Day 721

Felt better today, nice and windy with showers and sun and big clouds, gales in prospect.

More computer experimentation. Went round to my parents' and made pastry for a quiche, was complimented by Mum. Put the list of suggested jobs into Excel, sorted the ratings, not much inspiration.

Day 720

Felt glum, but better when the sun came out.

Day 719

Watched Quantum Leap in the evening, a good one where he was a woman caught up in 60's liberation hassle.

Day 718

Ordered a scanner from the computer shop with my abstinence money. Also bought a non-Amstrad mouse, which works fine with Windows and GEM. It has improved using Windows 100%. Amazing difference.

Felt a bit odd as I always do after spending money, but there's still £100 left in the building society.

Rang the bloke who rang up on Thursday, he'd never heard of me and it turned out he'd rung the wrong number but coincidentally wanted to speak to someone called J. Laughs all round.

Day 717

More computing. Added to the D&D project, but is it worth it?

C. phoned, and was very irritating and judgemental over this bloody NVQ bloke. I don't even know that's who he is!

Day 716

Mum came round with a new 486 laptop she's been given for work, so I could do some experiments. Such power! Very good colour too. Rewrote my dictionary program on it in QBasic, with good effect.

In return went round and mowed their lawns and clipped the edges; very peaceful and pastoral. Then came back and defragmented my own hard disc, surprised to find it was 82% unfragmented anyway after 1½ years. Considered copying MS-DOS 6.0 onto it, but felt it would consume too much memory. Defrag works regardless of DOS version anyway, luckily.

Day 715

No Viz today: suppose it must be published on literally the last Thursday of every other month.

The weeks seem to be going very fast at the moment.

Did not ring up that Foster bloke - as I said in September, if he can't be bothered to turn up to interviews I'm not interested.

Day 714

Watched half of Star Trek which I videoed yesterday. Mum phoned and said someone called Rob Foster had been trying to get in touch. I don't know anyone by that name. Could be be the NVQ failed appointment bloke from back in September? Almost exactly 6 months ago after all, it could be the basis they work on.

Possible new Viz tomorrow.

Day 713

I investigated speech therapy in the library, but found it was all in the sort of areas I should avoid. Pity. Is there anything similar, I wonder?

Day 712

Got to the envelope-sealing stage of applying for a job at County Hall, then noticed it was too late for the closing date. Irritating. Heard news about another speech therapy course, apparently it's ideal for linguistics graduates. Will check in the library tomorrow.

In the afternoon experimented with First Publisher.

Day 711

Chopped through the Expert Part 8 typing, only the tips to do now. Basic book completely done.

Day 710

I feel a lot better since Dr M's words on Friday, they have removed my self-perception as someone with a problem.

Day 709

Got a Pascal book from the library.

Day 708

To the doctor's. He said I looked marvellous compared to when I last saw him - as soon as I walked in he spotted I've lost weight (about a stone). So he was convinced I'd actually done the Great Temperance. I thanked him for his tough talking in June last year.

Watched Red Dwarf, more time paradoxes. So Lister did end up marrying Kochanski.

Day 707

Very cold today. More shareware experimentation: wrote a TSRBasic prog to duplicate the graph function of my programmable calculator. The very first Minder was on in the evening - made me feel as old as the hills.

Day 706

My shareware arrived in the morning, spent a pleasant day experimenting with it. Used the column-formatter I wrote last Friday to print out one of the manuals. Worked perfectly. I got a voucher with the discs too, I can have 5 discs for the price of 4 if I order within 6 months.

Watched Frank Bruno knock someone out in 1 round - not a very impressive fight.

Day 705

Very funny letter from M this morning with scanned and altered photos of me and S. I laughed out loud. M never writes letters, she should do so more often if they're like this. 'Every time something good happens J is careful to make a note.'

Day 704

Went round to mum's and asked her to let me use her credit card to order some shareware. £25 - paid her £5 with two instalments to come.

