Gaspode's Journal

Another day of not-school and not-planning. It's nice to have a bit of a break!

stagknight and I tried to get random-german-apple-liqueur again today, but there was none. So we got Royal Mint Chocolate Liqueur instead... It was interesting. Findings to be found here.

I hereby innaugurate the House of Rock Research Institute! Hurrah.

Well, here I am, back in sunny¹ Orkney. The journey up here on Sunday was generally uneventful. The flying weather from Heathrow to Edinburgh was perfect, meaning there was a lovely view from my window all the way across the Midlands and Wales, and then across the Wirral and into Snowdonia (with Snow on it and everything). A bit further North, I could see the entirety of the Lake District spread out below, right out the the coast and then the Isle of Man beyond. Fairly spectacular to see a large portion of the country at once like that. Not often it's perfectly clear all the way up to 30,000 feet. Lots of snow and lakes and things, with much of the signs of human habitation hidden by haze. Saw a good portion of Scotland, all the way up the West coast and into the Grampians and Cairngorms before we landed. I was sitting on the East side of the second plane, and hence saw mostly sea on the way to Kirkwall.

Watched Master and Commander to amuse myself on Sunday night. It was good fun, though I found it a little disjointed in places, and I could've done with slightly less of the surgery thankyouverymuch :-)

Monday... er... got up late, went out for tasty lunch, watched Harry Potter 3 to pass the time, and then there was dinner and TV and sleeping. Not particularly exciting.

Tuesday, similar to Monday, except I watched The Bourne Identity, and then my brother came home in the evening.

Today is Wednesday isn't it? Good. Tasty lunch again. And the first half of The Return of the King Extended edition. Can you see a running theme as to how I'm passing the time here?

Anyway, that's mostly it. The wind is cold, but the beer is free², so I suppose I can't complain³.

¹Well, not really sunny. More sort of overcast and blowing a gale, but I'm using poetic license, OK?

²Well, I don't pay for it anyway.

³I could I suppose, since this place is really rather boring and all the joys of London are really rather far away. But there will be Christmas presents and more free booze and tasty food. There may also probably be snow. But not the nice kind. The kind which is freezingly cold and wet and brought by a force 9 gale.

Today has been a day of... Good!

First, my period 1 lesson with the year 11 turned out to be watching the first half of a Spiderman 2 DVD. Hooray. They sat still and we all watched the shiny.

Then I had a meeting, which was ok.

Then I bunked off to do my Christmas shopping.

Well, what I really did was wander about shops looking for inspiration and spend 1/2 hour in the Apple store on Regent Street playing with the shiny. Oh, the shiny. The shop is so shiny. It has the staircase made all of glass, it has the toys. I played with a dual 2.5GHz G5 Powermac with 2 30" widescreen displays attached. You can drag windows a whole metre and have room to spare!

Then I hung about in ICSF and played some magic, then it was the ICSF xmas meal, attended by me,

not_on_fire,

stagknight,

karne_k,

arctic_fox,

dwagon,

purplecthulhu, Michelle, Ali and Cristina. I think that's everyone at Wagamama (Mmmm curried armadillo and gyoza and Asahi). Then the pub-going types among us went on to the Britannia for some pints of Christmas Ale and suchlike. Hooray!

And now home, mainly to collapse and go "zzzzzzzzzzz".

"zzzzzzzzzzzz"

Today started off ok, but rapidly deteriorated.

After hearing that we were gong to have to hang around until 6 or 6:30, I was rapidly giving up on my plan of getting to some shops in Hammersmith before they closed. The afternoon session at the Institute was a bit on the dull and infuriating side, and didn't achieve anything really. Tired and annoyed me then went to the 'how to get a job' seminar thingy on the timetable for 4:15. It was moderately useful, though not worth spending that much time over. Managed to escape at just after 6pm. Rushed to Russell Square, hoping to get home before 7pm and shop shuttage.

