My Day Off

Quotation Of The Day: Geoffrey Cotterell -- In America, only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.

No, i have no idea who Geoffrey Cotterell is (i could Google him, i s'pose, but to be honest i can't be arsed).  I found the above in The Penguin Book Of Modern Humorous Quotations and it tickled my funnybone for some reason.  Mr Cotterell may have been implying that Australians are illiterate or something, but i have a couple of very dear Strine friends (Matty & Roo, you know who you are!) and i love them to pieces la la.

Anyway, yes, at last, a day off.  I'm sure i've whinged before about how much i hate having to work six days a week at that rotten job.  (I'm supposed to work five-and-a-half days, but the half-day off never seems to happen....) And the job just seems to get more and more difficult.  I'm not going to write about it, though!

My friend Jillian got fired from her job a few days ago -- she posted to Facebook some comments about how awful her bosses and her customers (she's a waitress) were, her bosses saw the post and gave her the old heave-ho.

So, today: scrubbed the cat's litterbox, cleaned the kitchen (a bit), ordered the new Roger McGuinn CD, "CCD" -- yes, that's its title, "CCD."  And got Bruce Springsteen's new album, "Wrecking Ball."  Upon a first, very casual listen, it's pretty underwhelming but i really haven't given it the attention it deserves.  Yet.

I just re-read "The Hobbit" -- refreshing my memory of the book (i'd forgotten a lot of it) -- in anticipation of its December release.  I think it will be worth a trip up to the big city to see it on the wide screen....

Music -- A List

Quotation of the day: Nöel Coward -- Extraordinary how potent cheap music can be.

For lack of anything else to write about this evening, i decided to steal an idea from a blog i look at regularly, An Overdose Of Fingal Cocoa (http://overdoseoffingalcocoa.blogspot.com/) and just make a list of some of my favourite albums, albums i listen to more often than any others, in no particular order, really (although obviously the first ones that come to mind will be more favoured than others).

Van der Graaf Generator -- Pawn Hearts
Van Morrison -- Astral Weeks
Pink Floyd -- Wish You Were Here
Pyewackett -- Pyewackett
The Beatles -- Rubber Soul
Rory Gallagher -- Irish Tour '74
Jethro Tull -- A Passion Play
Brian Plummer -- No Questions
The Who -- Quadrophenia
Seether -- Holding On To A String Better Left To Fray
Runrig -- The Cutter And The Clan
Fairport Convention -- Liege & Lief
Saga -- Silent Knight
The Kinks -- Arthur, Or, The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire
Joan Osborne -- Relish
The Beatles -- Abbey Road
Rod Stewart -- The Rod Stewart Album
Radiohead -- OK Computer
Wishbone Ash -- There's The Rub
Thin Lizzy -- Bad Reputation
Rob Hyman -- Largo
Mike Oldfield -- QE 2
Jeff Beck -- Truth
The Byrds -- Greatest Hits
Jethro Tull -- Aqualung
Kate Bush -- The Dreaming
Ofra Haza -- Shaday
Rory Gallagher -- Calling Card
Terje Rypdal -- After The Rain
Joni Mitchell -- Court And Spark
The Lovin' Spoonful -- Greatest Hits
Jimi Hendrix -- Electric Ladyland
Runrig -- Mara
Van der Graaf Generator -- Godbluff 


And here's the cover of the album at the top of the list: 

Later.....

My Day Off

Quotation of the day: W.C Fields -- Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.

Je suis, as we say in French, pissed off. My day off, right?  And as my regular reader will know, i only get one a week. (I'm supposed to get one and a half, but the half-day off rarely happens.)

This morning, i had to 'phone my landlord.  I have a leaking tap in my bathtub, and a leaking tap in my kitchen.  I really hate having anyone in my apartment if i'm not there, and so i stayed in all day awaiting a plumber.

This afternoon, around 4 o'clock, aforementioned abovementioned landlord called -- the plumber will be here tomorrow.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

So (a) my day off is wasted, in fruitless waiting and (b) someone will be here tomorrow when i'm not.

Well, maybe it wasn't entirely wasted -- i watched four (yes, four) episodes of "Hill Street Blues."

What a great series that was....

A Little Learning

Quotation of the day: Oscar Wilde -- Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

This isn't going all that well, ackshully.  I wrote earlier that i'd enrolled in an online, part-time college course in programming.  I'm up to the 4th module, but the entire system seems to have crashed.

I'm on to the subject of variables, and the coding thereof.  So, i wrote something like var myCat = "Cate"; hit "enter" and received an error message.  ("Ooops, something went wrong," to be specific.) Tried again, same error message.  So, i backtracked to the 3rd module, because obviously (i said to myself) i've missed something....

But no, my syntax was correct.  What could have gone wrong?

So i went to the college's user forum and hi-de-hi a lot of users seem to be crashing at #4.  So the website is buggy, it's not just me.  Well, that's good news, i suppose, but it's bloody frustrating!

So here's a picture of Ofra Haza, inserted here for no other reason than that it cheers me up...

Back To School

Quotation of the day: Roger Waters -- We don't need no education / we don't need no thought control / no dark sarcasm in the classroom / teacher, leave those kids alone

Well, Mr Waters (above) notwithstanding, i firmly believe that, once you stop learning, you may as well curl up 'n' die.  Plus of course keeping the brain active is a good way to prevent Alzheimer's.

And so i have just enrolled in a part-time, online college course in computer programming.  At my advanced age, this isn't (likely to be) a career move, but i love everything about computers and it's a brain exercise.

Unfortunately, i only have a very limited amount of time to work on it and i'm stuck on lesson #4, i may have to backtrack.

It's fascinating, though!