All entries for Wednesday 09 August 2006
August 09, 2006
The Ageing Techy
During my trip to Essex today I decided to make a suprise stop off at my grandparent's house in Harlow. I haven't seen them in about 1–2 years (bad, bad grandchild!!!), so they were pretty suprised to see me. Grandad said I made his week.
Grandad is partially sighted these days. Well, he is 81 and did have corneal grafts in the 1950s or 60s or something (one is Swiss, the other is French, in case you really wanted to know) – he also has a set of very early contact lenses – they fit over the whole front of the eye and had to be removed with a small plunger – no kidding – he has them still in a little box in his house – but I digress! Anyway, because of his deteriorating sight he has decided to invest his savings in a 46" HD TV. It's a whopper and must have cost him a fortune. It does give him a little quality of life though – because he can hardly see, he can't read and he can barely walk these days too, so at least he can get some entertainment in his house. I think it's pretty cool having an 81 year old Grandad who owns a mobile phone, a digital camera, a 46" flat screen TV, a sky digital box, and a DVD player. Futhermore, he knows how to work everything too (better than I would)!!! Yay for technologically advanced old people!!! Perhaps I'll get him an i–pod for Christmas.
Motorway Rage
Had to drive back up to campus today from Essex. I'm fed up with my usual M11 – A14 – M6 route, so decided to take the equally fast M11 – M25 – M1 route. However, when I got on to the M25 there were signs saying that junction 21 exit was closed. I knew the M1 junction was somewhere around there, but figured that if they had closed off such a major junction, they would have said somthing like "M1 North junction closed" instead! But no, that would have been all too easy. As would have putting a clearly signposted diversion in place. Instead I twice drove back and forth on the neighbouring junctions of the M25 trying to figure out how to get North.
Don't these people realise that there are some of us out there that do actually want to go North of the M25?! Then again, the people controlling those signs probably don't realise that there's civilisation outside of the M25. Grrrrrrrrr!!!!