Inky Fingers and Weak Wills

How do ink jet cartridges know to run out when you need them the most? Mine expired just at the end of printing out an otherwise perfect print on the most expensive paper. Never mind, I thought, I've got a spare cartridge. I got it out of its air tight bag, dropped it into the printer and it fell out onto the floor. Wrong sized cartridge for wrong printer. So now I have an opened cartridge for the other printer and a worrying feeling that the right cartridge is somewhere else in my room. And I can't print my picture. Dang.

So at lunch time I went out to get a new printer cartridge. I hate buying them because they are expensive and don't last as long as I would like (i.e. forever). So in the end I didn't buy one. I bought a camcorder instead. Well, I had to. It was the last one in the shop, specially reduced, and I've just got paid a little extra cash for some stuff that I wrote yonks ago. I've been thinking about getting a tiny little camcorder for the holls and they had one which looked perfect at a scarily good price. And I am very weak. And I like my toys. It is very nice. It does everything except make the tea. I'll buy the printer cartridge tomorrow. Maybe.

I am not a mean person

I have been taken to task as being a rather mean driver. Apparently I don't "let people in" as much as I should. These are folks who are so misguided as to live in silly little roads which are connected to the proper thoroughfares that I drive along to work. They sit at junctions in cars which are posher and newer than mine and expect me to stop and let them pull out.

I of course totally reject this allegation. I am a generous and open hearted person who will give you the time of day at any time of day, or indeed night. I spend ages agonising on how I may best serve my fellow human. I see myself as considering not just the driver being let out but the people who are in the traffic behind me, to whom I feel I also owe a duty in this respect. After all, letting someone in in front of me (note the "in front" part of this) means that I am also, by implication, delaying those behind. Who am I to slow all of them down, just so that some shiny BMW driver can complete some no doubt pointless journey from their big house?

Of course, this discussion would not have taken place if I had not failed to recognise the car of number one wife waiting to pull out of the filling station on the way home this evening....

Red Nose Day Madness

I'm doing it again. I've no idea why. Every two years I do this and swear it will be the last one. Especially after last time when they painted my hair red. It took ages to get the dye out. Our bathroom looked like it had just hosted a spectacularly gruesome murder.

But it is for charity (but then again, so is "Comic Relief Fame Academy" - arrgh). Oh well. If you really (and I mean really) have nothing better to do on the 11th of March. And you happen to be passing the Robert Blackburn Building on the University of Hull campus at lunchtime. And you want to learn about Microsoft .NET, Cheese, Smartphones and rapping. Then it just, just, might be worth dropping in. You can find out more and get a free poster here.

Free Food?

Took number one wife out for a meal today. We ended up at a place which does "two meals for the price of one" (I only go to the classiest joints). They implemented this rather cleverly by simply doubling the price of a single meal. And of course there were three of us.

I really should have ordered a fourth meal. I'm not sure if I would have been capable of eating it but it would have been worth a try. I thought about offering it to the person stood behind me in the queue, but this would have only complicated things. In the end we just had the three meals and left it at that. But next time I go there it will be in an even numbered party.....

BCS Competition

Today we hosted the Northern heats of the BCS programming competition in our big shiny lab. There were 12 teams of programmers fighting to beat the clock and complete as many of the problems as they could in the time allowed. With only one computer per team. Great fun. I was judging. Apparently we had more completed programs in Hull than anywhere else in the country. Which sounds good to me.

The competition in full flow