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

hit b****ing seventy degrees here today! And just a few hours ago the heater was going....
I've been moving house within the house. The spousal unit wants the bed moved and in order to do that I have to rearrange the shed and clean up the garage....and then progress through the house until I achieve the desired result. Don't like beds much. Was happy sleeping on the floor for years. It was good enough for the cat.

Yesterday I had my house in uproar as I had my new carpet fitted. I tried to move an easy chair from another room into this one and got it jammed in the door. Even with another person, I don't think I could have done it and it took me ages to get it sorted out.

Then I had to reassemble my computer, which then wouldn't work as for some reason it would not recognise my modem. Took until 12.15 am to sort out.

Have you got any further with your entry on (brain's gone dead) Tom Lehrer? - good surname for a lecturer or a teacher, that!

No...I've been intending to donate an entire day to learning Guide ML and I've been caught up in this in-house moving thing this week.
And the dishes...and the dog...and....surfing the web looking at people's blogs and webcam sites....

I often wonder about the people who design doors and furniture...do either know the other is alive?
I've moved furniture and appliances for fun and profit for most of my life and I've yet to see a building that was built properly with furniture in mind...

And carpeting.....eeyuck! I hate the stuff.
I'm allergic to the tailings from the new stuff and I'm allergic to the filth from the old ones. I used ot work in a factory where they made the carpet padding and I hated the smell of it. My job was loading the 50 to 100lb rolls of carpet padding into large truck trailers....my shoulder still hurts...

You have to be careful when you unplug computers to shut everything off, then when you move them from one part of the house or country to another, you have to treat them very harshly, otherwise they think you don't love them and they will mess with you when you put them back together...

I have a Brazilian friend who loathes carpets. She wants to rid her house of them and have stripped and polished floorboards, but it's too darn cold without them!

The easiest thing with guide ML is to start small and add stuff.

Two good ones to start are followed by (I think of the second as an 'unheader', and to create a paragraph, followed by to finish the paragraph. The trick is that they come in pairs.

Why not give it a go on something small.

What's a blog?

kindof a website on the cheap.
It is basically a 'web log', where you tell everybody where you've been and what you thought of it. It is a series of web links interspersed with musings of a personal nature.
Go see Wil Wheaton's and you will see what I mean.

Wil Wheaton, who s/he?

Finished my Marbles entry! Hoo!

Was a teenaged actor on Star Trek:The Next Generation, but that doesn't matter. It is a standard address and he is pretty interesting.
Played Wesley Crusher, the Doctor's son.

Ah yes, I remember the character, but I wouldn't have remembered who played him.

I'm fighting off a cold, I think at the moment. Loads of people have gone down with 'flu here. I know it's not that - that comes with throwing up, however, I'm not at my best at the moment.

Do what you have to. If you sneeze on the monitor, you won't need goo.
The whole family is still coughing. The last freeze actually killed the grass and some trees and there is all kinds of stuff flying around. They call it cedar fever around here, though the trees are actually junipers....

I suggest two ounces of Drambuie and two days of sleep....

wish on, right?

Too true!

I've just completed the third day of a training course and I've been almost asleep for the last day and a half - even though it was quite interesting.

Tomorrow I'm interviewing. Too close to the training course for comfort, but I've not had a great deal of choice in it.

The really cold snap seems to have abated for the moment. For a couple of days it was really quite mild, but this morning, it was back to scraping the ice of the windscreen.

BTW - back to a previous bit of conversation - Rolf Harris recorded a version of 'Stairway to Heaven' (in the early 90s, I think) which rocketed him back into the charts after 23 years. Became a bit of a cult classic. He went to Glastonbury a bit later and got rave reviews. All the kids remembered him from when they were young. I think they voted him the best ever entertainer there!

Rolf Harris....hairway to steven.....Glastonbury...I'll go see what the BBCedrics have to say in their surge fungtion.

'The BBC Women's Hour'? Well, I found him. and his website and I got to hear him singing at Galstonbury (in bits and pieces) and with the Be-at-les in 1963...doing a remake of Tie My Kangaroo Down.

I'v'e forgotten what the original point was.

Interview for a job?

I had to go down and spend two hours chatting with a teacher and a counselor at my dorter's school today. She's got'em all fooled.
Do they teach penmanship anymore?

That's more than I have. My computer doesn't do sound. Apparently he hadn't heard the original when he was persuaded to do 'Stairway' - someone had decided to get as many different style versions as possible, including an Elvis Prestley impersonator.

Interviewing someone for a job - I was part of a panel. No decision yet - internal politics. Someone doesn't want us to appoint the best person, so she might leave and go somewhere else.

Penmanship? I think they must do. Young 'un is learning according to an agreed formula and I saw on a BBC site helping children with exams that for English, they do handwriting. I think they have to copy something using their best handwriting. Do they do it in the US?

