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Post by Shockprowl on Jul 22, 2010 18:39:03 GMT
Feel quite ill with worry today and the slightest thing is just setting me off shouting. -Ralph Hang in there, big guy. I helped my good friend move house today (he helped me when I moved), I'm as tired as it's ever possible to be. Also, it was Piglet's last day at her Nursery School. She's fine with it. But me and Mrs Shockers feel quite emotional! They had a Butterfly Ball, and Piglet wore her favourate yellow party dress.
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 23, 2010 11:21:24 GMT
Did some prep for next Monday's interview but head a bit fuzzy so will go out for a few hours to enjoy the sun before doing some more later. Just found out got another interview for next Thursday. Both posts are temp (the event horizon in jobs in Edinburgh at the moment seems to be next March) but well worth giving it a go anyway.
-Ralph
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Post by Fortmax2020 on Jul 23, 2010 12:04:24 GMT
Hooray! Good work Ralph!
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 23, 2010 15:55:59 GMT
Did the interview. Hard to tell how it went (competency based ones always are) but I flunked the test beforehand big time so I'm not hopeful. -Ralph Didn't get it. Add to that the other interview I failed last month and the decision to leave my job now looks staggeringly idiotic. I was going to do some research for Monday's interview this evening but my head feels like's going to explode so I'll do that tomorrow instead. -Ralph
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Post by Fortmax2020 on Jul 23, 2010 15:59:44 GMT
You were all but pushed from that job due to no fault of your own and your head was already exploding in it.
You have only had two interviews so despair not I see. And you are racking up more interviews now than 6 months ago, so be encouraged and pleased that you seem to have gained appeal from your last employment.
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 23, 2010 17:28:57 GMT
I'm not going to do any more research tonight for Monday's job as my head just isn't in it, but I have found some Government reports and the like which will be useful background reading and I have plenty of time to go over them during the weekend. This evening, I will open up some toys and read some vintage comics after I pay a visit to the ducks on the canal. Earlier, I spotted some trout lurking beneath the waters.
I am a naturally depressive person irregardless of circumstances so sometimes I find it hard to have a perspective on things.
-Ralph
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kayevcee
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
The Weather Wizard
Posts: 5,527
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Post by kayevcee on Jul 23, 2010 17:38:47 GMT
The Saudi embassy called this morning. I forgot to get my medical form stamped by the Foreign Office to say... that they accept the medical centre is telling the truth? I thought the centre took care of that but obviously not. So they have to post back all my stuff and I have to take my form to the only foreign office branch that can handle legalisation of documents... in Milton Keynes. Then they have to send it back to me and I have to send everything BACK to the Saudi embassy and finally get my visa before I can leave.
I don't leave for another four weeks so it's perfectly doable (albeit expensive and annoying) but that didn't stop my dad having a go at me when he got home. He'd had a few so there's no point talking to him about it now. I'll just stay out of his way till he goes to sleep. He got like this last year about Toy-fu but thankfully not to the same degree this time. Hey ho.
-Nick
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Post by blueshift on Jul 23, 2010 20:33:01 GMT
My last sift through my parents garage before I go back home has resulted in the discovery of my copy of Alignment! Hurrah! Was it really £8.99? Crikey!
I also found a pile of Dreamwave Armada / War Within comics. Is there any call for these nowadays? Would I even be able to get a pound a pop?
Also found some of the GiJoe & Transformers and GI Joe / G2 crossovers from the 80s, are these worth anything, couldn't see anything on ebay.
