The Ramblings of an Accountant

Without further comment because it's almost 2am and I've been trying to find this version on Youtube for several weeks, here's the Monte Vista Christian School Choir with:



A Merry Christmas indeed. With love to you all, because you are all fabulous.

Because I have a stinking cold and am tired and crabby. Be nice to me...

the ❝that's my favourite!❞ meme
A FANFICTION PRAISE MEME

In other news, my fabulous beta has turned around my big bang fic in less than twenty-four hours. Some stuff to do, but I'm feeling a lot more confident about it now! Still need to write the epilogue though...

I'm still delicious tagging the crack_van Pros Recs (No, I've not forgotten about them!) 156 down, 50 to go. *sigh* I should get them done before it's my turn to drive the LoM Cortina next month. I hope.

C is being a complete stalwart and bringing me tea, even though she's not feeling too good either. I love you, honey.

Research question - can anyone help?

It's London, 1982, and you want to leave, say, a small amount of cash, an A4 envelope/file full of 'state secrets' and a passport in a location which is accessable at all times, is not too difficult to get into, but is safe enough. Ideally security would be of the "if you have the key you can open it" as I require a third party to be able to access it (with the key, of course) It also needs to be fairly long term.

What would you use?

I suspect lockers at stations (esp. Waterloo and Victoria) would've been in the process of being removed at this time, and even if they were still available, you couldn't get away with having a key to one for three years, could you? They were strictly short term only.

PO Boxes aren't, apparently, actual boxes, unlike in the States and elsewhere. (Which is annoying because they are rather cool, actually!) Has that always been the case?

Bank safety deposit boxes, at least now, are too difficult to get into, require too much ID.

Gym/swimming lockers, I suppose aren't accessable 24 hours? Tempted to use a bathhouse (*g*) but also suspect that you'd definitely not get away with long-term use of the locker and/or the proprietor turning a blind eye to you using it, wouldn't be so impressed when other 'gents' start using it as well.

Thoughts?

Oh, and ta muchly!

Oh, oh - and if you can't guess what this is for, I'd be very, very surprised!

A few terrible (maths) jokes. Just for gritsinmisery. Yes, you can beat her up for encouraging me.

( Unfortunately, no pun in ten did )

Just don't ask me to start writing down the old shaggy dog stories. I think someone might shoot me.

ETA: to fix the minor inaccuracies in the jokes. My friendslist is a haven for pedants, obviously. *grin*

Oh help me, wonderful knitting friends, I'm trying to find a pattern.

I bought, back in September, a skein of laceweight cashmere, made by The Knitting Goddess from the wonderful Darlington yarn stall A Fine Yarn. Talking to the lovely proprietoress of the stall, she recommended a small Ishbel shawl, but also mentioned that there's a similiar lace shawl pattern out there, that's free. It takes the same amount of yarn, approx 350 metres. Does anyone know what that similiar shawl pattern might be?

TIA!

To say Merry Christmas to everyone on my friendslist, Guv, Gladys, Sunshine and Angelfish wanted to do something really special.

(Well, actually, cuvalwen decided to dress the poor dears up. Angelfish is still upset he had to play the girl!)

( Click for the Christmas Card )

So there is it is - Merry non-Denominational Holiday of Your Choice. May it and the coming year be filled with fun, laughter, hope and happiness.

Busy, busy, busy, so here's some New Scientist content to keep you happy. (Must get back to finding their dodgier headlines. These are almost sensible!)

Terry Pratchett: Fighting to keep the fantasy alive

The prolific author discusses tinkering with science, his battle with Alzheimer's, and the odds of escaping from a crab bucket

Ten inventions that changed the world

To mark its centenary, in June the Science Museum in London had its curators select the 10 objects in its collection that had made the biggest mark on history. These then went to a public vote to find the most important invention of past centuries. Results in pictures, just follow the link.

In (very slightly) related news (in other words if you get why they're related, you're doing well!), I've been listening to Flanders and Swann a lot at the moment. They are very good. I know a lot of my friendslist hold a soft spot for them as well, so I ask you all - can anyone recommend me artists in the same vein as F&S (and Tom Lehrer, of course). Weird Al, unfortunately, doesn't qualify.

(Fic is only about 100 words from being finished. Need to get this month's finance report mocked up and the cash management numbers finished before I can finally look at it. *phew*)

I'm a bad fiancée. After spending a few months talking about doing something to cuvalwen's incredibly old computer (and not doing anything about it), I finally got round to transferring a lot of files off it (no room on the 20Gb hard drive) and defragging it. This should've made the thing a little faster at least, except there was no virus software on the computer beforehand and so I loaded up Avast.

Suffice to say the computer is now running *slower* and I'm definitely not flavour of the month.

[Yes, I did know this was an issue with Avast beforehand - and AVG, for that matter, but it was that or let the two trojans we found carry on, unabated...]

So, my wonderful *techie* friendslist, please to be helping. I'm in dire need of decent (preferably free, but not necessarily) virus software which doesn't make the machine run like molasses on a cold day. Is there such a thing?

Also - any tips or encouragement to get the damn thing running a little faster / better would be incredibly wonderful as well.

(To let you know what I'm dealing with, the vital statistics are: AMD processor, 600MHz, 386Mb RAM, 20Gb hard drive, Windows XP Home, Service Pack 3. Slower than a turtle on dope.)

You are all utterly wonderful!