Years ago, I occasionally shopped at Rod Irving Electronics in A’Beckett Street. There was a shop assistant in there who looked like Darrin from Bewitched. The first, original Darrin, with the ears that stuck out. Apart from the ears, he had slicked back jet black hair, a dark suit and very shiny shoes. I don’t know if he was a bit strange or something, but I distinctly going in there one day and asking for something. He acknowledged my request, and appeared to ask a colleague to fetch it for him. I waited, and he carried on standing by the counter, waiting too. I looked around at something else as I waited.

After a minute or two, he came up to me again and asked me if I was being served. Weird. I said I thought he was already serving me, and when I got just a blank stare, I asked him again for whatever it was (something geeky and early 90s no doubt — maybe a copy of MS DOS 6 or something), and eventually procured it and fled. From that day, I avoided him when I went in there again, and the shop finally shut down in the late 90s, probably due to all the custom he lost for them.

This morning I got on the train to go to work. Only a very few seats left, and they were all in the awkward to get to spots in the corners, where you’d feel hemmed in by another person sitting next to you, so I decided to stand and read my newspaper. I aimed for a spot with relatively few people standing, and space to grab a handle and open the paper. Some guy in a longitudinal seat was resting back, his legs fully spread out across the train. As I went past I half stepped over his legs and half accidently-on-purpose bumped one with one foot. After all, if you’re one of the lucky half who have got a seat, at least you could do is make some space for the poor slobs like me who have to stand. Rude bastard.

I got to my spot and stood and read the paper, half-wishing someone would open a window, though the need was not desperate, so I didn’t ask anybody. After a couple of minutes I looked back at my laid back friend. Still laid back, feet almost across to the opposite seats.

The train rolled on. Read, travel, read, travel, read. A stop or two later I looked back again. Feet still there. In their shiny shoes. I glance across the carriage to the bloke attached to the feet. It was Darrin, looking not a day older, not in a suit but in trousers and a shirt. Shiny shoes, ears still sticking out, jet black hair still slicked back, and a bored expression.

As the train filled up, his shoes retreated. When we got to my stop, I got off the train and fled.

An update about my colleague who lost his laptop computer on Friday the 13th last month. A couple of weeks later he was playing with his kids in the front yard when a male youth walked past on the footpath. With a laptop under his arm. Colleague recognised the laptop, ran after him and rugby tackled him on the nature strip (or so the story goes. Maybe he just shouted out “Oi!”). Youth claimed he had bought it in the pub. Yup. A likely story. The laptop was recovered, and Colleague took it back into work and got the local geeks to look it over.

So they checked it on the asset register. And it didn’t match. Different serial numbers. Uh oh… had he beaten up the wrong kid and got the wrong laptop back? As it turns out there was something askew on the register, and it was eventually positively identified as being the correct laptop. Problem now is it’s no longer covered by the insurance (since they had been told it was stolen, and the replacement had arrived) so now it’s in laptop limbo.

The OFLC got back to me after I queried the G rating of Doctor Who: The Two Doctors, saying that: In the Board’s view, the material is suitable for general viewing as the incidences of violence are so theatrical and unrealistic in this low budget science-fiction context as to be minimal in their impact. Can’t say I agree with them when it comes to the stabbing scene, but there you go. Nice of them to reply, anyway, and not a hint of “go away, you crank”.

Geek joy: That moment when you realise that the tweaking you’ve done of the program has been successful, and though the code is a tad more confusing now (quite possibly in a way that nobody else will ever understand, no matter how well-documented it is), but all the effort was worth it because it takes about a hundredth of the time to run.

Had a company sponsored flu shot yesterday. Obviously they want to remove the most likely reason for taking a sickie this winter. Even us lowly contractors, normally shunned when it comes to corporate benefits, were included. The medicos took over a meeting room for a few hours to administer said shot to everybody who wanted it, thus allowing those of us sitting nearby to marvel at the liberalism of the corporation for allowing a safe injecting room on the premises. Best of all the flu shot showbag included mints, M&Ms, Ovalteenies, tissues (you’d think we’d be less in need of them now) and some Dilmah teabags (certainly a step up from the usual ones in the kitchen).