lemme take you to school

I probably have many things to say.

None of which are appropriate I deem.

Therefore.

I will talk to you about ASAP.

ASAP, as many of you will know (I don't doubt), stands for "as soon as possible".

I have deciphered (no need to thank me for the legwork here) two possible meanings for this phrase when appended to notes I may receive in the line of duty. I will posteritise (new word, folks) these new meanings right here. And this is just (and I mean that my dear peeps) for you. Yes you. Here we go:

1. I need this now if not sooner.
2. I need this as soon as possible. I understand that you have a dynamic workload and I understand that you have to prioritise said work depending on needs and then based on a "first-come, first-served" basis. Based on this understanding, I would like this work done at the earliest convenience your schedule allows given these parameters and allowing for an arbitrary sense of urgency you may place on pieces of work when faced with a dilemma caused by two pieces of work - one marked ASAP and one with a definite date - where the "definite-date work" came in after the the "ASAP work".

I'm also going to let you in on a little secret. Yes indeed. I process all work marked ASAP under the category assigned to the number two above.

That is to say: work marked ASAP is.. I can hardly contain my glee in saying this.. is NOT treated as urgent.

There is a VERY important lesson to learn here, kids. And it's not the obvious one (much as it pains me to say it). The obvious lesson is to mark your work as "NEEDED BY [date]". The slightly less obvious lesson is to not mark your work as ASAP unless you mean meaning number two (I get some people who actually do mean meaning 2 - they are glorious people). The lesson I'd hope you'd learn is this: TO MEAN WHAT YOU SAY.

The super super not expected lesson is to manage your suppliers. Yes, by all means mean what you say, but also plan in your own golden contingency. If you tell me you need it for 9am but you secretly need it for 11am... well then if unforeseen circumstances happen.. it's not all so bad now is it.

The corollary of this little theorem is that you never let on to me that you've been managing me. If you consistently tell me a certain time but always pick your work up late.. well it's a dead giveaway isn't it?

The secret secret about how I treat you in all of this? Well that's a secret now isn't it? I can't give away trade secrets, can I?

A-A-ohhhhh (verandout)

in the half-light

There's been a lovely twilight tonite.

It made everything feel hyper-real.

I find those times interesting. Often I find it's if there's a strange natural lighting going on. Other times it could be at a party when the music's loud and you've had a couple of drinks. It's funny. Because it feels both real and not real.

That's my observation for you tonite.

foop-ball to come. And maybe poker. Who knows.

o&o

staying late / extra credit

Calloo Calay.

I'm here today.

I've been thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about society recently. I don't like it much. Having negative thoughts that is. Society's got its high and low points. I just wish people wouldn't be arseholes to each other.

And I wish we didn't have to tear down all the time.

But it's so easy. Everyone thinks they know better. Everyone has a plan.

Why don't we let the journalists run the country? I'm sure they could do a better job.

Actually I don't think sarcasm helps the situation. It does make me feel better for a little bit, but then it tastes sour.

I could spin this out into an essay, but I need to get dressed really. Also, I meant spin in the other sense. Not the newspaper sense.

oberonout

this that and, of course, the other

Stoopid hacking type people ruined my phone auction. So I'll now have to relist it.

It's interesting (maybe) to think that when people are behaving themselves there are two categories. Unless you can think of more, in which case there are two or more categories.

- people who don't do immoral things on the basis that it's immoral
- people who don't do immoral things on the basis that they might get caught

Which category any given person falls into differs on an issue by issue basis. For instance I would imagine that quite a few people fall into the second category when driving a car.

The thing is though, for the first category you would expect that the person will never do the action in question, but for the second it's just a matter of what risks they're prepared to take or whether they get the opportunity to do the action without getting caught.

The application of this (I can tell you're itching to hear it), or rather the catalyst for me thinking about it is using/leaving your credit card details in the possession of other people. You have to leave your card as a deposit for hiring surf boards etc and I've also recently heard of people having their credit card details stolen by petrol stations in Dartford (I don't know which ones). Most people hopefully will fall into the first category and you're safe, but some people fall into the second category, and you'd better hope they don't have a plan.

To the moon

black and white and grey. Monochrome in fact. Or greyscale

Or grayscale if you're of the american spelling persuasion. Or ghrayschayle if you're cheating at Scrabble. Or greyskull if you're into nostalgia. Whatever.

Rants recently said something about the blog spectrum on his blog. I'm not sure where I'd fit on his restrictive little system (I jest, Mr Builder) but I've recently discovered.. well, I say discovered, it's more that I just made it up, so let's start again. I've recently made up that I would rather sit the whole way across such a spectrum than sit somewhere on it.

This goes for quite a lot of things. When I fill in those personality questionnaires or learning questionnaires or any of that guff I tend to come out as a hideous mish-mash of all of the outcomes/types. I'm running away from the truth perhaps?

On a vaguely related tack, we were just having a conversation about how different people see things in either black and white or grey (that's a very old concept so I'm sure you know what I mean) and how nice it must be to be able to see things in black and white.

I'm not sure I had a point to get to with this so I'm not sure how to continue. I would like to be able to see things as black and white. Maybe I do in some ways. For instance, I have a black and white view about how grey everything is. Everybody wins. Seeing things in grey is more tiresome I guess. If you see it as black and white it's easier to go about things.

Might be about time to wrap this up here and now. We're on holiday this week by the way. We're in Cornwall with the RealPilot and the Fogpilot (who now have a MiniPilot as well) until Thursday and then we're going up to Shropshire to visit the GrandRents-in-law. Fun fun.

overandout

webber-writing yo

Isn't it funny the things that people get indignant about? For this 'banal observation'™ I have drawn on the experience of seeing them speedy cameras what are been burnt or painted over or whatever. People get rather het up about it all don't they? But why? It's the law. If you don't want points or fines, don't speed.

The funny thing with people is they're always justifying things with theoretical situations. "It's unfair that if you lapse in concentration and accidentally go too fast you should be punished". How often does that really happen? You know you're going too fast. The lapse in concentration was not noticing the camera. Also, shouldn't you be concentrating all the time when you're driving? Not that anyone does of course. Not even, not EVEN, yours truly.. hee.

The other one that makes me chuckle is when there's talk of putting speed limiters on cars. I'd really appreciate one time someone actually saying "well we don't want speed limiters because I like to go really fast actually." But the line that usually gets used is "it's dangerous because sometimes you need to accelerate out of danger". I've been driving for 8 years and the only time I've ever had to do that is because I was going too fast in the first place. Maybe not being able to go over a certain speed would cause a couple of accidents. But maybe that should be weighed against how many accidents get caused by speeding in the first place..

"I don't like tobiwan.co.uk so much these days. He's getting preachy."

The actual point I was originally going to make before I "went off on one"™ was that it's bizarre that people get all fired up and burn speed cameras when there's things like Guantanamo Bay going on. I guess it's only really easy to get passionate about stuff that affects you personally hey?

Quoi d'autre? OH I'M SELLING A PHONE ON EBAY! Huzzah!

K I'm done. You can't have it all yo yo.

in the twilight

I don't think there's a more atmospheric time than twilight. Even the names for it are evocative: afterglow, blue hour, dusk, gloaming.

Lovely..