Category: Uncategorised

This weekend I met Boris The Dog, who is very famous. And very nuts. We had great fun playing chase, and fetch, and try-to-destroy-the-ornaments. He even let me share some of his chicken and chips later on in the evening.

Oh, Sir Findo Gask, SWMBO, Anni and Mat were also there. But they forced me to go to a pub full of scary, ugly people of indeterminate gender trying to “sing” Britney Spears stuff on karaoke. Boris was actually nice to me and only bit me once.

I’m just wondering if “tour t-shirts” are an idea. I may price these up on Tuesday when I’m in town. Anyone want one if I do?

Cat. Argh.

I put out the word on the street about the cat I found on Wednesday night and a couple from up the road came over. Their cat (black, adult, reflective yellow collar but with a nametag on the collar that I couldn’t find) has been missing since Wednesday night. However, he’s sure (or was – the seeds of doubt are now inevitably sown) that Wurzel hadn’t gone out till around 8:30. I found the dead cat at 6:00.

The thing is, said cat has a habit of wandering into garages and whatnot, and getting locked in. He once jumped into someone’s van when they were moving house and had to be brought back!

So sadly, we’re back at square one. The folk at number 10 are still in limbo, unsure about their cat. And as the actual cat involved is now in a landfill somewhere, there’s no way to be sure.

Plans. Argh.

People keep recommending places I can go. ********. Now added to the list is Cambodia, and the Angkor Wat temples. And the Tiger Temple near Kanchanaburi (site of the “Bridge Over The River Kwai” and it’s associated war memorial) – that recommended by the guy sorting my garden!

Oh, and he’s also told me about the penguin parade near Melbourne where they all come out of the water at night to hide in their burrows. So that’s a few more quid (and another day) spent.

You know, at this rate I may make it to New Zealand sometime before the new year. The current plan is to get to Thailand with my shiny visa which means I can enter the country without an outbound ticket. I’ll spend a fair bit of time there and then head to Cambodia, Vietnam and Loas (in some order, perhaps by land) and then to Australia, maybe heading back into Thailand first (using my 30-day waiver courtesy of a UK passport and a pre-bought outbound ticket).

The only downside is I’m relying on other very kind people from CouchSurfing for accomodation in Oz and I don’t want to keep buggering them around for dates! Part of me’s tempted to offer myself as a volunteer for a month or so at the Tiger Temple. Once the house goes, I’ll have no money worries at all. And I could spend time looking after tigers. Real ones. I mean… wow.

Today’s recipe – “Easy-as-****-to-make Stew”

Ingredients: One tin (yes – tin) of stew, 5 spuds, one large carrot, peas to taste, brown sauce

Method: Quarter the spuds and drop them into a pan. Peel the carrot, slice it, drop it in. Empty the tin of stew into the pan. Cover with peas. Fill with water till it covers the ingredients. Heat on full tilt for about 40 minutes. Sieve off water and dump on plate. Smother in brown sauce (rough quantity – “shitloads”) and eat.

Who needs Jamie Oliver? The guy’s a ******* freak anyway. Sainsbury’s? Bollocks. With Morrison’s current 2for1 on tinned stew, my dinner works out at less than a quid. Beat that, you bloaty-tongued ****.

Couple of pretty bad things today. First off, a friend of mine could be about to lose one of her kitties. It’s been diagnosed with a rather nasty disease and she has to make a decision whether to let him live on or have him put down. Anyone reading this knows how I feel about animals – my own cats in particular – so you know I’m sympathetic. It’s one of those “wish I could do something” times, made all the worse by the fact that I know I can’t.

Another poor kitty died in front of me today. Just as I was getting home, I saw a cat literally writhing in the road where I was about to park. I jumped out, thinking it was two cats fighting at first, but just one. Bleeding everywhere from somewhere in its upper half. At first I thought it had been hit by a car, but there was fur around it (not its own – it was a black cat and the fur was a light brown) so I’m now thinking it lost a fight and maybe got bitten in the neck.

It lived for maybe a minute or so. By the time I’d figured out that it was helpless and started looking for something to bash its head in with, it had stopped twitching and then stopped breathing. It had a collar on, but no name tag. I wish it had, as someone’s going to be waiting for their cat to come home tonight and I could at least have let them know.

Thanks to Steve for helping me tidy the poor thing up. Not very dignified (wrapped in two binbags and a garden sack) but at least out of harm’s way.

Overall, I just feel shitty at the moment. I have two cats here with me. KK’s sulking in her armchair and Ed’s lying with his head in my lap. I’m going away and leaving them (in capable hands, in fairness) for over a year. I’m going to miss them more than anything or anyone else I’m leaving behind.

And I’m just a soft old bastard who needs more sleep…

Bit of background here – a teensy bit of geeky stuff and then on to the philosophy and real science. Load balancing involves having several servers or processors and then balancing any given workload across them. Simple in principle, worth a lot of cash to whatever company can make it work efficiently and automatically. Simple.

Now, how about load balancing people? I put this to one of the guys in the office. I was thinking along the lines of splitting any given task into segments, but Paul took thinks somewhat more literally and came back with the suggestion:

"See-saw"

A mental tangent arrived. OK, so you could load balance people on a see-saw. But what if one was really skinny and one was really fat?

"Put the fat one near the middle and the skinny one at the end."

OK… now, if there were an even number of people or a large enough number whereby you could mix them around enough this would continue to work. But, how about three people of similar weight? And you’re not allowed to put anyone right in the middle as they’d not actually be "balanced". My response:

"A really big mincer."

Going back to the original question, I admit this would perhaps affect their productivity somewhat, but it would allow you to load balance them pretty much perfectly. And if you bagged everything, it’d be less messy than trying to average things out by ripping off a limb here, popping out an organ there and shifting them to the other side of the see-saw.

Hey, you see more stupid things given government cash towards research grants. Think of the areas of study. How big a see-saw is convenient? What sort of strength bags do you need? Would being put on a see-saw or minced up really make someone work more efficiently?

I’m wasted here.