Things Going Wrong

A bit of an electronics disaster today.  Firstly, my soundbar stopped working for no discernible reason.  I've been having ongoing minor issues with it since I got it - so this didn't come as much of a surprise.  Serves me right for getting a cheap brand, even though it came recommended.  After extensive online research, extensive playing around with the system settings, and a lot of cuss words - managed to fix it.  And how did I achieve this - by using the tried and tested formula of turning it off and turning it on again, and it magically fixed itself.  Grrrrrr.  And then this was followed up by finding out that one of my Nintendo Switch controller buttons isn't working properly - hence an embarrassing effort on Mario Kart today, as I couldn't get one of the key speed boost buttons to work.  And looking online, the price of replacement controllers is exorbitant - sold out at most places, and the few people selling them are doing so at an exorbitant markup.  I'm clearly going to have to shell out since I can't be competitive without it, but not happy about it.

Dark Days

- I've been watching Inspector Morse and Prime Suspect on PBS, but all of a sudden they will stop airing these shows after the end of May.  And AMC are not airing any episodes of Line of Duty beyond Season 3.  This is an absolute tragedy - how am I going to get my weekly fix of British detective shows (without subscribing to another streaming service)? 

- It is quite literally a dark day today.  After a couple of warm and sunny days, we've been hit with a load of tropical type storm systems - dark clouds, heavy rain, thunder and lightning etc.  Very unusual for round here.  Good job I went for a long walk yesterday, because I'm not going anywhere today.

- And finally, what do you get when you combine a pandemic, increasing unemployment, a probable recession, a cop killing a black man caught on video, and an unhinged president who encourages violence and protest?  You get the kind of scenes we saw in American cities last night - and probably also tonight and who knows for how much longer.  Of course, when the president - and I emphasize THE PRESIDENT - tweets racially insensitive things like "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." and then throws a hissy fit when Twitter finally attached a warning to one of his tweets about glorifying violence (something they should have done a long time ago) - well things are quickly going to escalate.

Hard Work 2

Another early start, another day sitting around in case I'm needed.  Today might even have been worse than yesterday.  I treated myself to a massive meal last night - a big rack of ribs - and totally overdid it and so I felt stuffed all last night and this morning.  American portions are just ridiculous - this was really a meal for 2 rather than 1, but I couldn't help myself and I paid the consequences.  And then at today's meeting, they brought in a load of external experts - and let's just say that some of them were "technologically challenged" (not unlike certain parents!).  So trying to conduct a virtual meeting with them was painful.  So yes, another long day which again ended up with nothing for me to do.   

Hard Work

Today was the first of 2 very long days at work.  And of course when I say "at work", I mean "at home doing work".  And more accurately, "at home waiting to see if I need to do any work".  Because we are currently practicing some high level meetings with the FDA covering a submission I've been involved with - we don't even know if or when this meeting will actually take place, but it might be necessary in order to secure approval of our drug.  Of course, I am nowhere near at a high enough level to actually attend the meeting - they are all vice presidents and executives.  I am not even part of the backroom - which is full of departmental heads.  No, I am part of the backroom support staff.  So if we get any questions during the meeting that need addressing and covers my particular area of expertise, then I have to be available and prepared to quickly program some outputs that can then be used.  Which means getting up early (these meetings start at 8 am), and sitting around on the off chance that something comes up - nothing has yet.  But if it does, then that means some serious pressure to turnaround a response.  Kind of interesting to see how the work I've done fits in the bigger picture - it is really just a very small part - but this is the kind of thing you put on your CV.     

Song of the Week #7

After a brief respite on Memorial Day when it rained all day, I once again peer out of the window and it looks like it is snowing with the amount of tree pollen floating around and settling on the ground.  But that doesn't matter, because it's song of the week time - this one a random one from the early 90's that I hadn't heard for ages until very recently, though I think it was played loads at the time.

Viking

I watch a lot of British dramas, particularly British costume dramas, if they happen to air on American network TV.  And let's just say that the demographic for these shows tends to skew on the older side.  Which means the advertising also skews on the older side.  So as much fast-forwarding as I do I still catch an unhealthy number of adverts for things like Viking River Cruises.  And something really struck me about this particular advert.  You are trying to sell me going on a cruise on a river, yet every single shot in the advert is aerial.  So you see all these great panoramic shots of these beautiful European cities from the air, but in reality you will never ever see these shots from the ground, and certainly not from the river.  It's not like there aren't beautiful shots to be had from the water - so it just seemed like a very odd choice.  I just wanted to get this off my chest.   

A New Game

Yes, I am now the proud (?) owner of this:

Yes, it is way way bigger than I anticipated.  Good job I've just about got the space in my home to put it.  Yes, it is good fun and the in-built games can get quite intensive.  Yes, it will probably lose it's appeal quickly and remain untouched for months on end.  Yes, it was an absolute nightmare to put together.  No, it was probably not worth getting it.