(no subject)

insert excitement here

And just after I posted, as I was emailing somebody, the building alarm
went off. At more than 60 dB, and of course I was at the workstation closest
to the siren... I sent, logged out, and held the door open while almost
everyone else left. A couple asians seemed not to mind the noise (?!) and
didn't budge. As the last of those who left hit the staircase, the alarm
stopped. I went ahead on outside. Following a security bloke back to the
gatehouse, I found out the cause: someone had unlocked and opened their
office without telling security, tripping the alarm. I commiserated,
telling him that stupid people were the security problem in infosec, too.

So I went back to the pub (which is in the student union building and
across the hall from that laundry facility). I found K there, and asked
for clarification. She demurred (she was at at table with a few people
then), but once I had wandered about for a minute or two and set up shiny
at an empty table, she came over. We had a nice little chat. I slowly
remembered some of the things she had told me at other times (we met at the
airport, actually) and she clarified. She apparently had to listen to this
girl talking about me for "half an hour". She seemed agreeable to me trying
to not encourage it any. I told her about Jack, and showed her the meichi,
er business card he handed me. She found the whole thing pretty amusing.
The girl in question got back to the pub a few minutes after that (I had
seen her and exchanged destinations outside the gatehouse). Steve lumbered
over shortly after, wanting to fiddle with shiny. I put him on as guest,
but he couldn't see or paly much from there, so I relogged
(he wanted to see the porn and music). Although critical of my porn (which
K seemed to like a bit, but maybe just playfully) he looked at quite
a few ;)

The pub cleared out a bit, K left to get a cab to the airport (Amsterdam
for the weekend) and I left the girl in question (Really had ought to get
her name, huh?) looking over the front page and introduction of
Reciprocality, and then the
easy intro to M0, while laughing at a show on BBC4 about a guy who travels
the world looking for other people with the same name as he..

Colin threw us out as athe show went off the air (was past midnight after
all) and abbreviatedly: I handed her the Tolkein biography and Ley
lines pamphlet (a brief explanation of ley lines was required) and wished
her good night. I pointed her to the secret passage, cautioned her to mind
her head and went in search of chocolate.

Two things are obvious, at least. I am more interested in K than
this girl (of course). K professes to be looking for girls (of course).
(Oh, and I told the assembled table a brief version of the
peaux,rick,jen,(me) thing (as part of the story of how impressively
dense I am to people's entreaties and such (Hi Peaux! I wuv you!)).

Oh and the third obvious thing. the girl in question (less socially adept
than I, possibly) also did not like my collection of porn. She made the
humourous suggestion that only guys porn, and I had to disclose her
responsibilty as a netizen (to leech porn) and the state of IT tech
(porn and video games, email on some days).

This exciting day brought to you by Mozilla Messenger,
"cat > 11july2002.html", and the OS X Terminal with a little cleanup in
GNU nano.

adric, roehampton.ac.uk, 0:48,1:01 12 July 2002

(no subject)

Same pattern as last Thursday, except I'm rationing...

I went up to the habib in Roehampton to get some bread and peanut
butter, and to look for other rations. I forgot that the English don't
acknowledge the development of peanut butter, a substance they find
distasteful (Steve has suggested the very idea is disgusting). So, I
counted out 3.77 GBP (3 crowns, a half-crown, a dime,two nickels three
tu'pence and a penny, if memory serves) to buy a loaf of bread, a small
block of Mild Irish Cheddar and a small jar of Nutella
(not Gnutella, nor
Freenet, either)). So, I
can now feast on cheese and/or nutella sandwiches this weekend, with
copious amounts of tap water and some milk to drink.

The Post Office was open, but quite out of Jubilee stamps. He
suggested I try one of the main post offices, such as in Trafalgar
Square.

So, I had a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. I can't remember
what I thought of nutella last I had it, so it can wait until the next
meal. Now, having sucessfully foraged for food and brought in
provisions for the weekend (admittedly not difficult in this culture,
where food is abundant), what else is there to do? I have shelter, food,
water and clothing (The shirts I washed are surely cleaner and to some
extent dry, although still in sacks over there). What remains but
emotional support, and entertainment?

It's a deep question, incidentially; don't strain yourself.

There's schoolwork to do, of course, and at least some of that I need
to look at. I could get partially online which holds prospects of both
if I work it right. (More productively, I need to go back to that
catalog and actually count, rather than just eyeball, the number of
courses that I'd need to complete various bachalaureate (sp!) programs.
Sure, I can't afford more school, and don't have a place to live next
year, but I still want to know how much longer, and how much more money
it would cost to B.S.) Also online we have porn and computer news sites,
which activities are approximately equally productive.

Hrrrrm....

Reply

Hi,
Pleased to make your aquaintance. Here are the rough details of my schedule while I am in country. Past 31 July I will be back on the other side of the pond, and not particularly close to the New York office, so arrangements might get complicated. I am mostly available either over the weekends (Thurs evening through Sunday evening) and also most weekdays ( Mon-Thurs ) after 1700 or so (varies with classes). I am trying to get a bit of travel in on the weekends, but with prior planning we can probably work around that.

What are your feelings about scheduling and such?

Cheers,
adric