Bad timing

Head Rambles Posted on by 2

I have said it before but there is little to write about these days.

One day follows another and each is much the same – I am either looking after Herself or sleeping. Occasionally I drop down to the village but that is the peak of my excitement.

It crossed my mind this morning that it would have been a lot better if I had started this site nearly fifty years ago.

Back in ’70 [or ’71?] I started working for RTE. I actually worked in a department called RTE Relays which was a cable television company [anyone remember cable television?]. After a sort of apprenticeship I got the job of planning the systems around Dublin. The plans were then passed to contractors and when they had completed installing all the cables and equipment it was passed back to me to commission the new area. That involved lugging ladders and signal strength meters around housing estates, switching on and tweaking amplifiers and then making sure everything worked within specification.

Whenever I commissioned an area, it involved climbing ladders in all weathers and of course I had to knock on doors to get the okay to sling a ladder against their walls or climb onto their roof. So I got to knock on anything up to thirty doors a day which led to some very interesting encounters. I met some lovely people, some ordinary people and in quite a few cases I had dogs set on me. In other cases I had the wife set on me which was worse than the dogs.

If I had been scribbling back then I would have had endless material.

In the late eighties I switched jobs completely but was still in RTE. I became a computer programmer.

To cut a long story short, I moved from programmer to looking after the internal computer network and also the Interwebs. This meant lugging a meter around most days but at least there were no ladders involved. I got to know just about every corner in both the television and radio areas not to mention just about everyone who worked there. Once again, a lot of material to scribble about.

I suppose I could reminisce about various events and encounters but they are all a bit of blur now. It is hard to remember individual stories as they have all sort of merged together in my memory. Pity!

Anyway who the fuck would want to hear about something that happened half a century ago?

The child is father to the man

Head Rambles Posted on by 3

I am beyond sick of hearing about this climate lark.

This past week was designated as “Climate Week” so we had the subject constantly pushed at us. RTE were the great offenders with “climate reports” in every news programme and various other programmes dedicated to the subject. Needless to say I didn’t watch any of them. I saw a few of their trailers and they were pure propaganda. Herself likes the news though so I couldn’t escape that.

Last night we had the unedifying spectacle of 157 ten to seventeen year olds taking over our parliament to debate climate from their perspective and to produce a report for our gubmint. So we have kids making decisions now? I suppose they can’t be any worse than their adult counterparts though.

I had a look through their “recommendations” which were predictable enough. I was somewhat bemused though at number seven –

Ireland to outlaw acts of ecocide – being the widespread and systematic loss of ecosystems, including climate and cultural damage.

Fucking ecocide? And what the fuck do they mean by “cultural damage”?

My overall impression was one of sadness. These kids have been thoroughly brainwashed into a state of fear and worry that the planet is on the verge of total collapse. They seriously think the world is about to end and that it will be their fault if they do nothing. One of the reports during the week told us that the majority belief amongst the Greenland population was that climate change was a natural phenomenon. RTE of course had to pop into a school and terrify al the kids by telling them that the world is about to end because of humans. Shades of the old religious missionaries?

I almost hanker for the good old days of the Cold War.

At lest the threat of global annihilation was real then.

On being stressed

Head Rambles Posted on by 13

I received a letter the other day.

The health mob have made an appointment for me to have a stress test.

I have to report to the hospital wearing loose clothing and comfortable shoes and carrying a towel.

I know a little bit about stress tests. They take the material in question and subject it to various tortures until it breaks, and from that they can deduce how much strain similar materials will behave and set various safety limits. It’s a simple enough process.

So presumably they are going to subject me to various stresses and strains until I fail? And what constitutes a fail? Are they going to wait until I collapse in a gibbering sweaty heap begging for mercy? Is that what the towel is for? For me to throw it in? Or are they just going to go the whole hog and keep stressing me until the heart fails and I drop dead? Am I to be sacrificed in order that limits may be set for others?

These are fairly important questions, for me at least.

They don’t mention any of that in the letter.

Solving the climate crisis

Head Rambles Posted on by 9

Our national broadcaster is going ballistic at the climate lark.

Last night, RTE started a series of programmes, all red in the face with excitement at the catastrophe that is on our doorsteps [or maybe on our sea shores?]. I didn’t bother watching as they had already devoted a fair chunk of the news to the subject.

There was something I noticed about that news item. They told us such facts that the warmest ten years on record had occurred in the recent past, or some such. In fact the entire report kept referring to “since records began”, or “record breaking” without saying when records actually began. One piece was a Greenlander telling us of tales his grandfather used to tell him about glaciers for fucks sake.

So when did records begin?

This is an important point as everything has to be taken in context. As far as I can discover, temperature records only started about three hundred years ago at the very earliest, and how reliable are they? Reliable records probably don’t go back much further than two centuries. Now two hundred years is not a very long time, considering that humans have wandered around for the last thirty five thousand years or so.

So the climate is changing. Quelle surprise! it has always changed, but comparing modern climate with evidence garnered from a mere couple of centuries gives a very distorted view. I could equally claim that today is the coldest day for the last eight months but that proves nothing but sounds alarming.

So assuming temperatures are rising, how can they possibly tell what’s around the corner? Maybe temperatures will plummet again [as some experts are predicting as we head towards a solar minimum]? If the feckers can’t predict the weather beyond five days, how can they predict climate in the next thirty or forty years?

If they are really that worried about the climate, then I suggest they just tweak a few figures in their computer models.

Problem solved.

Glad to see that Dublin Bus isn’t worried about climate change?

The Great Flood

Head Rambles Posted on by 4

It has not been the best of weekends here at the Manor.

It started on Saturday evening when I went to replenish Herself’s pill box. You know the things? Little strips of boxes for morning and evening supply of drugs for the week. It was then I discovered that I was out of supplies and of course the Chemist was closed.

Fuck! Herself was going to have to survive the weekend unsedated.

Sunday morning wasn’t too bad. The withdrawals had started but we hadn’t yet reached the stage where I needed to strap her to the bed.

Then the Cat went missing. I saw this as a little ray of sunshine on an otherwise dull day but Herself wasn’t happy. She wanted the Cat back. And she wanted the Cat back immediately. There was nothing for it but to search everywhere. No sign. I began singing for joy.

Then I went into my bedroom for something. There was the Fucking Cat. The little shit had nosed her way in and the door had swung closed behind her. Herself was pleased at the return of the little arsehole. I wasn’t.

By Sunday night Herself’s room had become a no-fly zone. Cat was the only one who could enter and hope to survive. I went to bed.

I got undressed while Penny curled up at the side of my bed. I got in. I got out again really fucking quickly. The bed was drenched! I inspected it and sure enough the entire lower half of the bed was sopping wet, right through the duvet to the mattress. Fucking Cat had pissed on it! I swear that cat’s internal organs consist of one gigantic bladder as the volume of piss was quite astounding. I had to move to another bed.

Things are better today. I have been to the Chemist so Herself is back with a smile on her face. The Cat is steering well clear of me. And an electric blanket that I handed in for cleaning ages ago has finally turned up [having done a tour of the shop’s chain of branches].

Happy days.