I always think of interesting things to blog about when I'm driving or in the shower and then by the time I get back to the computer i've either lost the inclination or decided that the rambling in my head wouldn't sound quite so interesting all written out.

And I just blow dried my hair with the parting all wrong.

So drawing and painting was cancelled. That really sucked.

But I had my first Spanish class yesterday and it was pretty awesome. I need to write it up sometime, but not now.

It's so my birthday tomorrow!!!

Whoop, I am a fully signed up member of Spanish for Beginners and Drawing and Painting for Beginners. I feel thouroughly adult-educated. Or prepared to be, or something.

I am kind of wondering if i will get bored in the Spanish Class. I'm pretty sure I won't in the Drawing and Painting. It's just that I know that if I'd taken Spanish in high school, I would have been bored the whole time and done my best not to do any of the work. There's something about deciding to do things for yourself that makes the difference. Or maybe it's just that I actually *want* to learn this and put the effort in. That's almost the same thing but i think there's a subtle difference.

No reply as yet on the current possible solution to my "what to do this summer" dilemma. :/

Well, today's been a bit of a non starter.

I did some laundry and some washing up, that was about as productive as it got.

I found out that students can bowl for £2 at Megabowl so we were gonna go and do that but we decided we couldn't be bothered. So all I have scheduled for this evening now is dreading work tomorrow.

I'm so bored of wasting my time with this crap.

And no, I'm not just randomly whining, I have actually attempted to do something about it this weekend, but I don't know if it's gonna work out, so I don't wanna talk about it yet.

comments

"So all I have scheduled for this evening now is dreading work tomorrow."

I SO thought you were going to say dreading your hair.

You have disappointed me again, Jaym.
Grimtooth | Email | 04.18.04 - 3:58 pm | #

oddly enough, you are like the 4th person ever to try and convince me to go dreaded. maybe you people are on to something.
jaymee | 04.18.04 - 4:21 pm | #

Well, finally, most of my friends are back in Newcastle. This has been quite a random week consisting literally entirely of work, sit in bedroom, sleep, work, sit in bedroom...

That schedule is preferable to sitting in the cold living room on my own, or hanging out with the two weird flatmates who were also here.

Anyway, the girls got back today, which was nice. We went to see gothika, which wasn't nice at all.

Oh, this is quite interesting. I read on bbc news that german scientists have been doing their scientist thing, and they've decided that the universe is trumpet shaped. I'd like to think they mean with buttons and mouth piece and all, but I think they just mean the end bit. Anyway, this means that in some places, time and space are so curved that you can see the back of your head. You can see the back of your head! How random is that? I'm not sure i've fully got my brain around the concept of space and time being "curved"... but bbc news, in it's infinite wisdom, has posted this story just as a "snippet" and I can't find more information on it anywhere.

Carl asked how long it would take to get to the places where this happens, which made me realise that, infact, if people could get there, it would just be full of women exclaiming "wow, my bum *does* look big in this!"

Comments

You crazy Brits probably used some wacky telescope made of teacups or something. Here in America, you can't see the back of your head, no matter how hard you try.
Grimtooth | Email | Homepage | 04.17.04 - 10:23 pm | #

"I read on bbc news that *german* scientists"

geez, you're an idiot.
jaymee | 04.17.04 - 10:28 pm | #

I'd really like to know how to find this spot in the universe for the next time I highlight my hair.
dolly | 04.17.04 - 11:53 pm | #

I spent much of my (extensive) skiving time at work today reading bbc news. That was depressing.

I don't read the news enough though. I must make an effort to do it more.

Woah what the hell, I've just checked my email... how fucking ridiculous is this?
I emailed tabletofdeath company saying:

"I've given up trying to get my tablet to work well or get any
helpful answer from you on the subject, and I've purchased a wacom.

However, I can't install the wacom drivers as the nisis drivers are
refusing to uninstall. It tells me that a file is corrupt and
installation quits. I've tried reinstalling from scratch but the
program crashes."

That might seem quite snappy but i did refrain from including ".. have tried installing from scratch but the crappy installation program that looks like it belongs in windows 3.1 crashes" so I've been quite good really.

Anyway, I got this back:

Amy
To remove all traces of the original installation, you need to go back
to the System Restore point you created before you originally installed
the Nisis Graphics Tablet.
Nisis UK Technical Support Centre

...?????????

Comments

worst. company. ever.
d1j | 04.17.04 - 4:41 pm | #

Wow they suck but they have a sense of humor. Not very funny when your frustrated with their product.
dolly | 04.17.04 - 5:09 pm | #

they have a sense of humour?

The stars before were just cause i didn't wanna put the company name. but screw them. it's nisis.
jaymee | 04.17.04 - 8:19 pm | #

I didn't finish work till 8.30 tonight. That was pretty cool. 4 hours over time :D

It will have just about paid for my wacom which was waiting for me when I collapsed through my front door.
However, all is not happy in wacomland. It's working, but I can't install the drivers. When I try, it says that I can't have more than one tablet driver installed at once. So i go to uninstall the old crappytabletofdeath drivers and it says that this file is corrupted and uninstallation will quit. So I deleted that file manually and tried again, and it says that it can't locate that file... well d'uh.

So i restored that file and went for a trip to my favourite phone-number-less website, www.nisis.com. I dutifully downloaded drivers and planned to install and then try uninstalling. However, as soon as i run the installer, it warns me that "uninstall has failed to initialise and may be unable to uninstall this item"... then promptly crashes. Excellent.

Crappytabletofdeath is on my hard drive like white on rice.

