You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine, and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?
Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.
Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.
Monday, September 03
Back Later
Have to go see The Doctor.
Have to go see The Doctor.
Update: Congratulations! It's a souffle!
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Thursday, August 16
Blue Forgotten Monday*
Sydney
2022
Monday
Corner of Oxford and Newland Streets
At twenty to eight I gave up waiting for the tram and started the long slog down towards the office. In the civil service, it is always better to be definitively late than uncertainly on time, and my spex showed three amber dots doing an impression of Brownian motion amid the maze of city streets. Which meant, with roughly equal likelihood, that the transponders were down, the feed was down, the trams were genuinely stuck in traffic, or all of the above.
My spex were up, at least, and I chirped in with a revised ETA.
It was Monday, one of those increasingly rare summer days when the temperature and the humidity dropped into double digits simultaneously, and I could use the exercise. My transfer last year from field work to an analyst’s desk had failed to induce any reduction in my pastry habit, and the unending overtime left me with no energy to stop at the gym on the way home of an evening. So I took my jacket off, slung it over my shoulder, and I walked.
The office is part of the sprawling sandstone edifice of Central Station. If you enter from Eddy Avenue through the colonnade, turn right into the first service corridor, go past the bathrooms and the authorised personnel only signs, enter the baggage elevator and take it down to P3 and then back up to P1, you will find yourself in a narrow pedestrian tunnel with an arched ceiling, pale green walls, and fitful fluorescent lighting installed around the time a young Marconi was first toying with spark-gap transmitters.
And if you follow that tunnel far enough, you will come to a closet door labelled DR JBB BELL.
I opened the door and went in, because that is me, and this is my story.
Don’t try to follow those instructions, by the way. Not only will you be surreptitiously fingerprinted and retina-scanned, and then very politely but very firmly arrested, but I lied about at least three critical details, and in any case, it’s not there any more.
My name is Jocelyn Barrett Beresford Bell, known as B.B. to my more irritating friends and Baby to people I refuse to talk to. My father is an astrophysicist, and my mother is a fruitcake. I have an MSc in statistics, a PhD in abnormal psychology, I turn thirty in June, and I work as a transit cop. Which partly explains why my office is a renovated broom closet in a service tunnel deep below Central Station.
But only partly.
Sydney’s Underground system is the most complex in the world, a last gift of King and Country in the decades before independence. Bored Scots engineers, run short of London silt to burrow through, had been shipped off en masse and run riot in the rich southern soil. Or so the story goes, and indeed the city had inherited an Edwardian knotwork masterpiece of brick and cast iron, weaving a spell of rapid transportation from the beaches to the mountains for over a century.
Being unique in scale brings with it unique problems, so unique – if you will forgive my phrasing – so unique that the sociological actuaries are required to carry backup weapons.
[To be continued, maybe.]
* The title I mentioned previously.
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Saturday, August 11
Ten Years Later, Realizes What Song Was About
Oh.
Oh.
Update: I replaced the original video with the official version (which has better video and sound), and apparently that won't play in the US. If that happens to you, try one of these instead. The first doesn't work for Australia, which might be a good sign...
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06:52 PM
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Tuesday, August 07
Decompression
Was 85% dead (pressures of work, minor illness).
Was 85% dead (pressures of work, minor illness).
Caught up on Kokoro Connect.
Now 75% dead.
Not for everyone* but consistently entertaining and surprising. Avoid reviews** and just watch it.
* Grade C Angst Alert.
** As Mrs Who would say, Spoilers!
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09:36 PM
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Monday, June 18
Intangibles
Today I spent $330 on renewing domains (ac, io, sh and vu were up for renewal, and I went for the 2-year option), $225 on jQuery plugins on CodeCanyon (they're nominally very cheap, but I need the extended license option to integrate them with Minx), and $49 on a collection of web UI elements (summer sale, down from $349).
Today I spent $330 on renewing domains (ac, io, sh and vu were up for renewal, and I went for the 2-year option), $225 on jQuery plugins on CodeCanyon (they're nominally very cheap, but I need the extended license option to integrate them with Minx), and $49 on a collection of web UI elements (summer sale, down from $349).
