Bad News

The wizened wee EeePC on which I rely for almost all my blog posts has gone senile. I can't save files. I usually can't open files. I can't run the Task Manager, and - worst of all for the purposes of blogging - I can't access external devices. Having noticed a problem, I tried to back stuff up the external HDD: no dice. Happily, I can still run Gmail on this aged kerjigger, so I uploaded and emailed everything to my Hotmail account. Unfortunately, yes, you're probably ahead of my explanation, if I can't access external devices, that means I can't put access pics from my camera to put on here. I have to use Dad's machine, which has a flexible schedule, serving all four of us at different times and for different purposes. Mm.

What's that old saying? If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So last night I finished the latter half od Michael Jan Friedman's Starfleet: Year One, which is an entertaining but not life-changing look at the first year of Starfleet. There are considerable problems with the TV show Enterprise, but I'm happily in the position of having forgotten what a lot of them are, and minding less about the others. I also finally got round to reading Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives, which is a change of style from a lot of his other work. To be fair, this is one of his earlier works, so it's not that he's changed, but that I've read him out of order! It's a very entertaining piece of literature, and even with my scanty knowledge of Lovecraftiana, I was able to follow the oblique references well. Knowing nowt about computers, I shut my brain off while reading them, pronouncing the syllables without comprehension. That incomprehension also spurred a mild desire to learn something about computers, but it soon faded.

I mean to finish off Life of Pi later on, and then a splendid little memoir of the Great War, Haig - Master of the Field by Major-General Sir John Davidson. Generally regarded these days as an incompetent bungler or murderous buffoon, thanks to the acid-tongued memoirs of Lloyd-George, it's interesting to read about Haig's positive qualities. It is also a timely read for the season, as I am posting this between Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday. Memoria minuitur nisi eam exerceas (memory diminishes unless you exercise it), as my old Latin teacher used to say. Although in his case he was chastising me for always forgetting homework. On that note, I was mildly amused by a discrepancy in this assistant-teacher training course I'm taking. Some of those taking the class hadn't e-mailed in their homework to the tutor. A tasty little juxtaposition with the irritation a teacher might reasonably show with a child who did the same.

I roped my brother in yesterday, and he helped me move my weights bench up from the cellar. I never used it down there, and since lugging it back up here, I've used it twice. Not to mention the exercise of hefting a hundred kilos of weights up here to fiddle with. I've pulled out the old Arnie New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding off the shelf, allowing me to invigorate the leetle grey cells with ways of rebuilding the beeg muscle cells. I have no idea why Poirot crept in there, and I apologise, 'Astings! :-D To the consternation and bafflement of a number of my friends, I have long found dance music rather conducive to exercise. Truth be told, I also used to baffle my mate, Kev, by working out to Madonna's '80s work and Johnny Cash classics. Maybe my friends are right to be concerned! I'll leave you now, with Johnny Cash and Madonna cacophonously clashing in your lugholes, with the hope that next time I'll be able to post from Dad's PC and get some pics up. Bye-bye!