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Dec. 8th, 2009 @ 12:48 am Did he just skip to the end there...?
Current Location: Bath, UK
Tags:
Today's Deal or No Deal has been described as "the greatest of all time". And that's not a description I'm going to argue with at all. If you haven't seen it, and you're in the UK, then stop reading this entry right now, get yourself over to Channel 4's catch-up web site and, er, catch up with it. Go on. Do it now. My ramblings about it will still be here when you're done.

Seriously, go! You'll thank me for it. Even an international sports star wanted to talk to me about this game today, that's how good it is!

Okay? Seen it now? Because from here on in there'll be spoilers.

I wasn't in the audience for this particular game, although I did hear about it because I was there for the games due to be broadcast between Thursday and Sunday later this week, during whose recordings today's game was mentioned. Well, of course it was mentioned. How could a game where Corinne, a 74 year-old woman whose sole aim was to single-mindedly and resolutely pursue the quarter-million pound jackpot not be referred to again? She wanted the money to buy a particular vintage car costing £200,000; any amount less than that just wouldn't cut it for her.

Amazingly, fate conspired to keep that £250,000 box in the game until the very end, along with the 1p box. A bigger contrast you could not get. An offer of £88,000 was made. But an offer of £88,000 wasn't enough to get Corinne that vintage car, so an offer of £88,000 was duly rejected. She opened her box to find one solitary penny inside. It was the biggest crash in the history of the game, but Corinne took it with such grace and stoicism that I couldn't help but feel total admiration for her.

In fact, the only annoying thing about it was the fact that somebody thought it might be a good idea to spoil the tension for some of the viewers by revealing the details of the game at Deal or No Deal fansite www.dond.co.uk over a month before the game was broadcast. This makes no sense to me. I don't understand what motivates somebody to deny others the edge-of-the-seat thrill of seeing it for themselves. It wasn't like the people who visit the forum wouldn't have been watching every episode anyway, obsessed nerds that we are. I suppose this spoiling person just wanted to show off that they knew something other people didn't, but it was rather a selfish act to do that by ruining other people's excitement.

But then again, I would say that. For I take Deal or No Deal far too seriously.
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[info]misteral
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Dec. 7th, 2009 @ 09:52 pm This Depression Thing
DisorderYour Score
Major Depression:High
Dysthymia:Slight-Moderate
Bipolar Disorder:Very High
Cyclothymia:High-Moderate
Seasonal Affective Disorder:Slight-Moderate
Postpartum Depression:N/A
Take the Depression Test

Now is probably not the best time in my life for me to take this, but what can you do?

Difficult to know how to interpret the results. Doctors have suspected I have Borderline Personality Disorder but as I haven't seen anyone regarding depression for over four years now, I don't know if that's diagnostic of anything. A lot of the symptoms subsided and I haven't really had the need to consider medical help over something I thought was in the past. The last two months have been tough but, at the moment, nowhere near as bad as 2001 and 2004 were.
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[info]lupestripe
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Dec. 7th, 2009 @ 08:03 pm The Animals Of Farthing Wood
Thanks to [info]huskypupp - The Animals of Farthing Wood arrived on DVD today. It's going to be a great Christmas - I can't wait to immerse myself in it again - it's the one thing, above all others, that made me furry. Thanks hun *slurps*
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[info]lupestripe
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Dec. 7th, 2009 @ 07:27 am HAPPY
Happy, haphappiest of birthdays to my BFF [info]lacyunderall!!!! Love you!! Have a wonderful beginning to a great new trip around the sun!!!!
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[info]tinywarrior
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Dec. 7th, 2009 @ 11:49 pm Fleetwood Mac, Acer Arena
Yup, still got it.

Proper thoughts when I can make more sense of it, and my ears stop ringing. But in a nutshell? This was Fleetwood Mac having fun. Who'da thunk it?
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[info]jblum
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Dec. 7th, 2009 @ 05:55 am bah life
Have to leave for class in 5 hours, in hopes of finding out what the final project is. Since. NOTHING HAS BEEN UPLOADED ABOUT IT ONLINE aughhhh.

