Review of the Year 2008 (Part 2)

So we are now into the final stretch as far as 2008 goes, and some of my correspondents in foreign places have already made the futuristic leap into 2009.

We have already reviewed most of the year in Part 1, and I have filled you in on all that has happened since then, so this Review of the Year Part 2 will focus largely on the success, or otherwise, of the New Year's Resolutions.

And it turns out that that 'or otherwise' is going to come in handy. Here's how it went:

1. The usual things: I will eat healthily, exercise a lot (must buy a new bike), and drink plenty of water. I will not live on chocolate. I will have a more disciplined spiritual life. I will take control of my finances and buy a house and start a pension, and other such responsible things. I will stop spending hours staring into space.
Ha. Buy a house? Start a pension? In my defense, though, had I done these things, I would now be living in a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere, spending hours staring into space, so this is not a bad thing.

2. I will put weight on. I know this is the opposite of what everyone else will be doing, but you see I've got a bit skinny, so I need to fatten up a bit, because my clothes don't fit any more, and I don't want to have to buy new ones (see previous post). Since most people are trying to lose weight, I could make a lot of money if only I could figure out a way to transfer weight between people.
I'm not sure, because I threw the scales out, but I suspect this didn't go so well either.

3. I will work very hard in work, and win Employee of the Week every week (this is not too difficult, since I started the award in the first place and I choose who gets it).
Now we're just getting ridiculous. I managed to work for a grand total of 3 full weeks this year. And forgot to award Employee of the Week in any of them. And probably wouldn't have deserved it anyway.

4. I will not undertake any form of DIY, building work, renovations or redecoration, other than that which is necessary to tidy up the current mess. I know this is disappointing for those who regularly follow the blog and enjoy the updates on the building work and the non-progression thereof, but there are plenty of other incompetent bandits out there and I am certain we can make do with them for a while. Besides, we still have some way to go with the present work, so we could be riding that wave well into the Spring.
The Spring? The Spring?! That was optimistic. But in general, this did not go too badly for most of the year, with very little DIY work being done, beyond assembling flat packs. However, we got a bit cocky towards autumn, with a bit of painting and papering, most of which was fine, apart from the Hole In The Living Room Ceiling Incident.

5. I will find a new, grown-up approach to handling crises. The current approach ('scream until grown-ups come') has served me well for the past 29.5 years, but it is wearing a little thin, and now that I'm about to turn 30 I need a more adult means of coping with life.
Does it count that I discovered that 'scream until grown-ups come' actually still works quite well, so I decided to stick with it?

6. I will leave Richard Dawkins alone, unless provoked.
I'm sure Richard Dawkins breathed a hearty sigh of relief at this one, and it went well for a full 3 months, until this little gem distracted us. In October we mused on The Atheist Bus Campaign, but I think that counts as provocation, and therefore is OK.


So much for the resolutions. I will come up with some new ones for 2009, and no doubt we will build on this year's success.

Of course, no Review of the Year at WhyNotSmile would be complete without the Review of the Year at The Largest Bar of Soap in the World, and an analysis of the related state of the global economy.

The Soap (for which read 'global financial markets') had presumably been around for some time, but only came to our attention in June, when it was received as a birthday present (the soap, not global financial markets). It was not, however, fully appreciated until September or so, when we realised just how large it was. Since then it has been in a steady decline, both in terms of quality and quantity.

The latest report shows that it is still about the same soapcumference, but underneath it has gone all squishy, and large brown cracks have developed.

An interesting point to note, though, is that the Soap has led to a massive increase in blog traffic; a look at my analysis software shows that the search terms which most frequently lead people here are variations on 'The Largest Bar of Soap in the World' and 'Large Soap' and 'Big Soap', which proves that more people are interested in the Soap than in global financial markets.

Happy New Year.

What Ever Happened To The Weather?

I don't mean this in the sense of "What's going on with the weather these days, where are all these tornadoes coming from?", I'm talking about the weather forecasts on TV.

With not having had a TV for a while, the last time I saw weather being presented by an actual person, it was Michael Fish with a big map of Britain and Ireland behind him, with weather symbols which he changed by pressing a little button which he held in his hand. Of course, he wasn't really standing in front of the map, he was in front of a blue screen onto which the map was digitally added afterwards, and if he wore a blue tie, you could see the west coast of Ireland through his middle. To a child of the 80's, this was all stunningly innovative; my formative introduction to the science of predicting forthcoming atmospheric conditions was via Wincey Willis and fuzzy felt. But you knew where you were with it, and you got the basic idea that the weather tomorrow was likely to be much the same as today, or perhaps a bit different.

But I happened to tune into the weather at my parents' house yesterday, and it was like an ill-advised cross between A-level geography and the Large Hadron Collider.

For a start, we were zooming about all over the place; I fully expected that if I pressed the red button on my remote control (which I first discovered during Christmas Day Top of the Pops, allowing my father and myself to sing along, much to my sister's disgust) it would fly right in to my own house and show me the current cloud cover. The rain clouds were actually raining, and the clouds were shown flying across the sky. It was like the internet, but on TV.

More disconcerting, however, was the presenter, who seemed to be on his own personal crusade to fight the nation's falling educational standards. We were gravely informed that the front currently in the Atlantic is stationary and we were invited to inspect for ourselves the predicted behaviour of the isobars. Now don't get me wrong, Michael Fish talked about isobars with the best of them, but only in a way that made you think he knew more than you and therefore should be believed, not in the sense of expecting you to understand and suggesting it as a topic for discussion at the dinner table.

