An Ever Decreasing Circle?

Conrad Had This Pop Up In His Head Today

I was having a constitutional into Lesser Sodom mid-afternoon - we'll get to that later - and my situation for most of the day did seem to reflect that statement, and - wasn't there a sitcom, too?  Art!

     When Penny was younger and hotter PURELY AS AN ACTRESS and the phrase got me wondering, because wouldn't a gradually decreasing circle be a spiral?  Or does the convention imagine that there is an infinitely large number of completely separate circles that decrease in circumference, down, down, down to the sub-atomic level?  Art!

     I like my idea better, so we're going with that, and no arguing.  As the spiral gets smaller and smaller, it's line-width would also need to decrease, as otherwise it would come to a hard stop, which belies the "Ever" part of today's title.

     Of course, I may be overthinking this .....

     ANYWAY let's get going on My Work Day.  Normally I log into our 'WFM' app on Sunday afternoon, in order to get my schedule for the following week.  Not possible, so I misanthropically logged off, deciding to do it in work time Monday, guessing at a 09:00 - 17:00 shift, rather than my time on Sunday.  Art!

     With an unknown irony, this was Monday morning, bright sunshine and cloudless blue skies.  Great!  Just what you want to see when Stuck Inside Working, hmmm?  Yes yes yes there are clouds in that picture, use your imagination you sausage.

     This is where the problems begin, because Conrad didn't experience any problems logging onto our new ISP Friday evening, but O my! the work laptop was a different subject altogether.  In fact I shall capitalise that: the Work Laptop.

     It refused to work <heavy sigh>.  Art!

NO WAY am I putting up my own details.  Use your imagination, you sausage

     The Password field refused to co-operate.  No matter what keys I typed on, it steadfastly refused to work and displayed a whole 0%.

     Okayyyyy clear cache and cookies, reboot, try again.

     Same result.

     Using Notepad, I typed out the password and tried to paste it into the field.

     Same result.

     Could it be the laptop keyboard not being recognised?  I plugged in the external keyboard, to no avail.  This is when the circling feeling began.  Perhaps the external keyboard needed to be plugged in before a restart?  CCACR, try again.

     No joy.

     Then I wondered if it was perhaps having two different devices operating with the same ISP, so I logged off my own personal laptop.  Art!

Just like mine

     No change in result, circling feeling intensifies.  Logging back onto my personal laptop, I looked up and down teh Interwebz looking for a solution, including a Youtube video from a Teuton chap that taught me how to find Devices, yet which didn't resolve -

     Hold hard, because I was now able to type into the password field!  I have no idea what caused that to happen, but was confident I'd be online in mere minutes.  Foolish Conrad!  Over-optimistic Conrad!  Fate-tempting Conrad!

      "12345678abc" can stand in as the password.  When I tried to type it in, every single key stroke, letter or number, resulted in double figures, thus: "1122334455667788aabbcc"

     

How I felt

     Back to my own laptop and another search across teh Interwebz for a solution, which all ended up recommending that I update Windows 11, and that should resolve t YES BUT I CAN'T GET ONLINE TO UPDATE IT! circling feeling now quite intense.

     I tried to copy and paste the password, then delete the surplus password, but it would always delete two characters at a time, and because it was 11 characters in length I ended up with a truncated password.  The cursor would only move two spaces at a time.  CCACR.  No change.

     Then I managed to copy the first password from the password field - and this is a lot easier to type than manage as everything was 'secured' by being presented as a set of dots not the actual letters or numbers themselves - and delete both passwords and then paste in the copied one intact and -

     It worked!  Circle broken.  I hastily log into 'WFM' and discover that, thanks to my message on Friday via phone Message, I had been down for all of Monday as 'Unpaid Leave'.  By this point in the circular process it was nearly 15:00 and not worth bothering to try and recoup the next two hours.  Art!

Yes, I got an Intro.  BUT IT TOOK 6 HOURS!

     So I took Edna for a trot and then walked into Lesser Sodom, where I got a bottle of Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer, which I am going to enjoy before carrying on with the blog.

     

We've Covered This Before

There's a bit of a screaming headline piece over at "The Daily Beast", which, if Art will put down his bowl of coal - 

     We last looked at this situation in April 2023, so fifteen months ago, which is a long time in the modern world.  Conrad is going to re-read the old  "핵 비상!  (Hang  Bisang!)" blog and the one above and see if there is anything worth updating.  