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Post by legios on Jul 23, 2010 20:34:21 GMT
Yay! They have transistor lenses, which make me look like a film star when I come in from outside. Your glasses are powered by the awesome power of Transistors? They must have been invented by Tony "Iron Man" Stark! :-) I am not long back from my summer holiday this year. I spent last week down at my sister's in Shrewsbury, and an action-packed week it was. We started out at the RAF Museum at Cosford, which if you have an interest in aircraft is somewhere that I would thoroughly recommend. There are some fascinating rarities in there - especially in their test aircraft gallery, which not only contains one of the two surviving TSR-2 prototypes (an aircraft that I think is one of the most beautifully boxy things that the UK's aerospace industry ever produced) but also some really unexpected items such as a Gloster Meteor modified to test the idea of a prone piloting position. The rest of the museum is also stuffed full of unexpected things - including an MH-53 helicopter (Movie Blackout's alt-mode) and a fine array of transport and trainer aircraft ( the unsung heroes of the airforce which do hold a certain place in my heart). (Got myself a new "weekend" hat from the shop as well - a blue cap with the RAF arms on it, which is clearly far too good to waste on the working days). The next day was a visit to Chester, a place I haven't been in over a decade, and which is well worth a visit. The odd double-level streets in the old centre, combined with the surviving walls give it a genuinely unique feel to it. We also went for a walk in the park by the river, where we met the first of a number of highly entertaining wildlife - in this case a squirrel that came bounding up to us and stared expectantly as if waiting to be fed, whilst looking over its shoulder as if to warn us that we had to get this sorted before the pigeons arrived to claim their cut. (And when the pigeons did swoop down it gave us what can only be described as a very angry look before flouncing off in high dudgeon). The rest of the week could be described as a story of trees, tunnels and canals. Starting out with fascinating park - the former grounds of a large estate which had been landscaped in the English "naturalistic" style rather than the European "formal" that you usually see. The end result was a wooded hillside filled with precipices, roman mining works turned into a catacomb and narrow bridges. It also was home to a Robin that had clearly lost half of its tail to a predator or a fight - but none of its nerve, as it boldly fluttered up to us whilst we were eating our lunch, cheeping as if to ask where its food was. We duly fed it, and were amazed that it hapily landed within a metre of us to make off with its tribute. We did a couple of days walking different bits of the Langollen Canal as well. I can see why they claim it is the most scenic canal in England. The views were wonderful and tea in a cafe in Elsmere was great. Not just for the tea but because my sister spotted that a Great Tit had made a nest right over the door to the verandah where we were sitting, so we spent a good half an hour watching the parents feeding their two young. Sadly I had to leave Shrewsbury and head northwards, but I was able to fit in a stopover in Leeds to visit the Royal Armouries museum. As ever this was a fascinating place to visit that swallowed a day and a half with ease. I spent a morning in the oriental gallery alone, tracing influences flowing back and forth across the Asian and Indian Sub-continents (nothing emphasises how important the Mongols actually are to world history than having the opportunity to actually see their influence work its way through various cultures for example). I was also able, courtesy of the excellent talks by their interpreters to handle a genuine Martini-Henry rifle, as used in the Zulu Wars. (It changes your perspective on things like Rourkes Drift to actually handle the weapons used, to work the breach and wonder if you could do that whilst facing a horde of very angry folk with Asegai baying for your blood). I also took a break from my perusal of the Tournament Gallery(which made for a fascinating contrast to the modern jousting which I was watching at the start of the holiday) to watch the two-handed sword demonstration. Don't let Hollywood tell you that two-handed weapons are slow and cumbersome. In the hands of people who know what they are doing those things are not only balanced, but frighteningly fast. In the end the Armouries museum swallowed up much of my time in Leeds, and then it was time to come home. Unfortunately I was stricken by a nasty Allergic reaction on the way home - serious gastroenteric distress is not the way I really want to end a trip.But at least I know now that I definitely have an allergy to mushrooms..... I've spent the last couple of days (once I had recovered from the lurgy) pottering around the house and doing a bit of walking in the vicinity (weather this good should not be wasted). I took my lunch and a good book that is on loan to me up to the site of the roman fort a few miles from my house today and spent a fine hour propped up against a tree reading in the sun. Tomorrow it is off to the Airshow at East Fortune Air museum to round off the fortnight in fine style. It was a wonderful day out last year and should be another good one this year - wingwalkers and aerobatic aircraft and all. Karl
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Post by Shockprowl on Jul 23, 2010 22:24:42 GMT
What an action packed holiday, Karlos! Glad you had a good time.