I don't see myself being awake then.

Damnit.

Also I think I might have strep throat. :| If it doesn't go away tomorrow maybe I'll hit up the nearby medplus or something.

edit holy crap there is something online about it and it isn't anything super huge ahhhh I can do this without going to class. I AM SO HAPPY. Also I am NOT a doctor and have found out that sinus drainage by itself can cause my sore throat, seeing as how I don't have a fever and other things (and sinus drainage is not a symptom of strep throat) I'll probably wait a while longer before I see a doctor, since I'm otherwise fine. Even if it is horribly distracting and kind of painful.
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[info]comicsan
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Dec. 7th, 2009 @ 11:01 am thanks, and apologies
Thanks to everyone who posted with kind words last night.

Giles is away for a few days, I'm here alone and sometimes being alone with your thoughts isn't the best thing. Usually I make a point that if I'm feeling down I stay the hell offline just so as to avoid such things. Slipped a bit last night, and I'm sorry for bothering people with it. I can reassure you that it's not some new situation that's arisen to upset me, and it's certainly not any kind of personal problem, it's just a long, ongoing pain in the arse of a situation related to something that I really don't give two shits about but which just keeps blighting my life and will not go the fuck away, and after years and years of it sometimes I crack a little.

Anyway. I will STFU about it and endeavour to keep it that way }:-).

Now I must get on, code won't write itself }:-).
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[info]stinkygoat
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Dec. 7th, 2009 @ 03:04 am STOP
I wanna go home

Take off this uniform and leave the show
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[info]stinkygoat
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Dec. 7th, 2009 @ 02:09 am gah
I really shouldn't listen to Roger Waters in my current state of head.

goddamn it I basically don't listen to music any more anyway, because you just don't when you're depressed, it just falls away. And now when I try it just hurts too much. Yet another thing in my life arbitrarily fucking ruined.

Still do not know what the fuck I did that I deserve this. My life is just a pain amplifier.

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[info]stinkygoat
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Dec. 6th, 2009 @ 11:54 pm It's CHRIIIIST-MAAAAS!
Current Location: Bath, UK
Tags: ,
# It's the most wonderful time of the year!

# Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful!

# Have yourself a merry little Christmas!

# Etc. etc. etc.

These are just some of the words that have found themselves coming out of my mouth, usually formed into some vague sort of a tune, at various points over the past two days. I've sung them as part of an octet, as part of the full chorus, as part of a 20-man subset of the chorus, and I've also sung them when we've descended upon some unsuspecting local pub after the show and delighted/irritated the patrons inside by spontaneously and informally bursting into tune.

Yesterday's impromptu pub singing was amazingly good fun. When we turned up, there was already some live music going on in the form of three people with semi-acoustic guitars and amplifiers performing some blues-y type tunes to a fairly indifferent audience. But when the band saw us, they decided to cut their set slightly short so we could perform instead. We just sang while standing where we were in the middle of the pub for about half an hour, and got a far better reaction than the band with their guitars did! We were inundated with people telling us that we'd made their evening, asking us how to get into singing groups themselves, and generally being really complimentary to us. It was fantastic.

Roll on Wednesday, when we're singing in public again!

So, after I got home this evening I watched today's Deal or No Deal, which turned out to be one of those games where nothing seemed to be going right. That was until the very end, when Charmaine managed to salvage £3000 for herself.
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[info]misteral
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Dec. 6th, 2009 @ 11:40 pm Reading And Experiencing...
God, I really don't fit in, do I?
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[info]lupestripe
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Dec. 6th, 2009 @ 03:51 pm (no subject)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/710

And now I will never right click a link and click Send Link instead of copying the address again.
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[info]dr_dos
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Dec. 6th, 2009 @ 11:34 am Whirl
Time is goiing by faster than I ever thought possible, and for now that's just fine with me. Bring on 2010! It's been a rough one for us in some ways, but a brutal one for so many friends of mine that I can't even bring myself to carp about the minor hurdles we're dealing with here. We had our first hard freeze here a couple of days ago. It lasted for about an hour, but I'm hoping it was enough to kill the bugs. As usual, none of our gardens were mulched or ready, but I'm sure they'll be fine. The big project in the spring is a rework of our fountain area in accordance with the awesome plan that [info]lacyunderall came up with a few months back. It's gonna be beautiful!

