Year: 2009
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Got them ol’ Blu Ray blues
A couple of weeks ago, Twilight came out on video. Not that the I was eagerly awaiting its release or anything, but the wife was, which meant that I was facing a couple of hours watching a chick-flick if I expected to fulfil my ‘conjugal rights’ later that night. Still, I reasoned, it could be worse – it was a ‘vampire movie’, right? That’s basically horror. (Although Shaun of the Dead, is a zombie movie, so also horror, and that didn’t exactly strike a romantic chord…). I’ve spent the past couple of years gradually ‘training’ the wife in the art of high definition. After much cajoling, she’ll… Read more
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Who’s gonna ‘drive your home?
Just before Christmas my eldest managed to frag the hard drive on his laptop. I’m not sure how he managed it (probably deliberately, to get out of doing his homework), but when you tried booting it up you’d just get an “Operating System not found” message. Freya has an identical laptop (to avoid sibling rivalry) so I swapped her drive into Finn’s laptop and confirmed that everything else was fine – just a blank hard drive. It could have been that he’d just deleted everything, but that’s pretty hard to do by accident, so I’m guessing he dropped the laptop and crashed… Read more
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Turning Japanese #1: Food
My current project is implementing a new SAP system at some of our warehouses in the U.S, Japan, and Europe. When I joined the project I relished the possibility of going to Japan – I’d only been here once before, for a mere 24 hours, in transit from Singapore to Houston, so the possibility of a longer stay was enticing. Six months into the project I managed to wrangle my first trip. I’d originally conceived of this as a Change Management dog and pony show for myself and my immediate supervisor, but by the time I’d floated it past management, several other members… Read more
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You are not free to roam…
I recently bit the bullet and bought the BlackBerry Bold I’d coveted for so long. One of the primary drivers was that I’m due to spend a fair bit of time in Japan this year, and I wanted a phone that I could use over there. My first trip is fast approaching (next week), and as part of my preparations, I thought I’d check the details of my ‘phone plan. Sadly, it appears that although my ‘phone will technically work in Japan, actually using it there is a whole ‘nother ball game. To start with, AT&T list the international roaming charges in Japan… Read more
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Going Postal
I needed to send some important/urgent papers back to England, this week. I had everything prepared over the weekend, and wanted to get them sent off on Monday. There’s a Post Office about half a mile from my office, but it’s always crowded at lunchtime, so I thought I’d quickly nip out mid-morning. Unfortunately, my plans to be back before anyone noticed I had gone didn’t take into consideration the permanent go-slow that the Post Office staff seem to be on. I was about the 6th person in the queue when I got there. Not great, but pretty good compared to the usual… Read more