I've been telling Mrs Shockers for years that Mushrooms are the food of the Devil.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jul 24, 2010 8:38:59 GMT
Sounds like a great week there, Karl, a mixture of nature's beauty and man's death-dealing inventions.
Sorry to declare rhyming week Just as you were going away. Next year at your diary I shall peek To ensure you're around, okay?
I love mushrooms. Nature's vegetarian meat substitute!
Martin
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jul 24, 2010 13:06:31 GMT
I've been very busy lately (by my standards, at any rate), with lots of travelling and meetings at work, and volunteering and family visits and storytelling events and so on in my spare time. What I really felt like was a day with nothing planned whatsoever. Today is that day. No shopping to do, no Welsh homework, no gardening or housework - just keep a day completely free from commitments so that when I wake up in the morning, I have complete freedom to decide then how to fill my day. I think it's valuable to have such days (though I don't know how easy it is to manage if you're not single). Anyway, it stood to reason, having just bought the box set, that I would start the day by watching some Battlestar Galactica in bed. Then I had a vague idea of continuing my slow progress through Jules Verne's 'From the Earth to the Moon' - in French. (I'm not using a dictionary to look up words, I'm just finding that I can follow the gist of the story with 90% of the words, and bypassing the unfamilar ones.) But before I could do that the postman came and delivered a certificate of membership from some professional body of which my employer is now paying for me to be a member because I'm now doing work in a particular subject area. Anyway, I went to file it in my certificates folder, and found there in the folder a nice bound copy of my PhD thesis from eight years back. Now, I haven't even looked at any maths more advanced than first-year undergraduate level since I finished the PhD and left academia behind me, and apart from the title of the thing, I can't for the life of me remember what I could have written in a little over a hundred pages, supposedly representing four years of full-time work (ha!), that could have warranted them awarding me that qualification. All I remember was meeting my supervisor once a week with a little bit of progress in my thinking to report, and in between walking by the lake contemplating the maths problem, reading 'The Lord of the Rings', and writing a few computer programs to generate swirly patterns. So, burning with curiosity, I decided today to try to read the blasted thing and find out what was so special about it. It's slow going. Because it's written for a professional mathematician reader, the introductory chapters, which supposedly start from the basics, keep stating things that are no doubt obvious to someone who lives and breathes maths, but which I struggle to follow. "This clearly implies this, from which we see that this, and therefore the result is trivial." Wha-? I find myself using Google to remind myself how to calculate the eigenvalues of a matrix, and stuff like that, which I'm sure was basic undergraduate material. I went to the pub for lunch and had lamb chops with mash followed by chocolate fudge cake and a pint of Guinness, during the course of which I have managed to progress to the end of chapter 2. Towards the end (maybe the Guinness helped) I found myself laughing at passages such as this: "Crutchfield and Kaneko envisage the phenomenon as resulting from intricate basin and intrabasin separatrix structures, giving a labyrinthine quality to the high-dimensional state space. The transient relaxation is seen as a sequence of transitions through a hierarchy of subbasins of decreasing dimension, subspaces of a basin separated by walls through which an orbit can pass only at portals which correspond in our dynamical system to two spiral centres colliding. The further the initial conditions are from the attractor, the higher the dimension of the initial subbasin and the greater the number of portals or spiral annihilations required to reach it." What the- I have to say though, that I have a greater respect for the Martin of eight years ago as a result of re-reading this. I'm in the habit of dissing him for producing not very much at all, but I'd forgotten how advanced some of the stuff actually was. I'm not as smart now as I was then, since I've been doing such simple stuff in my job since then. I need to keep in mind in future that even if I can't remember what was so good about what I did back then, that doesn't mean it wasn't