So, yes, the Christmas lunch went well, all very jolly, and afterwards we trailed back (some very much later than others) and prodded our keyboards in a desultary manner, making vague attempts to look as if we were working but fooling no-one.
Apart from that life continues to happen, even though at the moment I'm too tired to really notice it or to write about it.
I put my geek hat on a couple of nights ago and fitted a USB2 card and an external four-port USB hub to our smokin' hot Hungarian PC, which is starting to resemble a battered old Lada Riva fitted with spoilers, turbochargers and go-faster stripes. The card and hub work very well, thank you, except for one small irritation: I can't use my keyboard with them. It works fine when the PC's running, but when I reboot the machine hasn't found the card by the time it looks for the keyboard, and throws up the classic error message: “keyboard missing – press F1 to continue”. I'm currently awaiting delivery of an adaptor so that I can put a second USB hub into one of the CD drive trays on the front of the machine – it's designed to sit in a 3.5in floppy drive tray and I don't have any of those. When that's set up I'll be able to do things like plug a digital camera straight into the front of the machine to download pix instead of having to grope around the back.
Other stuff:
I came home last night to find an e-mail telling me I'd made it through to the final shortlist for the Parliamentary candidacy in Esher and Walton. I'd been hopeful about this as I'd thought the shortlisting interview (in front of a panel of five local activists and councillors) had gone reasonably well, but you can never be sure. So now I've made it through two of the three stages. The last one involves the whole constituency membership, with a hustings, speeches and questions. Should be fun, whether or not I'm selected at the end of it.
Have signed up with Friendster, largely at the urging of those fine folks at Heck's Kitchen. You should too – it's slow to load but quite fun. You'll find me in there under my real name. Don't know my real name? Look in my profile here for my e-mail address, or go to my site. Don't know what Friendster is? Read this. It looks ideal for the network of friends from Tangent21 or the Lipstick Girls, for example. (Sudden panicky thought – perhaps they're all already on there and just never told me…)