Day 1239

Last day of summer. Examined the list of books I've been reading in the evenings, some of them over 10 times in the last 4 years.

T got an e-mail message through in the evening and we exchanged messages all afternoon. Sent a Feedback enquiry to Compuserve about the 'Postage due $0.10' that appears on external incoming e-mail.

Had a good read of the Almanac on Microsoft Bookshelf - fascinating, Captain.

Day 1238

Into town with my cashed Giro. Put £25 in the building society, checked the balance at the bank. Wanted to treat myself to a book or something to christen my debit card but couldn't find anywhere that took Visa or Delta.

Heard on John Inverdale on R5 that their fax machine was 'little used' so sent them a fax to welcome him back to the prog. Got thanked on air while I was cooking tea ½ hour later.

Very cold and grey today, practically dark by 8pm. This and other things reminded me strongly of other peaceful times with something to look forward to. I really hope this course goes well. Where was it I read that the lucky man is the one who knows how much to leave to chance?

Day 1237

Found it a bit hard to motivate myself to do anything after the excitement of the weekend. Carried on typing up my Latin notes.

Day 1236

T was pleased I liked After Hours so much: I told her about the Tom & Jerry ep it inversely reminded me of. They gave me a lift to Stratford: I said they should drive me to Mugsborough and let me fall out back outside the DHSS.

Surprisingly the Bank Holiday trains were half-hourly and I was back at Mugsborough station by 3.40. Walked home.

Tested the WWW prog cursorily. T's getting an e-mail address at work, so we can communicate cheaply.

What a wild weekend! And I didn't have to sign on today.

Day 1235

Went out to see Carry On Up The Khyber. Captain Peacock out of Are You Being Served was there. The film was extremely good on the big screen and the audience reaction was a true pleasure, especially during the 'dinner party under fire' scene.

On the way back T got into an altercation with some Church of Islam-type blacksters and she went on and on and on about it on the Tube train.

Later we watched a film called After Hours on telly. It was brilliant. 'Probably get blamed for that.'

Day 1234

The Compuserve Worldwide Web disc arrived, set it aside for when I got back from T's.

Had a good train journey (no more coaches for me) to Stratford.

Day 1233

Went into town, got some cash out from the building society., went into the bank and got them to send me statements monthly instead of yearly.

Day 1232

The thermocouple I ordered yesterday arrived - excellent speed. Got my visual Lunar Lander working, by substituting SendMessage(WM_PAINT) with ::RedrawWindow(). Quite an achievement.

T rang up in the morning to suggest we go and see Carry On Up The Khyber on Sunday, as part of the Barbican C.O. season. Only £4; it is my fave C.O. and I'd love to see it on the big screen.

Day 1231

Was absurdly pleased first thing by the arrival of a TSB 'Bankcard' for me: debit card for Visa & Delta and £100 cheque guarantee card. This puts me back in credit (in that sense) for the first time in nearly 4 years. Went into town and checked my balance (over the counter because not PIN yet). Still £14.99 over what it should be.

Used the card in the afternoon to order a new thermocouple for my multimeter over the modem from Maplin. Phoned up Compuserve to ask for their free Internet access discs. They've changed their prices: instead of paying 3p/min for extended services, you get 5 hours' free access to everything for your £6.50, after which everything costs you. Since I've only been on for 5½ hours in nearly 2 months, that suits me fine.

Cooked egg and chips for tea, watched Star Trek: TNG 'Rascals', very funny, as good as the Mintaka ep.

Day 1230

Studied Visual C++ again - it's a struggle. Did more scans; beginning to appreciate the capabilities of that Corel PhotoPaint.

In the afternoon, for some reason looked through my diary for 1989, making some interesting new conclusions. I didn't go on the slide in early October when J chucked me, but much later, about the beginning of November. 'Those who do not understand the past are condemned to relive it'.

S rang up about noon and sent me a 3-page fax about UFOs. In the evening clocked Mir again, twice; had a good look at Hercules and Corona Borealis which I'm trying to learn as summer constellations.

Day 1229

A good day. Went to the bank to try and resolve the cheque card request. I immediately saw a woman who stated she could make a check on what I could be offered. Two minutes of small talk later the details came up on the terminal: I could be offered a personal loan, a cheque card, Visa or Access! Their credit-checking must be crap, even though I was listed as 'not working'. Then again, I have had the account over nine years and never been overdrawn, even if it did have 6p in it from 1987-1994. I was very pleased, especially when she told me I could use the card for cash at Midland machines, which should be OK for the Effolk campus.
I thanked her and left, annoyed by the thought that (presumably) any time over the last year (at least) I could have walked into the bank and asked for any of those things.