Anyway, the weather today seems to be much the same as it was yesterday, so perhaps it's not as complex as it looks.

An Account of Christmas 2008

Apologies for the delay in transmission during the festive period, which we will return to presently. First of all, however, I trust that we all had a very merry Christmas and did much eating, drinking and being... well... merry. Also, a belated Happy Birthday to The Soapbox for 23rd. I don't mind that I didn't get invited to the party (not that I would've gone, of course, being in a state of ill-health, but it's always nice to be invited. As a matter of point, in fact, if you're ever having a party and you want to be seen to be generous with invites, but you can't really be bothered entertaining everyone, invite me - I never come).

But to get back to the business in hand, you'll all be wondering how Christmas was here at WhyNotSmile, and in all honesty, the answer is that it was pretty much the same as most Christmases that you or I have ever had. Mum decided to have turkey for dinner, and my dad had got these things called crackers that had bits of plastic and crap jokes in them. Great-Auntie Isobel asked whether Mum had steeped her ham (despite having no idea of the potential consequences, I live in anticipation that the answer to this question will one year be 'yes') and then we pondered why it is that people always say that turkey's dry. My sister got overexcited about the whole thing (one of these years I'm going to hit her with a turkey drummer in the middle of The Snowman), we went for a walk on the beach and then came back in time for The Queen, who spoke of how she was thinking of the troops and how it would be nice if we were all nice to each other a bit more. Then we played 'Matching Pairs' with Great-Auntie Isobel (we like our games, but you can't have anything with overly complex rules).

Then of course there was the religious aspect. I failed to make it to church this year (all that 'oh look how much you've grown, are you married yet?' from old Sunday School teachers just could not be faced), and was left at home in charge of putting the oven on, cutting X's in the Brussels sprouts and sorting the presents (the latter at my sister's behest - she really does get overexcited). But of course, there is always TV, and on Christmas Day it offers something for everyone. On one side we had the atheists scoffing at how they are dead clever and they know things that Christians don't know, because Jesus wasn't really born on 25th December and anyway Christmas is a pagan thing. On the other we had the Archbishops saying that it would be really nice if everyone was a bit nicer to each other and that what with the credit crunch and Christmas, it is a good time for spiritual reflection and maybe people should go to church more.

Incidentally, someone, somewhere has worked out that Jesus was, in fact, born on 17th June (something to do with Mars and Venus, or something), which is pleasing because it means He has the same birthday as me, but would be a bit crap if they moved Christmas to then because then I'd only get one set of presents. I already share my birthday with John Wesley, founder of Methodism, so it's clearly the day to be born.

I should also mention that I got the biggest present of all, although this was mainly because it was saucepans, which are an awkward shape to wrap, so my mum put it in a big box.

So that, basically, was Christmas, and very nice it was too.

Anyway, the festive season was dulled slightly by lack of internet access, the tale of which you will be wanting to know. It started like this: on Monday I was sitting in Belfast and trying to finish off some work and wondering whether the scary kids would come back and getting a bit nervous, when I realised I'd run out of milk. I couldn't really be bothered going and getting more, since I was due to be going to The Parents on Tuesday anyway, so I thought, 'Sod it, I'll go to them today'.

So packed up all my things and drove down, got myself unpacked, and thought 'I'll just go online and finish off that bit of work'. Fired the laptop up and it wouldn't connect to the network, cos I didn't have the password. So I thought, I'll use mum's computer. But all the files are on my laptop. So I came up with a (in hindsight, ill-advised) plan to use her modem/router cable in my laptop, which went well until Windows told me there was a problem and to reset the router. Held in the reset button, tried again - nothing. Held in the reset button again, this time for a bit longer - nothing. And now mum's computer isn't working either. Dig around, find user guide for router thing, it says 'Pressing the reset button resets the router. Holding it in for more than 4 seconds will wipe all your settings and banjaxx everything.' Damn.

Anyway, it's working now. Well, my laptop is. Mum's computer not so much.

A second festive disaster involved the jardinaire (don't know how to spell that - kind of a fancy plant pot) which sat at the bottom of the stairs and which we have now all agreed we weren't that keen on and didn't really match the decor anyway. I'm still not entirely clear how this happened: one moment I was at the top of the stairs holding a sofa cushion, next moment it was bouncing down the stairs, gaining speed despite my desperate attempts to wrench it back with the force of my anguished stare, and then the jardinaire and plant and cushion were all in a little muddled heap in the hall.

So that was Christmas 2008, and frankly I'm more than a little relieved it's all over.

Dodgy Mathematics Special Edition, Part 2: For The Slow People At The Back

I said I would only explain this once, but some people clearly weren't listening, so I am going to have to say it again. But differently, because this time it's for the slow people.

VAT.

I saw a sign in Carter's on Saturday (I should explain that I was not in Carter's, but going past on the bus; I should also explain that yes, I was in Belfast city centre on the Saturday before Christmas, and that I left quite quickly) which said that they are offering VAT-free prices (or some such; I forget the exact phrasing), by reducing prices by 15%.

But of course this is incorrect, and I shall now explain why.

Suppose that pre-sale, an item cost £100 (this is at the new, lower, rate of VAT).

Now, if they reduce it by 15%, the new price will be:
(£100*85)/100 = £85

However, if they merely removed the 15% VAT, then the new price would be:
(£100*100)/115 = £86.96

which is not so good, so you wonder why they make that claim.

Funny Things For You

Thanks to Virtual Methodist for finding this. Splendid.