before I forget *again*

I've been slowly but surely working my way through the Project Gutenberg copy of The Three Musketeers for the last while. I tend to read it in half-hour chunks while catching the DART into town, hence the slow progress. Anyway. I was reading through a rather amusing episode last night where the four companions (that'd be three musketeers plus one guardsman) need to have an urgent but secret discussion, and in order to do this they make a bet with their fellow soldiers that they'll be able to have breakfast in a spot recently vacated by the enemy and spend an hour doing so. Now, there is a scene in Stephen Herek's movie version where the boyos have just stolen a carriage, and are being pursued; Porthos pops up from inside the carriage mid-chase to enquire if the others would like some champagne. Athos turns to him and says, "we're in the middle of a chase" to which Porthos replies, "you're right - something red". This seems more-or-less par for the course in the modern action movie; the hero must throw in a few wisecracks in the middle of whatever he's involved in, no matter how grave the situation. But it's exactly the sort of dialogue that crops up in the aforementioned breakfast en bastion - at one point, Aramis (I think) refuses to leave the bastion despite approaching enemy soldiers on the grounds that he's not yet finished his breakfast. It's interesting to see the parallels, and makes me wonder if the scriptwriter for Herek's rendition was paying homage to the original or simply hit on a coincidentally similar gimmick.

for the child executive, I guess

In this week's haul of Cheap Stuff On Sale In The Canteen: "Executive Racetrack", basically a miniature Scalextrix-type toy. On the back of the box it recommends "adult assistance" when changing the batteries.

ask and you shall receive, sorta

Amazon's free music downloads as RSS Not quite what I'd hoped for, since it doesn't do the enclosures thing (which the author mentions as being some sort of problem with Amazon) but there you go.

unclear on the concept

I sent a complaint to an Irish ISP - one of the biggest - because I received spam from a customer of theirs.

They responded by sending me a spam for their anti-spam product.

also not completely clear on the concept

Very chatty checkout lady at the supermarket. Chatting so much to the woman in front of me that she absent-mindedly lifted up the "Next Customer Please" thingy¹ and started adding my groceries to the other customer's. Then there was a problem with the credit card swipe, so she had to key in the card number by hand, during which she uttered the following gem:

...these are really difficult to type in, you have to get all the numbers exactly right, not like those barcodes...

Er, yes. Quite. Just scan my stuff already, eh?

1. Dunno what you call these things. It's a little plastic doohickey that you put on the checkout conveyer to separate your stuff from the next/previous custmer.