Abigail Brady

I had a wonderful party on Saturday. Thanks to everyone for coming! I seem to have a rather embarrassing alcohol surplus, which I will have to have another party, perhaps sometime in the new year, to drink.

Off work this week (yet again I forgot to take off any time in the summer and am having to use it all up in the last two months of the year), so today I went to Ikea and purchased two more bookcases and a sofabed, which should be being delivered tomorrow. I need to do remaining unpacking but am available for social things.

Reading Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds.

I am doing general pre-move tidying and packing things in to boxes and making scones on Saturday from about lunchtime. Help welcome.

gah, boiler still isn't fixed.

it has been 3 weeks since i reported it broken. this is quite crap.

I am all moved. Lots of things in boxes need unpacking, mainly onto shelves that will come down next weekend. Internet should be turned on tomorrow (was hoping for today but is looks unlikely now). New morning routine and commute was good, arrived at work the earliest I've made it, I think.

Deciding to read something from my to-read pile last weekend, I picked up "Hey Nostradamus" by Douglas Coupland, utterly unaware of its topicality. Curious book.

one of today's letting agents wanted an upfront fee to register with them before. who should i report them to? this has got to be illegal. but news is not entirely bad, as seeing flats tomorrow and tuesday in clapton and manor house respectively.

leicester looks nicer now. presence of river, parks and entire outer and inner ringroads good †. absence of hinckley road and narborough road bad. it's remarkable how much you can do with low-res satellite photos and the out-of-copyright NPE maps.

coming back for the weekend, hope to finish city centre. oh, and meet people...

† not that leicester has an entire outer ringroad, of course.

_lostinthecity has decided to move out at the end of February to be closer to work. thus myself and notajeep are looking for a new person to live with us. near seven sisters tube, is big room, 490 pcm. could also reshuffle so i take that one and new person gets smaller room (which is 415). anyone interested/know anyone who is interested? spread the word!

Dead & Buried on Friday; which was OK, but didn't dance much. This may be related to the fact my left knee has been hurting when I place weight on it for a number of days. Ouch.

Over halfway through Illuminatus!. I can see the fnords! Has anyone published annotations to this, I wonder?

not updated for while.

notajeep came round this evening to sign contract and will be moving in on the 15th. been rather lonely since i moved to london so this should prove good.

read The Forever War, The Warrior's Apprentice since last update. nearly finished The Vor Game. the next two supreme power trades turned up as well which i must get round to reading.

pondering going to Dead and Buried tomorrow, a tradgoth night that i failed to go to last month due to cider, (if i know anyone else going). saturday afternoon i am going to a party. sunday is free.

odd weekend, overall. there's a better word for it than that, but nevermind. barely ate anything saturday and had few people over for flatcooling : popped into intelekt later, very quiet indeed. was too tired to really stay.

we need to find another housemate, as the american chap who lives in the room downstairs is going back to america. who wants to live in a nice house in seven sisters?

been working hard last few days, interspersed with discovering the british library's collection of obscure government papers and acts and SIs and stuff.

oh, and i have the gospel of the flying spaghetti monster now!

in London. started to unpack. didn't get to watch Dr Who last night. not got wireless working either yet (the builtin card crashes with exciting IRQ errors : or rather lack of IRQ errors - this is the pci age not 1995!) and the random dongle that came with the room crashes when i compile and insert the driver. funfunfun. startingtomorrow.

Visitors to my flat have often wondered what this light switch here does. (It has been mentioned before.) It is by my door. For months I assumed it did nothing. It certainly didn't operate the hall lights, which would have been useful as having them automatically turn on at 4am when I'm popping to the loo is not good. Here it is :-





The other light switches aren't mysterious at all. This is what they do.







So. I was thinking the other day, that it was funny that not only did I have a mysterious light switch that I didn't know what it did, and that I also had a light (on the cooker hood) that sometimes didn't turn on when I wanted to. I must have been very tired, because when I decided that these two facts might be related I thought it was a breakthrough!

So I did an experiment.


here is the cooker


here is the cooker with the mysterious 3rd switch on!



So. The mystery was solved : the mystery switch controls the light switch that the cooker light is on. Sorry for such a dull answer. Next week, we investigate what is up the mysterious hatches in the hall and the corridor outside!