Still in bed with a stinking cold, but this turned up overnight in my cricket club's group chat, which has brightened my day considerably:
OTD in 2022 in Oxfordshire - Sandemaniac obtained his first smartphone, a moment many regard as the true dawn of the modern era. Once a man of paper diaries and landline calls, Sanders emerged overnight as a prolific sender of 🍆, 😂, and 🔥, bewildering teammates and terrifying group chats.
The acquisition marked a seismic shift: group chats were never the same again. Within hours, Sanders had discovered emojis, GIFs, and the ability to send 14 near‑identical photos of his findings from his allotment from slightly different angles.
Much like Wilfred Rhodes spanning three decades of Test cricket, Sanders’ digital career has already spanned three WhatsApp updates, two broken chargers, and many infamous incidents involving autocorrect that are still spoken of in hushed tones.
Historians agree: civilisation may have advanced, but the group chat has never fully recovered.
It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that my very first post included a less-than-subtle innuendo.
Still in bed with a stinking cold, but this turned up overnight in my cricket club's group chat, which has brightened my day considerably:
OTD in 2022 in Oxfordshire - Sandemaniac obtained his first smartphone, a moment many regard as the true dawn of the modern era. Once a man of paper diaries and landline calls, Sanders emerged overnight as a prolific sender of 🍆, 😂, and 🔥, bewildering teammates and terrifying group chats.
The acquisition marked a seismic shift: group chats were never the same again. Within hours, Sanders had discovered emojis, GIFs, and the ability to send 14 near‑identical photos of his findings from his allotment from slightly different angles.
Much like Wilfred Rhodes spanning three decades of Test cricket, Sanders’ digital career has already spanned three WhatsApp updates, two broken chargers, and many infamous incidents involving autocorrect that are still spoken of in hushed tones.
Historians agree: civilisation may have advanced, but the group chat has never fully recovered.
It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that my very first post included a less-than-subtle innuendo.
@Sandemaniac One of my colleagues sat me down in 2019 with a bargain offer to sell me his mum's first smartphone to see how I got on with it. This was just after I'd finally accepted out loud that a smartphone would have to be in my near future (due to getting a correct diabetes type diagnosis 3 years after the misdiagnosis which meant I was now eligible for a continuous blood glucose monitor which meant blood sugar readings could go to my phone). Also, I was being seriously left out of informal communications within my work team at the time as a result of everyone else having WhatsApp. Which said colleague was getting frustrated at on my behalf plus, as he charmingly put it. "My mum, she can't do computer stuff like you, she learned how to use it, so you will be fine!" I meekly complied.
Until then, I'd been perfectly content with my small basic phones (one for personal life, one for work/church/organist/music teaching work) but they were also harder to get, and were getting more and more expensive to run.
Now, the diabetes tech didn't actually happen until 2022, but in retrospect, my work in education during the Covid Lockdowns would have been very difficult without the smartphone.
That first device still lives on as it has a radio which is not reliant on data! Just need to be using wired headphones which picks up the analogue signals.
The one person who'd tried, and failed, over several years to move me on to a smartphone earlier is in absolute awe of this particular colleague who succeeded where they had failed and I must remember to get them in the same place at the same time sometime so this awe can be fully expressed. I do believe most of my friends described this moment in my life as "Japes finally joins the 21st century."
My first smart phone was second hand from a friend of my husband and I've never looked back. I do think I have a bit of an addiction to it, so I'm trying to make myself read more physical books.
I could have nabbed a space to do Pilates this morning, but I'm feeling lazy so I'm going to mooch down to the market instead. On Fridays there is a brilliant farm stall that sells excellent 'traditional' veg very cheaply. I'm after some potatoes, cabbage and carrots so they should have those. Its where I get my Christmas veg and usually spend far less than £10.00 for enough to last a couple of weeks of meals.
Last night I went through our physical photos trying to find some pictures of my late niece with us for her sister L who wants them for the slide show at the funeral. The whole thing was rather sad as there were lots of pictures of my late mum, and my dear friend T who died earlier this year.
Feeling the teeniest bit ropey after last evening - though very nice dinner. To go with my apple cake, another guest brought a sweet wine which was 70 years old.* Mind you, that still made it the youngest member of the company.
There was also a 2011 Chateau Musar, an Italian Riesling and a fizz. And sherry.
*Previous record was a 1953 Trockenbeerenauslese I got for Mr F's 60th (he was born in '53).
