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

Whit you doin' up at this hour?
Can ye no sleep, son?

Ma maw always tellt me, "Son, don't ever go tae sleep, it gies ye piles"

What's all this fuss about de-caff anyway? A few pints of caffeine never did anyone any harm.

Look at me, I'll be on top form at night school tonight....

I guess you're up this early so you can make it into Glasgow by noon?

Me? Naw, I'm working. No crossing the great East-West divide this week. Nightshift in Ops at the B of S. (Bag of shite or Bank of Scotland, choice is yours )
How did you go at the weekend?
How was Lyns and the crew on saturday morning?
When I left them at 7.30pm on Friday, they had ounced a few bottles of wine between them, and were heading off for more recording and wine, before retiring to the hotel bar!
What are you doing up this late/early anyway?

Ha, so you're the one that keeps telling those computers to write me £20 letters are you?

Lyns & Esteban - The word "wrecked" just about sums up their condition on Saturday morning. How a cameraman can film thru eyes with a 2mm sight gap beats me. They went on to arrange something for the Vampire Society on Friday night and ended up clubbing it (or possibly seals) until 4am.

I had a kip last night to miss the soaps, woke up at around 11.30 and sorta got more and more caffeinated as the night wore on. It's strange, now that work's beckoning I'm beginning to feel drowsy. I'll probably end up in Balloch or Helensburgh on the train. Beats Clydebank anyway.

No, no, it's not me. It's those damn programmers! I get them too

Ha! serves them right. I wasn't allowed to say anything about the Vampire Soc., just in case it jeapordised their plans.

Isn't it always the way, you try to avoid something and end up paying for it in the end. Hope you manage through and then don't fall asleep during your class this evening.

Catch you tonight (if your still awake

Did you sleep to avoid the soaps again?

Howdy ho. Now that all the sensible folks are tucked up in bed in their jimjams, it's time to come out and play.....well play anyway.

Nightmare at college last night, I was like one of those cute little nodding dogs you don't get in the back of motors anymore, except my driver kept braking suddenly WAH! repeat for three hours...get home, crash out and only find time for a couple of emails.

Yep, avoided the soaps, and the kiddiwinks clogging up the lines tonight, but mainly because I'd just been at a dentist who seemed to be inspired by Marathon Man or was under the delusion that his patients supplied their own Novocaine. I suppose I shoulda got suspicious when I saw the restraining straps on the chair, the handcuffs and the fetching little leather outfit of his assistant. So it was Distalgesic as soon as I got home and crrrash! Now I find I can't drink coffee unless it's within 0.5 degrees of my mouth temperature - this could have calamitous implications like keyboard imprints on the forehead or something.

Seems Lyns is beginning to fall in love with Glasgow's nice warm climate, she got frozed again filming vampires in an alleyway off Hope Street. Has the whole of Edinburgh had central heating installed or something? I don't ever remember being warm there, apart from inside a pub. Maybe, it's not shivering from the cold that's affecting her, it's the DTs.

Having a busy night again?

You just brought to mind the post-dental scene from '10' with your talk of coffee

As for Lyns, I'd say the DT's since Estaban is still here. Now there's a bloke who likes a wee tipple.

Actually nice and quiet here
Come Saturday night, it'll be bedlam Ho hum.

Wasted on me. I've never seen 10. Damn, just had a look on IMDB for the story and found that Julie Andrews was in it. Now if only they'd publicised her instead of Bo Derek, and had Dudley Moore talking like Dick Van Dyke...yeah a sort of Young Mary Poppins Goes Apeshit in Acupulco, then I might have watched it. "Ullo Maerae Poapins, want you chiminey swept?"

I'm surprised you get away with surfin', I thought banks were among the stricter workplaces. Or is it just tolerated as a means of keeping you awake? I've got a bro in law at the RBS (can I say that?) in Edinburgh (did I say that?), and it seems that every second site I send him gets blocked for no good reason.

If I go to H2G2 in work I've got to turn off all the images, have the email covering most of the screen and be ready to expand it in half a second. I'm visible from all directions except from in front of me, so a head from the Exorcist would also be helpful. I've thought of sticking wing mirrors on the monitor, but it might look a bit suspicious (unlike turning my head thru 360 degrees!).

Esteban certainly looked like he liked a tipple when I saw him, but at least he's got an excuse for feeling cold here.

Cheer up, by working on a Saturday night you miss the TV schedule from hell. It goes something like, 5pm get into the pub from football to discover that the BBC have put on Dad's Army/Flying Doctors/Are You Being Served to encourage drinking so no one will notice how crap the rest of the night is. This is swiftly followed by the Generation Game just in case some lucky folks missed the earlier prog and still haven't started drinking. And after the Generation Game we get.....err after that I can't seem to remember what we get, but it just gets worse.

...I suppose the downside is that you also miss the drinking, but hey, isn't it worth it to avoid Corporal Jones saying "Don't Panic" for the 354th time?

Cheers

Ok, basically, DM falls for BD and to find out more about her, goes to her dentist and has loads of root canal treatment. He then goes for a coffee before the anasthetic has worn off, can't feel a thing, doesn't realise how hot it is, or even that he is drinking it, is making google eyes at a girl at the opposite table while drinking said coffee, it pours out his mouth and into his lap scalding him quite humerously

Because we need to be able to monitor the banks websites, we have access. One of the perks is being able to surf. Yes most 'interesting' sites are barred as are access to email and chatrooms etc., however h2g2 doesn't seem to come under that category. I used to live in dread of the day i would come to work and find h2g2 barred However, it hasn't happened, and since IT has been outsourced to IBM, we have access via IBM proxy too (unfortunately this is via netscrape, but you can't win them all).
The upside is IBM actively encourage the use of the internet, so I win either way. I should really be in Alabaster at work , and do on a dayshift, but most of the time it's fine.

Actually I do have a wingmirror on my monitor, so that I can see if my manager is behind me. This was placed there by one of my co-workers, because he hated having his back to said manager. This was also before we reorganised the layout of out department. Now it's not so bad, but still handy.

Saturday night is going to be a nightmare. Worse than new year 99-00.
We are doing a workload switch from one mainframe to the other. This has not been done for nearly 2 years. Lots of problems are envisaged.
Thankfully we have a curry and beers to look forward to on Sunday evening, courtesy of IBM. Our xmas meal out. Go figure.

Later
J.

Ah, this has reappeared, so I thought it was time to ressurect it.
So, how goes it with you? I was in Glasgow on Saturday, and thought I better drop you a line. Handy this turned up, eh?
What's been happening then? Anything new?

Well RL seems to be bearing a remarkable resemblance to h2g2L right now. I'm getting slung out of this house before they knock it down, so I'm moving on Thursday to Cowcaddens (which I reckon is just within staggering distance from Byres Road - yippee!), but I don't know if they'll let me in or not cos of this foot and mouth thingy.

Has Lyns been in touch with you? Apparently she lost her password and can't reopen her old homepage, not that she'd want to. I haven't heard anything about the other site yet, which is good cos I've still got a phrasebook to do.

Lucky you re:Saturday, I haven't been in a pub for a week now, but as I'll be staying at Cowcaddens for a fortnight before Wummenbeevil moves in, I might just start rediscovering the pubs in the town c. 1/4 mile from the house.

I guess from the time you're at work, and have struck lucky again with h2g2 access?

This time I am off to bed, I think!

Ah, interesting times ahead then? Good luck with the moving etc.
If it had been this last week, I could have offered to give you a hand, but back onto crap nightshift again. Ho hum.
Enjoy the rest