Looking Out To Sea

Things you can do no problem at all:

• Stand at the cooker, laptop in one hand for reading email, idly stirring soup with the other hand.
• Playing Tux Racer on the sofa.

Things that will take some setting up:

• Connecting up to router console port because there does not seem to be any terminal software in the default repositories.

The full title of this little gem of a book is Don’t Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I’m a Piano Player in a Whorehouse, written by Paul Carter. He’s a slightly jaded oil rig worker who’s been to a lot of terrifying and absurd places in the name of Big Oil.

There isn’t much in the book about the process of digging or the oil industry. Mostly it’s tales of derring-do and idiocy. For instance, you learn what happens if you sneak into a mosque at night and change the pre-recorded call to prayer for a recording of Ring of Fire. (The answer, in this case, is get thrown out the country as a religious undesirable.)

But you also get a picture of some of the scarier ends of the nearly civilised world — where you need a code word to exchange with your driver to ensure he’s not some random person who wants to rob and kill you.

I can’t pretend this is the best written book in the world. A somewhat scattergun approach to punctuation and the like. But it’s certainly entertaining.

I have an incredibly eighteen unfinished blog posts sitting on my computer and in WordPress, waiting for me to conclude… something. Probably that they’re useless and need to be completely rewritten, or that they’re completely out of date and shouldn’t even be published at all.

I will probably get more blogging done in the next week. Helen is going on holiday — skiing in France — and I’m staying here to enjoy the horizontal rain and furious umbrella-killing gusts that are typical of Edinburgh winters.

But I’ll be heading away to see my parents for the weekend, so probably no updates in the immediate future. But I must remember to take my CCNA book with me and do some studying.

This post is being prepared in advance. Brinkmanship was the theme of 2007: preparation is the watchword for 2008. Getting things done in advance might even mean getting them done properly.

• Studying well for the CCNA exam when it comes around in a few months’ time.

• Thinking about food in advance. Preparation when it’s possible, and execution at the last moment. Like having pancake batter in the fridge overnight, you know?

  

• Getting grown up things done — bank accounts, pensions, savings — before it is too late to be worthwhile.

• Most importantly: leaving computers to do the hard work of publishing blog posts so that I can be elsewhere, enjoying the company of my friends.

See you all in the new year!

Photograph by LynnInSingapore on Flickr.

I’m further behind in my Christmas shopping than I wanted to be… there’s some stuff I am very happy with but other aspects are a bit lacking (or, in fact, completely lacking). I should really be out scouring the shops right this minute, but I have pounding headache and a dribbling nose so I don’t feel up to it. I was out earlier this afternoon and just couldn’t stay the course.

Where did my cold come from? Well, I’m blaming my work mate, Colin. He was off work last week but came to the work night out on Friday with symptoms galore.

But there’s nothing I can really do about that. Colds during winter are just something we have to get used to. I just hope I’ll be better by Christmas, if not tomorrow. This evening we’ll be preparing stuff for our visit to our parents’ houses on the twenty-fifth. There’s a few nice recipes we’re going to have a look at this evening.

In the interest of continuing professional development and the like, I’ve started studying for the CCNA exam.

What does this mean? Well, a bunch of us at work are having regular study sessions: going through the study guides and the test questions. It’s been easy-going so far, because it’s been the ‘fundamentals’ section and it’s all been stuff that a home network tinkerer might come across. (Well, apart from frame relay…)

I’m nervous that it all just appears easy but the exams will be horrifying. Also, horrifying and expensive to resit. :-(