Archives

This is just a place for things that I think it might be useful to write down and put somewhere.

Steve rang the RAC, and a truck arrived 45 minutes later to remove him and the car. I was then able to pick up the back story from Paul. At some point in its 13 year history, Steve's car had an immobiliser fitted for insurance reasons, which has an interesting feature. If left undriven for a couple of weeks, it drains the battery completely. In the last few weeks Steve's wife has been away and so he has been driving her car - leaving his sitting and running out of charge. Yesterday morning, it wouldn't start, and he had to jump start it from the other car. He then made the executive decision to leave the jump leads behind; and then of course turned the engine off outside our house. Thus are bosses made.
4:42 PM

Friday, August 30, 2002  
At last, the official PHD Comics book is out! And what's more, my copy has reached the UK. PHD is a wonderful strip about grad student life, and although it appears less frequently than it used to now, is still very relevant and insightful to anyone taking a post-grad course. Only the odd strip is Stanford-specific, and usually those are so well paralleled by reality elsewhere that it doesn't matter... Nonetheless, reading the whole book in one go isn't a terribly good idea, as you are left appallingly cynical.
1:41 PM

Friday, August 23, 2002  
Comic relief: since I had already filled out Version One of the EPSRC forms for this year, they went out to Marconi quite early. Miraculously Marconi have managed to sign off on them, and get them back to the Board of Graduate Studies, so I am now at the very front of the Engineering Department CASE Award queue, ahead of all of those waiting for solvent firms to do the paperwork.
11:22 AM

Thursday, August 22, 2002  
Oooh, I haven't written anything here for a while! Been exceptionally busy visiting relatives, and cutting back the vine, which grows about a metre in every direction every few days. I do this under the belief that if it expends all its energy making shoots, the grapes will suffer. Reading E. M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady and sequels, and can increasingly relate to sentiments described there.

Also have been eating chocolate - can especially recommend Montezuma's dark (70%, I think) chocolate covered dates, which are just incredible. Also their hot chocolate mix, although it isn't exactly the season for it at the moment. I do seem to spend a lot of time plugging Monty's to friends and relatives, and felt slightly vindicated the other week when speaking to them on the phone, only to be told that they have had a big spate of orders from Cambridge recently. I'm always ready to support small, independent stores, especially ones that stock organic goods - and chocolate in particular. I have to confess that I haven't eaten any Green & Black's for a while though - Monty's do much more interesting things!
11:51 AM

Thursday, July 25, 2002  
During the course of another futile attempt to establish the state of my CASE funding application, I found out that the forms that were most recently dispatched to what remains of Marconi are, as of last Tuesday, the wrong forms, Gromit! Luckily for me, unlike all the other applicants, I don't need to fill in any more paperwork, as the bits I did originally are the ones EPSRC has decided it likes. They just need to be copied and sent off to Marconi again. On the plus side, at least my College fees will be paid, this year, anyway. Assuming EPSRC decides what forms it is willing to eat before I start my course!
2:37 PM

Thursday, July 11, 2002  
From the Telegraph: Lord Simpson and John Mayo presided over a disaster that took Marconi from a £35 billion telecoms darling to near bankruptcy but Michael Armstrong's manoeuvres at AT&T make them look like amateurs.
3:40 PM