So, stressed, tired and annoyed me hurries down the 175 stairs (yeah, all the lifts were broken today), cursing inwardly at the slow slow people who won't stop to let you past on the little landings between spirals. Get to platform. Train arrive. Get on train. "There are currently delays on the Piccadilly Line Westbound, due to a passenger taken ill at Gloucester Road". Lovely. Train waits. Lalalalala. More people arrive on the platform. More squeeze onto the already overfull train. Yet more people arrive. Soon, living space was more limited than for the average sardine, and most people were getting intimate with each others' elbows/knees/luggage. I seethed and fumed inside my head. We move on to Holborn, where we wait and wait and wait on the platform, squeezing the train to bursting capacity. I give up temporarily and nip off, moving down the platform toward the Central Line. The platform is hopelessly packed with people, and I spot a fortuitous gaspode-shaped hole recently vacated by an exasperated traveller and their luggage, give up on swimming upstream and get back on. I fit myself into the hole and really begin to empathise with the canned fish.

And then somebody arrives at the door of the train (which has NO ROOM in it at this point). Just one look tells you they're a yuppy suit, of the obnoxious kind. The hair (slicked back), the suit (expensive), the facial expression (twattish). Oozing "I'm better than you and used to getting what I want you plebs" from every immaculately shaven pore.

And then, to prove his credentials Mr. Suit utters the immortal words "Could you PLEASE move down the car" in an annoyed, off-hand condescending way. The emphasis on the please; everything about the facial expression; that alpha-simian sneer.

All geared toward tripping the dusty, cobweb-ridden Anger Fuse in gaspode-brain-land. In an instant, fuse trips, signals shoot straight toward the jaw muscles and cause the words "Could you PLEASE fuck off and get on the next train." to exit my mouth.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, mild-mannered me, prone to ranting but not to fits of anger. Swearing at commuters on the train. Mr. Suit looks momentarily stunned. There is a ripple of laughter and approving comments from my fellow sardines. The train goes beeeep, the doors slide shut and off we go to Covent Garden station, leaving him standing on the platform.

Of course, we then spend a hell of a long time sitting on the platform at Covent Garden ("Due to the ongoing problem at Gloucester Road" Um. Take the ill person off the train and stop holding up the rush hour maybe? How can it be an 'ongoing' problem?), so I get off and take the Piccadilly Line back to Holborn and grab the Central Line to Shepherd's Bush and hop on a 295 bus back to Hammersmith. (I'm half tempted to experiment with this as an actual alternative route in future, since if you discount the extra waiting-at-platform delay time, it only took 15 minutes more than the Piccadilly Line on its own, and most of that could be accounted for by my backtracking manoeuvre)

Where I come across a gem of a "You know you're in a chav town when..." comment. Some kids at the back of the bus are talking (loudly and obnoxiously; I want to shout a them too, but I've exceeded my quota for this month) about what they're gong to do at the weekend. With reference to a party of some sort, and the sartorial requirements thereof, one girl squawks "Shall I wear my Nike tracksuit? You know? My nice one?".
Oh deary me.

All is well when I get to Hammersmith, as it turns out the shops I wanted don't close 'til 8pm despite their website's protestations to the contrary.

And now, there has been the microwave pizza of calm, the chi-stabilising tasty fruit squash and the tension-numbing glow of the intorweb. All is calm in gaspode-brain-land, the spiders are re-inhabiting the Anger Fuse box and I look forward to a weekend of NOT working at all. Not even one little bit.

Here our tale ends for today, gentle reader, so until next time, I bid you farewell.

"Hippies are dirty and they have no money. Also, the elderly are incredibly crotchety and heartless."

Excerpt from a description of why a particular scene in Futurama (in the Top 25 [alleged] best moments) is funny. Description unnecessary, but still funny.

ICT Skills Task No. 1:

Producing Your Curriculum Vitae

At the start of the course (... waffle clipped for non-relevance...). If possibly, try to use the following format but it is not essential if you have little knowledge of computing.

Most of the things in the Cotswolds are closed on a Monday. This is worth knowing.

Prinknash isn't though, so we're off there to see the bird park & abbey...

BIRDIES!

Isn't the BBC Weather forecast a wonderful thing :-) Yesterday was allegedly 'Sunny' (not even sunny spells, the full-on sunshine symbol with supposed temperatures creeping up as high as 20 degrees).

It was rather more cloudy, windy and wet than that yesterday in Gloucester. Apart from the weather, Gloucester is nice enough, though an awful lot of it seems to be closed on a Sunday...

