{"id":8595,"date":"2006-09-17T07:30:45","date_gmt":"2006-09-17T06:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/?p=8595"},"modified":"2018-01-13T10:25:54","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T10:25:54","slug":"17-september-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/2006\/09\/17\/17-september-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"17 September 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning on another tolerably passable day in beautiful downtown Byfield. A bit of grey sunshine this morning but pleasantly mild and looking like one of those days which could go either way \u2013 it could turn out pleasant and moderately sunny or it could rain. This being Britain, the likelihood is that it will rain, of course.<\/span><\/p>\n

Apologies for last week\u2019s delivery delay \u2013 I don\u2019t know the cause behind the tardy arrival of the Befouled News other than some mail server somewhere (presumably mine) was on go-slow all weekend. I knew something was a bit fishy when Ms Playchute kept asking whether I had sent the news to which I replied, \u201cYes. About an hour ago.\u201d Or two hours, three hours, etc. throughout the day. I also knew something was up as I always address a copy to myself (that, at least, ensures that I get some mail once a week). However, it didn\u2019t arrive, and didn\u2019t arrive until finally the customer complaints began to arrive as well. So, as you know, we dispatched it via another account and it arrived in a flash. Naturally, we knew it hadn\u2019t vanished altogether as, of course, it arrived the following morning with no explanation, i.e. attacked by Indians just outside of Dodge, hence the delay. I regret to say that even my tart e-mail to the support desk, \u201cCan you give me any explanation why my outgoing mail should have been delayed by up to 24 hours?\u201d elicited no response whatsoever. Hey ho. I\u2019ll keep an eye on this week\u2019s delivery and, if it is tardy or slow, I will start to dispatch it via Gmail.<\/p>\n

Not much to relate this week you will be glad to hear. We\u2019re both back at work with a vengeance and haven\u2019t done much aside from the boring stuff that pays the mortgage and keeps the dog fed. It seems that everyone and their brother wants a new playchute for the new season \u2013 I can, from time to time, hear the plaintive plea from the factory floor upstairs whenever the phone rings, \u201cOh, no! Not another order!\u201d On the one hand, nice to know that your product is indispensable to Scout, Guiding and church groups all over the country; on the other hand, nice to know that you can moan about your success without the boss taking offence.<\/p>\n

I ran across the following somewhere during the week and it reminded me of how dangerous our cycling outings could be \u2013 we certainly have squirrels aplenty around our country lanes:<\/p>\n

HELSINSKI, Finland – An opera singer who was riding his bike was probably looking out for cars or other people on the street. He most likely wasn’t watching out for a nutty squirrel who jumped into his bicycle spokes and caused a bad accident. Esa Ruuttunen was on his way to a rehearsal of a new opera when the squirrel jumped into the spokes and caused Ruuttunen to suffer a concussion and a broken nose. He ended up in the hospital instead of at the opera house, and the squirrel did not survive. The new opera has its world premiere on September 15, and Ruuttunen is hopeful he will be well enough to participate as planned.<\/em><\/p>\n

Shame about the squirrel.<\/p>\n

\"\"I can\u2019t remember if I sent the attached before or not so, if so, apologies. It is, as you can see, a meeting held in the office of the Grand Bassa County Superintendent in Liberia and includes, on the left-hand side with the beige trousers, the Special Representative of the Secretary General one Jordan Ryan. It looks suspiciously to me as if he is sound asleep.<\/p>\n

One other little tidbit I picked up in the news this week:<\/p>\n

The Hard Drive celebrated its fiftieth birthday on 13 September. Fifty years ago IBM introduced the first magnetic hard drive \u2013 the Random Access Method of Accounting and Control (RAMAC) \u2013 which offered a whopping 5Mb of storage on a total of 50 disks measuring 24 inches in diameter.<\/em><\/p>\n

The price? A mere $50,000.<\/p>\n

Wow! I recently bought an external hard drive that is a mere 50,000 times bigger for just over $100 \u2013 how times have changed.<\/p>\n

And finally, Dad suggested that I should announce the answers along with the winner in the \u201cName the Butlers\u201d competition so here they are along with their relational descriptions (from left to right):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Liz (Jeremy’s wife, Jeremy (Penny’s younger brother), Jake (Jeremy & Liz’s youngest), Thi (Judy’s adopted daughter), Penny, Beryl, Nathaniel (Liz and Jeremy’s middle child), Hannah (Nathaniel’s girlfriend), Oz, Molly, Naomi (Liz and Jeremy’s eldest), Judy (Penny’s elder sister), Greg, Sugar and Adam.<\/p>\n

Love to you all,<\/p>\n

Greg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good morning on another tolerably passable day in beautiful downtown Byfield. A bit of grey sunshine this morning but pleasantly mild and looking like one of those days which could go either way \u2013 it could turn out pleasant and moderately sunny or it could rain. This being Britain, the likelihood is that it will … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “17 September 2006”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9w76b-2eD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8595"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8605,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595\/revisions\/8605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}