For several weeks now, Outlook has persisted in reminded me about reminders I have already dismissed and I kept dismissing them only to be reminded again. I finally got annoyed enough to do something about it.

Close Outlook
Start/Run
Type “outlook /cleanreminders” (without the quotes)

This doesn’t always cure it but it sure helped me.

I realised the other day, as I professed ignorance to the whereabouts of Edmonton, that there is seldom an excuse for ignorance these days, if you have any kind of Internet connection. A few moments with the web browser of my choice and not only would I know where it was but I could also learn about its history, town flower, principle attractions, grazing rights and almost anything else I could care to learn. Including a reasonable journey plan should I wish to see for myself. My ignorance was my own fault and the fact I did nothing to remedy this leaves me vaguely guilty.

My forebears would have swooned at the information available for the mere effort of searching. It’s not even as if you have to actually perform the search yourself- typing a few choice words in a box does not involve effort - it’s all done with computers these days you know.

I often feel, at work, that I’m mocked slightly for my keenness to get to the bottom of a problem, to find out what the cause is and squish it once and for all. I flex my google-fu at the slightest provocation in order to find out what exactly an annoying error message means; instead of telling the user to close the application and open it again.

There is just no excuse for being ignorant of things these days. Not that you have to remember everything - I outsource most of my memory to Google these days. I’m always reminded of the wonderful Feynman anecdote ‘map of the cat’ where he is incredulous that biology students bother to memorise the internal structure of a cat when it can be looked up in moments. I totally understand that sentiment, and generally feel it’s more important to get the gist of something rather than remember every little detail (unless you’re the surgeon performing an operation on my person, I suppose!). What I mean is, understanding is more important than being able to parrot back facts and figures. If you can’t tell me *why* something is true, I won’t be impressed when you say it is.

I will be forced to go find out where Edmonton is, it’s like a nagging toothache.

On a completely separate, but bitterly related, note, I give you How Email Works - a child’s view of the internets. Well, my inner child’s view, anyway.

Hello, it’s been quite a while, sorry. Various things have happened, some things haven’t happened, and much continues the same. There, that’s an update.

Oh okay, where to start..

We went to the isle of Mull again and had a wonderfully relaxing, chicken-filled holiday. There are various pictures available on my Flickr. Not so many of the chickens, but I video’d them mostly and haven’t processed the videos yet. One is 550MB. Ahem. Hey, I like chickens. Especially the ones that roost in trees…

We did go and see a house while we were there, and formed plans of purchase, but these have come to nothing as the lady has realised that it’s a jolly nice house and is going to stay in it. Oh well.

I managed to pour orange juice into my trusty dell laptop. There was a fruity electrical-burning smell and a sad fizzling noise. A day of being open to the elements seems to have sorted it all out though, as it is back to life. However, I trusted Phil’s adamant opinion that the thing was toast, and ordered a shiny new bottom-of-the-range MacBook (didn’t want to remortgage the house to afford a nice one!). Am totally in love. To be fair, I could have cancelled the order, and could have sent it back, but you will have to claw this MacBook out of my cold dead fists as it’s BEAUTIFUL. MINE.

I’ve taken the advice of Merlin83b and MattT and purchased a copy of Delicious Library, whereupon the husband and I have spent an hour or so gigglingly scanning in barcodes of various items (including a jar of Branston Pickle, which it declined to recognise). Amusement was heightened when scanning in various Harry Potter DVDs and a spooky voice hissed ‘VOLDEMORT’ at us. Very funny, you strange people.