LaraLoola

Request denied

You may have noticed that I’m quite a fan of this social networking malarky. Well the virtual type anyway. (Given that my best friend and I managed a drink in February I’m clearly not so hot at the real life version.)
Despite the false friendliness of it all I do enjoy twitting and facebooking. Even if, of late, the main function of facebook for me is to compile endless lists of five things.
I don’t enjoy the “join this group to save children/whales/the planet and if you don’t you are horrid” aspect of it though. To begin with I had no problem with joining a couple of pages or applications for encouraging people to donate to saving something or other. But now my goup requests list is getting stupid. And properly fucking annoying.

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In ur office not doing ur workz

Belatedly, and perhaps not terribly excitingly this is my new office (note the lack of “ra” and thus entirely SFW).

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They fill you with the faults they had.

I’m currently looking for a shoe rack to sit in the kitchen (to prevent further instances of gifts in shoes), and have been browsing the Ah-Goose* website and looking at the reviews. On one shoe rack two separate women suggest that it was tricky because they were women: “Not easy for a female who thought it only required a screwdriver” said one, and “from a female point of view, it seemed a bit too much for me to tackle” was the other’s review.
Why is being female relevant to assuming that you need only one screwdriver? Surely, that is more naive faith in the quality of Argos’s workmanship and a lacking tool kit. And why is it inherently trickier from a “female point of view”?  Are you attempting to hold the screwdriver with your vagina?

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I’m the Devil. Now kindly undo these straps.

Photograph of Exorcist steps by *Photography by Chris* on Flickr.

Still feeling suspiciously like MASH here. Small person opted for the exorcist variant of whatever it is that ails me, and so Sunday evening involved a trip to the local hospital.
Though there are a lot of things about the reorganisation of the NHS that I’m not tremendously struck on I did like that the PCT lady, who called back after calling NHS Direct, was able to book us in there before we got there. Essentially it was telephone triaging. I know there are many things that such a system wouldn’t work for, but for this it was particularly good. Especially given that toddlers are not known for being overwhelmingly patient patients (though to be fair nor are most adults).
I’m less impressed by the definition of emergency pharmacies about these parts though. Apparently Sunday after 2pm doesn’t exist. Hmm.
Luckily my regular Friday visit was cancelled by the other party, in lieu of a dental appointment, which is fair enough given the last time that I cancelled a dentist appointment I got taken off their books (I was ill, I was not impressed). I’ve had to cancel this for this week in person, because though not quite exorcist level I am showing distinct signs of following π’s lead in the vileness stakes.

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You wouldn’t understand…

[non essential photo removed ]

Before I was a parent if there was one thing that annoyed me about other parents it was the phrase, “you wouldn’t understand you’re not a parent”. Or varients of. I’m now a parent, and still it makes my hackles (whatever they might be) rise. It’s one of those phrases almost certainly guaranteed to start a fight on an internet forum, and I imagine if the participants were drunk enough, it would do so in real life also.

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For want of a 1394

This spot should contain a video. The house blog warming, except you’ll notice that it doesn’t. If ever I meet any of the eejits who fill instruction books with phrases like “cross-platform”, or “use with any PC or laptop”, I will hurt them. And I mean really hurt them. Of the eight certainly working photographic devices* in the house, four have video capabilities. One films in a format no software will have anything to do with, one films in a format only Premiere Pro* will edit and has less than great sound, one will only film about a minute at a time, and the last one has both USB and firewire ports but nothing-not MovieMaker, not Premiere Pro, not After Effects, not Encore-will recognise the bloody thing with USB.

After discovering a forum filled with similarly grumpy Panasonic purchasers I’ve discovered it will only recognise it with firewire. Does my PC have firewire? No, of course it doesn’t. I wouldn’t be quite so whingy if it did. Fortunately the server does have firewire ports, less fortunately it’s a) a server, and b) in the loft-which is friking freezing. And I now have to find an ebay seller who is selling a cable with the right number of pins on both ends and not, as all the ones I found so far are, 1394 to a hundred other bloody things.

So in lieu, temporarily, of the video. Happy new year.

*The camera count consists of working absolutely-2 digital semi slrs, 1 dv, 1 120, 1 digital snapshot thingy, 1 35mm slr, my phone, his phone.
The don’t yet know-1 120, 1 127, 3 8mm.
The they don’t make film anymore-Polaroid Land Swinger, 1 110, 1 126.

*Which would be fine had I a computer that was as powerful as possible, and then I wouldn’t have sound and pictures running at different rates, and wouldn’t have to guess where to cut.