Journal

Sporting Behaviour

My weekend down in London had a sporting vibe about it, as it turned out. Starting with a visit to cousin Iain’s gym on Friday morning, followed by playing pool for the rest of that day in the aforementioned sports bar. The elusive Demian even put in an appearance after work, via one of those comedy “using mobile phones to find each other in a busy public place” scenarios. It was good to see him again in the flesh, albeit briefly, although due to the amount of drink I’d had by the time he showed up, we didn’t get much web developer shop-talk done. Probably a good thing, actually – Iain would have been bored stiff.

On Saturday morning we found ourselves in Shepherds Bush Walkabout watching the AFL grand final, before heading off to the QPR v Leicester City match. Sadly both games ended up a bit one sided at the end, but they were enjoyable all the same. At the football there was some nut case wearing a sombrero whom the away fans nick-named Pedro, and gave him no end of abuse while Leicester were in the lead. In fact, Pedro’s climb from despondancy into elation was good entertainment in itself, as the match swung from a two-nil Leicester lead to a 3-2 QPR victory – with all the goals happening down the other end of the pitch it was easier to see Pedro than the on field action for most of the second half.

On Saturday evening Emily cooked us a tasty dinner, and we sat in watching tv for a few hours before making our way back to Iain’s. The day out, added to the heavy day on Friday had left us both tired, so we settled for watching Match of the Day and then a game of Madden 2005, before calling it a night.

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When Saturday comes…

Tonight I’m off down to London to visit cousin Iain for a weekend of… well, excess, I suspect. Although we’ll arrive pretty late, it does leave tomorrow wide open for some fun and games, and the outlandish possibility of meeting up with Demian, whom I haven’t seen for about three years.

I imagine we’ll end up doing the usual stuff, like going to Wagamama, then on to that sports bar near Leicester Square where I got “highly intoxicated” last summer, according to the doorman.

Oh… talking of Leicester (in a round about way), when Saturday comes (see, it wasn’t just an obscure reference to that Sean Bean film) we’ll be going to see Leicester City visiting Queens Park Rangers, which I’m looking forward to. Should be an interesting match – QPR have won their last three straight, while Leicester have stumbled in recent weeks. Heck, what do I know? It’s just an excuse to do all that “Ooooh!” and “Aw, ref–a–ree!” shouty stuff with lots of other people rather than at the telly.

Should be a fun weekend. Should be exensive too, but in a justifiable “life enriching” kind of way. :o)

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Defoxicated

I decided that since I’d been using the Firefox browser for over a year now, I would buy some stuff from the Mozilla store by way of contribution to their efforts. So a couple of weeks back I ordered a t-shirt and a little firefox plush toy, the former because I like having tons of t-shirts, and the latter because I thought it would be a good gag.

On Monday my order arrived, and although the t-shirt was as expected, the plush toy didn’t look too much like a fox. Workmate Adam said it looked more like a racoon, but then Adam’s eyesight was never too hot – unless this particular racoon had been wallowing in a chemical bath, this was just not the colour expected of a racoon.

When I introduced Fliss to the so-called fox on the way home, she was suspicious of the species from the get-go. Doing the sensible thing, she read the label to find the small print that said “red panda”.

A panda?

A red panda?!

I didn’t order no stinking panda… I ordered a fox. Something was rotten in cyberspace.

So I go back to the Mozilla store to find out that their picture of the plush toy was a good likeness of the one I’d been sent. Wow. The great red panda conspiracy was unfolding before my eyes. I was amazed that it could have gone this far without anyone else noticing that they were mailing people panda’s instead of foxes. And red panda’s at that.

I mailed the mozilla store, just to clarify that I’d ordered a fox and not a panda, and they sent me this hilarious but terse reply:
Please read the following factsheet regarding this mammal:

http://www.wellingtonzoo.com/animals/animals/mammals/panda.html

Red Pandas are found in the temperate forests of the Himalayas and some
high mountain areas of China and Myanmar (Burma).
The Chinese name for red panda is hunho or FIREFOX (name for the
browser), due to their colour and similar size to a fox. The soft plush red panda has a nice face and expressive eyes.
This information was posted next to the item in the store available for you to read.

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