Hygienist this morning then granddaughter popped in. Now I am off to my French conversation group. Thankfully no more commitments after that today. Busy weekend ahead. I’m ready for a breather.
I avoided any type of mobile phone until 2019, as I was brought up in a house without a phone and hated making phone calls. So my first phone was a smartphone and we bought it because my doctorate studies meant I would have a few weekends away and I would need to text to organise pick ups with my husband. I rarely ever make phone calls from it.
A busy day so far of emails, admin and writing 2 tutorials. I’ve just had a cheese omelette (Perl wen) and I’m about to go back to work and start the first of this year’s marking marathons. My first batch are early reflections about studying a module on death.
Mr Heavenly is out at a work do this evening so I might have a takeaway.
I'm an early adopter of tech. I've had a smartphone since 2008.
Hedgehog duty was satisfying again. It's nice to leave them all clean and tidy and snoozing in their nests. Lots released today due to the mild weather. Good news and plenty more are nearly up to release weight (600g).
I rarely use my phone as a phone either. Being deaf, phone calls can be tricky, though the wonders of Bluetooth do make it a lot easier than it used to be.
I had a successful trip into town and bought a cabbage, three carrots and a bag of potatoes for £3.00. Other than that I've been catching up with hobbies, a bit of writing, a bit of knitting and doing a jigsaw. I've also made the Christmas cake which is cooking at the moment.
I'm jolly glad I haven't had to go out, we've had some very heavy showers, mixed with bouts of sunshine, including both at the same time, which meant a rather good rainbow over our local sugar factory.
'...a rather good rainbow over our local sugar factory' would be a wonderful title for a short story, or maybe a little film.
No rainbows in Arkland the Mild, where it is again cloudy and windy. A few showers are possible, but nothing bad enough to deter the trick-or-treaters this evening. FatherInCharge has sweets ready for any who call at his parsonage, but (he says) he will only speak to children accompanied by adults. I expect he will deliver a little homily about the True Meaning Of Hallowe'en, but, if he does, I know it will be done in a gently humorous way...
Italian cuisine for lunch - Spaghetti Carbonara, with Italian BEER.
I went out for coffee with a friend this morning to one of our local garden centres, where Christmas was very much in evidence; also a lot of over-excited children running around screaming and dressed in various halloweeny-type costumes.
This afternoon - much excitement as the engineer came and replaced the element in our fan oven. I've been fine managing with the small oven, but the Christmas cooking is on the horizon, plus we are planning to move house and it will be good to be able to say that both ovens work. I also apologised for the state of it (I clean it rather less often than once in a blue moon) and he said, "Believe me, that's spotless compared to some I've seen." He's a nice person .
Spaghetti bolognese for tea again, and we'll be having a glass of red with it this evening, having not been able to last night because we were both going out.
My long waterproof coat proved its worth this afternoon. It wasn’t raining when I locked the door but I was very wet, or rather my coat was by the time I arrived at my French group, just a few minutes walk away. Dry and sunny to walk home afterwards.
Having been sufficiently cold yesterday for people to be scraping frost off their cars, it was unseasonably (but very pleasantly) mild today. Work was worryingly gentle; what will they all get up to at the weekend? No matter; an empty in-floor is always a good thing on a Friday afternoon.
My new reading specs (which I only ordered the day before yesterday) arrived in all their multicoloured glory, but sadly they're actually not much use for the distance my work chair is from my computer ...
Back to the old ones, which actually work fairly well. The new ones are quite good for reading, and doing things on the mobile or the Tablet; they're just not quite right for the distance between eyes and computer screen, which is what matters to me for a large chunk of my day (not to mention the bit of said day for which I get paid).
'...a rather good rainbow over our local sugar factory' would be a wonderful title for a short story, or maybe a little film.
My writing group has a prompt every month, maybe I'll suggest that for next month. This month's is 'In bocca al lupo' which literally translates as 'In the mouth of the wolf' and is the Italian equivalent of 'break a leg'. It was chosen because an Italian class meets in the same place we do, and it was on the white board when we came in.
Our local sugar factory runs its campaign as they call it from roughly October to March. Lots of lorries carrying sugar beet going in and out and rather dramatic plumes of smoke that I can see from my study.
The Christmas cake I made this afternoon fell apart when I took it out of the tin. It tastes ok so I've put the broken lumps in the freezer and it'll be turned into a Christmas pudding instead.