It was more of a monsoon really, and we're packed for 'sunny' so we got wet and cold. Also we got yelled at on a slightly deserted road by a crazy man 'When did the vampire die?!' They had a priory but some little c*** had graffitid on it (there's a special place in hell for those kind) and it was slap bang in the middle of an industrial area. Gorgeous cathedral though, super duper with a very fine cloister when it comes to English cloisters - Exedra

I maintain that special hell is Slough, since it's conveniently located on the line from Paddington to Gloucester. Also, there were supposed to be other things to do in Gloucester, like museums and suchlike, but they didn't like Sundays at all. The B&B; was quite nice, and breakfast was tasty and filling. Last night's dinner was tasty good reasonably priced chinese which more than warmed us up after the slight drenching we received during the day (At least you had a leather jacket :-). Also Wetherspoons had no draught beer on...(But love the archers and coke for 99p)

Now we're in Stroud, and the BBC forecast is starting to come true a day or so late. It is sunny, though it hasn't taken us too long to explore just about all there seems to be in the town center itself. Something of a one-horse town I feel, though there may yet be things to discover. Maybe round the back of some of those shops...

Tomorrow we head to Painswick which although is much smaller than Stroud, it seems to be the only place the Stroud tourist information centre wants us to know about, which bodes well as we are there for two nights. We have even bought a book with a couple of circular walks in it which I look foreward to. Yayz.

Also worth noting for future reference that a lot of Stroud is closed on a Monday. Maybe if we'd decided to do them in the other order... :-)

But the lovely weather that has broken through at last means that even doing very little is super. I am looking forward to owning a car for the super duper amount of freedom it will afford such holidays. Yay for my car, I will love it so.

Hmmm. That might just have taken care of the Livejournal addiction for the time being. I doubt there will be opportunity (and hopefully not the spare time :-) in Painswick for such things. We head there tomorrow on some kind of mysterious bus from Stroud. Painswick looks kinda small and should be quite nice. Oh, and for the record, Gloucester looks bigger on the maps than it is in real life. You can walk from one side of the interesting bit to the other in about 15 minutes.(ten if you're speedy)

Good extended weekend.

Got gmail invites. Is there still a human being out there I know who needs one?

I won the Rector's Prize in Science Communication. It does exist. There is a cheque associated, but god knows where they've posted it to as I have no pigeonhole anymore...

Got me some work to do for realy moneys. Not much, but it's stuff I can do at home (or, well, in icsf where there's intorweb)...

ADSL Update: I await a callback from technical support minion #3 today. I need them to connect us up again so I can get a migration code and switch providers.

Life Update: Yesterday was frustrating in the daytime (sooo long in techsupport queues), but good in the eventime with the drinking and the good company. Though was mildly irritated by the vast quantity of vodka-red-bull chugging pikey scum in the pub.

Morbid Update: Happy Deathday J R R Tolkien! 31 years dead today and he doesn't look a day over 29. Who says death stops at 30 eh? The franchise is still going strong...

Here's how it goes...

Sometime around the 3rd of August, our adsl stops working, so we set about trying to contact our provider to get it fixed. In the course of this somebody actually picks up the house phone and finds the landline to be dead. BT has killed it, with some sort of network fault. They tell us they'll fix it by the 23rd of August...

On the 20th or so, the landline starts to work again. Hooray. Well, sort of muted hooray, since we've been without phone for a fortnight, and we can't claim compensation because BT fixed it by the time they said they would...

The ADSL still isn't working... Hmm. It must be Bulldog DSL's fault. Cue much maligning of Bulldog, swearing and attempting to contact their customer service. We suspect problems with transferral of a direct debit to be the culprit in out internetly woes. Last week (Tuesday or Wednesday) I get through to a monkey in Billing at Bulldog. It's not a billing thing. Cue more swearing at Bulldog and shouting and decision to change to a new ADSL provider.

Today, I get through to customer services for the first time evar. They tell me they'll give me a migration code. They don't phone back. This afternoon, I get through again, the man does phone me back to inform me that...

It's not their fault! It's BT being a bunch of incompetent fucks. Apparently, on the 3rd of August, they disconnected our ADSL without telling Bulldog (our provider) or us that they'd done it...

What... the... fuck?

British Telecom, in their infinite wisdom, decide to cut off our internet access, which we're paying for, without telling us??

This is madness. Sheer madness. Anyway, I'm no longer in the service-provider switching game. Now I have to harass BT to connect us up again.

Useless bastards.

Anyway, that's the ADSL saga for now...

