce a twist at the end that will let you draw the story out for a bit longer

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been M&S Korean ribs and chips. Very spicy

And to go with it, the final episode of the Lockerbie thing

[ladymuck]

The "might rain" has been upgraded to "enthusiastic rain"

[NickFitz]

Shopping accomplished!

I went via the slightly more direct route rather than past the old flat, which meant going to Sainsbury’s first. The refurbishment drags on, meaning many things still aren't where they ought to be, but I think I managed to get everything I needed, along with the usual assortment of things I didn’t

And then over to M&S, where it turned out the shirt I was thinking of getting wasn’t available in my size. I dithered around for a bit, but almost everything that I thought of buying was also not available in my size, so in the end I didn’t bother getting any clothes at all. Instead, I headed for the Food Hall where, given that I can never get the app to work with the public wi-fi, I used one of their self-scan handsets for the first time. This proved to be adequate at making me no longer look like a shoplifter whilst also avoiding the hassle of tipping everything out again for scanning at the end

And so home. I realised that being parked by M&S with no need to go to Sainsbury’s meant the best route home was the one past the old place. Not because it’s shorter or quicker, but largely because I’d have to drive all the way through the shopping park to take the other route, and I find the place vaguely annoying. So I was able to confirm that the chestnut trees are still OK

Time for lunch now

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Cloudy with outbreaks of sunshine. Currently 16 degrees with a high of 17 expected. Might rain at some point. Barometer steady at 1020 mBar.

Sunrise 05;33; Sunset 21:12 BST

Date night dinner at Margo was very good yesterday evening.

This morning HWMBO has made Scottish morning rolls filled to bursting with egg, bacon, square sausage and potato cakes.

I head home this afternoon where I see it's already 23 degrees.

[WTFH]

Morning all
TFIF, etc.
9C at 5am, warmed up now.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s a sunny start, with wisps of mares’ tails here and there. The wind seems to have dropped too, so 17°C now feels like 17°; the expected high is 23°, and the barometers are up to 1012/1020mB

Though the nights are getting cooler, the bedroom is still above 20° at bedtime so I haven’t reactivated the duvet yet. But I’ve taken to chucking a throw over the duvet cover under which I sleep, which tends to slide off the bed at some point during the night. It hasn’t been cold enough yet for the loss of it to lead to me waking up

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Friday.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky with high wispy clouds.

Brrrr 19.7 deg in here, 21.2 in the kitchen, 18 in the leanto, 12 out the back.

1018.5 mBar, 30.07 in Hg, 763.9 Torr, 14.77 psi, (unchanged), 52% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 2nd of April 2020, between 10:58 and 11:21, barrydidit, covbob, eek, LM, MrMarkyMark, NF, and scruff popped in.

For the first time in ages the upstairs windows were closed overnight, and, even more alarmingly, the duvet was pressed into service for most of the night.

Walk (abbreviated, 3 miles) walked. Wore jacket: better to have a jacket & not need it, than need a jacket & not have it.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: noon o'clock news. Much crap on the tube about the Demented Orange Mother****er. And one about the SAS teaching the Septics how to do it on a training course.

Entertainment: Jack Hargreaves Old Country: "Flapping" races: amateur horse & "long dog" races done in the evenings. Changes in farming practices over his lifetime: remembers returning in 1946 to see some prize winning heavy horses on a ploughing team: the next day they were off to the slaughter house because they'd been replaced by tractors: 2nd time I've heard that story. . 2nd hand tractors sent over by the septics in WWII that replaced the heavy horses. Combine harvesters. The machine that makes those big round bales of straw. How modern wheat is much shorter than the old wheat and how the combine leaves most of the straw on the field so it's either burned or baled.

Tea: chilli con carne with rice etc. Entertainment: PM <click> UFO bollox on Blaze.

Ships: HMS Victory. This proved so inneresting I washed the dishes.

Six Million Dollar Man: S6 E5: Sasquatch. I thought I recognised Geoffrey Lewis.

Bab5 S2 E22 "The fall of night". The excrement has entered the aircon.

Taggart S15 E4. "Long Time Dead". The organlegging one: I have no recall of this whatsoever.

[NickFitz]

I ended up watching another episode of the Lockerbie thing, so just one left now

And in Just a Shot Away, Meredith Hunter has been stabbed and beaten to death by the Hells Angels while the Stones continued to play. Then the Stones left the USA in a hurry and have been trying to distance themselves from the whole sorry affair, but Rolling Stone has put together a special issue revealing just what a nightmare Altamont was, even for those who didn’t get killed

Shopping tomorrow!