I was reading Jane Grigson rhapsodising over winter celery the other day - so I bought a head this morning (and a tub of hummus). And it was indeed beautifully crisp.
It will offset dinner which will be a thoroughly autumnal casserole of beef, kidney, pancetta and mushrooms, to match the cold and blowy day out.
As it was Artisans' Market day in Linlithgow, I ambled along and came back with a couple of skinless, naturally-coloured smoked haddock fillets with which I plan to cobble something for supper. Not, I think, kedgeree this time, as it's not that long since I did that, but I've long wanted to try and replicate a smoked-haddock-tarragon-cream-pasta thingie I had in a restaurant in Derry* many moons ago. Not quite sure if it'll work with dried tarragon, but we'll see.
It's been mostly a rather nice day, still quite mild though cooling a bit, and intermittently sunny.
* From the front it looked like an ordinary chippie, but at the back was a rather nice fish restaurant, sadly replaced with a burger joint a long time ago.
I spent the morning leafleting for the up-coming by-election. I think Reform will probably edge it, but we got a better reception in the area we were canvassing than we did during the General Election.
This evening we're off to a ceilidh.
As it was Artisans' Market day in Linlithgow, I ambled along and came back with a couple of skinless, naturally-coloured smoked haddock fillets with which I plan to cobble something for supper. Not, I think, kedgeree this time, as it's not that long since I did that, but I've long wanted to try and replicate a smoked-haddock-tarragon-cream-pasta thingie I had in a restaurant in Derry* many moons ago. Not quite sure if it'll work with dried tarragon, but we'll see.
It's been mostly a rather nice day, still quite mild though cooling a bit, and intermittently sunny.
* From the front it looked like an ordinary chippie, but at the back was a rather nice fish restaurant, sadly replaced with a burger joint a long time ago.
If you get it to work, can you shsre on the recipe thread, please? I'm a sucker for anything with smoked haddock in. We even tried it in a Thai curry... and it works!
Mild and windy again in Arkland the Damp, after heavy Rain in the early hours of this morning, but pleasant enough for November.
No need to go out today, although I'll make my usual Sunday Expotition to the village Co-Op tomorrow for Bread. I also need to visit the Arkland Orfis to collect a parcel - a new flag for the Ark, to wit, the official Flag of the Province of Groningen (in The Netherlands), where the Ark was built, and where she worked for many years:
My new reading specs (which I only ordered the day before yesterday) arrived in all their multicoloured glory, but sadly they're actually not much use for the distance my work chair is from my computer ...
Back to the old ones, which actually work fairly well. The new ones are quite good for reading, and doing things on the mobile or the Tablet; they're just not quite right for the distance between eyes and computer screen, which is what matters to me for a large chunk of my day (not to mention the bit of said day for which I get paid).
I'm sure that when I was working an employer was required to pay for glasses if they were specifically prescribed for display screen equipment (DSE) use. If the glasses were needed for general vision or other purposes, the employer was not obligated to cover the cost.
A lazy day here with nothing achieved other than a walk followed by a trip to B&Q, where we purchased a lampshade for the spare room. Lunch was a Brussels sprouts salad courtesy of Mr Heavenly. Mr Heavenly is currently painting the arms and legs of the chair we bought last week while I am browsing the internet and stroking Mochi.
This evening we will probably go to the fireworks at the town to the south of us rather than the one in Cambridge, as it is a smaller and friendly event.
Lunch has been delayed until Tea-time, owing to my having spent over two hours on the phone with BT, trying to reset my email security details and password.
It appears that my email account was somehow compromised earlier today - I know not how, as I have lots of firewalls and anti-virus Stuff - but it was easy enough to reach the reset page on the BT website. That's when the problems began, as it wouldn't accept my answers. Simple enough, one would have thought - date of birth, postcode, and mother's maiden name.
Ha! After much consultation with three separate BT guides (Real Human Beings, thank The Great Pumpkin), it transpired that my email account is so old that the d-o-b and mother's maiden name were those of the former Mrs BF, who set up the account about 25 years ago...
All is now well, and the account details duly updated. Better late than never!
Time to fish out the Salmon from the fridge...and the BEER, too, as I feel in need of a stimulant.
That sounds traumatic @Bishops Finger and I'm glad it's all sorted now.
