That little fellow there proved to be a lot stronger that I had expected. Yes, the woman on the market stall said it was a habanero pepper, and I should have just gone, "Habanero, yes, I know about them . . . so maybe just one or two in the chilli." But it didn't really seem that strong with two in, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to add an extra one . . . but it did. Tania and M**** couldn't eat the chilli, as it was just way too strong for them. In the end, I had to order a pizza for them both. Shame, really, as the chilli was gorgeous . . . based, as it was, slightly on this recipe, although I didn't bother with all that capsicum and casserole dish crazy-ness. Oh, and I didn't bother with any of the other chilli peppers mentioned in the recipe . . . and the chilli powder . . . well, some of that was used in the oil to fry the onions but, otherwise, no. P'raps a teaspoon of chilli powder and three habanero peppers, and whilst I could manage a stronger chilli, I think I had made something pretty lethal (for the average person). So there you go. I need some breakfast.

Added some more dull tables (graphs still proving problematic) to the statistics page, which seems to show that the hours between 12:00 and 15:00 are the most popular for visiting my web-site. Great. Oh, and that dullest of days, Tuesday, seems also to feature highly there. Okay.

From the BBC web-site today - Linux steps into the limelight

Feeling knackered now . . . 20:17 . . . been waking up too early these last few days. It didn't help that on Sunday morning, 10 o'clock in the morning, M****'s neighbours, two doors up from her house where playing some god awful music so loud that it could be heard . . . well, two houses away, you know? I gave them evil looks as I passed them this morning, getting into their car. How popular must they be, being able and willing to have their music heard at unsociable hours by not just their immediate neighbours (and being back-to-back houses, that would be three), but also . . . p'raps seven houses in all, maybe even nine. Crazy . . .

So, erm . . . nothing much happened today . . . posted Jake's birthday present on the way to work, struggling with my bicycle lock (D-lock), which has gone really stiff lately . . . dunno why. The rain might have got into it. Is it still rain when it lands? Met M**** for lunch. Initially thought we would go to Pret-a-Manger (the one on Infirmary Street), but that was crowded . . . we passed Subway on the way there, but ignored it . . . tried O'Brians, but had a massive queue, but that queue was nothing compared to the other Pret (opposite Boots), so . . . back to Subway, for a 6 inch turkey salad roll . . . turkey, red onion, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and some jalapenos (NO CHEESE!). . . all in a 'honey wheat' roll, I think it was. Two pounds and nine pence. 13:20-ish. And a packet of Walkers Salt and Vinegar crisps . . . note the new packaging. I think I should go now.

And booking a holiday to Tenerife for late February . . . that happens, or at least the gathering of prices and dates and all that stuff. Never been there before. My holidays so far have either been to Australia or France. It's either the very near or the very far. And last night I had a dream whereby I was telling my mum all about this very vivid dream about some guy chucking double decker buses at 10-storey buildings (maybe just one building). I realised too late that I was still dreaming. Meta-dream. A dream about a dream. The detail was incredible, though. Watching the bus hit this building, and the chaos that ensued. I almost had to move to avoid being hit by falling metal/glass/masonry, but I think I was, erm . . . kind of marvelling at the elegance of it all . . . everything seemed slowed down . . . oh, okay, time's up.

Erm . . . I'm actually doing this from M****'s house. Seems to be working though. Today I had this odd e-mail from someone from 'The Insight', asking me if I wanted my web-site listed in their directory . . . something to do with a mention of 'unitarian universalism' I made a week or two ago . . . whenever. So, I followed the links to their web-site, entered my details and, as requested, here is that link. Anyway, time to watch 'Twin Peaks', episode 3.

How strange. How weird that if you do a search on ask.co.uk for 'Central Heating Chat Room' and select for 'UK web results', then you get my page listed about half way down on the second page of results. Okay, maybe not that weird, seeing as how somewhere I will have mentioned 'central' and 'heating' perhaps in the same context. And, yes, in the right-hand side pane over there it does say 'Chat room'. But . . . erm . . . a central heating chat room? Does such a thing exist? Hmmm . . . thinks, rubbing hands together maniacally. I know of all this because, reading through my web-server's log file (hey, I've nearly finished it now, but every time I think I'm near the end, more stuff appears . . . a story that never ends), I noticed that someone had recently entered my web-site (actually at 09:31 this morning . . . I think that's GMT) with the HTTP_REFERER set to, erm . . . you know, the results page from the search on ask.co.uk. How exciting, I must be thinking.

So, erm . . . perhaps if someone does a search for 'foetal handglide chat room', they just might end up here . . .

Or, perhaps leaving the whole chat room theme, how about 'Lollypop coffin seagull'. Not many pages with those words together.

