Maybe bong hits will fix my build.xml.

[reddragdiva]

• The Privatise Thatcher's funeral petition is at 26,000. A hundred thousand and it gets discussed in Parliament. FORWARD IT AROUND.

• The British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies on treating the trauma from leaving religion.

• Freda should be at this stage in about a year or two.

No shaving cream at all actually gives a smoother shave than Lush Ambrosia, surprisingly.

We have a new old dishwasher! After seven years' having the crap beaten out of it, the tabletop from megabitch finally died. Being a cheaparse, I bought a Hotpoint FDF780 second hand for sixty quid with six months' warranty from the British Heart Foundation furniture shop. And it works and stuff. The older teen is most pleased.

I should note that just before Christmas, Freda got her first-ever phone call from a friend, so they could talk about their Christmas trees. None since, but I shall mark the moment as the beginning of the end.

Freda has taken to turning juice containers and Pringles cans into junk sculptures, working for days to stick stuff to them just so. Then she presents them to people as presents. I can just see her making big eyes at someone, saying "But I made it for youuu!" then they give her a large cheque. Here's hoping, anyway.

At work I have been working on automating everything possible with Ant. After using ant for a while, you do think "perhaps mod_brainfuck would be more flexible."

I have just discovered how to do a loudness wars mix. (Soft limiting.) Fuck it's horrible.

Comments

[mstevens]

Look on the bright side. You're not using maven.

[valkyriekaren]

I'm kind of torn about the whole 'Thatcher's Funeral' thing. It just feels quite vindictive. I mean, yes, we all still hate Thatcher, the racist, classist, community-destroying Prime Minister, but now? She's just a frail old woman, who for all her flaws, I think genuinely thought she was doing the best by her country. She should get the same as any former Prime Minister gets - to do otherwise is petty.

Liking the article about the trauma of leaving a religion. I think this is what Greta Christina means when she talks about making atheism a safe place to land:
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/11/a-safe-place-to-land.html

[tyggerjai]

Do former Prime Ministers of the U.K. automatically get state funerals, though? The interwebs is ambiguous - apparently she would be the first former prime minister to have one since Churchill, but I can't be arsed googling to see if that's because she would be the first former PM to die since Churchill. My feeling is that full state funerals of the kind being discussed for Thatcher are in fact very uncommon, and not at all normal for a former PM.

[valkyriekaren]

I'm not sure. All of the ones pre-Thatcher are already dead. Harold Wilson had a memorial service at Westminster Abbey; Callaghan, who was PM before Thatcher, died in 2005 to very little fanfare though that may have been due to the wishes of his family - and he was only in for 3 years.

I don't know what the current arrangements are for Mrs T to be honest - was a State Funeral even mooted or is this campaign just railing against nothing?

[reddragdiva]

It is quite certain she will get a state funeral. I see nothing wrong with raising the issue to popularity.

[reddragdiva]

The RationalWiki Atheism FAQ for the Newly Deconverted is specifically for people who've lost their faith and are going "what now?" Mostly seems to be aimed at recovering US evangelicals.

[korenwolf]

We have a new old dishwasher! After seven years' having the crap beaten out of it, the tabletop from [livejournal.com profile] megabitch finally died.

Wow, that thing was still going?

[reddragdiva]

Sure was! Turns out Bosch make pretty good stuff. What eventually happened was that the motor stopped spinning the spray arm - the motor worked, but whatever connected it to the spray arm had gone. I opened it up to see if it was something obvious, contemplated its intestines and decided that spending money was a better idea than trusting the family's non-electrocution to my ability to repair a 3kVA device without a service manual to hand.

[reddragdiva]

I don't expect this Hotpoint to last anywhere near as long and will be pleased if it makes a year.