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Stitches Out

15 September 2009 by

I got my stitches out today. Left Arran on the 11:05, got to Ayr hospital for 14:15. My appointment was at 14:30 so my brother headed off and said he’d be back to get me after 16:00 (well, he said after 4, but I’ll stick with the 24-hour clock for the sake of consistency 🙂 )

The nurses fast-tracked me because I live on Arran and so I was back out on the pavement before my appointement time. Unbelievable. Of course my brother had gone so I got the bus into Ayr, thence to Prestwick. I took a look at the iPhone tariffs in the 02 shop (still to expensive: cheapest is £30 p/m or PAYG for whatever it is but it’s unworkable as the price of data goes up after the first 12 months to too much), got a box of choc toffee from Thorntons and then got the bus to Prestwick to see my folks. My dad was away to hospital himself so I didn’t get to see him.

I also visited Kustom PCs in Ayr to pick up a new video card. I had narrowed the non-working new computer down to the video card and was sure that a new one would be the answer. It wasn’t. It must be the RAM. I’m getting rather sick of this whole debacle. Trouble is I don’t have the means to test everything. One can’t have spares of everything laying around, can one?

I read a bit of the newspaper on the way over and it got me thinking once again about my lack of knowledge on British politics. I took a look in Waterstones when I was in Ayr and they did have one book that might have worked for me,

Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career Of British Democracy by David Marquand, but it was £25 and I wasn’t able to read any reviews. It’s the first time for a long time that I’ve went in to a book shop to browse with a particular topic in mind, and I realise that Amazon reviews (or whichever site I happen to be on, i.e. hardware sites, etc) are now an important part of my shopping experience and, without them, I feel too poorly informed by close the deal.So, after spending time trying to get the fucking computer working, I spent some time on Amazon, browsing politics books and listening to Muse’s new album. I didn’t even know Muse had a new album out, and I’ll tell you what, it’s really bloody good. Loads of recognisable snippets of classical music (why is I can never remember the whos and whats of classical music? Except Shostakovich of course, which Muse don’t touch, and Moonlight Sontata, which they do). I decided on Exploring British Politics, by Dr Mark Garnett. It’s completely up-to-date, has good reviews (at least the previous edition does; the new editions is likely too new). The Look-Inside feature on Amazon is also very useful, taking the book-shopping experience closer to the brick-and-mortar analogue, whilst also giving all the advantages of online shopping.

And now my torrent of Good to Great has finished downloading (as recommended on this week’s TWiT (this week’s This Week in Tech ;)) by good old Jason Calacanis) so I can stop wasting time waffling on my blog and get tae ma scratcher. Night all.

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