Workshop Booze Up VII - New Year, Same Plague, Same Booze Up, Deja Vu

[Jubal]

Yikes. Hope the ribs get better soon

I'm pretty knackered after last week's conferences - and also really annoyed about a new issue, namely having ordered a book and had the large academic publisher who sold it to me fail to inform me clearly about the likelihood of customs charges - said charges being to the value of half the price of the actual book. And then responding to being asked about this by quoting their Ts & Cs at me and then just not mentioning the fact I'd also said that the book had some light spine damage on delivery!? So Wiley books are very much in my bad books right now and I'd advise against ordering from them unless you want to be kicked in the pocket quite nastily.

[dubsartur]

I agreed to write a chapter for a book from Wiley because I knew the editor.  Eventually someone in their office in India sent me an email with an unsolicited email with a link to their rather aggressive contract and not attached polite nothings.  I sorted it out (looked up their address online, emailed them asking if they had sent it) and requested some changes such as spelling my chapter's title correctly.  The Wiley representative said he would ask his boss and then started sending daily reminder emails to sign.  After about six months of politely asking for a decision on the contract changes, unsigning up to the reminder emails, getting spammed again and repeating the representative had the editors withdraw my contribution (!) during the pandemic (!) still never having said yes or no and never having acknowledged that they had not got the title correct.

[Pentagathus]

Ah, apparently I did get an email from the gym owner on monday but my email inbox decided not to load any new emails for a day or two. Strange. He offered to freeze the membership but it seems like he's cancelled it after not hearing back from me. The ribs are definitely getting better at least, hoping I can be back at work next week but I might still need to take it a little slower.
And on the truly bright side I have ordered no books from Wiley. Huzzah! I do need to buy a new anatomy book though I believe.

[Jubal]

Well I've just had the week from hell. Fractious meetings, people pushing deadlines back and asking for work on totally unreasonable timescales, inconclusive meetings that needed to conclude things on a schedule, having to deal with a student issue inconclusive AND fractious meetings, and then on Friday night I managed to trip over my dustpan, breaking it, knocking myself on the head and damaging my arm which I still can't move normally (I've not lost range of movement, there's no break, it's just very sore and will take time to heal).

Generally feeling really rather sorry for myself today

[Pentagathus]

Have some sympathy. And some mead, though you will have to supply the mead yourself

[Jubal]

Oops, forgot to announce the meetup this time Still going for another couple of hours though (link should be in your inboxes) if anyone wants to drop by!

[Jubal]

Am now doubly vaccinated as of yesterday Feeling a bit woozy today but not too bad. May have ended up on a YouTube binge of watching bits of the 1990s Sharpe TV series rather than working for much of the day, but could be worse.

[Gmd]

major contra indicaiton of the covid vaccine is sharpe fan. be careful

[Jubal]

I'll let you know if I accidentally end up with the symptoms of being shipped off to Spain with a company of green-jacketed riflemen.

[dubsartur]

YT showed me some of the old Sharpe too.  I used to borrow those on tape from the library.  "Major Lennox answered with his life sir!"

I have also been reading some of the 16th century military writers like Smythe and De La Noue.  More Anglos should read them, because the Elizabethan interventions in the Wars of the Low Countries and Ireland are the ancestors of the types of wars we fight now.

[Jubal]

Well, the past week involved:

• My landlord, who gave me no details to contact him for two years, saying he can't reduce my rent for problems because he wasn't told about them. Spot the problem here.
• A literal plague of moths, so I had to throw out about ten kilos of birdseed.
• My beloved Panasonic Lumix TZ90 camera breaking (my favourite I've ever had - I've ordered the same model as a replacement already, though given my luck with sales lately I have zero faith it will actually arrive without problems).
• A four storey tall vine falling on my garden and crushing sixty percent of my plants
• As a result of the above points, me getting even further behind with work

And at this point I'm just wondering which deity I've pissed off. Or deities. Maybe a smallish pantheon somewhere?

[Jubal]

Well most of the last post's round of problems have improved - I paid a painful amount of money to my landlord, the moths are not gone but seem a bit more under control, I finished clearing the vine last weekend and I have a new TZ90. Unfortunately I'm now extremely tired, the big Tunisia project I've been working on is overdue and I'm ending up running myself hard into the ground trying to finish it, plus having two looming conferences both of which are not proving organisationally very fluid to the point where I literally don't know when my talks will be for either of them...!

[Jubal]

Just had the amusing moment of getting out of a meeting on social media regulation policy to discover that Facebook appears to have beaten our endeavours to the punch by going offline. Funny old world

[Glaurung]

In news of great joy, my laptop (roughly 2 years old) has just told me it's ready to upgrade itself from Windows 10 to Windows 11. I'm now wondering whether I should let it do this, and would appreciate people's views.

[Tusky]

I haven't been offered an upgrade on any of my machines yet, so I can't give aqny concrete advice.

That being said, if it's anything like the 7 > 10 upgrade then that went quite smoothly for me.
I suppose it depends on if you are in the middle of something that you don't want to interrupt with "Oh where did that thing go?" thoughts, or being assailed with information about all of the shiny new features.