BTW, which bit of Texas do you live in (nearest big town?)?

Killeen, by Ft. Hood, near Waco.
Just about a hundred miles from Austin.

Well, I was told in no uncertain terms by a guidance counselor that penmanship was not expected to be a useful life skill or work requirement...So much for the noble profession of teaching.
I was told by my daughter's language arts teacher yesterday that they did not have children stand up in class and read what they had written because there had been legal concerns about 'humiliating' the children.

Pfui!

Your cpu doesn't generate little beeps and boops?
What generation system are you using?

My child's allowed to stand up in class on his 'news day' and be vocal. I's already (probably) emboldended him to contribute to the latest Quaker Christmas concert, without my knowledge or encouragement by singing two Christmas songs. He said he wanted to sing 'How far is it to Bethlehem' as his second song, but couldn't remember the tune, but he wanted to sing it anyway. Luckily, people there knew the tune and so it went off quite well.

So 'Pfui' - I quite agree! There are probably two points to writing, one - to be able to read it yourself and, two- for other people to be able to read it. In not - what's the point?

I've no idea what you mean by generation system. I have a computer with a total capacity of one gigabyte. Small, isn't it! (thoughts of Marvin!). No beeps and boops, but lots of noises.

Yes, well, mine makes up songs on the spot, as I've taught her, about anything that comes to mind. Usually not in any recognizable tune.

I'm not talking about my computer.
This is a purpose-built thing slapped together by a local techie.
It's got a cd-rom and speakers and a fairly stunning sound card.
A Yamaha synth card, I believe.
And when the speakers are turned up but there is no music, they sits there and make noises small burbling noises from the fan in the CPU
and make moans and whines when I move the cursor.

By what generation I meant what year? Or what kind?

Umm. Mind composed a song just before Christmas, which he sang and played on a guitar (he can't play and there was a string missing and he had played with the pegs, so the strings were just that little bit extra out of tune).

Quote 'In a far off land, we will share all the toys, and play and sing and play and sing'.

I thought at first he had learned it at school, until I asked him to repeat it and he sang it completely differently.

It's a Dell PH1331 and it's at least 5 years old, possibly a bit more, if that means anything.

So it is running at least Windows 95 or some similar PC OS.

I had a 386 enhanced (giggle at will) Windows 3.l IBM PC boat anchor a couple of years ago. It had been manufactured in in 89 and it had a beep-boop sound card and a speaker built into the horizontal cpu. I never attempted to go online with it because I believed the moron who gave it to me who told me it was too slow. Now I'm not so sure.

I do parodies of songs better than I do the songs themselves.
And we have taught the child that poorly presented self-expression is better than none at all, but a tiny bit of self-awareness about the appropriate venues for such things is probably a good idea.

My daughter is very pleased with her new Language Arts class of one day. She felt that she was a genius among idiots at the last one.
Now she feels she is among equals and the burden of dumbing herself down is lifted.

And she has positively blossomed at home now that she realizes that I care about what kind of education she receives and how she feels about it.

It had Windows 95 when I got it, then someone gave me a legitimate copy of Windows 98, which otherwise was going into the bin, so I was able to convert to Fat32 (is that the right name?) which gave me twice the memory. It also sorted out some serious errors I had picked up.

I've got strong feelings about children's education. I think we've got it wrong here in the UK as we start to teach children how to write around four years of age if they go to nursery and five if they don't. I think it should be left until at least six and that other things should be taught at an earlier age such as listening, co-operative skills, etc as they do on the continent.

Sounds that you're being a supportive parent. Mine makes up little songs and jokes and I think that is in part due to the fact I used to sing instructions to him. It worked! Often he wouldn't do as he was told if I merely asked in a normal voice, so he thinks that improvising is normal.

Aha! That's a good one!

I, too, have strong feelings about education.
I think there should be a pass/fail for teachers that has nothing to do with the fact that they went to school to become teachers.
Not everyone who picks up a saxophone and takes lessons for four years is worth listening to. So, not everyone who decides to be a teacher and takes lessons for four years is worth listening to.
There has to be a quality involved that is not common.

I also think that the ability of students to 'culturally blackmail' the schools is irritating. Have your culture at home and for the rest of your life, but follow the rules at school.

I was in the hallway when the middle school kids (6-8th grades) changed classes the other day. They were far too loud and ignored the teachers as best they could.
It looked like the idiots in charge of the asylum.

I have no idea what a Fat32 is. But what you describe seems to indicate that the drive was cleaned when you switched to 98 and a compression system for your files was installed or activated.
Hmm. If I really knew what I was talking about, one of us would be impressed. As it is, no more clue than before.
I think it is possible that there might be a slot for a sound card.
Check out your control panel on the my computer thing. Rummage around a bit. I often go squirrel around in the back closets of this puter because my memory is so bad I've forgotten what I had.