So how is everybody? Is Grizzly Adams (aka Marc Clifton) still giving 'em the "Good News" (TM)? Is Pete still flogging his Arctic weather gear? Is John Simmons still the proponent, as ever he was, of gun ownership? Mustafa - last I remember you had some sort of aneurysm; hope you're ok and dealing with it. (There's lots of other people I hope are ok too: Dalek Dave, TrollSlayer, MidWest Limey, Dario Solera, Paul Watson... the list goes on and on you're too many to mention). Yours truly is still happily married and just returned from Malaysia, solo. TAMMH decided to stay for a few weeks because her mother isn't well. Reminds me of being a bachelor - but less good.

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It is to my very great regret that I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Sagan in 1989, but couldn't due to ill health.

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Substitute values?

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Well it would be if you were doing it in one "sitting", but not when you're on hols with no deadline to meet (and no clue where you are in the world). That said, I wanted to do the Mille Miglia route, but my co-pilot was having none of it. Silly girl. Could have hired a Lambo and aced that circuit easily.

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...I did not previously know. 1) You end up in Italy. 2) There's not all that much driving. 3) Brunelleschi's Dome is more impressive* than the Great Pyramid (just not as old). Still, you can expect no more when the sat-nav packs up somewhere in Belgium and the wife "reads" the map. *from an architectural and engineering point of view, but not in a ruddy great big thing out in the desert sort of a way.

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I'm getting a sense of deja vu... What an extraordinarily brilliant invention that is. And not in the slightest a complete waste of everybody's valuable time, oh no. Not for them placing external drives out of the way, propping them up something (anything!) or taking the precautionary step of not spilling drinks near them... nope! For them the only answer was to fit robotic legs and a moisture sensor, the combination of which seems more than capable of walking said external drive off the nearest high surface.

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What an extraordinarily brilliant invention that is. And not in the slightest a complete waste of everybody's valuable time, oh no. The inventor deserves some kind of prize - would the Nobel Peace Prize be out of the question? - and then to be roundly booed, just shortly before it's taken from him and somebody thumps him.

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Sounds like a Kate Bush song. Are you sure you won?

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I wouldn't regard this as a joke of any sort (and certainly not the best joke in human civilisation), but a variation of the Judgement of Solomon.

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If by "great" you mean "miserly" and by "people" you mean "gits" I heartily agree. If you don't mean that, I'd recommend wearing a Celtic shirt in a Rangers bar just to see how "great" they are :)

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I can't comment on the hats, but I can tell you that the Scots are the most miserly peasants on the planet. Furthermore, they always vote Labour (idiots), think deep fried Mars Bars are fine cuisine (heart attack victims), think the bagpipes sound good (tone deaf) and will quite happily draw the dole, live on council estates and otherwise be a bunch of useless wasters (until they get independence. I'd love to see Alex Salmonds' face when he finally realises what he's been fighting for). In other news: cunts. Another naughty word.

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Who Dares Wins[^] :)

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Just us old boys and our war stories left :) I shudder to think what archivists will make of it all in 10,000 years time :D (Except that you were clearly older, obviously ;) )

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Newcastle East and Newcastle Central ;)

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Names are fascinating! For example my surname, Hughes, means "Son of Hugh". Who the hell was Hugh and what was his beef? Who knows? I've researched it and I've yet to come up with an answer to that, but I did find out that a distant relative of mine was a highway man (hung at the assizes apparently) and another was well known for ripping off the local parish.

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Christopher Duncan wrote:

Man, what Koolaid have you been drinking? And by the way, bubba - you're older than me, if I recall.

In your dreams, sonny ;)

Christopher Duncan wrote:

Intellisense is nice but Visual SlickEdit (and its competitors, I'm sure) do that, too. What, just because VS has a built in editor, I'm supposed to use it or I'm a Luddite? Even if it's pathetic? What if they threw in some photo editing capabilities - should I sell Photoshop?

Seriously, though, I agree with you on that. You need tools and good tools at that and the best tools available when possible. Although there's a limit. For instance, in various bits and pieces that I do I need to produce nice page layouts. Now I could sink a chunk of money into InDesign - and it's not like I couldn't afford to - but I'd never use an eighth of the features or get passed the learning curve which is why I go for something more accessible. It's almost the same with VS, but slightly in reverse. VS does an extremely good job of masking the complexity of what's really going on at the expense of understanding what's really going on, but by masking that complexity it pretends that there is nothing better. Bring back 6502 machine code, is what I say. I understood computers back then!

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And more interesting than your folks copulating would be....?

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What did you do during the war Grandpa Chris? :)

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Well that wasn't very interesting. Make it more interesting!

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Sound advice is sound in many situations - up to and not excluding the fairer sex! (although knowing which buttons to press in that case is a matter of on-going research...)

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