Hmm, 46 keys makes for tiresome diary writing. I'm getting lazy and less intrepid in my old age. Do you remember that million quid you spent attempting to persuade users to download stuff over mobile phone dialup, ambrosen? And now you've got full QWERTY, faster internet access and everything you'd want from a pocket device yet you think it's a chore to write on. Where is my flying car? Or even the internet access on the big fast machine in front of me (it's got everything barred, for patient privacy reasons. That said, it's got medical journals, so at least there's some research I can be doing into my own health)?

Convoluted sentences apart, what else can I talk about?

All's pretty damn OKish for me at the moment.

Was out Christmas shopping and impulse bought a PVR for the brother I'm living with, but once I'd paid for it (it was at Argos, who don't show you the goods until you've paid, Soviet style, and £60 for an 80GB recorder with DVD), it turned out to have a digital tuner, which is no good where we live. I pointed it out to the person selling it to me, who gave me the catalogue, where I persuaded her that the catalogue said analogue (actually, it merely said not digital), then she attempted to persuade me that digital was a superset of analogue, and then called the floor manager over to persuade me that digital is a superset of analogue, who called an 'expert' colleague over just as he was leaving, to persuade me of same, and another bloke behind the counter came over to join in. So there were four of them, gradually talking themselves into believing with certainty that this machine could decode analogue signals, and digital was a special bonus feature added, whereas I know that analogue uses an FM carrier and needs an ADC to be digitised and MPEG compression chips to put on disk, etc, whereas digital's transmitted on a QAM carrier and needs only resampling and recompressing to store on HD, but I held my counsel, because noone likes a smartarse and it's easy enough to take it back when I've proven it doesn't work. Anway, they all felt clever and pleased with themselves for successfully resolving a problem, and I dumped the machine on my parents, who should be most pleased with it, so all in all it's no problem.

I noticed in our new user's diary that he mentioned a colleague who couldn't use Ctrl+Alt+Del to get to the task manager. I find Ctrl+Shift+Esc to be the better option, as it brings it straight up. Other not well enough known shortcuts: Windows + E, Windows + D and Windows + L.

Called a friend yesterday. She's just broken off an engagement, and doesn't seem too bothered about it, so all I could think of was how annoyed I was at the reduction in numbers of 'safe' friends to bitch and moan to without worrying about them getting too attached to you. Especially those who have brains and emotional articulacy. But it's still shite for her. Seemed like a match made in heaven: her with huge breasts, him with a brand new BMWAlpina. Anyway, that's flippant, because they're both real people, and nice.

Citrix, as promised, is merely that someone's managed to set the default printer on people's Citrix desktops to MS Document Image Writer. Which would be fine, except one of the proprietary apps normally prints from buttons with no dialog box, and it's one helpdesk has no access to, so we're having to attempt to talk people through things we don't know. Anyway... I'll get VNC access in the new year. Should make things easier.

Lots of driving this weekend. Up to Holyhead to get the ferry to Dublin, then coming back New Year's Day. Should be OK.

Applied for lots of jobs today. Hope some come through. Also saw a doctorate position that's interesting. Procrastinating over writing the enquiry email. Needs done by 1st Jan.

Enough rambling. Enjoy.