good, it just means I'm not good enough now to keep such stuff in my head. On the other hand, my head has other things in it now. When I was capable to doing postgraduate maths I was incapable of doing lots of things I can do now, such as speak in public, and take responsibility for relatively important decisions, and what-not. I've sacrificed expertise for more breadth in knowledge... and I think that's what was best for me, as I never 'loved' the maths in the way that most other postgraduates around me seemed to do. I was right to get out of it when I did. But it's funny how I get to hang on to the PhD, which implies I'm knowledgeable about a subject that I've mostly forgotten - a bit like my driving licence, which remains valid though I haven't driven for several years and am not safe to do so. Memory's a funny thing. Are you guys aware of anything that you used to be good at, but which you dropped in order to grow in other ways - subjects you used to know inside out but which have been reduced to the barest fragments in your mind? Have you ever thought you'd lost a skill through lack of use, to find that actually when you tested it it came flooding back to you? (That's not happening with me in maths, but has happened to a certain extent in other areas such as understanding French and playing a certain few of the pieces I used to be able to play on the piano.) Well, enough deep thought and self-(re)discovery for one day. I think I've earnt some TV time - the original 'Ocean's Eleven' with Frank Sinatra is on channel 5 in about half an hour's time. Martin
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 24, 2010 15:05:02 GMT
Yeah, I was really good at a job I did for five years but left thinking I wasn't being developed and deserved something better somewhere else. The three years since have been a quite stressful stop-start-stop-start affair with four periods of unemployment in the last two years alone and I still don't know what I should be doing. I do actually deeply regret leaving that job. It's only with time and distance that I realise I really enjoyed it despite a lack of recognition from Those Above.
On a lighter note, I did used to be much more knowledgable in history and geography but since I did my degree in education my general knowlege has dropped right off since I don't have to do research as much and I do miss being as quick to 'know things'.
In another respect though I remain a very shy and reserved person, public speaking does not hold the fear it did for me than 10 years ago and I have discovered a 'performer' side to me in the last year which seems to have replaced the writer side in me alas.
-Ralph
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jul 24, 2010 15:40:40 GMT
Hmmm, on page 29 out of 130, I completely fail to follow the logic of my argument, and the argument in the thesis doesn't quite match the corresponding argument in my hand-written notes. I am wondering whether there might be a mistake thereabouts. That possibility compels me to put the thesis back in the drawer and leave it for another eight years before looking at it again. I'd like to believe that the me of eight years ago would be able to explain what's going on and show me that there is in fact no mistake. However, he might not, and part of me would rather not know. Either way, I don't think the me of now is capable of resolving the point one way or the other, and I probably shouldn't be presuming to question the maths of the me of eight years ago and his supervisor and external examiners, who didn't spot any problem with it.
Best to leave the past to take care of itself, as it makes no difference to me now. I'm sure there's a lesson there.
Right then, Battlestar Galactica... and maybe a little something to drink.
Edit: I've also let my writing (for pleasure) lapse in recent years, and my drawing. But on the other hand I'm learning Welsh, and doing dormouse surveys and what-not. There isn't enough time to do everything, and it'll be good to look back and see variety in interests - perhaps some sadness at things being dropped, but not so much when considering what took their place.
Martin
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 24, 2010 15:52:41 GMT
My walk earlier has not relaxed me, so I think my brain is trying to tell me I need to take a day 'off' from job searching. Tesco had pizza's at half price so picked one up and some flapjacks. There's beer in the fridge left-over from last weekend so a cheap night in ahead I think. Shall watch another episode or two of my watch-through of 'The Prisoner', some cartoons and will listen to the Doctor Who Proms live on the iPlayer @ 7:30pm.
