hello all,

if you’re reading this and wondering where i’ve been for the past few days, i – like the rest of the united kingdom – am on vacation until wednesday; we’re celebrating having had the queen avoid being kicked off the throne for 50 years now, and it really is quite amusing when watching the radical press and republican minority trying to deny the existence of a very sizable pro-monarchist population.

aside from a selection of rabid (or envious) politicos, to my mind the british are really not at all enthusiastic regarding the proposition of citizenship and becoming a republic; i personally suspect the douglas adams explanation to be most accurate: that anyone who is capable of having themselves made president of a country, is ipso-facto someone who should on no account ever be permitted to be do the job.

we’ve tried the republic thing once. it didn’t work then, so why should it work now? the queen has almost zero political power anyway, and on those rare and implausible occasions that she would be permitted to exercise it, i would far prefer that someone born to the job (and who didn’t have to answer to anyone about anything) made the choices.

transient politicians seek fame. the royal family has it thrust upon them. ergo, my take on the matter is that they have less to lose, and are more likely to make an unbiased decision.

anyway…

once back to work on wednesday, i have three days of work, a weekend, and then am flying out to the bay area for a five-day stint somewhere down in san jose, next week – at the sun technical leadership conference.

if you’re going along to that (or know someone who is) – then please let me know and we’ll try and arrange something social on the side.

let’s see: my last epistle was on thursday, early morning. i’ve spent much of the last few days gardening, trying to make my lawn fit and presentable should i decide to throw another works barbecue later this year.

i’ve had a few technical phone-calls from various people, but hang-it, so long as it’s under a couple of minutes and i am not actually in the bathtub or something, i generally don’t mind chatting – i could go stir-crazy from lack of communications, otherwise. i had an old college friend over yesterday, cooked lunch, watched videos and gossiped about our friends until the wee hours of the morning.

my ankle is still suffering from the effects of the incident last week – bruises and sprains no longer heal as quickly as they once did, and i managed to re-pull the tendon last night, which was painful; with enough compression bandages and support, i can still walk quite comfortably, though.

oh yeah – and i have booked the third and final part of my motorcycle test, in july.

i am starting to wind myself up towards work, in the vague hope that i can hit the ground running next week; today’s challenge includes trying to debug the procmail recipe that i have written in order to dispose of the many nigerian-based money scam e-mails that i receive per week. for some reason they keep getting past the recipe that i’ve currently got, and i am lost to explain why.