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

^^^

Control Panel Design: Features wild black controls labeled in black on a black background, complemented by a small black light that lights up in black when operated.

Arthur's Question: Asks what the button does.

Ford's Warning: Tells him not to touch it.

The Result: A panel lights up saying "Please do not press this button again".

. .

That would be a better design than what we have at the moment

[NickFitz]

Tea has been ribeye steak with fried onions, chips, and beans

And a further episode of the Lockerbie thing

[DoctorStrangelove]

^^^

Control Panel Design: Features wild black controls labeled in black on a black background, complemented by a small black light that lights up in black when operated.

Arthur's Question: Asks what the button does.

Ford's Warning: Tells him not to touch it.

The Result: A panel lights up saying "Please do not press this button again".

. .

[NickFitz]

Well, today was a bit boring until 11:00, when a user made a mistake on a file upload and totally screwed all the figures for last month, this month, and next month!

I never got around to having lunch as I was busy digging through things trying to work out of there was any way to undo everything easily. But although, in theory, it could be done, it would have been a lot of work. So I had to go to the infrastructure people to get the data restored from backup - which is a huge process in itself, due to everything involving loads of moving parts on AWS, and certain things needing to be done by them

But they were brilliant, with five or six of them jumping on a Slack call and assisting me through the whole process - first on our hotfix environment just to check there weren’t any nasty surprises lurking in the undergrowth, then in production. And the system allows for restoring to a point in time with a granularity of five minutes, so we didn’t lose any of the work people had done this morning before that, or very little. We got the whole thing resolved just before 17:00 and everything’s up and running again

We’ve got to have a full post mortem on Monday because it counted as a P1 incident due to needing to take the service offline for a while, and I gather they get reported upwards to senior management, only just below ministerial level. While there are potentially valid reasons for users being able to do what this one did, it really shouldn’t have been that easy - the system should have alerted them that something was unusual and given them a chance to correct it, rather than just charging ahead. So I’ll argue that even though we’re not supposed to be adding new features, we should at least take some time to strengthen the guard rails

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Blue sky poking through the lumps of fluff. Currently 15 degrees with a high of 18 expected. Barometer up a lot to 1020 mBar.

Sunrise 05:31; Sunset 21:14 BST

A couple of meetings to do this afternoon. Then HWMBO and I have a date night dinner planned for this evening.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Thursday judging by the racket on the road earlier.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky.

Where did the rain go?

21.1 deg in here, 22.75 in the kitchen, 20 in the leanto, 16 out the back, 16.4 in the saltinghouse.

1016.5 mBar, 30.1 in Hg, 762.4 Torr, 14.74 psi, (up from 1012 last night), 56% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 2nd of April 2020, between 10:44 and 10:57, covbob, eek, LM, MrMarkyMark, and NF popped in.

Washing frenzy in progress.

Walk (abbreviated, 3 miles) walked in the grey gloom & cool breeze.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: Wonderlands E4/4: Tolkein, Erskine Childers.

That requiring the iRon received its attentions. Entertainment: Archive Hour: "Man of the people: Paul Graney's Story": chap who lived in the North West, as old as the century, worked in cotton mills, fought the BUF in the 1930s, visited Germany during the rise of dear old Adolph, lived in a workhouse, became a tramp during the 20s. A different world.

Everything in off the line & airing upstairs.

Entertainment: Jack Hargreaves Old Country: The pack horse. The packman (aka tinker/chapman). Fishing in "Turk's Pond" which hadn't been fished since said Turk had done so: plenty of fish, though very small, & unlike said Turk, Jack didn't eat the fish. I wonder how someone from Llanelli ended up fishing there. It's a mystery. Well at least it wasn't a Swansea Jack. .

Tea: baked beans & baked spuds. Nice enough. Entertainment: PM <click> Blazian UFO bollox.

5Select: Ships: SS Great Britain.

Bab5 S2 E21 "Come the inquisitor". G'Kar starts getting his act together. Delenn and Sheridan are tested by the inquisitor who turns out to be a human abducted centuries previously by those nice Vorlons.

Digging for Britain. Seem to have watched bits of this before. Amusing enough.

Blazian UFO bollox: we are not alone, apparently, with The Truth, no doubt, Being Out There Somewhere. Truly bollox but I don't recall watching it previously.

Possibly More Blazian UFO bollox. Hadn't watched the first half before, but the bit with the lune who was abducted, worked as a supersoldier on Mars for 20 years, then returned to his 17 year old body 15 minutes after his original abduction had irritated me previously. The truth may well be out there, but that probably ain't it. .