Edit:

aca makes a salient point... Whilst BT may have been responsible for killing our adsl, Bulldog as our provider are responsible for making it work again. However, they claim that their system can't give us a migration authorisation code because of being disconnected by BT... So I need to harass Bulldog to reconnect us, then get them to give us a micration code, then set up the new internet access.

Kinda lucky for the denizens of our flat that I don't have a job really.

Also, I'm not looking forward to the mobile bill for this month.

(P.S. I have also been using our landline a bit too, but not recently, since the first time I got through to a human at Bulldog, the stupid fucking cordless piece of shite fucked the connection and made me hang up on them. Cordless phones blow donkeys. What's wrong with wires people?)

Let's see... the weekend... (so far)

Friday:

On the way to Kingston, some kid tried to kill the driver of the bus I was on with a catapult. He fired something which smashed through the glass door of the bus and narrowly missed the driver's head, spraying small shards of glass about the place. Had to wait for the next 371 to come along, so I was slightly late for chinese takeaway and the pub with

exedra and friends.

Saturday, hanging mostly, some Firefly and some shopping and tasty lunch. Then home for some slacking and paperwork.

This morning, I am loitering in icsf again, because Bulldog still ahven't fixed the internet.

Well.

I have just finished reading Getting the Buggers to Behave (one of the recommended texts on classroom management, behaviour, control and that sort of stuff). Interesting and somewhat daunting. I find that when I explain I'm going to train to be a teacher, I get a variety of reactions. So, in the name of Tuesday afternoon (it is Tuesday isn't it?) time wastage: ticky ticky!

Poll #340309 The ticky clicky teaching poll
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

View Answers

You deluded idiot you
5 (18.5%)

Well, someone's got to do it I suppose
4 (14.8%)

You have my sympathies
8 (29.6%)

It's a perfectly good profession
5 (18.5%)

Congratulations!
5 (18.5%)

View Answers

Adolf Hitler
0 (0.0%)

Stalin
11 (40.7%)

Monty Python
11 (40.7%)

Someone from Grange Hill
3 (11.1%)

A herring
2 (7.4%)

So, how do you rate my chances of survival in the teaching profession (1=not at all, 10=guaranteed to succeed):

View Answers
Mean: 6.92 Median: 7 Std. Dev 1.38

1	0 (0.0%)
2	0 (0.0%)
3	0 (0.0%)
4	2 (7.7%)
5	3 (11.5%)
6	2 (7.7%)
7	10 (38.5%)
8	6 (23.1%)
9	3 (11.5%)
10	0 (0.0%)

Parents visited at the weekend, so tasty food and things were had for the best price. Free. :-)

Went to Barnes Wetlands center (ducks and frogs), Kew Gardens (Trees and more trees) and well, that's it really. ENjoyable, nice weather, tastiness. Mmmm.

I have no job. Still. It reaches the point now where in a lot of cases I wouldn't actually be able to work the notice period before I'd have to quit... Have looked here, there and everywhere (read Hammersmith, Kensington and Kingston, and the interweb). Ah well. Bursaries soon.

Well, as soon as I've filled in the metric tonne of forms I need, all of which (including the student loan) need to be done in about 4 weeks... This isn't a lot of time when the wheels of bureaucracy are involved...

Ah well. I was going to write more, but I can't be bothered really :-)

~~I have a gmail invite. Does anyone I know want it? I know the bottom's fell out of the market, but still, someone might want one...~~

Edit: We have a winnor. Wow. I get comments if I have invites... I should get more ;-)

Weekend had cakes (I took a picture, but the cake was mostly the work of

exedra so I shall await her postings of images), an engagement party (fun!) and then Sunday's OMWF/cider/beer/chips/Galaxy Quest/Futurama in the library. More fun!

Our ADSL is very dead because out landline is very dead. BT claim to fix it by the 23rd. Hopefully. So we'll have been phoneless for 13 days... BT Suck

I post this through the joys of my Shiny Thing. Acting as a 9600 bps bluetooth modem, it allows me to share this sorry state of affairs with the world at large :-)

Today tidying and some slacking.
Tomorrow things and the jobfinding.

Still no bit of paper from the IoE and the GTTR. I want my bit of paper so I can go apply for massive tax-free bursaries...

Anyway. This here connection is consting me money so I shall wander off now...