We had a fantastic time at Disney and the boys are both doing well. Elder son still has his moments of teenage moron syndrome (TMS), but nothing major, thank goodness. We're getting ready for the holidays and I'm actually looking forward to it being a lean one. We blew our cash in Florida, so the holiday is going to be about hanging out, eating, and spending quality time with family--which is what I love most about Christmas in the first place. The boys said they want a western-themed tree this year, so we're having fun with the planning of that. I'll post pics once we're done.

This weekend we've been enjoying the new oven and baking things that actually cook evenly!!! Yesterday we made peanut butter cup cookies and red velvet sandwich cookies. This morning was cinnamon crumb cake and red velvet cupcakes. I'm a fan of the red velvet, in case you can't tell.

So the splotchy quick entry just to check in and say hello. I'm keeping up and sending love, even when I can't find the time to sit and write a coherent comment...but I am always here cheering you on!

Time to get moving...lazy Sundays are the best!
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[info]tinywarrior
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Dec. 6th, 2009 @ 04:04 pm A Still More Glorious Dawn
Current Location: Somewhere in the Universe
mood: contemplative
It doesn't annoy me that people don't understand the vast complexity of the universe around them. I don't understand it, even the greatest minds of our time openly appreciate that there is so much we don't yet know.

It does really annoy me, though, that so many people don't even try to appreciate the complexity around us, and even consider it stupid, nerdy, or laughable that some people would do. So many people are consumed by their own self-importance that they never spare a thought for how tiny we really, how vast everything is, and just how wonderfully fantastic the fact that everything simply exists is.

What annoys me the most, however, is that I feel like I started to ignore those things myself, concepts that used to be really quite important to me. Fortunately, there are people in my life who seem to be able to remind me about the important things just when I need it the most.

Listen to these.

The three songs behind the link above remind me of some of the important, wonderful things about life. I feel like, if everyone appreciated these things, really appreciated them, maybe we'd all get on just a little better. It doesn't matter what you believe, what faith you do or do not hold, what colour or race you are, these are things that we can all appreciate. That we >should really appreciate.

They make me want to grab people in the street and say, "have you HEARD this??"

Thanks, [info]doran_eirok.

Azakir Devaris

"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together."
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[info]azakir
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Dec. 5th, 2009 @ 08:36 pm Nixie clock part 4
Those of you who have been following my LJ for a while might recall, nearly two years ago, a few posts about a Nixie clock project I was working on. (Part 1 described the project and where I got the parts, Part 2 described the time base, and Part 3 described how I interfaced the display.) I didn't forget about it; it just sat around for a while, partly because I was busy with other projects, but largely because I was dithering about what kind of enclosure to put it in. My carpentry skills are beyond lousy, which ruled out doing any sort of nice wooden case. Ultimately I decided to re-use the original rack-mount case of the equipment I got the Nixie display board and power supply from, after cleaning it up a bit and repainting the front panel. Pictures of that when it's done, but first I wanted to give details on a couple of auxiliary circuits that I haven't shared yet.
( Read more... )
As an interesting side note, I finally thought to look up the NSN number still attached to the second, still unaltered device. It came up with a description of "INDICATOR, DIGITAL DISPLAY." The supplier was listed as the National Security Agency, via the Air Force Cryptologic Support Center. The list price was $880. This is not surprising considering the components in it, some of which were pretty cutting edge in 1974, and the fact that it appears to have been hand-assembled. The original main logic board, which I removed from the one I turned into a clock, is done entirely with wire-wrap and bears some 31 digital logic ICs.

I forget what I paid for these, back in the late '90s when I bought them. Around $30 or $40 each, I think.
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[info]orv
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Dec. 6th, 2009 @ 12:52 am Credit or No Credit
Current Location: Bath, UK
Tags: , ,
I've had a fantastic day, which involved singing in front of some old folks in a nursing home, then singing in front of a paying audience in a church hall, and finally singing in front of a bunch of surprised punters in a pub afterwards. It was great fun, but I'm not going to write about any of that right now. Instead I'm going to be all negative and moan a bit.

