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I was watching the special features DVD of The Two Towers on Sunday. The room is not set up well for daytime viewing. There is a little too much sunlight in the room. I'm the one on the right.

Tonight a brand new O/S goes onto the upgraded computer. That will take us back to two working web-accessing computers. One is not enough.

Between two buildings at my work there is a path. It isn't covered. There is a sheltered garden to either side of the path. In the garden, near the doors to the buildings there is a lamp post. On the top of the lamp post sat a raven.

As I walked from one building to the other, I noticed the raven. He noticed me. I stopped to look at him. He casually watched me. I was only about a meter from his perch, yet he sat, undisturbed.

I continued to my destination door, still watching the watcher intently. I collided with a post. I should watch where I'm going.

Blockage? What blockage? Regularity reigns.

We've been invited to a friend's (call her J) birthday party - with a "come prepared to perform" message on the invitation. Sounds like this innocent party may turn into a soirée. J's spouse will probably bring out his cello, then who knows in what raunchy direction the party will head?

I do. Well, sort of. I rang up J's daughter to get some useful background information (translated: embarrassing stories) on the birthday girl. It seems I'm not the only one who has sought out such historic tidbits. Others are planning a savory roast-J at the party. I'll do my bit to stir in some spice. If you ask your guests to perform, you have to take what you get.

I'm happy. After the phonecall I sat down with a feast of J's fortunes and foibles in front of me. A couple of hours later I had my lampoon written (which I shall not post here before the party). That gives me a full week to prepare the performance part. Don't die of shock. I can do some things well ahead of time.

Where has the inspiration gone? Being busy is a pain. When you finally get a free moment to sit and write there is nothing to write about.

*strains* Uurrrrgh, Urrurgh!

*looks for results*

*strains more* Uuouuourrrrgh, UuurrurrRGGHH!

It's no use. This mental constipation won't pass with brute force methods. I need a mental laxative. I suppose I could read company procedures and policies, but that would probably be overkill. Best not to even think about what comes out after that. No, I'd be better off with some good cerebral roughage. I'll find some later tonight.

You are The Cap'n!

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any man that stands between them and the mantle of power. You never met a man you couldn't eviscerate. Not that mindless violence is the only avenue open to you - but why take an avenue when you have complete freeway access? You are the definitive Man of Action. You are James Bond in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. Your swash was buckled long ago and you have never been so sure of anything in your life as in your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off their head if they show any sign of taking you on or backing down. You cannot be saddled with tedious underlings, but if one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

Sorry for the lack of a blog. For the last couple of days my writing time has been spent constructing a little hoax for EK. It was lots of fun and generated quite a few laughs. I won't reproduce the hoax here since it sits elegantly within the culture of the EK community.

[edit: it's now posted on the hoaxes page in my scrapbook - see Ebony]

"Bother!" said Virge. "This motherboard change-over is taking too much time. The system works sufficiently well to play Warcraft3, but it still crashes on any net access and on Cakewalk. I've downloaded driver updates. I've disabled and removed potentially annoying devices. I even found a program to remove DirectX 9, just to check if that was causing the problems."

"You've still got Win98 in there. That's got to be the problem. It's an old faltering fossil - not the only one around here," said the nagging voice inside his head.

"But I don't want to back everything up and install a new OS and then reinstall everything. I've got better things to do with my time."

"If the stuff was important you should already have it backed up. Besides, you're wasting your time anyway, Virge, with all this searching and re-booting. While the upgraded Mobo won't talk to the net you only have one net PC - and that gets tied up by the kids. Bite the bullet, bozo. Wait another year and nothing will run under Win98 anyway."

"But that's like admitting defeat. How can I back away from a technical problem. There must be an answer."

"Aha! Now we see the root of your problem. You'll spend hours, days, weeks on the problem just for the sake of your precious engineering pride. Let it go, you gimpy geriatric geek. Get a life!"

I hope that this weblogging diary
will cover your casual inquiry.
It's a project by Virge
to herald his urge
to be published before his expiry.

I'm glad that you're reading my journal
of thoughts perhaps best kept internal.
I find that it spices
my textual devices
adding phrases debauched and infernal.

So if you'll be easily offended
by comments you think I've intended
as sarcastic humour
or scurrilous rumour
then sorry, but I think that's splendid.

Two days ago I bought a replacement mother. She was getting old and unreliable. I'd been meaning to do it for months but knowing that it was going to be a lot of work I'd been putting it off. I guess, deep down, there is always the fear of losing something when one upgrades. There were old things she used to do that I'd become used to and was taking for granted. Even with her limited memory and a brain that wasn't really up to taking on some of the new activities, I was still a little reluctant to change. But change was needed. We couldn't keep going the way we were.

My new mother is not yet doing all the things my old one did. There are a few unexpected wrinkles. She throws a major fit every time I try to get her to use the internet and she makes annoying little tutting noises when I'm playing mp3 files. Perhaps it's a motivation issue. Once I find the right drivers I'm sure she'll behave herself.

I haven't yet thrown out my old mother. She's wrapped in an anti-static bag and sitting on the kitchen table for the moment. At least my new one is performing well enough that I don't expect to have to use her again. She's really only of historical interest now - something for the kids to poke at.

Sometimes dreams make sense. This one from yesterday morning didn't, but at least I can remember it.

I was flying over the western coast of Africa. I guess I was in an aircraft but I didn't notice at the time. I could see almost directly below me, so the supposed aircraft wasn't very substantial. I could make out the shape of the coast and see how it matched the African coast-line from my memory of a world map. I could also see individual trees.

The astute among you would realise by now that my dream had a vast error in scale. If I was close enough to make out individual trees, then I could not possibly have been high enough in the air to recognise coast shapes that would appear on a world map. Did that bother me in the dream? Yes. It did bother me. It was the fundamental problem in the dream - not the lack of security of my aircraft (if any), not the reason why I was flying over western Africa, but that the scales were all wrong.

By the end of that scene of the dream I had concluded that I must have been wrong about my previous estimates of the size of the world. Everything was a lot smaller than I had realised.

The next scene had me driving through a cave of twisting tunnels. There was sufficient flat floor of the cave for driving a small vehicle through, although I can't remember much about the vehicle. I had a companion with me but I don't know who he was. We took it in turns to drive, but I can't remember stopping to change drivers.

In the final scene of the dream I was in Singapore on a train. The air was warm but I was comfortable. I don't know where I was going. I think my companion was the same guy who was driving through the caves with me. He seemed to be a local. At some time the train became a tram driving through a shopping area. I've no idea if Singapore has any trams. I've never been there.

In the cave and train/tram scenes, traveling was the only thing happening. No questions of purpose or destination worried me. There was no feeling of pursuit or important quest.

Looking back on the dream now it seems a bit like a game-world. The scale distortion and the top-down view in the first scene match that idea. Driving a vehicle through cave tunnels also sounds a bit like a game. If it was a game then I stopped playing when it looked like it was going to take me shopping. How stereotypically male of me. ;)

Perhaps the dream describes my life at the moment - comfortable observer, not frightened, noticing the absurdities of life and trying to make sense of them, not driven by any burning ambition or purpose, and happy to let others drive for a while.