Raith Against The Machine

Start reading the Sherlock Holmes books from the Gutenberg Project. Just search for Conan Doyle, and then find "A Study In Scarlet", the first novel. I've been reading through them this week, and they're excellent. Watson keeps saying that he's ejaculated.

I'm not surprised we don't win any wars any more. If Facebook is anything to go by, today's soldiers spend more time posing for photos with the largest guns they can find, rather than actually shooting anybody.

Today's game being off is a real shiter for us. Kevin Smith is getting less and less game time to make an impact, and I fear that we won't get him back after Christmas if Craig Levein leaves United for Scotland, as looks likely. A new manager coming in isn't likely to start sending players back out on loan immediately, if at all.

Well, as you well know, the official site is frugal with its details, but Weiry is one of the few who I can find a definite date for. The information on the majority of the squad amounts to this, from May: "David McGurn, Craig Wilson, Laurie Ellis, Iain Davidson, Mark Ferry, Allan Walker and Graham Weir are all under contract for next season and Mark Campbell, Robert Sloan, Gary O’Connor and Stephen Simmons have also re-signed."

As far as I can tell, John McGlynn's contract runs out in mid-2010. Weir is signed until 2011. Cripes. Craig Wilson is signed up until 2011, too. Mark Campbell, Robert Sloan, Gary O’Connor and Stephen Simmons all signed new deals before the start of the season, and I imagine they were all 2 year deals, with the exception of Gary O. Maybe Sloan only got a year too, but I wouldn't think so.

He's limited, but he's good at what he does. Admittedly, what he does is rather crudely smash into people, but there isn't really anyone else who does that for us.

I'd keep Davidson. So will McGlynn.

I don't suppose anyone has any idea of the players whose contracts expire at the end of the season? My understanding of the situation is that players can be approached with a view to Pre-Contract Agreements once they're in the last 6 months of their contracts, which would be about now. I don't actually think there's anyone in our squad who has been excelled enough individually to warrant the attention of other teams at this stage (except perhaps Davie McGurn, although his circumstances mean there aren't realistically any teams he'd leave us for), but I'd be interested to know who's contracts are running down anyway.

Him who made Alien?

What's the book?

Well, that's Craig Levein away to Scotland, then. We're fucked.

What's actually wrong with David Murray's legs? Can he support his own weight, but not walk without assistance? I think he'd be ace at Judo, or at least a similar Martial Art. With those crutches he's like a simplistic version of Wolverine. Anyway... A couple of things that get on my nerves: The floating paragraphs at the start of Star Wars films. They're really annoying to read. I've never watched Star Wars before, and these things don't exactly endear me to them from the beginning. And when you start watching a TV show, and they show a really dramatic scene, then follow it with "4 hours ago..." or similar. I hate it. I hate knowing what's going to happen. It annoys me almost as much as "Next time, on..." Feck off! I'll see it next time! I don't want to see it now!

Today was the first day I've ever driven in the snow. Well, f**k me, that was difficult. I don't know if it was because it was a massive hail-storm immediately before a thick blanket of snow, and I was on roads that hadn't been driven on by anyone else yet, but the car was just not playing games at all. I was at a t-junction, turning right, and as I pulled out the car started to go the way I wanted it and then the back end just drifted off and the car slid into the kerb. Then I had to go down a hill towards a roundabout, again going right, and try to navigate it despite the slope. A double-decker bus stopped to watch my Bambi routine as the car slid this way and that as I battled with the wheel. I tried low revs, I tried high revs, I tried steering gently and (briefly) steering quite violently. The car was just doing whatever it wanted. I also kicked off a mudflap clearing the slush when I got back to the house

I thought it read like a children's book, with the bits about physics there partially to make you think otherwise, and partially so it wouldn't be classed as one.

I thought it was awful. I think the point of the whole thing must've just spectacularly flew past me. I thought that it seemed like it was rushed, there was very little development of any of the characters (except the robot), and the storyline just seemed to be a bit... lacking. Maybe if I read the rest of the books I'd appreciate it more, but the first one just doesn't standalone well, for me.

we built a wall WE BUILT THE PYRAMIDS

Just finished reading "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". It's shit.

Yeh, that book was actually brilliant. It properly explained all the flattening forces, and gave proper full comprehensive examples from real companies/countries. So when it came to picking five for that question it was easy, and I had good examples to hand.

I didn't mention overbooking, and struggled to really get market segmentation properly. My Yield bit was really poor, I spent ages trying to remember the diagram and then gave up, and just wrote a pretty basic answer that didn't even really have much of a structure. I think my Globalisation and JIT bits were good enough to make up for it though.

Ah, excellent. I really didn't fancy getting a bus in tomorrow. Cheers.

How did you lot find the exam then? I wrote a belter (I think) of an essay on Globalisation, fired out a detailed analysis on five of Friedman's flattening forces. The other essay I did was the Operations one, which was 80% Yield and 20% JIT. I did the Just in Time bit first, and then ended up just scribbling down everything I could remember about Yield in the last half hour. Combined with my marks from the project, I should have done enough to pass well-ish. Leisure Management tomorrow, though. *sigh*

I'm the same, but tomorrow. As much as I hate having to get up early for an exam at 9am, at least it still leaves you with the rest of the day. Do you, by any chance, know if the boys are on the front gate this week, or do they not knock off for Christmas until next week? They seem to be tightening up on the old parking restrictions, and "I'm going to Residential Services" no longer seems to cut it if you don't leave for 2 and a half hours.

Same to you. I've managed a 2A from the project, so it shouldn't take a massive amount of effort to pass. I've actually done more preparation for this than any other exam ever, purely because of the fact that I read the first half of the book that Friedman's Flattening Forces come from (The World Is Flat). It's actually pretty interesting, if you're a boring b*****d like me, and if I hadn't only found it yesterday I would've liked to have read the whole thing before this exam.

Because I'm in Stirling tonight Because I have an exam tomorrow Gah!

I live about 300 yards away from that "garage", and I've never even heard of it. From Googling, it seems it's an "engineering" place that I did know was there, but I'd steer clear, to be honest.