Sleep

After spending half an hour waiting for Excel to save my workbook, I was not happy when it crashed, said it had recovered my  workbook (and the hours work I'd done on it) and restored it to it;s state as it was when I started. Still I just closed down my laptop and will do it all again tomorrow morning except then I am sure it will work. They say a bad workman always blames his tools, well 95% of the time Excel is really useful, but every so often it can really let you down. Really when you thing these programs just move round binary digits and such a clever way you can do some incredibly useful calculations and analysis.

I suppose that it still puts a strain on my tiny mind. Tonight I managed to lose a contact lens. The worry is that's it's still somehwere in my eye. That happened to me once before, so we shall see if it resurfaces at some point.

Anyway I said my next three posts would feature artists's who'd covered the Rolling Stones' "Happy" and the first of those are The Pointer Sisters with their excellent cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Fire".

Right it's time for bed, there will be more tomorrow.

Encouragement

One of the great thing in life is when people say what you are doing is good, that they enjoy it, that it makes things better, and that does give you a lift and makes you want to do more. In a work situation this encourages teamwork and working together. Outdie of work it makes you want to interact more and work with and help others. It can bring your life to another level.

You get the opposite, people looking to find faults, trip people up and cause trouble and mischief, the sort of people who are only satisfied when they and others are miserable. It's not enough to succeed, somebody else must fail.

Part of my job has always been to spot faults and errors and to fix them, the fix rather than blame culture is so much more positive. Also encouraging others gets the best out of them.

Social interation also helps in a work situation because if you talk about non work things, it becomes easier to share ideas and deal with problems.

I wrote this post because someone gave me some encouragement, it was unexpected, but it was appreciated.

Also yesterday I saw someone almost resorting to violence because of a small mistake in a shop, and the person behind the counter was being very helpful but the customer was having none of it and ended up being ejected, it would have taken five minutes to sort his situation but he wanted blood.

Anyway I thought I'd try and find a cover of one of my favourite all time songs "Happy" by The Rolling Stones, and listened to covers by Nils Lofgren, The Pointer Sisters and Spirit but for my mood all fall short of the Stones doing that song. However my next three posts will include songs by each of those bands.

Anyway it's Tuesday, it's still dark but dry so have a brilliant day.

A Monday To Experience .....

I've just finished "Cold Hands" by John Niven and started "No Good Deed" qualified ominously by the completing phrase "Goes Unpunished" but while this are started with some dark situations at least there is humour in there. This is to take nothing away for "Cold Hands" but don't go there look for humour however dark there.

Weather outside looks drab but dark and dry so a walk into work is on the cards, and currently my listening is "Electric Ladyland" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience which I always listened to in sides (four odf them). Now I'm listening to it in effectively on chunk. One thing I 'd forgot was the two "Voodoo Chile" sole songs, one the fifteen minute blues jam and the other the "(Slight Return)" killer riff post departure number one single.

Electric Ladyland was the name of Hendrix's New York studios and when it first came out it was sold in brown paper bags as the cover featured a lot of naked women which you can see here. It was then split into part one and part two and packaged with more "acceptable" covers, but I do prefer the original (which you can see in this group of dodgy covers here).

It also contains his cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" which if I was allowed only one single on a desert island, that's what it would be. The lyrics of Dylan allowing Hendrix's voice full flow (he was emabarrased about his own lyrics so tended to hold back on his own songs) the his guitar work backed by The Experience absolute perfection for four minutes.

My favourite song is "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)" which takes up most of side three and am definitely looking forward to hearing that on my walk into work, but I will leave you with this live take on "All Along The Watchtower", enjoy your Monday my friends.

Threks

When I sign in to do this blog I have to press "Sign In" on three different screens. Now OK I habitually delete cookies and such ensure web stuff I do is showing the current expected version but I don't know why Google has this incredibly inefficient log in process. In fact while I accept that cookies can be useful, they should not be used to store sensitive or secure information, although maybe that's just my opinion.

I've finished the latest John Niven novel I was reading "Cold Hands" and was surprised that there were zero laughs, these was a very dark pumped up Irvine Welsh with some disturbing insights into the natures of revenge and madness. While it is excellently written it was not an easy ride, so I'm hoping "No Good Deed" may provide a little light. I am fine with black humour but when you find yourself in a world of total darkness that gets scary.

Today has been a great day, my Dad's 83rd birthday and he's finally using his computer, then we finally caught up with Mark, Helen , Eve and Jess over a Sunday Lunch and high def Harry Potter movies.

Step wise this is the first day I have done less that 5K since a rainy day on holiday in Yorkshire, but I am  still ahead of the game for my January walks. February may be a different matter.

The word Threks is non existent as far as I know and was shome letters I was trying to make a word with in Scrabble .

One of the many things I have to thank my Dad for is introducing me to Johnny Cash , his "Greatest Hits Volume 1" was in our house and often on the stereo Radiogramme that we had, and from that I'll choose "Five Feet High and Rising" before I hit my bed. Tomorrow is Monday ....... the start of another wonderful week of life ....

