h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"RE Mr D and his lack of knowledge on Gaiman"

Mr. X, surely?

"PH 2: the “music” of Primus. What is Les Claypool on half the time? Not my bag."

Yes! Have you seen that clip of Primus doing 'Master of Puppets'? I just don't get slap bass... it's like once people learn they play nothing else and their music becomes a triumph of technique over feeling.

*cough cough* Mark King *cough cough*

Yyes indeed. Mr King was indeed one of the worst culprits.

Sadly, in the following video you can only get to hear what is going on after about 2 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToqCy-nTMzE

PP

~*~Mr X, Neil Gaiman is considered a god in some circles.~*~

Well, I spent five minutes reading a synopsis of American Gods, which makes me totally qualified as an expert on everything he's ever written. And based on my now-extensive knowledge of his work, I think I can confidently say that I'm not among those circles.



~*~Even Austen needed an editor.~*~

I'm assuming you mean Jane Austen here. Now, I actually did read Pride and Prejudice, and I didn't much care for it. The prose style was.... rough..... it was hard to engage with the narrative. Admittedly this may be because it's over a hundred years old, I'm willing to acknowledge that possibility.

However, (some) other things that over a hundred years don't have that problem, so I'm not entirely convinced.

Ah, there you have it, Mr X:
>>...five minutes reading a synopsis ... makes me ... an expert on everything he's ever written<<

If you've seen it you're an expert. If you've done it, you're an authority.

I'm smell a troll!

On another note, American Gods is totally worth the read and it's a great introduction to Neil Gaiman's work. Ooh, that reminds me - I need to reread the Sandman series

PH: the way my company's IT department rolls out updates. It's the end of the month, we are all busy as hell, and they have moved our email to another server. I downloaded the .BAT file for Outlook this morning, as instructed. And I now have lost my Contacts, all of my inbox subfolders (issues flagged for follow-up, expense reports, etc), and all of my calendar reminders/ appointments.

And I can't send or reply to emails because I don't have permissions.

I've been here for four hours and have managed exactly 30 minutes worth of work.

My first day back at work after holiday on Monday was like that. All the same problems as ever rolled into one morning - no access to printers, no interaction between programmes, general non-functioning of everything which makes you think "I'd be just as quick with a typewriter and an abacus". I spent until 12 Midday booting and re-booting the damn thing and didn't get any work done at all. On reading through my e-mails later, I discovered that they had had a complete shutdown on the Friday before to do some work on the server farm. Surely that should have improved things? They've been getting gradually worse over the past 4 years.

Never thought I'd say this, but - the smell of meat. A truckload of animals went down the road a couple of hours ago, and we can still smell it.

PH: I have a flat. But they want a "pre payment". Of two thousand and something. I don't think they've ever asked for that before. WTF? I just want a flat dammit, and I have an article due 8th Aug, but haven't even finished the blogs yet. It's slow, painful work with this particular one.

Pre-payment = deposit + a month in advance? Or just a month in advance?

I have never come across a flat or house let any other way.

PP

We're moving to a new place this weekend, and absolutely everything related to that will be my PH till Tuesday at the earliest. Especially the having no phone or internet from tomorrow till Monday afternoon bit.

PP - over here the deposit is 3 months rent. You get it back when you move out, but 1:1 - the landlord´s %%%for investing your money is his, not yours.

Return on invesment here stays with landlord here too. But at 0.5% at best, it's not ever likely to be an issue. I have also come across up to 3 months rent (although it is not very common). Actually, it doesn't seem so unreasonable when you consider the state that some places get left in. Repairs can be pretty expensive and whilst repairs are being done, you can't rent a place out so end up losing rental income too.

My ex has a property that she rents out and had it left in a real mess. Re-decoration throughout was needed and she was left out of pocket.

If I was a landlord, I'd be after a big deposit too. Some tenants can be a bit of a nightmare.

PP

This is going to sound really petty: People who can't tell the difference between historical fiction and fact when compiling lists (or sorting books). I've been looking through the Amazon lists of best-selling history books on Kindle. Ten of the books in their Top 100 Paid-For are fiction, including one classic (The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins). There are 'only' eight fiction in the Top 100 Free list, and only one isn't a 'classic' (using the term loosely, i.e. the author died more than 75 years ago).

Whoever sorts these books should hang their head in shame.

What criteria are you searching by? If you are only looking for 'history' and the lists are also just as generic then results that include both fiction and non-fiction are completely legit. It's up to the person searching for something to use enough criteria to get only the results they want (and people not doing that, then complaining about the results, is a big PH of mine. )

In my area, landlords usually collect first month's rent and a security deposit of up to an amount equal to one month's rent. The place we are moving to this weekend, we did not pay a security deposit, but rather a move-in fee, which is non-refundable.

I'd just as soon the landlord be up front about it. I have lived here 10 years and have never received a penny of the interest the landlord should be paying me on the deposit. Nor did he escrow the funds- he spent them- so I am fairly positive he won't have it to give us after we leave. It's not worth the hassle and expense of going to court.

Lots of new laws in the UK to prevent such abuses now, psychocandy. Whilst historically deposits could be withheld on the whim of a landlord, and often were, for no good reason (stories abound of flats returned in a cleaner state than found, with photos to back this up, and still deposit withheld). Now (well in the next few months anyway), by law UK landlords must put deposits into a special account which belongs, I think, to the government. The landlord will now have to apply to the authorities with a good reason, to keep all or part of a deposit.

As both a tenant and a landlord I'm not sure how I feel about this- perhaps things are swinging too far in favour of the tenant now, with too few safeguards against abuse of these rules by tenants.

the renting rules in the UK are terrible. Short term only and having to renew after a year are the norm, from what I keep reading.

No wonder nobody feels encouraged to take care of the place. Here it's hugely different and people look after rented accommodation very well.

PH today: not getting to see any of the interesting sports, where are the reruns of shooting, kyaking etc etc on the TV? And where are the freaking medal ceremonies?

and PH2: what's with all the photos of olympic medal winners biting the medals?