Came back, experimented with Corel Mosaic. D rang up to say he'd had a bailiff's letter saying he'd 'been officially declared a cunt' and must pay up or have his stuff seized.

Did some trial 256-greyscale scans in the evening, found 100dpi about the best the paper resolution of a glossy like Good Housekeeping was up to: also found the files excessively big.

Went round to M's watched the space station Mir (='peace') pass overhead. Damp smell outside, rain forecast for the holiday weekend.

Got a lot done today eh?

Day 1228

After tea M came round to borrow my serial cable. Made her wait while I taped Country House off the Top 40. She pointed out I didn't need to wait for her to turn up at my house before thinking of going round to hers. It's an interesting friendship I have with M: starting in 1987. She's been an invaluable friend - look how things dropped off in September 1993 when she went to Newcastle.

Day 1227

Seven years since I got my A-level results.

Made big strides with my Visual Lunar Lander prog, but then ran into trouble with WM_PAINT and TextOut. Had a look round Compuserve.

Quite a constructive day really. always feel better when I get to 10pm and can think I haven't simply whiled away the time up to then.

Day 1226

Went round to M's in the evening. E's got an impressive collection of Dr Who books - I might get my own by no means slight collection out of the loft at my parents'.

I caused M to laugh by mentioning I thought the party in February was pretty good: 'Hester said it was shit' she said. 'Hester's used to better nights out than I am,' I explained.

Day 1225

Got a letter from T in the morning - as I suspected, the trip is off (I'd've liked to be told earlier).

Day 1224

Dreamt that my brother had invited Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness round, and G.A. reacted badly to a facetious remark of mine; then I heard them all talking about me behind my back. It was terrible.

New green carpet laid in the afternoon. With the yellow walls it's quite a transformation.

Fish & chips for tea owing to general disorganisation; forgot to watch Star Trek TNG.

In a way this decorating has been helpfully symbolic of the transformation I hope to achieve from being unemployed to being a top computer studies student. I know the concept is so strange as hardly to be believable, but seven years ago (the A-level results come out tomorrow, so it must be the weekday equivalent of when I got my results on Aug. 19 1988) I didn't know what to expect either at Lowlands.

I've also thought of why I'm so afraid of being contradicted by tragic irony whenever I start feeling happy: just before the end of ABC last year I made some ill-fated remark to W about having settled in enough to feel OK about joining in their [standard-issue office] innuendo. It must have been the last thing I said there (apart from 'No') because I got sacked about 2 minutes later, if that. What an experience eh, and enough to make anyone feel in fear of sudden unpleasantness. Now I can view it with a certain degree of equanimity, but it wasn't pleasant.

Wonder where T is btw - she never replied to my fax last Monday and I haven't heard from her for ages. Ah well.

Day 1223

I'm writing this camped out in the lounge surrounded by my possessions after a day's very hard work. I spilt paint everywhere in the bedroom. I had to shift everything, lock, stock and barrel, out of the room to prepare for the replacement carpet. It took 6 hours. I never realised I had so much stuff. I filled 10 carrier bags just with oddments. I did however find an envelope labelled 'The second weekend fund' with a fiver in it, so something good came out of it.

Day 1222

Went and signed on. Two more to go, and four weeks till the next one because of the Bank Holiday. Got a Modula-2 book from the library and a new Visual C++ book. Came back and worked on a visual Lunar Lander to keep my hand in.

In the evening watched a very poor pilot episode of David Croft's latest effort, Oh Dr Beeching. It really was crap. Croft & Perry had their last decent prog with Hi-de-hi, and that was crap after Simon Cadell left.

Day 1221

More Pascal. Drew up a massive chart to structure my use of time over the next 54 days. Felt buoyed up by the Effolk stuff that came on Friday; I think I've realised that the time of having very little to look forward to is over.

Day 1220

Did some ANSI C, listened to a fairly good version of the triffic The Third-Rate Genie kids' book by Robert Leeson on R4. Got my hard disc working! I looked through a lot of stuff on Compuserve for inspiration. Rather worrying inconsistencies in their charges which I must investigate, btw.

Started writing an abstraction for file lists in Quick C, and also tried out the abstraction concept in Pascal (it worked).

