I know this is several days behind (mainly because I’ve been busy as of late) but a belated Happy Easter to everyone anyway, to those of you who celebrate it (or indeed don’t, because we get a bank holiday as well which is always good).
So, what have I been up to since we finished for Easter? Kirk and Rachel have both disappered off home for the holidays so I haven’t done anything with them, although Kirk comes back tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll have a film night at some point as Kirk has yet to be initiated in the rituals of Flash Gordon and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 🙂
A mention must be made of the new Doctor Who series, seeing as about half a dozen people pounced on me as soon as it had finished to ask me what I thought. To be honest I wasn’t all that impressed, but it was the first episode so I’m prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, and I know deep down that it’s never going to be the same as the series I remember. Anyway, I’ve setup a separate blog called Shada to keep up with all the goings on in Doctor Who (both old and new, since the BBC are still releasing the old series on DVD) rather than clutter up this site with them. I’m also playing around with WordPress to see if I can get it installed using multiple blogs (one per subdomain) running off one instance of the code on zblogs.net with a view to letting anyone have their own WP blog without having to install it.
After much coaxing by Lewis, I managed to make a start on moving some accounts over to the new Compsoc server, although it’s slow going at the moment because there are a lot of steps for each one and I can rarely get more than one or two done without being interrupted and then I end up doing something else. I’m aiming to get some more done over the next couple of days though and hopefully if I can get the other admins to chip in we should be able to get the migration completed in the next few weeks.
I’m also doing my best to keep on top of labs work, and I’m trying to get some done today. I really want to finish as much as possible for when I go back in just over a week’s time, so that I’ll be able to relax a bit and take things slightly easier. Well, that’s the plan anyway, but knowing how stressed and worried I usually am it probably won’t work. 🙂
There was an attempt to organise a meetup on Rogue Students for ex-Holy Cross students who I knew but unfortunately that got cancelled at the last minute because people were busy with the football match this evening and also the usual student “I’m skint” reason. Maybe something will come of it next week though.
The Queen Bee has also written a poem about me called My Conservative Friend, which made me burst into laughter the first time I read it. You probably have to have seen the discussions Jennie and I have (mainly on her LiveJournal) to get all of it but nevertheless it cheered me up immensely.
In the world of computers, I’m still trying to get FreeBSD installed on my laptop, with no success so far. I’ve asked on a couple of forums and the official mailing lists but no-one has replied yet, which means either I was asking the wrong thing or there’s no solution that anyone can think of (which is a shame because I really want to try and get it working). Maybe I’ll try NetBSD instead, which apparently has support for a wider range of hardware.
Monday was Warped as usual, in our new location of Kro Bar whilst the Burlington is shut for Easter. Personally I think I prefer it over the holidays, as there are leather sofas in Kro anyway and there’s rarely a queue for the bar plus the group seems to stay together when the students aren’t there. I was also happy and bouncy this week which was good. 🙂
Unfortunately when I got home from the pub I realised the lights had gone in both the hall and the landing so I was trying to deactivate the alarm in the dark whilst slightly drunk. I didn’t manage to do it in time to stop it from going off, but a couple of seconds later I hit the lounge switch which gave me enough light to see what buttons I was pressing and switch it off.
Yesterday I went to Ed’s for the afternoon, which was cool. We deprived Tesco of most of their ready to eat sausage rolls and pasties (oh and boy were they nice) and listened to Doctor Who audio stories.
Anyway, so far things have gone pretty damn well this holiday, which is turn up for the books. Here’s to hoping it stays like that for the rest of term.
Actually, I’m back Friday, but no matter 🙂
Glad you like the poem
Stay tooned fer more 😛
hugs
I like the Easter break. It’s usually good. I’ve had too much work this Easter though. What has annoyed me this year even more is it’s hit home that places don’t close on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and the Bank Holiday Monday.
It’s not on and I’ll put this to you Mr Waring. If by some strange freak of nature you ever do become pm then put it right and make it so the shops shut!
I don’t think the shops should close. Britain is far too multi-cultural these days and, while some form of Christianity is the “national religion’’ (thinking about it that seems a ridiculous concept), a fairly low proportion of the country are actually religious. More often than not I find out that people are agnostic/atheist or non-practising Christian (I think my parents would class themselves as this on a census but they are certainly not religious).
As such it seems unfair to ask that people not shop/go out/enjoy themselves on these Christian holidays. England doesn’t grind to an enforced half for other (non-Christian) religious holidays but these stay holy, just the same.
Why bother with FreeBSD when you have a shiny! powerbook running OSX? 😉
Seems strange if the country isn’t religious that over 70% of the country said they were Xitian in the census.
I think the shops should shut. Even if it’s just for the sake of tradition. It’s a shame that all people seem to think about now-a-days is money.
Xitian? Tradition?
Hmm. As I pointed out—I think my family is registered as CofE but we’re not. I don’t imagine my family is the only one that have done this either.
And it’s not about money—it’s about not being forced to curtail my life for a couple of days because of a religious festival.
I’m not too sure on the closing on public holidays idea. Personally I think shops should close on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day (which they are obliged to do so by law anyway if they employ over something like 5 people), but I’m not too sure about Bank Holidays. I think small shops should be allowed to open whenever because it’s incredibly useful to be able to pop down to the local corner shop to get some milk when you realise on Sunday evening that there’s none in the fridge.
I can remember the arguments that went on when the Sunday Trading Act was first proposed to allow shops to open on Sundays (it’s not that long since almost everywhere was closed on Sundays, and many towns had half days as well). I think it would be nice if shops weren’t open one day a week and everyone could have a proper day off but I think our lives now are too busy to allow for that.
If I ever get into power you can rest assured that I will give the matter further thought. 😉
X = Chris
Xtian = Christian
Xtmas = Christmas
Xmas = nothing.
Tradition. I remember when I would have been around 5/6/7 and the shops shut on Good Friday. It’s only since the shops started opening on a sunday I think that they opened on Good Friday. It should be closed on Good Friday. We are an CofE country so we should close on Good Friday since theologically it’s more important than Xtmas.
“If I ever get into power you can rest assured that I will give the matter further thought.”
Cheers, even though I doubt it’ll happen!
The deal is that shops under 3000 sq ft can open on Easter Sunday – no-one else can.
These are the same shops that can open as long as they like on Sundays.
Phones 4 U in Cambridge City Centre was inexplicably open Easter Sunday. Nothing else around would have been, so I don’t know why they bothered.