Good day at work and a lunchtime safari Much better workwise today - was good to power through some sticky stuff that's been hanging around. In the grand scheme of things it means nothing I guess but I do love it when a plan come together.

The maddest thing that happened today was at lunch, I got tapped for cash by a guy in a sandwich shop. aggressive begging like this is pretty much unheard of in Edinburgh so I was totally confused.

I was just checking that I had enough cash for my food when I hear "Hey man, hiv you goat 40p so's ah kin phone ma mum tae get picked up"

Turned around and there's this badly burned guy looking at me, I was like "What the fu....."but since I had a ton of shrapnel in my paw it was easier to pick out a 20p and give it to him than pretend I had no change.

So he turns away and then turns back, "Bit a need 40p man!"

"Baws" says I, "the phone's only 20p"

at this point the shop owner interupts and starts trying to move the guy out the shop
- rapidly going red and snarling through gritted teeth - "I don't care what you do outside, but don't disturb customers in my shop".

Then the beggar starts complaining that the guy called him a beggar (Irony!) and starts goading the shopkeeper to punch him.

Now, shop owner is beetroot, motionless and about to explode.
Beggar is saying "Cum oan hard man, punch me then. ah canny punch back cos mah airms are f******"
and I'm telling the frankly terrified girl behind the counter that "yes please, I would like some salad."


Finally, the standoff ends with a flourish and no blood spilt.


Beggar points a bony finger at the sandwich man - "You're a bad man you, I believe in Karma man, what goes around comes around" and shambles off.

And a nasty wee bit of me thought "what did you do in a previous life to end up like that then???"

Anyway, my first draft of this was pretty nasty so I've took some of that out as I try to give people the benefit of the doubt (i.e. I'm a sap).

However, professional victims really piss me off - that beggar will be going away thinking that I'm a bawbag for only giving him 20p when I had a muckle paw of shrapnel and that the sandwich man is a wanker for throwing him out his shop when he was *only* trying to ask a guy for money.

Takes all sorts I guess  ¶ 10:44 PM 0 comments

  Eeesh What a day at work - morning stuffed by databases pointed elsewhere and afternoon and evening stuffed by gremlins in machines.

Sometimes it's like trying to do a rubix cube in your head - would be nice to work with real machines that you could bash with a spanner.

Computers can be a pain the the @rse a lot of the time.

I wonder how much of this stockmarket volatility is caused by misconfigured automated systems following the electronic herd. Mind you, human error is probably just as dangerous.

the £128,000,000 typing error...  ¶ 9:38 PM 0 comments