lost pitt pen

I managed to lose my Faber-Castell Pitt pen at the AGO last night. They’re not particularly expensive, but they do write well, and you have to find the right kind of art store that sells them.

otnay osay ightbray: Shop manager broke into own store

Shop manager broke into own store
“A supermarket manager has been remanded in custody after admitting carrying out a £50,000 break-in at his own store.”

This would be unremarkable, except that we used to shop there when we lived in Kirkintilloch. It used to be a branch of The Co-op.

Bet he wouldn’t have done it had it still been the Co’; he’d have been stealing from himself!

strange inscription

A new black granite headstone at the old cemetary at Kennedy & Eglinton has the baffling inscription: Lum Lum & Bulgy.

broken bird

Walked by two agitated starlings. A third starling was on its back in the road, legs kicking. It looked like a fledgling, maybe fallen and couldn’t get up. I went over to pick it up. Red stuff had come out its head. A vehicle had hit it. The parents were hopping about, screaming. There was nothing I could do; nothing to pick it up with. Couldn’t dispatch it with sandals.

I walked back to the verge. There was another starling fledgling hiding in the grass, a sibling maybe. It had soft grey nest-fuzz among its feathers, the wide yellow slash of a nestling’s beak. It ran close to me for comfort, then stopped. Not all moving things might be friends. We watched one another, the parents still screaming. I had to leave.

canadian moment

A CN freight rumbles up to Kennedy on the rail spur just south of Eglinton. It stops. Two men get out. They walk up to Tim’s on the corner of Kennedy and Eglinton. They come back with double-doubles and donuts. The engine starts, the crossing lights flash, and off goes the train through the intersection.

Industrial Flower Factory

Cool name, cool idea. Industrial Flower Factory make low power draw, small footprint, low noise computers. I reckon that my hulking old AthlonXP is one of the major power draws in the house, and it certainly creates the most noise pollution.

IFF’s machines are a little pricey, but when they’ll save so much of your hydro bill, that’s got to be good. They’ll also preinstall Linux, which make me happy.

faster mac

I upgraded the memory in Catherine‘s eMac last night. It was deathly slow with the original 128MB, but now runs good an’ fast with 384. CPUsed isn’t the cheapest place to get RAM (it’s the same 8-chip PC133 that mini-ITX boxes use), but at least it’s a Mac place, so I could rant at them if it didn’t work.

See how propriteary systems beget proprietary systems …?