(I'm doing even more singing in front of people tomorrow, so I might put all of the weekend's singing anecdotes together in my next entry. Or I might not. You'll just have to wait and see.)

So anyway, before all of that happened I was online trying to work out how I'm going to transport myself from Dublin airport to a television studio approximately fifteen miles further south, when I visit there next Saturday for some reason. Unfortunately the city of Dublin itself sits in between these two places, and it's bound to be packed full of people and cars and other stuff getting in the way and making progress rather slow. So I had the idea to hire a car from the airport.

To the internet I went then, and looked for the cheapest car I could find from the cheapest hire company I could find. I found one that'd let me have a car for less than twenty quid for the day, so I booked it there and then. But then I read the small print.

Said small print informed me that I'd have to leave a financial deposit when I picked the car up, which I suppose is fair enough. What was really annoying though is that the only way I was permitted to leave that deposit would be via a credit card. But I don't have a credit card! I've never bothered getting one since paying for stuff with a debit card seems far easier and more efficient to me. However, it seems that a debit card is not something that a car hire company will deal with.

I got on the phone to the rental company. They told me that I could leave a cash deposit if I liked. How much would this cash deposit be? One thousand two hundred euros, that's how much. I'd have to withdraw over £1000 in cash from my bank account, exchange it for euros, and carry that cash on my person. Oh, and then change it back into pounds at a huge loss when I got it back again.

Looks like I'll be spending a couple of hours on buses next Saturday then...
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[info]misteral
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Dec. 5th, 2009 @ 09:11 am apropos of nothing
I remember there was a poll that went by somewhere long ago about favourite words. I forget what I answered to that, but casually browsing today I know what my least favourite word at the moment is. 'Pretentious'. It's one of those words that gets overused and misapplied, especially on the Internet - where it tends to be casually flung out whenever the following two conditions apply;
* something is even slightly unusual and imaginative, and;
* someone else doesn't get it.

Other than that, am in Crewe today, where there will be Pawpets writing. Woohoo!
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[info]raimei
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Dec. 4th, 2009 @ 11:43 pm It's Snowing in Mississippi.
mood: impressed
( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
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[info]crabby_lioness
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Dec. 5th, 2009 @ 01:44 am Mogg, Bolton, Way, Palmer
Current Location: Bath, UK
Tags: ,
Did you know that the Ministry of Defence have spent over half a century employing people to investigate reports from those crackpots who think they've seen aliens in the night sky? Well, it's true. Taxpayers' money has been used up giving credence to such crazed notions of little green men for over fifty years. But, as of this week, not any more.

Of course, I don't know that there definitely isn't intelligent life out there, able to sustain itself in travelling many light years through space with the sole intention of hovering over a field just outside Basingstoke for a bit. However, the possibility of such an event does seem, well, a little remote. Certainly remote enough to mean that paying people -- people ostensibly charged with protecting the citizens of the United Kingdom -- to specifically look out for these aliens would be rather a whimsical extravagance.

Besides, as all readers of science fiction stories will testify, any predatory extra-terrestrials out there can simply be defeated by the common cold.

Okay, I'm rambling on and not making much sense now, so I'm going to stop writing this rubbish soon and go to bed. But first I should mention that on today's Deal or No Deal Peter turned down all of his offers and had just one pound in his box.
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[info]misteral
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Dec. 4th, 2009 @ 04:57 pm This Honesty Meme Thing...
I am sure I did something similar a few months back but there's no harm in doing it again. Got to do something whilst I am reading about maggoty casu marzu cheese. Seems interesting.

I WILL BE COMPLETELY HONEST FOR 48 HOURS...
you can ask one question; Any question, no matter how crazy, sinister, lewd or wrong it is. I WILL answer no matter what and you will have my FULL honesty; but I DARE you to put this in your LJ and see what questions you get...
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[info]lupestripe
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