Confessions of a Geek in Denial

“I really want to know what it is about programming, or computers in
general, that makes people want to grow a beard, have long hair, and
dress like a slob.”

I’m really going to have to try a bit harder in order to obtain geek status…

Powered by ScribeFire.

List the messages in the queue
sudo exim4 -bp

Remove a message
sudo exim4 -Mrm <message-id>

Powered by ScribeFire.

Dilemma. Whenever i think of this word it reminds me of the cheesy R&B hit by Nelly. This morning however I wasn’t reminiscing my first year at uni when the the song repeatedly was played at the student bar.

Why do we face dilemmas?

Dilemmas for me represent a choice. A choice which either option will have equally good and bad consequences. Making the choice will commit yourself to a course of actions which you will cannot reverse. Once the decision is made you won’t be able to face the dilemma again.

I wonder how much of our own dilemmas are self-imposed. How many are easy decisions, just we express reluctance in making them. Perhaps the state of dilemma is like limbo, just a decision must be made.

I wonder if facing a dilemma is actually a desirable position to be in. Faced with a choice between two paths, I think it is more desirable to do nothing. And by doing nothing, have you solved thedilemma? In which case is there always a third choice? Can we just choose to do nothing?

So are dilemma’s just mental-illusions? Is a dilemma a normal decision just blown up out of proportion. What makes these decisions any different from the ones which we face every day?

Retrospect adds a new dimension to dilemmas. Often when looking back at the decisions I’ve made I’ve wondered was it really as important as it seemed at the time. Thinking about it the most important decisions I’ve made in my experience are the ones which I haven’t spent time deliberating over. It seems that all the important decisions I’ve made haven’t been a choice because I’ve known instinctively which is the right path.

So dilemmas I think are a waste of time. Time is the real winner. The important decisions you make today aren’t the ones which you will consider at great depth.

Of course thinking this places faith in the ability to naturally make the right choice.

• “St Pancras was listed Grade 1, 10 days before it was due to be demolished and redeveloped as a sports hall and social housing.” I’ve always throught that St Pancras was one of the most visually impressive buildings in London. I didn’t know that it came very close to being demolished.
• The film The Golden Compass is being released on the 7th December. At the web site you can discover what daemon you are and then see if your friends agree. If they don’t the daemon changes. Have a look at mine.

l’ve just spent the last few days visiting my little sister in Bournemouth where she is at uni. I combined visiting her with enterin another 10km race. What I thought, from the race map, was a flat course turned out to have much more of an incline than I expected. When thinking of the seaside I generally assume flat land, not cliffs!

The first 5km of the race was nice and flat. Unfortunately this lulls you into a false pace and by the end of th 5km stretch I was starting to feel a bit weary and the faster, fitter runners started to pull away from me. The start of an unfortunate pattern which saw a lot more people pass me!

There seemed to be a lot more club runners at this event this time. Something, that as an individual entering, I find quite intimidating. To me anyone in a club vest takes their running very seriously. There were even people with customised running shirts.

It made me wonder if I should join a club and surcome to being one of them!

Update: I managed to get a P.B. time of 43 minutes 22 seconds

How to avoid being mugged - the Japanese way.. At uni I was known for surviving off the vending machines located in one of the colleges. Cooking, after-all was far too much effort when there was food at my disposal so easily. (This comment is not really related to the news article, but reminded me of good, more unhealthy times)

Technorati Tags: “vending machines”

It’s quite depressing when the clocks go back and I’m travelling back home from work in the dark. Other than being over-tired for the next few days now that it is dark it feels that the whole day has been wasted away at work…

In reality it hasn’t. Now that it is dark I doubt that my evening routine will change much. I’ll still be too tired at the end of the day to do anything really productive.

Today was a particularly bad day. The first day back after a week off is never nice. I was also particularly tired from a busy weekend. Other than working on Saturday, watching football and organising my mum’s 50th I ran a 10km race on Sunday.. This evening I’m going to go home and rest!

Technorati Tags: running 10km race tired train nights work

From the Radio 5 Live commentary of the England match;

1629: GOAL Russia 0-1 England

1628: “This has got draw written all over it, even if they were playing in treacle it would be less scrappy.”
anubisrich on 606

Powered by ScribeFire.

• I discovered that rsync can throttle its bandwidth. I’ll be able to stop my backups hogging my network connection.
• The Surreal Line. Adverts on the London Underground which give the illusion of interacting with the commuters.
• The Iconbar have reviewed the N770.. It’s an interesting read, but seems a little bit behind the times.
• I’ve discovered MapMyRun.com which allows you to plot your runs on a Google Map and share them with your friends. Unfortunately it’s littered with annoying adverts.. so I’m still hunting for an alternative.
• 
  Cheney, Obama ‘distant cousins’ makes me chuckle, they should sell tickets to their family reunion.
• Sir Menzies Campbell quits as leader of the Liberal Democrats. It’s a shame really because over the course of his leadership all we ever heard was how old he was. Goes to show how brutal the British media is.
• Orange is forced to sell an unlocked iPhone in France. I’m sure it will be at a high enough price to force the consumer not to stick with the Operator. Who would by a contract SIM with a unlimited data-rate (around £35) and then go and by an iPhone which is bound to cost >£400.

Powered by ScribeFire.

• Chicken lorry crash causes chaos. Nothing really needs to be said to accompany this post!
• My old Secondary School makes the news when there is a case of TB.
• Tesco are being blamed for rises in rent to nearby stores. Tesco deny that the rent increase is anything to do with the huge store they are planting near the centre of Reading. How can they not be publically aware of the economic consequences on the local area? Hopefully the local stores will be able to survive long enough too reap the reward from the extra customers they’ll gain.
• A Mexican politician faked winning his age category in a marathon to get publicity.

Powered by ScribeFire.