Work

I suppose a sign of you enjoying your job is you don't begrudge thinking about solutions to problems when you are away from work. I'm wrestling with a problem of testing a system updateby  basically replicating the live system using Excel. The set up is all over the place so there is no consistency between units. When Iasked to do this last year I set out what needed to be done and was then told that the testers were taking "a different approach". If I had a COBOL set up this would be a cinch to set up , though I think I may be able to do it using SQL but stepping back it's OK how differnt units need to be treated differently but then you get the exceptions thrown in , sometimes for no other reason than "they need to be treated differently". The thing is solving things like this makes time fly, especially when you are working with good people. The other thing is failure is not an option, so it will be done, and there is a tedious manual option, but that is a last resort.

I can;t believe this is the first time I've mentioned COBOL on this blog, though I've not used it for fifteen years it was my first programming language and as far as I know is still used for large batch processing operations in places.

Anywaty it's Friday Morning, the weekend is closer, the weather is mild but boring so I will be walking to work and am currently listening to Hawkwind's "Space Ritual" which I bought on vinyl recently and still looks wonderful and sounds excellent, over the top riff driven space rock smattered with poetry readings. I saw Hawkwind a couple of times and loved the music and light show, and listening now I'm impressed by how simple the song constructions are while still sounding impressive (well they do to me). I've chose "Orgone Accumulator" which lifted the "Green Onions" riff and went on for ten minutes but it's still a great song.

Have a great day everybody.

Future Games

Yesterday I was listening to Spirit's "Future Games", my favourite album of all time. I mentioned it in a favourites post here. It was the first time I'd heard an album where sound snips from film and TV were woven into the fabric of the album. The songs a classic second stage Spirit with Randy California's etherial voice and guitar playing and Ed Cassidy's (Randy's father-in-law) guttural Jack Bond interjections, with effortless covers such as "All Along The Watchtower". Into this seemless tapestry are woven The Muppets, Star Trek and Science Fiction "B" Movie dialogue. The song I included gives you a feel for the album, and if you like that just buy the album. "Spirit of '76" has a similar feel to it though not quite as seamless but still brilliant.

It;s like a film for the ears. I'd often go to sleep listening to it after a shift as a computer operator when I got the chance. Though often I'd finish a night shift and my dad would ask me to just drive a wagon to a site and drop off some stuff, and I'd get there and they'd want me to some more stuff to another site going on til the end of the day and I soon be back on the computer night shift. As I was about 19 at the time I could take it.

Big Audio Dynamite were another band that used this process in their early albums successfully and their first two albums are brilliant, highly worth listening to.

Oh by the way Blue Oyster Cult's "Curse of The Hidden Mirror" is a class album if you can get hold of a copy, some of the lyrics a bit AOR but all the songs are brilliant.

Anyway it's time to set off for work, have a brilliant day everyone.

Dreams and Hidden Mirrors

Spmetimes what you east can cause you to dream. Cheese is a  good one if you want to dream. Last night I had Aloo Chole a chickpea and potato curry along with some Sag Aloo from Rajnagar. I finished about half of it so I will be warming up the remainder tonight for my tea tonight and looking forward to it. I don't think that's the normal food to stimulate dreams although it's very good.

Anyway last night was a night of mental fragmented dreams. To start with there was something to do with the music on Nick Lowe's "Bowi" EP then I was in a high rise office block in Liverpool (I used to work in JM Centre in the early eighties. Then there was some work going on at the entrance to an underground car park , there were two guys doing it and has a small two seater smart car.

One of the guys walked into the car park and suddenly a big chunk of the floor sank about a foot. The guy ran in to so solid concrete floor , lay down and faded as if teleported. The other guy's girlfriend turned up and told him to clean the concrete dust from the passenger seat. She went into the underground car park and sank calf deep into another hole.

I'm not sure what happened then, but I was thinking how the hell do you deal with a really big sink hole? What if one appears in the middle of the streat and it's miles deep? You cannot just fill it can you? I'm sure someone will have an answer.

Well today it's dark and rainy so my steps are going to take a big hit, but that's fine as I am far ahead of my target so all is fine.

Current listening is "Curse of The Hidden Mirror" by Blue Oyster Cult. I bought this for completion but it's actually a very good album. Closer to "Imaginos" than "Agents of Fortune" that further over the top and veering into mystical Lovecraft type horror, as illustrated by track 3 "Old Gods Return".

"Now is the time the moon is in alignment 

With the unknown zodiac, the untold sign 

Of the fiery maniac within each breast 

Awaits a stirring irridescent whirring 

Of a six eyed god whose wings beat In a time so odd, so very odd 

And we're all lost, all of us blessedly lost "

Classic over the top BOC lyric fest.

The opener "Dance on Stilts" is a brilliant song (though the title doen's lead you to expect it) and the coda is just gorgeously excellent. The album doesn't seem to be available digitally and it is very expensive on CD but is worth getting hold of.