Velcro

I've acquired a corporate laptop from my new customer. I was a little bit concerned that the laptop came with a random piece of velcro stuck to the case, but then worked out what this was for when I examined the antenna for the 3G/GPRS card which came with it and which had an almost corresponding piece of velcro stuck to it.

I say 'almost corresponding' because, in my experience, velcro comes with a hook-like piece (which I shall refer to as 'male') and a furry piece (which I shall refer to as 'female'). Both my laptop and antenna velcro pieces were of the male variety. I wondered whether this would be a problem, but upon experimentation, it transpired that the two male pieces bonded reasonably.

One of my colleagues, who was around whilst I was verbally working through the ramifications of the velcro combination I had received, gleefully remarked that I had been supplied with gay velcro. My thoughts immediately turned to the unfortunate person who had received my gay velcro's lesbian counterparts. There was little chance of them ever getting their two furry velcro pieces to successfully bond. This was rather sad, as it also meant they would be inconvenienced by an unbound antenna.

I wondered how a cock-up such as this could have occurred, and wandered round the office examining unattended laptops and antennae only to discover that all velcro combinations were male-male.

The customer organisation is full of macho types. I find it pleasingly amusing that gay velcro is standard issue...

Happy days

Yesterday was A Good Day.

Work was in many ways very rubbish - it was already becoming apparent that I have too much to do to deliver something of the quality I'd be happy with by my end-of-the-month deadline (assuming I continue my endeavours to keep myself healthy through eating and sleeping and training), then following a meeting I'd prompted, it transpired that a colleague is in near dire need of a lot of support to get him through to the end of Thursday if the large workshop we're holding is not to appear a badly-organised amateurish affair (which would be A Very Bad Thing). Luckily this takes priority - not getting this right by Thursday will be embarrassing and damage our reputation, whereas my delivery of draft material will be a minor inconvenience. It thus will take some of the sting out of my late/draft delivery (if and only if we get Thursday right). Organising workshops being neither one of my core competencies nor a task in which I have much (any?) experience, it makes for an interesting change. I still have a lot of work on for the customer, but with Thursday's event and an exciting away day coming up the following week, the slog through to the end of the month seems tractable.

Meanwhile, The Mother Ship (aka my employer) continues to provide a steady stream of overhead and administrative work which has been keeping me busy in the evenings. This should taper off towards the end of the month and last night I'd crossed enough off my To-Do list to make my current batch of work look tractable and (dare I suggest such a thing?) on target.

By 8pm (and for a 12 hour working day) the day was going so surprizingly well that things really couldn't get much better. I took the time to check my email and found the training schedule for the week had winged its way to my inbox. It convinced me to down tools for the day and head to the gym for a long erg. On the way, I passed one of my crewmates heading home from her session. We exchanged a few words - it transpired another crewmate was pleased to have beaten my score from last week. This was motivation enough to persuade me that a serious sweating was called for.

45 minutes of erging later, I'd stuck just over 400 metres on my score from last week, and in the process notched up a best for the season (and drenched myself in thoroughly justified sweat). This was turning into an unlikely but Very Good Day. When I take another three seconds off my steady state 500m split time or, equivalently, add another 362m to my 45 min distance, I might have a beer to celebrate. (Incidentally, I think the last time I had a beer was the "Did I ever tell you" night. Evidently the occasion was sufficiently traumatic to persuade me that repeat performances were not called for. (Postscript: I am of course talking rubbish. My last beer was of course on the Circle line. Just another beer forgotten in the alcoholic haze of time...)

I wandered home in a state of extreme post-erg brain-mush, taking in the stillness of the river, the reflection of Hammersmith Bridge on its glass-like surface, and the last of the fading light to the west.

I wonder what today will bring?

Pick and Mix

The people who've made my day (some for the better others for the worse. All the more remarkable):

1. The Bearded Lady Of Guildford (BLOG), who appears to have taken up residence at the train station. I wish I was in less of a hurry in the mornings, and instead had enough time to engage in conversation. I'm sure it'd be enlightening.
   
2. The guy with a tattoo of something which looked like it was supposed to be the Magna Carta on the inside of his right forearm, who I sat next to on the train to Clapham Junction. So many questions I'd like to ask him: Why that? Why there? and Do they have deodorant on your planet?
   
3. The cop who was silent with deafening levels of anger throughout this morning's 'Lessons Learned' meeting.
   
4. The colleague who praised me for keeping my cool on the rather crazy day that was last Thursday. This is the same colleague with whom I regularly get absorbed in conversations, get into lifts, and between us forget to press the button for the ground/20th floor. We usually discover our folly after maybe half a minute when someone gets in on the same floor we think we left some moments ago. She puts the mishap down to having had a 'senior moment'. I usually blame the oversight on the generationally-neutral 'being away on a micro-holiday'. We managed that twice today...
   
5. The guy who pushed me out of the way to get a seat on the Guildford train, only to endure thirty minutes of my noticing his immense and unrivalled levels of dandruff. It was a truly spectacular collection (or is there a more accurate collective noun for dandruff flakes - a blizzard, perhaps? or maybe a drift?) of flakes. Most remarkable, but not exactly eye-candy. Far from it.
   
6. The well-spoken hoodie with a pleasant accent and clear enunciation who very politely asked me for directions to the main High Street in Guildford. My pleasure, young man.
   
7. The friend who is hearteningly, ludicrously, entertainingly, ridiculously, stereotypically and rather endearingly in love. Awwwwwww...

I love people. They're such fun and fascinating things.