Any ideas?

I was alone in my office today when one of the engineers, Andrew, walked in and started looking in the stationary cupboard. He said something like "Going okay?" so i said "yeah, not bad" and he said "good". All very usual. Then there was a pause before he came out with; "Mind you, I don't really know what i would have done if you'd said no." Which was odd.

I think he was kind of pointing out how silly it is to ask someone if they're okay because "yes" is the only answer you expect.

Only, I didn't quite know what to say to that so i said "ah yes, if i'd started crying or something. ha". Then I realised that really was quite an odd thing for me to say and everything went a bit awkward while i muttered something about how it "...would have.. uh.. freaked you out". It was all quite traumatising.

And that, readers, is why you shouldn't question social rituals like just saying "yeah not bad" when someone asks you how you are.

Comments

1st comment!
arsifoofoo | 04.15.04 - 5:53 pm | #

I pity you.
Grimtooth | Email | Homepage | 04.15.04 - 6:05 pm | #

Wow. Well I actually felt quite positive about work today. Which is odd. It's extremely nice starting the week on a Tuesday. It's like getting a freebie.

Tuesdays are also slightly better than any other day in general cause it's my day to cover reception which means I get a couple of 15 minute breaks chucked in where I just sit around and read whatever magazine of debauchery is laying around and vaguely attempt to answer the phones.

I think it was cause work was pretty busy today and I was pretty much getting on with my own thing rather than working for 5 minutes then asking my boss type person what to do next. I really hate that. Working independantly is much better. It still requires zero thought though :/

I even stayed after for overtime. Time and a half baby, won't say no to that. However, they tend to not actually pay me time and a half since i'm always late in, so they just count my overtime as making up for that... but still, I shall make a real effort this week and hopefully notch up a few hours of proper overtime. I've been spurred on by not having to pay rent on this house any more. For some reason, we've been paying slightly extra for the last 10 months, so we don't have to pay for the last two of the year. I have no idea, but it's pretty cool.

Well, all I've done today is go to work and there's only so much I can say about that.

I went for a random drive today. I like driving these days. However, I apparently have chosen to reside in the one area of England that wasn't bathed in glorious sunshine today :/. I've spoken to people in three completely different parts of england and they've all told me that it was sunny where they were; but Northumberland today was cloudy with occasional rain.

I'm loathe to talk about the weather, and I apologise for doing so, except to explain why I took almost no photographs of the Northumbrian countryside. It wasn't my fault, it was the light.

Anyway I set myself a challenge of seeing how far away from civilisation I could get. Now you'd think, driving around the Pennines on a monday afternoon it wouldn't be that hard to find yourself alone. Or at least, that's what I thought. But i was wrong, almost all day I went no longer than about 5 minutes between seeing other cars, and that's at the very least. Maybe it was busier because of the bank holiday, but seriously; the middle of nowhere is packed with people.

Oh, here's something weird... while driving around some place called... something beginning with W, i forget what... I stopped in a carpark to quickly look at a map and work out vaguely where i was. As i drove into the carpark there was a guy sitting in a kind of crappy car. With his face smushed up against the steering wheel. I mean, the side of his face was against the steering wheel, and he had a totally vacant look in his eyes. Anyway I can only assume he was wasted. He'd sat up by the time I left.

So i'd seen this sort of building on the top of a hill on the horizon and I thought it looked pretty cool. It was kind of the shape of one of those columned buildings in, say, Ancient Rome or Greece. So I figured I'd head for that. Well, I'll tell you now that didn't find it. But I was driving along and saw a sign for "something (i forget what) hall" and i thought that might be it so I turned off and ended up on the narrowest road in England just passing through farm after farm, never entirely sure if I was on private property or not. Anyway I didn't feel very alone the whole time, but rather uncomfortably watched by farmers and a bit lost. Heh. At one point I crossed a cattle grid with a sign that said "PRIVATE CATTLEGRID" which I kind of thought might mean I was supposed to get out and open the gate, but that seemed stupid, and something i had no intention of doing. And I never even found the signposted hall place, which probably wasn't the column thing, since in restrospect i was probably miles from there.

So I failed in my mission to plunge myself into the barren depths of Northumberland this afternoon. I guess my real failing was my unwillingness to leave my car. And if there's a road, there's going to be other people. But perhaps I will venture futher another time when the weather is better as the landscapes I went through are freaking amazing, just very unphotogenic in overcast drizzle.

However, I did manage to take a photo that is just, very very English. There's no other word to describe it, imo. I called the file "how fucking british", but on second thought, it's just very very English. There's wind blown trees, everso wholesome green rolling hills, grey sky, and a stone wall covered in moss. England england england.

England

Comments

That is the England I wanna see someday.
(...well, that and the inside of ARR's bedroom)
arsifoofoo | 04.16.04 - 1:25 am | #

are you sure? You will have to travel more than 5 minutes out of london to see countryside
like that you know, something that apparently sends waves of fear through many americans. :D

Infact, that picture was taken about 6 hours north of london, and about 5 minutes south of
scotland : )
jaym | 04.16.04 - 10:08 am | #

Waves of fear?

What could there possibly be to fear over there?

I WILL see that someday. It's beautiful.
Anonymous | 04.16.04 - 12:50 pm | #

I wrote the above and submitted before I entered my name.

me=duh
arsifoofoo | 04.16.04 - 12:51 pm | #

it'd look beautifuller if it wasn't raining ¬_¬
jaymee | 04.16.04 - 6:08 pm | #

well this seems like what all the cool kids are doing these days.