Not one of these items has any packaging, shipping, or other physical components at all. Over $600 for electrons. That's more than I spend on regular electrons in an entire quarter.
These better be some damn shiny electrons!*
* Actually, they are. One of them was an image gallery I really wanted for integration with Minx, but wasn't previously available with a suitable license. The UI element collection was tempting at $349, and a steal at $49. So I'm pretty happy with my little ion cloud.
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Saturday, April 07
Moth-Like Eating Suspected
It looks like something's been nibbling on one of my favourite shirts - there's little holes and tears all over one of the sleeves. It's such a nice colour and a lovely cotton/linen blend too, and I bet I won't be able to replace - [checks online] - well, I guess for $10 the moths can have that one; I've got two more on the way.
It looks like something's been nibbling on one of my favourite shirts - there's little holes and tears all over one of the sleeves. It's such a nice colour and a lovely cotton/linen blend too, and I bet I won't be able to replace - [checks online] - well, I guess for $10 the moths can have that one; I've got two more on the way.
Gotta love online clothes shopping.
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11:31 AM
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Sunday, March 11
Went Outside Today
I even tied my shoelaces.
I even tied my shoelaces.
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07:42 PM
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Sunday, March 04
Ow Update
Progress: Once standing, can walk - slowly, but with relatively little pain.
Problem: Standing up in the first place not so good.
As far as motility goes, it's like ageing 40 years in one second. While I can expect to get better again - I'm improving already - the difficulty right now is that I only had one second to plan for this. Given 40 years, I could probably have arranged things a little better.
Note to 75-year-old self: Remember to arrange convenient hand-holds in bathroom for use of 85-year-old self.
Progress: Once standing, can walk - slowly, but with relatively little pain.
Problem: Standing up in the first place not so good.
As far as motility goes, it's like ageing 40 years in one second. While I can expect to get better again - I'm improving already - the difficulty right now is that I only had one second to plan for this. Given 40 years, I could probably have arranged things a little better.
Note to 75-year-old self: Remember to arrange convenient hand-holds in bathroom for use of 85-year-old self.
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12:14 PM
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Saturday, March 03
Ow
Ow ow ow ow ow.
Something has gang agley in my spine. It doesn't actually hurt if I keep my movements limited, but if I tense up or move the wrong way the muscles in my lower back spasm and ow ow ow ow ow.
And now I need make the hazardous trek to my computer and share the Q drive so I can watch TV from bed. If you never hear from me again, I regret nothing!
Update: R drive.
Update 2: Survived.
Update 3: But the back spasms have diminished in frequency, duration, and severity, so that's good. It's still an ordeal just getting from the bedroom to the living room, but it's not a nightmare.
Update 4: I have corn thins, X Files, and ibuprofen. Forgot to get anything to drink though, which means another ow ow ow ow ow before long.
Ow ow ow ow ow.
Something has gang agley in my spine. It doesn't actually hurt if I keep my movements limited, but if I tense up or move the wrong way the muscles in my lower back spasm and ow ow ow ow ow.
And now I need make the hazardous trek to my computer and share the Q drive so I can watch TV from bed. If you never hear from me again, I regret nothing!
Update: R drive.
Update 2: Survived.
Update 3: But the back spasms have diminished in frequency, duration, and severity, so that's good. It's still an ordeal just getting from the bedroom to the living room, but it's not a nightmare.
Update 4: I have corn thins, X Files, and ibuprofen. Forgot to get anything to drink though, which means another ow ow ow ow ow before long.
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Thursday, February 09
5 Accessories Every Man Should Carry
- Hedgehog
You never want to be without a hedgehog; they make great company, and in dire extremis, good eating.
- Deck of cards
Handy if you need to make friends and they're allergic to hedgehogs.
- Can of spam
You can feed it to the hedgehog, and the empty can has a huge range of uses, such as a hedgehog bathtub.
- Clawhammer
Fight off zombies, drive nails, pull nails, light fires, catch fish.
- Towel
For wiping up incriminating evidence. May also have other uses.
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