The middle-class horror, part 94
This little dialogue has been taking place over the past few days on the outside door of my apartment building. My contribution is in green.
Here I am, waiting for the person from SEEBOARD. It snowed last night, as predicted, and I’ve taken some photos of the view from my window.
I have 15 days of annual leave to use up before the beginning of April (my company has a strange ‘vacation year’). I hope I can find the time to take from my project. There’s lots I want to do, like go to Brazil or maybe even see boyf again, so long as he promises faithfully to stay off the sauce. He emailed recently. I’m planning to send him some magazines on bridge (the game, not the civil engineering structure). He’s something of an expert.
Blair has suggested trying to get out of article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights in order to sort out this apparent asylum-seeker problem. He’s talking crap. Article 15 doesn’t allow us, so he’d have to withdraw from the entire convention. Unfortunately this would me us being kicked out of the Council of Europe and the European Union (as well as making the 1998 Human Rights Act invalid). I think there may be better ways than implicitly saying it’s OK to send people back to places where they’re likely to be tortured.
As an aside, in that BBC article, Simon Hughes of the Liberal Democrats not only criticised Blair’s comments but had a go at our derogation from Article 5(3) too (arrest and detention with no fixed time period before being charged or brought to trial). Go Simon! I’m doubly glad I joined them.
Staying with politics, there’s only about one week to submit comments to the Lord Chancellor’s Department regarding changes to the Data Protection Act that, amongst other things, may substantially increase the fees for making a request. This government seems to grow worse by the day.
I only just managed to get the hang of LILO when I’m confronted with a new style boot loader. I need to build a new kernel as it seems sound support wasn’t set up for this new machine (which, incidentally, was given 8 out of 10 by Linux Format).
BTW my arm is practically back to normal. When I told my mother she said I was likely to get arthritis in it in later life. Gee, thanks.
I gave in to temptation and bought an LCD monitor, a NEC LCD1511M, from PC World (yes, I know - but they are only across the road from where I work). It’s only with this that I realise how dark and out-of-focus my crappy old monitor was. Also I suddenly have space on my desk 
There was another brief power cut sometime earlier in the week and my Economy 7 timer is now 12 hours out. A nasty letter will be on it’s way to SEEBOARD.
Yay! Double bonus day!
My cubit arrived today. Actually, it arrived sometime while I was out but the fab people next door took it in and handed it over only an hour or so ago. Nice people.
It’s as cool as it looks in the photos and works so very well with my iMac USB keyboard and mouse. Much configuration has to be done as I’m not a fan of GNOME desktop (which is installed by default) but that’s all part of the fun.
The other coolness was Sue Doughty, my MP, replied to my letter in glowingly positive terms. I wrote asking her to pressure the Government to ratify Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights to make clear our commitment against the death penalty, especially when it comes to possibly handing over ‘enemy combatants’ to countries that have such a penalty (coded terms for the USA). She’s going to ask a question in the House of Commons about it on my behalf! Isn’t that just so fantastic! She’s a dude.
Today I started wondering if I care too much about work and the fate of my company. It’s always a challenge to determine how much others care (including management). A guy came over from the head office in Belfast to give a training course. He seemed to care so that’s encouraging.
The new office appears to have stunned everyone into silence. I think I like it but I’m not sure if I like it.
I learned a new word today: kibitz.
A quick scan on my DTVA revealed a new channel, Bid Up TV. You just have to see it - it really is the worst, worst, worst, worst channel I’ve ever seen in my life (and believe me, on Freeview it’s up against some stiff competition). It was so bad I got convulsions watching it.
I had a look around our new office, which we will be moving into on Monday. Actually I’ll be there over the weekend as I volunteered to be on the moving team (creep!).
It’s a very nice building. The office is on the top floor and larger than I was led to believe. We’re the first ones to occupy it so it’s all crisp and clean. There’s much more light with every other wall either containing glass or being glass. However, the lack of partitions may be an issue due to noise - we’ll all just have to speak softly (and carry a big stick).
Apparently there was a power cut in Guildford sometime last night (or during early morning). I can tell it lasted approximately four hours as that’s how much my Economy 7 timer was out by (gives me cheap electricity during the night, when I charge up the storage heaters). God knows how I’m going to get it reset.
The self same lack of electricity seemed to affect a number of parts of town, including work. This explained why my workstation had rebooted and snarfed my continuing search for RC-72 keys.
I have a cold 
My green box finally arrived, courtesy of the Council.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the UK joining what-is-now the EU.
A fantastic quote from Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International:
Governments are increasingly portraying human rights as an obstacle to national security and human rights activists as romantic idealists at best, defenders of terrorists at worst. Precisely because of these pressures, the role of human rights activists, far from diminishing, has gained new urgency… Our cultural diversity is the source of our strength, inspiration and determination… We need to find new ways of building international solidarity, to continue to transform despair into hope and compassion into action.
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