BOOJUM!: 핵 비상! (Hang Bisang!) (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

     The link lest you be unable to wait that long.  I also rediscovered my nickname for Kim Jong Jowly, "The Only Man Fat In North Korea" or TOMFINK, which is an hilariously devastating satirical point.  Perhaps.  It probably gets me a death sentence from the Norks, which is still better than living there.

"The War Illustrated Edition 190"

The cover date from this publication is 23rd September 1944, which is the fag-end of Operation MARKET GARDEN when it had very obviously failed.  The editing and censorship issues mean that it wouldn't be mentioned until the next issue, which would be early October.  One wonders how it's going to be sugar-coated?  Or will the truth be told?  Art!

     There's quite a bit of info in that photograph.  It's at the Albert Canal, where the retreating Teutons blew up the bridge, which probably slowed the British advance by as many as, ooooh, thirty or forty minutes.  No kidding; the Royal Engineers, whose job it was to build bridges, could span a canal like this in nothing flat with a Bailey Bridge.  It's no lightweight construction, either, as a 30 ton Sherman tank has just passed over it.

     To port of the tank is a six-pounder anti-tank gun, with only one of the crew on duty; the others are probably getting a wet and a wad on the other side of the road.

     At the post you can see what the caption describes as a British sergeant and a Dutch volunteer trooper from their Princess Irene regiment; interestingly the latter seems to be armed with a Mauser rifle, which may be official Dutch issue or captured Teuton booty, as it was their army's rifle of choice.  Also present, and you can tell by the curved magazine, is the post's Bren gun.  Not manned at present, so we can presume this position is either quiet or well behind the lines.

     That map is interesting.  Art!

     Here Arnhem is shown as being under Allied control, which by this date it most certainly wasn't.  Next Edition's take on this will be interesting!

"City In The Sky"

Having bested the Lithoi with their own petards - virulent disease and anti-matter engines - the Doctor has relocated the rebel Orskan, to the Namib Desert.

     ‘Yeeees.  About your sugar boost,’ murmured the Timelord.  ‘Don’t overdo it.’

     The lizard-like alien ducked his head.

     ‘They won’t last much longer, Doctor Smith.  After that I doubt I shall last much longer, either.’

     ‘Oh, come now!’ burbled the small man, giving the startled alien a consoling hug, a gesture completely unknown in Lithoi culture.  ‘Watch this.’  He looked carefully over the ground, before finding what he sought: scattered ants running around.  With the tip of his umbrella he dug and poked, sending ants pouring furiously over the sands in search of their tormentor.  Finally he reached into the sub-surface hole created and pulled a strange insect out.  It resembled an ant, but one with a grossly swollen abdomen.  He tossed it to the alien, who caught it, not understanding what a deformed ant meant.

     ‘Honey ant,’ explained the Doctor.  ‘Used by the nest to store sugars.  Try eating it.’

     A reluctant Orskan chewed up the insect, his eyes enlarging in surprise.

     ‘Doctor!’ he said (actually hissed).  ‘Sugar!’

     ‘Told you so,’ came the smug response.  ‘I keep my word.’  He passed his trusty, if now battered, umbrella to Orskan.  ‘Here, you’ll need this occasionally.  Not often, they only get an inch or two of rain here per year.  You might want to also research the bee and beehive, for future reference.’ 

     Tipping his boater politely, he left the lone Lithoi, sole survivor of the alien incursion, standing on the dunes of the Kalahari.  Having kept his word to Orskan, he now needed to oversee his other concern, the humans of the Bight littoral and the residents of Arcology One.

     A Doctor's day is never done.

Here's One For Later

Conrad re-read Stephen King's "The Stand" a few months ago, because he likes the challenge of a long novel, and Thomas Pynchon's next isn't out next, the piker.  Thus I was interested to see this on Youtube:

     You know Conrad.  Not only will I watch it, I shall annotate it, and you may hear back if that turns out to be interesting.

Finally -

What a dismal end to a day that started so gloriously sunny and hot!  Leaden lowering skies and rain rain rain.  Back to the traditional British summer.

     You know they're having trouble coping in Ukraine?  Routine temperatures of 55º C and over.  Car interiors have melted.  32º C in the shade.