knock yourself on the head

Monday night I stayed up late to watch “The Greatest Game on Earth” – guess what the game is – golf. Unfortunately it didn’t send me straight to sleep like a regular golf game does, but was actually a bit exciting at times – true fiction!

Grace has friends over for a few days. Cato and Bailey have come to stay while Ruth is at a quilting conference. The birds have already been talking back and forth to each other in their funny parrot/people voices and are well settled in.

 

I spent much of Wednesday morning wrestling with software, or more specifically, trying to move data from one piece of software to another. I recently downloaded a new journaling app - it has a nicer interface, and a few features that I like better than the one I was using. Obviously I want to transfer the entries from my old software. Hold the boat! It isn't as simple as that. I exported from the old software in csv format, updated the file as it had lots of formatting inconsistencies, then played around with getting the date into unix timestamp format. Next, I saved it as an xml document. I used to do this sort of data manipulation a lot during my working life, and had even written a few export/import programs to make life easier for myself, but I'm a bit rusty now. It will take some manoeuvring to get the xml file formatted to match up with the new software’s input format. By the time I'm finished I would have been able to do the whole thing by hand many times over! And may still have to do so! But it is fun to try ;-)

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This was written on Tuesday afternoon:

I could still hear the spirited discussion from the bedroom, even with the door closed. It was one of those days that I wished to be back in the 1950s, serving the men in the dining room then retreating back to the kitchen, which hopefully had a door. We had Carm's friend Eric, from past work days over, and I don't think he even made it fully in the door before the work talk started. Keep in mind that both have been retired for 4 years or more.

Phrases like 'infrastructure' and 'technology' peppered the conversation and they rehashed (again) their years working at odds against each other. It is a most unlikely friendship, as, due to department structure, they were often pitted against each other. However, they both love to discuss things (i.e. beat a dead horse), and neither seems to have a thin skin. So, like two huge elephant seals, bellowing at each other and crashing their enormous chests together, they continued their discussion through the afternoon. I'm sure you aren't surprised to learn that as soon as lunch was finished, I beetled out of there and took refuge in the bedroom, with the door closed. Which didn't bother me any – it gave me some time to work on this week’s writing assignment… I am having a hard time writing this one and need all the time I can get.

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Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. ~Horace Mann