Drew up a new chart for the wait. Now I can definitely claim income support till Thu.Oct.5th. Because on the Friday I won't be actively seeking work and there's fuck all the DHSS can do about it. Better not write anything on the UB40 when I send it back, anything funny I mean, as employment may not be instant in 1996.

I know I'm going to Effolk primarily to improve my prospects but I hope something social comes out of it. I'd better not resent having to be off campus by 10.15pm at the very latest.

That reminds me, I've got to try and persuade the bank to give me a cheque guarantee card. I doubt if either the TSB or the building society'll have a cash machine on campus.

Day 1219

A load of stuff from Effolk arrived; I've got to register at 9 am on October 6th, then there's 6 hours' hanging about till the postgraduate meeting at 4 pm and the 'party' at 5pm. I could take a library tour or something to while away the time (mindful of previous frustrations I intend to make a thorough tour of the place). Also it adds 2 days to the wait, so back to 56 days (8 weeks).

Did a few computer experiments. Went round to my parents' and cooked a quiche for a dinner party they're having tomorrow.

Day 1218

Good progress with Visual C++ - nearly worked out how to have a program just display a message box, then terminate.
Carried on with the ANSI C examples, out of a sense of duty more than much else - this linked list stuff is less than interesting. It is a good book though in the way it develops C++ concepts in C. Though I ought to remember what that bloke at Effolk said about C - I ought to brush up on my Pascal and Modula-2. Wish I could get the hard disc on my own computer working again.

Day 1217

The replacement PsiWin discs came this morning, less than 48 hours after I'd returned the other ones. Not bad at all! Installed it, found it pretty good.

Typed in some ANSI C examples to sort out this linked list stuff. Can't quite sort out the Psion horizon-to-equatorial prog.

Ought to mention I got George Orwell's essays out of the library: very interesting and a good antidote to worry.

Day 1216

Did some C++ experiments. Looked at the samples (I want to find the most minimal Windows app possible and work up from there). Wrote a Psion prog to convert horizon to equatorial co-ords, so I can identify what I'm looking at in the sky.

Day 1215

Sent back the defective Psion discs. Phoned the bank to find that the Greenpeace collection cheque had gone through. That was odd as I was convinced I hadn't sent it. So where has the extra £14.99 in my account come from?

Sent a fax to T to see if she's sorted out the holiday idea yet.

More ANSI C work, got bogged down in the evening in linked lists (I need to type in the case studies). Perhaps a revision of the Visual C++ might make a nice change

Day 1214

More ANSI C, good progress - and all the 'package' stuff is good C++ object practice.

Day 1213

Dreamt I was wearing naval full-dress uniform and had to cross a choppy channel by a rope-walk. Someone told me it was either that or the subway, and I didn't want to take the latter for fear of violence. I clung on by my fingertips till the stone broke away and I knew I'd have to make the crossing.

Did the exercises to Ch. 15 of the ANSI C - been at that over two months now, done pretty well I reckon. Under two months till Effolk, btw - 60 days.

Went to Sainsburys to restock essential supplies, came back via the fish and chip shop. Spotted the girl behind the counter trying to read my 'Canolbarth America' t-shirt.

Day 1212

Went into town, found £14.99 more in the bank than I expected, couldn't work it out.

More ANSI C. For one of the exercises, adapted the OPL merge-two-sorted-files prog I did two months ago (is it really that long?) for the Computer Science book.

Watched Punt & Dennis - good in parts.

Day 1211

More ANSI C. Very little of note happened today, really. This summer's rather reminiscent of 1988, waiting to go to uni. Wish I could engage a bit more with the Effolk idea, though I suppose all that unemployment takes time to wear off. I had no idea what to expect at Lowlands either.

But I do know I'm being offered a massive second chance, an opportunity to end stagnation and start again. It'll call for application too, but no more than I can cope with. (As the ANSI C and Visual C++ work proves).

Day 1210

Cashed my giro, rode into town to the library. More ANSI C, some progress.

Watched Star Trek: TNG Relics, with Scotty - very good with a 'hologram' recreation of the bridge of the proper Enterprise.

Thought the computer had fucked up in the evening as it was refusing to boot; I checked the CMOS setup and found it'd forgotten the hard disc details. Bit of a scare there.

Day 1209

More ANSI C; some knotty problems with C modular compilation imitating C++ objects, solved them so far.