-Ralph
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Post by blueshift on Jul 24, 2010 17:50:07 GMT
Back in Birmingham now after a week at my parents. I enjoy visiting them, but my dad tends to get super stressed out over the littlest thing recently. I also made some stands! They are multi-purpose, and are big enough for comics / fanzines too! Woop! I'll probably get some elastic to go round the middle for more stability.
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 24, 2010 18:05:40 GMT
That...display...gets...me....so..excited...on...cards...so...nice...
Need alone time now.
-Ralph
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jul 25, 2010 13:26:54 GMT
Philip has just spent £140 on coming to Auto Assembly.
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Post by blueshift on Jul 25, 2010 14:54:30 GMT
Philip has just spent �140 on coming to Auto Assembly. Yessssssss
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Jul 25, 2010 16:35:15 GMT
YES!!!!
Andy
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panderson
Protoform
Kiss Me? Hardly!!!
Posts: 548
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Post by panderson on Jul 25, 2010 17:17:49 GMT
Hi gang - back from extended hols and ex-partner karma cleansing and had limited internet...what I miss in last few weeks? - Will of course check all the posts but anything major drop?
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 25, 2010 17:39:25 GMT
My bowels dropped today.
-Ralph
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panderson
Protoform
Kiss Me? Hardly!!!
Posts: 548
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Post by panderson on Jul 25, 2010 17:55:05 GMT
My bowels dropped today. -Ralph GAHHH wTF!! you ok mate?
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 25, 2010 18:07:54 GMT
It's alright. I had plenty of loo roll.
-Ralph
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Post by Shockprowl on Jul 25, 2010 18:46:45 GMT
Nawt like a good poo. You can't change the world when you're sat on the toilet- but you can plan to.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jul 25, 2010 18:50:38 GMT
Ah but your world can change rapidly while sat on the throne...... usually it's a much better place afterwards.
I'm told that "on the toilet" is one of the most common places to die!
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Post by Shockprowl on Jul 25, 2010 19:22:27 GMT
Sadly yes. It's called 'Defecation Syncope', blood rushes to deal with the matter in hand, and not enough gets to vital organs, arrhythmias occur and then hasta lasagne. You have to be fairly unlucky though.
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Post by legios on Jul 25, 2010 19:36:39 GMT
Sounds like a great week there, Karl, a mixture of nature's beauty and man's death-dealing inventions. It was indeed a very good few days. I topped off my forthnight off with the airshow at East Fortune - a celebration of flying for the sake of it with an emphasis on precision aerobatics. I could watch folk throwing small nimble aircraft like the Pitts around the sky for hours - so I did. The highlight this year was the Aerostars display team - six Yak 50 aerobatic aircraft piloted by a group of enthusiastic part-timers whose literally metre-precision is truly breath-taking. Unfortunately I was struck quite hard by the back-to-work blues today and as a result spent a lot of the morning in a bit of a funk. Fortunately a conversation with my sister in the afternoon lifted my mood. I spent the rest of the afternoon trimming back some of my garden (a couple of the climbing plants had decided that they were going to engulf the tree, my stone cat and make a try for the bottom of the wheelie bin) and patching some nasty raggedy edges to my repainted bathroom. I have finished off my holiday with a nice supper and a pleasant glass of wine. Also good on occassion for changing the size of the eater.... I love mushrooms too. Especially with a cooked breakfast. But it looks like I shall be abstaining in future as they seem to be less than keen on me. Karl
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jul 25, 2010 19:44:27 GMT
Sadly yes. It's called 'Defecation Syncope', blood rushes to deal with the matter in hand, and not enough gets to vital organs, arrhythmias occur and then hasta lasagne. You have to be fairly unlucky though. I know I get fairly light headed after going - the medication effects my ability to pass solids - so it worries me !
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Post by The Doctor on Jul 25, 2010 20:20:03 GMT
Lots of walking and listening to podcasts today in a desperate bid to chill.
Job interview tomorrow isn't until 2pm so I will be spending the morning doing the prep work for it.
-Ralph
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