Life, the Universe and Everything

Bumped into an old mate at a dance tonight. He told me he'd got married to a 36-year-old woman. "Nice!" I said. Social convention dictates that I should have asked if she's got a sister but I'm not very good at that sort of thing. He helped me out "She's got a sister!" I came straight to the point. "Does she dance?" "Yes and she's very keen to get married" "Uh huh?" "Only problem is she's still stuck in the Philippines" "Shame!" I said with rare diplomacy.

To an optimist, the glass is half full. To a pessimist, the glass is half empty. To an engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Marks and Spencer's have Mince Pies. The box says "Classics for Christmas". It also says "Best before 29 Nov"

I've been getting a lot less junk mail (aka "Spam") recently. To the point where I wondered if my email system was broken. Then I found out the reason. It seems that a large portion of the world's spam was controlled from a server in California. So did the government close it down with a Police raid, lots of flashing lights and SWAT teams? No. The two companies who provided Internet access saw what was happening and cut the blighters off. Nice to see some community action. Link Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline

Last weekend, there being no dancing, I flew off to the island of Jersey to see a friend. It was easy. A short drive to the local airport that I still call Staverton but nowadays prefers to call itself "Gloucestershire M5". The plane has real propellers and just 20 seats - all by a window. We walk across the tarmac and up a proper set of steps into the fuselage like they do on old newsreel footage of politicians. The captain himself does the safety drill then says "Now, the interesting stuff - Sweeties!" and hands round boiled sweets. I look at the wrapper wondering if this largesse is sponsored by a local dentist but no, it's Lloyds TSB. Odd. It's disconcerting to fly over a beach and half an hour later to walk on it but its got to be done. Jersey beaches are surprisingly big for a small island - that is, until the tide comes in and then they don't exist at all. I started wondering where thousands of summer visitors moved to twice a day when the sea r...

I was at the Ceroc jive dance class tonight. As usual, we were changing partners every few minutes. A woman I'd never seen before came to be my partner in turn. She was unremarkable in appearance and dress. But how she could dance! Not only was it good, it was different! As the freestyle dancing session started, I looked out for her to ask for a dance but some guy handed her a coat and they both left. Damn!

You know those coloured twisted ribbon things people wear to show allegiance to a cause? Friend showed me her latest one last night in the form of a yellow metal badge. She did tell me the cause but, erm, I forget which one it was. There's probably several dozen causes using the colour yellow anyway which is classic example of what a software person would call an "overloaded variable" which is as bad as it sounds. This morning, I logged onto Facebook and saw that a friend had joined the cause "Autism Advocacy" I clicked through and spotted their ribbon That's cool!