The Patent Dragon's Zone of Soul Retraction

This business with Diaryland continues to piss me off. Okay, so sites providing "free" services have to pay for their overheads, such as servers, domain names, all that stuff... I don't dispute that for a second, but fuck you if you're going to slap a big banner over part of my content and navigation. And fuck you if you do nothing to publicise what you're planning to do - or at least that's how it seems to me.

Am I being selfish in "expecting something for nothing"? Hey, there was a high probability that I was about to start paying for Diaryland's premium service, but this came at the worst possible time, just after the exams debacle, when I was wanting to try and get back to normal, and perhaps have stuff to post both before and during Christmas and New Year...

*imagine someone doing that "eyes tight shut, massaging the bridge of their nose" thing...*

I've had the last few days off, but I've not managed to get much creative work done. Yes, I have a self-imposed distraction or two, but right now, I'm picking up some pre-Christmas "slack" for others - and when I do get to sit down, it's usually too late for the thought processes to get up to speed before I start falling asleep. Tomorrow may give me something of a chance - especially now that the VIP seats for The Hobbit are sold out for Saturday.

Oh, for FUCK's sake. Why are there no weekend afternoon showings????

Looking through the comments on BBC's "Have Your Say" page "Does the welfare system need reform?", I despair for humanity's future. There are just so many of the same old tired right-wing media "panic nuggets" - "waaah waaah paying all my tax so scroungers can stay in bed", "waaah waaah 42-inch plasma TVs and SKY Sports", "waaah waaah teenagers pumping out children for a council house", "waaah waaah work-houses for the work-shy"...

I'm not going into any detail. Anyone who's interested can read for themselves. I've already spent about an hour and a half I'm not going to get back on this...

...and while I'm mildly annoyed, might I just add that when it suddenly, and heavily rained this afternoon, my "gear bundle" got wet, and last night, one of my "falling asleep at the PC" moments gave me something you might compare to whiplash. Ow.

Guess being paid just about evens out things.

Development News... Yesterday's development "push" has spawned some significant progress on MoN-202 "Mane-of-Night And The Watcher From Beyond" (although it still needs to be typed up, admittedly). Whilst the story won't be completed to coincide with the final posting for MoN-109, which goes live tomorrow, it should come pretty close, if development continues at the same pace.

Words of Wisdom... If you ever get the chance, shoot a hacker in the face. If it wasn't for those bastards, you wouldn't have to pay for anti-virus software...

And finally... Interesting, isn't it, that when a Space Shuttle has problems, it's headline news, but when nothing goes wrong, complete media silence. Give these astronauts some damn respect!