It's been a glum day in Nenland and the weather's been miserable too with mostly rain, sometimes no rain, and one brief glimpse of the sun. November is my least favourite month of the whole year and if it carries on as it started all I can say is, roll on 1 December.
Stir fry for tea because Saturday and there's WINE (red and white) to wash it down with. I shall start with white as according to a friend of ours it is, "White before red, safely to bed; red before white, up all night." I slept particularly badly last night and would like for that not to be repeated.
Comments
Hedgehog sanctuary duty today for me,so an early start. See y'all later. 🦔
OTD in 2022 in Oxfordshire - Sandemaniac obtained his first smartphone, a moment many regard as the true dawn of the modern era. Once a man of paper diaries and landline calls, Sanders emerged overnight as a prolific sender of 🍆, 😂, and 🔥, bewildering teammates and terrifying group chats.
The acquisition marked a seismic shift: group chats were never the same again. Within hours, Sanders had discovered emojis, GIFs, and the ability to send 14 near‑identical photos of his findings from his allotment from slightly different angles.
Much like Wilfred Rhodes spanning three decades of Test cricket, Sanders’ digital career has already spanned three WhatsApp updates, two broken chargers, and many infamous incidents involving autocorrect that are still spoken of in hushed tones.
Historians agree: civilisation may have advanced, but the group chat has never fully recovered.
It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that my very first post included a less-than-subtle innuendo.
This is absolutely brilliant!
Until then, I'd been perfectly content with my small basic phones (one for personal life, one for work/church/organist/music teaching work) but they were also harder to get, and were getting more and more expensive to run.
Now, the diabetes tech didn't actually happen until 2022, but in retrospect, my work in education during the Covid Lockdowns would have been very difficult without the smartphone.
That first device still lives on as it has a radio which is not reliant on data! Just need to be using wired headphones which picks up the analogue signals.
The one person who'd tried, and failed, over several years to move me on to a smartphone earlier is in absolute awe of this particular colleague who succeeded where they had failed and I must remember to get them in the same place at the same time sometime so this awe can be fully expressed. I do believe most of my friends described this moment in my life as "Japes finally joins the 21st century."
I could have nabbed a space to do Pilates this morning, but I'm feeling lazy so I'm going to mooch down to the market instead. On Fridays there is a brilliant farm stall that sells excellent 'traditional' veg very cheaply. I'm after some potatoes, cabbage and carrots so they should have those. Its where I get my Christmas veg and usually spend far less than £10.00 for enough to last a couple of weeks of meals.
Last night I went through our physical photos trying to find some pictures of my late niece with us for her sister L who wants them for the slide show at the funeral. The whole thing was rather sad as there were lots of pictures of my late mum, and my dear friend T who died earlier this year.
There was also a 2011 Chateau Musar, an Italian Riesling and a fizz. And sherry.
*Previous record was a 1953 Trockenbeerenauslese I got for Mr F's 60th (he was born in '53).
I avoided any type of mobile phone until 2019, as I was brought up in a house without a phone and hated making phone calls. So my first phone was a smartphone and we bought it because my doctorate studies meant I would have a few weekends away and I would need to text to organise pick ups with my husband. I rarely ever make phone calls from it.
A busy day so far of emails, admin and writing 2 tutorials. I’ve just had a cheese omelette (Perl wen) and I’m about to go back to work and start the first of this year’s marking marathons. My first batch are early reflections about studying a module on death.
Mr Heavenly is out at a work do this evening so I might have a takeaway.
Hedgehog duty was satisfying again. It's nice to leave them all clean and tidy and snoozing in their nests. Lots released today due to the mild weather. Good news and plenty more are nearly up to release weight (600g).
I had a successful trip into town and bought a cabbage, three carrots and a bag of potatoes for £3.00. Other than that I've been catching up with hobbies, a bit of writing, a bit of knitting and doing a jigsaw. I've also made the Christmas cake which is cooking at the moment.
I'm jolly glad I haven't had to go out, we've had some very heavy showers, mixed with bouts of sunshine, including both at the same time, which meant a rather good rainbow over our local sugar factory.
No rainbows in Arkland the Mild, where it is again cloudy and windy. A few showers are possible, but nothing bad enough to deter the trick-or-treaters this evening. FatherInCharge has sweets ready for any who call at his parsonage, but (he says) he will only speak to children accompanied by adults. I expect he will deliver a little homily about the True Meaning Of Hallowe'en, but, if he does, I know it will be done in a gently humorous way...