Day 703

Went round to my parents' and vacuumed the house for a Mother's Day present. Read Dragon. Wondered if writing a piece on the Metagame, about game mechanisms in general, would get me anywhere. Keep my brain in gear I suppose.

Day 702

Went into town. Got Dragon. In the afternoon listened to ultimately depressing R4 play My Girl.

Day 701

Spent a pleasant day writing a prog to print 2 75-character columns at 20cpi on one sheet, with complete success: plus a longest-line finder to see which files would work with it. A good day's work.

Watched Red Dwarf in the evening.

Day 700

Started trying to think up ways to make Write print in columns (by putting each sheet through twice and setting a huge left margin the second time). Used this to test print some of the Warhammer rules. With the proper 24-pin driver Write is extremely good.

Watched Minder. Allegedly the last ever, but pretty good. Also Ben Elton.

Day 699

Cashed my giro, went into town. The woman in the building society asked if I was on my way to work. I said I was on my way to look for it. Had a look at scanners, but prices were high and my own computer is just compatible enough to probably run the OCR stuff very very slowly. So I abandoned that idea.

More Cyclopædia throughout the day, finished the Prime Plane Companion monsters.

They've found a 9th body at that house in Gloucester. Looks like that bloke's got some questions to answer. A mortar attack on Heathrow airport too, would you believe it.

Watched the Rock and Roll Years 1982, good stuff. Also that crime prog about bent police in the sixties.

Day 698

More Cyclopædia, finished the Expert monsters. Thought about spending £80 of the abstinence money on getting a scanner: I should be able to get an XT one but I don't know how good the OCR software is. It would eliminate photocopying though, and all that copying out bits from library books (nice little medieval activity poverty necessitates).

'Final' letter from Kays offering me 25% off £75 worth of stuff: couldn't really find anything I wanted.

Day 697

Walked into town to sign on. New Dragon not out yet. Walked back.

Day 696

Got up and got straight into Cyclopædia typing. I hope I don't lose interest before the end as I've put a lot of effort into it. Might even be good practice, editing and selection etc, don't quite know how I could put it on my CV though.

Sorting stuff out in the evening came across something witty I wrote on Sep. 1 1989, about the lethargy that had struck me that spring. I didn't know the cause then and I don't know it now. What puzzles me is how since then I've wandered off into a no man's land, a terra nullius where none of the guiding principles seem to avail. I wish I knew what the cause was, as I could warn others and avoid it myself in future.

Day 695

Up at 11.10 am after sweating gallons in the night. Felt better, no more aches. Reckon I've sweated out most of the infection. Didn't feel quite well enough to go into town though.

More Cyclopædia, finished the Basic monsters. Started on the Expert ones. The end of the task is visible.

Finished updating my favourite song quotes: 89K. It took 23 pages in 6pt. Courier, 1.9M of bitmaps. So the Cyclopædia, at 400K already, is going to be a considerable printing session.

Pleased with the proper Epson 24-pin driver, no more page-length problems. Constructive day.

Day 694

Did more Cyclopædia, typing at 6.40 am! In the evening watched Red Dwarf. I reckon me and Rimmer have got a lot in common, then again organisation-wise I'm more like Lister. I liked Rimmer getting stuck in pessimistic imaginings, I found that familiar.

Day 693

Lots more Cyclopædia, making fast progress on the monsters thanks to a couple of macros.

Day 692

Talked to C about jobs. Watched a prog about the Kray twins, pretty vicious. Got a nasty sore throat. Ipswich got knocked out of the cup. At least we got to the 5th round this time.

Day 691

First day of Spring. More Cyclopædia: sorted out the columns, finished Part 5. Part 6 (Monsters) will be the real heavy bit, after which I'll've broken the back of it.

Backed up my new copy of Windows (12 discs!) Watched Quantum Leap (gripping stuff). Pris later.