I have no letter yet, but the GTTR website says "You have firmly accepted an unconditional offer via clearing", so let's say I'm quietly optimistic on that front and wait 'til I can check on today's post shall we? :-)

I need to find some temporary employment to last me until term starts over. Cash is running a bit short... If I ate no food and didn't travel between now and term, I could probably juuust survive. However, I'd be dead from starvation and boredom. So there we go... Some moneys to keep me in beer, food, clothes and galavanting wouldn't go amiss ;-)

Anyway, enough of that, I've things to be doing...

I had a PGCE interview at the Institute of Education just now, and without sounding over-confident, I thought it went really rather well. Like very well. I shall find out in the next day or two if they're going to offer me a place. Hooray.

The interview itself consisted of:

A group discussion of some basic science questions (I ruled. ahem. what I mean to say is that I offered the most correct answers and fewest misconceived ones :-)

An individual interview, which I thought went really well. I managed to put a positive spin on everything including my exam results and so forth. Rockage. Coming from IC and almost getting on the Sci Comm MSc was a big plus here... Also more basic science questions, and even though I know nowt of biology I was able to figure out even the biology-style ones eventually.

A written exercise, which I think I did quite well. Not sure what else I could've written (it was in response to a 'teaching situation')

A presentation, which I did on Herschel (funny that, I've been researching its applicability to the national curriculum at key stage 4 for the past week), which was supposed to be aimed at GCSE types (whaddya know... ks4 ;-). So that went well. Stayed back and chatted with the tutor for a while afterwards about stuff. Made good impression I think :-)

So yeah. That's enough blowing my own trumpet... But I will be surprised if they don't give me a place by the end of the week...

Rockage.

Also, it confirmed that yes, I think I do actually want to be a teacher, at least for a while.

Of course I may have completely misread the situation and actually sucked, but oh well. Time will tell...

on the bus heading to work. Just had a job interview, which went well I think. Hooray :-) Time will tell...

Yeah... ok. Apologies for yesterday's post, I was being a whiny little git again. Shortly after making it, I got asked in for an interview (which sounds rather promising) with a company on Oxford Street. So hooray for that. I have also applied to be the Chief Whip's tea boy (civil service, so pay not good, but I'd get to carry cases of sensitive documents between parliament and downing street...), and customer service on London Underground (what you say? free public transport for me and my partner you say? Well, don't mind if I do thankyouverymuch). Heh. Fingers crossed and all that.

In other news, I got my exam results today. The actual proper percentages and all that.

Let's see. They vary (as

sulkyblue pointed out) from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Ridiculous:

Space Physics: 20% (33% passmark) FAIL
Maths Methods resit: 23% (35%) FAIL
E&M; / Optics resit: 23% (33%) FAIL
Solid State / Atomic resit: 33% (33%) PASS
Astrophysics: 33% (33%) PASS
Solid State / Atomic: 36% (33%) PASS

Sublime:

Comprehensives: 60% average (0% passmark) They're not hard.
Nuclear & Particle Physics: 60% (33%) PASS
Science Communication: 74% (40%) PASS
Project: 76% (40%)
Laboratory: 88% (40%)

Degree weighted average: 49.4%... d'oh! :-)

So that, as they say, is that. Now I can say I am Robbie Bain BSc (Hons.) ARCS. Heh. Letters. W00t.

Anyway, I'm rather proud of my 88% in lab. If only I didn't suck at the actualy physics modules (the ones that aren't nuclear & particle anyway).

Yesterday's thuderbolts and lightning (ver' ver' frightening) was fun. Was on the bus when it decided it wanted to be a submarine, with sheets of water cascading down all sides of it, making the outside world something that happens to other people.

Also, QOTD heard on bus: said by bratty 18 y/o ish American (Californian by the accent, definite valley-speak going on there, like, totally, and, like, yeah.) girl to obviously rich father:

[Girl]: So, the thing you cut corn with, is it pronounced 'skythe' or 'sith'?
[Father]: Actually, I think it's pronounced 'Scythe'.
[Girl]: 20 minutes of inane prattle about starbucks and starbucks and god no not starbucks again and WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU VACUOUS SPOILT LITTLE BITCH!

ahem.

So that was yesterday, and here endeth my lunchbreak thingy, so back to work for meee.

Oh, and look at today's Penny Arcade. \m/