Quick update before I go eat something.

Well, it's Christmas. I saw just Santa, riding on a highly lit sleigh, with a horde of 'elves' wearing high-vis vests. The helpers were collecting for charity (I probably should have asked which one), and the one at my door invited me to come meet Santa. I gave him a quid and told him I'd wave at Santa from my door. :-)

In other news, today was a good day. Got a lot done, and also got a gift voucher 'Christmas bonus' at work, and a bottle of Champagne for winning the weekly ICAEW news quiz competition.

Please post in the comments with your favourite Christmas Carol.
And/or with what you want for Christmas.

The first is so I can get an idea what carols are as popular in the UK as in the US, the second is for fun.

Oh.  And IRIS, my computer that I built with my own two hands a few years ago, has died.  This is very, very sad.  Especially as Alan figures it's the processor/motherboard that have gone, and that's not cheap to fix.

Today, Alan is away up north consulting for his firm.  I am on my tod for the second time since moving to Berkhamsted.

Rather than make dinner for one, I decided to break my hike home from the train station by stopping in at the local Wetherspoons.  I was hoping for steak night, but it was curry night.  I had a steak anyway.
Lesson 1: Eating alone can be -ing lonely.  I've often eaten alone, I mean, a good book has served as sufficient company on many, many occasions.  This was not one of them.  Apparently my loneliness was so apparent that the bartender/manager felt the need to come over and point out to me just how alone I was.  Not making that up.  He stopped by my table and said jovially "where've they all gone?  Did you piss everyone off so they made you sit here at the table under the stairs by yourself?"   Oh yeah, that helped.  But, OTOH, my book was good.   For anyone who read Wicked and didn't think the next book would be as good because it was less directly tied to the original OZ books, you should really give Son of a Witch a go.  It was a good book.  Although I never thought I'd see the day that there was gay sex in Oz.  Well.  Except when the Heinlein characters went there in Number of the Beast.  But even then, I don't think Heinlein went that far with the Oz mythology.  I think he did some sort of mushy 'no one can die or be born or do anything untoward in Oz because it's Oz' sort of thing.
 
Then the walk home.  Up the hill.  Wasn't too bad with a nice two minute rest on the bench.  However, on my walk, I learned lesson 2.
Lesson 2:  If you are going to park illegally in Berko at night, don't do it near The Rex.  On the ginormous small hill next to the Rex, there were two (count them two!) traffic officers ticketing cars.  At 8pm.  And I was tch-tching the SUV that had parked, not partly but COMPLETELY on the double lines.  Then as I took my break on the bench at the top of the hill I learned lesson 3.
Lesson 3: Traffic officers sometimes park on the double yellow lines.  And sometimes drive SUVs.  Yes, it would have been damned inconvenient for her to park her vehicle legally.  But presuming that double yellow is there because the curve at the top makes it dangerous for people to park there, it was irresponsible of her to park her large vehicle there for more than 15 minutes (I was in the area for about that long, I don't know how long she'd been there before I got there). 

Sheffield tomorrow!  I'm so excited.  I'm taking the train from Milton Keynes at about 6, and should be in sheffield a little before 9.  With any luck I'll be in the beer tent drinking a nice ale with friends before 9:30 has passed.  Take THAT loneliness!

Alan is trying to help his father get a backup system in place for their computers.
He's not had a lot of luck with online suggestions and reviews, so I'm turning to my friends and their geeky expertise.

We need: Backup software that will automatically backup data to (an external drive?) and has some form of encryption.  It should work under windows xp, and be as ... straightforward and simple as possible.  You know how parents can be with computers.

All suggestions welcome.

Thanks in advance!

Well, things are going surprisingly well with the US trip.  I was forcibly reminded why I don't book flights that aren't direct, when our plane was delayed by about 15 minutes, and the airline deemed we no longer had time to make our connecting flight and (admittedly conveniently) automatically canceled our boarding passes and issued us with ones for the next flight.  In 4 hours.  The only part about that that sucked, was that we DID clear customs and passport control in time to have made the original flight.

So after traveling 22 hours, we made it to my in-law's house.  I fell almost immediately into a sleep of the dead.  The next day my sister-in-law and her husband and their two daughters came to the house.  Bailey and Rachel have grown a little bit, and are slightly better at games (they especially like Express) but are otherwise more or less as I remember them.

Apparently Aunt Amber knitting made it seem fun, because they both insisted I teach them to knit (note that both their grandmother and mother knit).  They were doing pretty good, but I think I may get one of those little knitting things for kids and carry it in my bag next time I'm going to be knitting around kids.  I think they would have had more fun with that, as they would have got more immediate good results.  My main instruction for their 'practicing' was to count their stitches at the end of every row to make sure they had the same number each time.

That's about it for now.  I'm enjoying drinking my Mt Dew, and I have been sneaking a few Reece's cups from my private stash every once in a while.  Don't tell the kids!

I'll be moving this week, to Berkhamstead (HP4).

It occurs to me that there may be people out there on my friends list who are near there.
Knowing I had friends near would make this move a lot less stressful.

So speak up, who lives near Berkhamstead!?!

I thought for those of you out there who might be looking for IT related jobs in England, it might interest you to know which of the job search engines came through for me in the end.

http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/ was the source of the couple of 'nibbles'I had, and the lead that eventually lead to the job I was successful in getting.

And Latcom (http://www.latcom.co.uk/ ) was the Recruitment Agency that the job was obtained through.

Meant to post this last night, but apparently the storms knocked the phone out.

20+ years on, Pretty in Pink is just as awesome as I remember.  Yeah, it's a bit dated, but the performances are still stunningly good, and now, older, I can see even more clearly how very awesome the character of Iona (Annie Potts) is.  And Duckie is still heartwrenchingly adorable.

For the record, the big songs I missed from my list of "awesome songs from the soundtrack" were:
(from memory, forgive slight errors in spelling or names)

Wouldn't it be Good - performed by the Danny Hutton Hitters
Round, Round by Belouis Some
and (and I'm ashamed I forgot this one!)
Shell Shocked by New Order

For those who weren't there when I was trying to name them all, the one's I successfully listed were:
Pretty in Pink - Psychodelic Furs
Please Please Please (etc) by the Smiths
Bring on the Dancing Horses by Echo and the Bunnymen
Do wot you do by INXS
Left of Center by Suzanne Vega
and, of course,
If you Leave by OMD.

Interestingly, that's the entire Soundtrack CD (I just looked it up) save this song, which apparently I don't think is quite as good as the rest of the album.
3. Get to Know Ya - Jesse Johnson

Lizzie, you really MUST come over to see this movie.

I was cleaning today and re-found the piece of paper I'd scribbled this on.

Here you go!

We've been a rambling all of the night
and some part of the day
and now we're returning back again to you
and have brought you a garland gay

A bunch of May we've brought to you
and at your door do stand
it's nothing but a sprout but it's well budded out
by the work of God's own hand

The moon shines bright the stars give a light
a little before the day
so God bless you all whether you be great or small
and send you a joyful May

Our time has come we must be gone
we can no longer stay
So God bless you all whether you be great or small
and send you a joyful May

And I want to be more like the people around me. :-)

( My Star Trek Personality )