The Oddessy
2007-01-19
OK, so it didn't really take me 10 years to get home, but I left work at just gone 5, ran a 20 minute errand, and got home after 7:30. It was the wind, you see.
Apparently, as I gathered from what the man tending the Tesco checkout said, they had closed the bridge. Most of the traffic between various east-coast ports and, well, pretty much anywhere else goes past my town, by way of a very tall and very long bridge. It's a very exposed drive, and it's full of high-sided vehicles. Closing it for the sake of the winds (near gale or more) seems like a good idea.
Except that closing the bypass sends all the traffic through the town. I live in town and work a few miles outside of it, so I was quite glad of the excuse to head to an out-of-town PC World rather than heading the same way as the huge queue.
I don't like traffic queues: if I think they'll go away later I'd much rather wait until then than grab a place and stick with it. It's not as stupid as it sounds: if I can spend a couple of hours doing something half useful or interesting then have my normal few-minute drive, this is no worse than wasting an hour in a queue then doing something wholly useful when I get there. That's assuming the queue goes, of course.
So I spent longer than I needed in PC World. Since all I needed to do was go in and pick something up from one counter then pay at the till, the fact that I ended up talking to one of the staff about wireless networking (and various other things) for more than an hour was a change to the plan. Well, I did need to know about wireless networking. When I thanked him for his knowledgeable banter (because I'm often less than impressed by the folk in such a store) he pointed out that he'd learned as much from me as I from him...
I wish they were all that sensible.
In Tesco (looking for a printer that someone had told me was on sale) I found a strange little tub of toasted sweetcorn. I'd recommend it, it's by one of these strange 'authentic Indian' snack food companies, called Fudco. Incredibly moreish. They also had some internet phones, but although a damn sight cheaper than most other ones they were intended for Tesco's own internet telephone service and I'm not sure I can persuade them to be extensions to my home telephone system.
Did I not mention the IP telephone system? I feel another geek-fu post coming on (to sit in my drafts waiting to be redrafted for brevity and clarity, and probably to keep waiting until I turn this place off).
In any case, eventually I got home, installed The Burning Crusade, started a new character (and logged him in long enough to make sure his name was reserved), got my main character to make some bags for him (pretty shoddy ones because the economy is buggered: some things up in value, some things down, and many things sold out), then got him to level 10. If anyone is on Venture Co. and wants to know some character names, say so.
Apparently, as I gathered from what the man tending the Tesco checkout said, they had closed the bridge. Most of the traffic between various east-coast ports and, well, pretty much anywhere else goes past my town, by way of a very tall and very long bridge. It's a very exposed drive, and it's full of high-sided vehicles. Closing it for the sake of the winds (near gale or more) seems like a good idea.
Except that closing the bypass sends all the traffic through the town. I live in town and work a few miles outside of it, so I was quite glad of the excuse to head to an out-of-town PC World rather than heading the same way as the huge queue.
I don't like traffic queues: if I think they'll go away later I'd much rather wait until then than grab a place and stick with it. It's not as stupid as it sounds: if I can spend a couple of hours doing something half useful or interesting then have my normal few-minute drive, this is no worse than wasting an hour in a queue then doing something wholly useful when I get there. That's assuming the queue goes, of course.
So I spent longer than I needed in PC World. Since all I needed to do was go in and pick something up from one counter then pay at the till, the fact that I ended up talking to one of the staff about wireless networking (and various other things) for more than an hour was a change to the plan. Well, I did need to know about wireless networking. When I thanked him for his knowledgeable banter (because I'm often less than impressed by the folk in such a store) he pointed out that he'd learned as much from me as I from him...
I wish they were all that sensible.
In Tesco (looking for a printer that someone had told me was on sale) I found a strange little tub of toasted sweetcorn. I'd recommend it, it's by one of these strange 'authentic Indian' snack food companies, called Fudco. Incredibly moreish. They also had some internet phones, but although a damn sight cheaper than most other ones they were intended for Tesco's own internet telephone service and I'm not sure I can persuade them to be extensions to my home telephone system.
Did I not mention the IP telephone system? I feel another geek-fu post coming on (to sit in my drafts waiting to be redrafted for brevity and clarity, and probably to keep waiting until I turn this place off).
In any case, eventually I got home, installed The Burning Crusade, started a new character (and logged him in long enough to make sure his name was reserved), got my main character to make some bags for him (pretty shoddy ones because the economy is buggered: some things up in value, some things down, and many things sold out), then got him to level 10. If anyone is on Venture Co. and wants to know some character names, say so.
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