Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[Dingdell]

Hilarious weekend at DTD IIRC - a blonde get together?  I got back to my hotel in daylight, didn't sleep and went back for another day of poker fuelled by redbull. Very funny.

[tikay]

Hilarious weekend at DTD IIRC - a blonde get together?  I got back to my hotel in daylight, didn't sleep and went back for another day of poker fuelled by redbull. Very funny.

I recall it being at DTD, & Jen being so tired & distressed that she had no idea she had won until the next morning. She's some girl.

I co-analysed with her on 865 recently, & she was exactly the same as ever, refreshingly & totally mad, giggly, & mischievous.

[tikay]

I can't  find any mention of a TV mini series called "All the presidents men" but there was a famous film by that name.

Could the TV series be called "Watergate" ?

Maybe the book was called that, & the TV/Fim was called Watergate.

Nixon was played by quite a famous actor, I seem to recall, & he "fitted" perfectly.

There was a film starring Robert Redford as either Woodward or Bernstein (the two Washington Post reporters), as I recall. That was deffo not the TV Series.

[tikay]

Not in our lifetme obviously (me being mid-sixties or summat and you being 10 yrs older than I) but what's your take on the Estuary Airport?

It links your interests in planes with your love of wildlife - more planes good; less birds bad...

Boris is very for it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16606212

I am passionately in favour, David, either that, or a third runway @ Heathrow.

I am au fait with all the arguments against, & fully empathise, but it's how life is, air travel is how it is these days, & if the UK does not provide the runway capacity, France & Holland will. Or even a devolved Scotland.

And no, it will not be in my time, any more than that bizarrely expensive proposal for a new Rail Link to Birmingham & beyond will be.

[mondatoo]

Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang resigned overnight, & has left the Company.

He & David Filo founded Yahoo! the best part of 20 years ago, it was originally named "David & Jerry's guide to the World Wide Web", & as that name suggests, the internet seems to have come a long way since then.

Quite a ride, too, with the company being valued at $120 billion within 5 or 6 years. Today, I think its worth about a fifth of that, maybe less.

2 years ago, Microsoft offered $33 per share, which Yang curtly dismissed as "opportunist". The shares now trade at about $15.

With several readers of this Diary emerging recently to show great insight - probably far more than mine - into stocks, shares, or investing, perhaps they would like to speculate on where the Yahoo! share price will go now, & will Microsoft come back & make another offer. If it were worth $45 billion to Microsoft 2 years ago, & they can get it for $25 billion now - loose change to Microsoft - you'd think it was a given. Possibly.

Personally, even as a punt, I think I'd swerve the Company, which seems to have lost its way.

PS - Post created without the invaluable assistance of Wiki, which is "on strike" today. Come back soon Wiki.

This made me think of Facebook and how he turned down a huge offer then within a year it was worth so much more. It can go both ways of course, courage of your convictions and all that.

[AlrightJack]

Ach, you've made it this far Tikay, so there's no reason to think you haven't got at least one more century left in you...

[Rod Paradise]

Berlin was blockaded by the Soviets in 1948, & the famous "Berlin Airlift" ("The Berlin Air Bridge") took place. Can you imagine a blockade of berlin in this day & age?

I believe, in a roundabout way, that it was due to this airlift that Sir Freddie Laker first started to make money out of aviation. Later, he pioneered low cost Atlantic air travel, with "SkyTrain", (what a great name!) & it was very successful. Within 2 years, though, he was busto. Quite a story to Sir Freddie & Laker Airways, actually, & I may bore you with it one day.

My mum was flown into Berlin as part of that airlift, as a kid, because my Grandpa (an aircraft engineer with BOAC) had just been stationed there, they flew his oppo's wife, my Gran & my Mum out to be with their husband  - apparently they were the only females flown into Berlin at the time.

I really regret his dying before I was old enough to have a beer and a natter with him - a right character with a varied life was Sid.

They flew her IN?

How extraordinary!

Aye, then they flew them back out & based them in Hannover. This was between being stationed in Argentina, then going to the Bahamas where Grandad left BOAC & joined BahamasAir (because he was sick of BOAC moving him so often - Hong Kong would have been the next destination).

[gatso]

Celebrating victory after a ground battle in Japan, 1945, a picture I grew up with & loved - Americans, in my youth, were deemed the good guys, & everyone else the bad boys.

Quite recently, it emerged that several versions of this photo exist, & allegations & suggestions of photo-shopping arose. Rather sad in a way, as I can no longer view the photo with such admiration & innocence.

Click to see full-size image.

pretty sure they weren't photoshopping pics when you were growing up

[david3103]

Celebrating victory after a ground battle in Japan, 1945, a picture I grew up with & loved - Americans, in my youth, were deemed the good guys, & everyone else the bad boys.

Quite recently, it emerged that several versions of this photo exist, & allegations & suggestions of photo-shopping arose. Rather sad in a way, as I can no longer view the photo with such admiration & innocence.

Click to see full-size image.

pretty sure they weren't photoshopping pics when you were growing up

Maybe not, photoshopped, but....

[tikay]

Berlin was blockaded by the Soviets in 1948, & the famous "Berlin Airlift" ("The Berlin Air Bridge") took place. Can you imagine a blockade of berlin in this day & age?

I believe, in a roundabout way, that it was due to this airlift that Sir Freddie Laker first started to make money out of aviation. Later, he pioneered low cost Atlantic air travel, with "SkyTrain", (what a great name!) & it was very successful. Within 2 years, though, he was busto. Quite a story to Sir Freddie & Laker Airways, actually, & I may bore you with it one day.

My mum was flown into Berlin as part of that airlift, as a kid, because my Grandpa (an aircraft engineer with BOAC) had just been stationed there, they flew his oppo's wife, my Gran & my Mum out to be with their husband  - apparently they were the only females flown into Berlin at the time.

I really regret his dying before I was old enough to have a beer and a natter with him - a right character with a varied life was Sid.

They flew her IN?

How extraordinary!

Aye, then they flew them back out & based them in Hannover. This was between being stationed in Argentina, then going to the Bahamas where Grandad left BOAC & joined BahamasAir (because he was sick of BOAC moving him so often - Hong Kong would have been the next destination).

That's quite something, given how different & relatively difficult air travel was back then.

Then, of course, BOAC was really a Great British brand. They used to have a Terminal in West Kensington (!), & a fleet of Coaches toing & froing to Heathrow. Those coaches were the nuts.

The domestic equivelant of BOAC was BEA (later to merge with BOAC to form BA), here's one of their, now sadly decrepit, shuttle coaches.

[gatso]

I need help from punctuation geeks. how do we make this ambiguous statement-

I think I have read more books about this dreadful character than anyone else.

read as either

"I think I have read more books about this dreadful character than about anyone else"

or

"I think I have read more books about this dreadful character than anyone else has"

just by adding punctuation but leaving the same words in the same order?

everything I try looks slightly wrong

[kinboshi]

Not sure can clarify the sentence any further without changing the order of the words, but probably wrong.

Here's one I came across today. The company I'm working at are advertising for a data entry person and we're trying out the Job Centre online:

https://edon.businesslink.gov.uk/Edon/setLocale.do?country=GB

It asks us: "If you would like to notify a job..."

Is the use of the verb notify standard in this context, or a bit peculiar?

Click to see full-size image.

[gatso]

that use of notify is perfectly acceptable

[kinboshi]

that use of notify is perfectly acceptable

But is it standard?  I'd never think of using notify there, it would always be post or advertise.  Can't say I've ever seen it used like that before.

[gatso]

completely standard though I'd say I've noticed it is being used more recently