Italian cuisine for lunch - Spaghetti Carbonara, with Italian BEER.
This afternoon - much excitement as the engineer came and replaced the element in our fan oven. I've been fine managing with the small oven, but the Christmas cooking is on the horizon, plus we are planning to move house and it will be good to be able to say that both ovens work. I also apologised for the state of it (I clean it rather less often than once in a blue moon) and he said, "Believe me, that's spotless compared to some I've seen." He's a nice person
Spaghetti bolognese for tea again, and we'll be having a glass of red with it this evening, having not been able to last night because we were both going out.
My new reading specs (which I only ordered the day before yesterday) arrived in all their multicoloured glory, but sadly they're actually not much use for the distance my work chair is from my computer ...
Back to the old ones, which actually work fairly well. The new ones are quite good for reading, and doing things on the mobile or the Tablet; they're just not quite right for the distance between eyes and computer screen, which is what matters to me for a large chunk of my day (not to mention the bit of said day for which I get paid).
Supper was, of course, f&c, because Friday.
My writing group has a prompt every month, maybe I'll suggest that for next month. This month's is 'In bocca al lupo' which literally translates as 'In the mouth of the wolf' and is the Italian equivalent of 'break a leg'. It was chosen because an Italian class meets in the same place we do, and it was on the white board when we came in.
Our local sugar factory runs its campaign as they call it from roughly October to March. Lots of lorries carrying sugar beet going in and out and rather dramatic plumes of smoke that I can see from my study.
The Christmas cake I made this afternoon fell apart when I took it out of the tin. It tastes ok so I've put the broken lumps in the freezer and it'll be turned into a Christmas pudding instead.
It will offset dinner which will be a thoroughly autumnal casserole of beef, kidney, pancetta and mushrooms, to match the cold and blowy day out.
It's been mostly a rather nice day, still quite mild though cooling a bit, and intermittently sunny.
* From the front it looked like an ordinary chippie, but at the back was a rather nice fish restaurant, sadly replaced with a burger joint a long time ago.
This evening we're off to a ceilidh.
If you get it to work, can you shsre on the recipe thread, please? I'm a sucker for anything with smoked haddock in. We even tried it in a Thai curry... and it works!
No need to go out today, although I'll make my usual Sunday Expotition to the village Co-Op tomorrow for Bread. I also need to visit the Arkland Orfis to collect a parcel - a new flag for the Ark, to wit, the official Flag of the Province of Groningen (in The Netherlands), where the Ark was built, and where she worked for many years:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Groningen.svg
Not sure what's for Lunch today, but probably SALMON with CHIPS.
I'm sure that when I was working an employer was required to pay for glasses if they were specifically prescribed for display screen equipment (DSE) use. If the glasses were needed for general vision or other purposes, the employer was not obligated to cover the cost.
A lazy day here with nothing achieved other than a walk followed by a trip to B&Q, where we purchased a lampshade for the spare room. Lunch was a Brussels sprouts salad courtesy of Mr Heavenly. Mr Heavenly is currently painting the arms and legs of the chair we bought last week while I am browsing the internet and stroking Mochi.
This evening we will probably go to the fireworks at the town to the south of us rather than the one in Cambridge, as it is a smaller and friendly event.
It appears that my email account was somehow compromised earlier today - I know not how, as I have lots of firewalls and anti-virus Stuff - but it was easy enough to reach the reset page on the BT website. That's when the problems began, as it wouldn't accept my answers. Simple enough, one would have thought - date of birth, postcode, and mother's maiden name.
Ha! After much consultation with three separate BT guides (Real Human Beings, thank The Great Pumpkin), it transpired that my email account is so old that the d-o-b and mother's maiden name were those of the former Mrs BF, who set up the account about 25 years ago...
All is now well, and the account details duly updated. Better late than never!
Time to fish out the Salmon from the fridge...and the BEER, too, as I feel in need of a stimulant.
It's been a glum day in Nenland and the weather's been miserable too with mostly rain, sometimes no rain, and one brief glimpse of the sun. November is my least favourite month of the whole year and if it carries on as it started all I can say is, roll on 1 December.
Stir fry for tea because Saturday and there's WINE (red and white) to wash it down with. I shall start with white as according to a friend of ours it is, "White before red, safely to bed; red before white, up all night." I slept particularly badly last night and would like for that not to be repeated.
In a woolly hat too! 🤣