But, no, that's not why I'm here. Very busy right now trying to organise myself around these two Open University courses that I've enrolled on and that have now begun (or very nearly). First assignments due in on 25th February for both courses, MST121 ('Using Mathematics') and M262 ('Building Blocks of Software'). I've already missed the cut-off date (mid-January) for two preparatory exercises for MST121 (fortunately non-compulsory) so now I'm . . . not quite panicking, but there's a sense of, erm . . . well, I've been highlighting and scribbling on my calendar, hopefully in a way that I'll still be finding meaningful in the months to come. So, erm . . . getting organised, looking at what the first assignments entail, installing software, all that kinda stuff . . . perhaps I should carry on with this . . . erm . . .

Nope . . . no updates.

Valentine'sDay!

Ah well . . . whatever. Not sure what's going on here. Well, obviously I know who I am, where I am, that kind of stuff . . . but I'm not talking about that. Can't get my e-mail. You know? Something seems to be wrong with Pipex, because in many respects . . . oh, you know . . . I have internet access, but that's all . . . mail server's gone down, news server's gone down, FTP server's gone down . . . but it doesn't seem to say anything on their web-site. Hmmmmm. Not good.

So, what else? Well, I've ordered my Canon Ixus II . . . erm . . . I would put a picture in, only I can't FTP anything over to Pipex, so . . . well, never mind. And some memory, bought some memory. 128MB of SD memory, whatever that is. It all came to about . . . well, £185 for the camera and a bit over £30 for the memory. And what else? Well, with the help of Liz, Dom and M****, my curriculum vitae has been completely revamped and is now fit for job applications. Once again, I'm a bit stuck here, as Dom e-mailed his editted version to my mailbox but, of course . . . I can't get to it now. Which is kind of odd, because I was able to log on to their web-based mail server last night, but not now. I don't know what's going on . . .

Sorry, Pipex, I take it all back . . . it was my router.

Right, this will have to be quick. Going on holiday on Friday. Boiler stops working this morning. Got trapped (albeit temporariliy) in some toilets at work. Very painful ear-ache develops (remedied by painkillers). Appointment made for tomorrow morning. One university assignment has been e-mailed to the tutor. The other must be printed (have I enough paper? Will pastel coloured paper do?) and posted. See Guide to Preparation for instructions on how to fill in the PT3 form. Digital camera arrived on Tuesday, as I think did some more OU stuff . . . but I wasn't in. Take parcel delivery note to work. Read . . . 'left behind gate' . . . gate?! Oh, lower security gate . . . I see. Ethan's birthday on Friday. Presents bought. Need wrapping, posting. Hilary's birthday on 28th. Ditto. Where's me E111? Do I need one? Passport? More gin? Oh, there's my passport. Do I upgrade to kernel 2.6.2? Why won't Linux recognise my Canon Ixus II despite latest drivers, blah, blah, blah . . . is this a USB thing? Wonder about the choice of music at this moment in time . . . 'Freebird' by Lynryd Skynyrd . . . what kind of words are those? Considering ripping door off for said toilet cubicle . . . put my fingers round the bottom of the door, my heart racing, feeling claustrophobic, pulling and bending the door (wooden). Have second thoughts . . . release door. Lock releases. Damnit, I was kinda looking forward to ripping that apart . . . erm . . . oh, yes . . . better fill that PT3 in.

Ha ha ha ha, just noticed I'm listed at 'The Insight'! Fantastic! Perhaps there is some kind of, erm . . . therapeutic effect here, just by virtue of the dull content . . . that should calm you down. NO! Stick with kernel 2.4.1, you freak.

Hello? Yes. Got back from Tenerife at about . . . erm . . . three in the morning? Something like that. When we added in baggage retrieval, waiting for a taxi in the freezing cold (although I don't know if I would have waited less had it been warm) and the journey from Leeds/Bradford Airport back to M****'s, this ends being more like 5am or thereabouts. So, I wake up about eight hours later, grab my bags and the items from M****'s bag that wouldn't fit into my case (or that would, but that it was easier not to), and then head back to my place. So, whilst I have started unpacking my bags and I've even managed to get someone round to 'fix' the boiler, but this was another embarrassing incident . . . The boiler engineer comes round, we wander around the house together, trying to work out how the electricity gets into the thing, as this seems the obvious problem, the lack of electricity and, erm . . . yeah. What happened? Oh, yes, I remember. So this guy's going, "These are some steep stairs," as he's having to go to the first floor to see that boiler, then the ground floor, hoping to find some obvious exit points for the mains cable and then down to the cellar where all the mains cables end, but . . . Well, I leave him alone after he says, "I'll have to take up the floorboards," but then a couple of minutes later, he calls me from downstairs and here's the problem . . . there's a switch, see, running along the skirting board, right next to a mains socket there, and this had been flipped, thereby turning the power off to the boiler. He flicked the switch and the boiler started working again. Oooops. And I'm left paying someone £20 to flick a mains switch. Hmmmmm. So to finish that sentence above . . . I've been completely distracted by my computer, having decided now is a good time to upgrade to kernel 2.6.3. I think it's time for a reboot now.