Yesterday I started off by saying "I didn't notice
a single dog all night long last night". I certainly did last night.
If one wasn't constantly stomping all over my head in the small hours, one of
the other two was.
I made toast (again) and watched another episode of
"Stath Lets Flats", then got myself ready for work. As I
dressed, three dogs who had been so restless all night long were all blissfully
fast asleep. I resisted the temptation to rudely wake them; they wouldn't
understand anyway.
Pausing only briefly to cap six bouncers out of the tree
house (it's a Munzee thing) I set off to work. As I drove the pundits on
the radio were interviewing all sorts of people about the problems schools are
facing with pupils claiming to be "trans". It seems there is no national guidance from
central government, and so schools are doing what they each think is probably a
good idea. Some are being sensible; some are making a total balls-up of it.
Some are telling the pupils not to be so silly. Others are treating the pupils
as being the opposite gender to which the pupils' parents are treating them (and
deliberately concealing this from the parents). I've said before that I
don't understand the whole "trans" thing. Whilst I am sure
there are some genuine cases of gender dysphoria there is
quite a bit of evidence to show that those adults being treated for it are just
as miserable after treatment as they were before. And as for teenagers with
it...
Am I being really such an old reactionary in thinking that
when my father was at school there were those who dressed as Teddy Boys. When I
was at school there were those who wanted to shock by being Punk Rockers. “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” was a
"Goth Chav"... Does my granddaughter *seriously* have
twenty genuine trans classmates? Twenty? In one class?
And then the pundits on the radio played recordings from
"Yesterday in Parliament" in which the county's leaders
sounded just like ill-behaved schoolchildren squabbling over trivia. I've been
in high-level professional meetings before where there were serious differences
of opinion, but every time the protagonists disagreed by stating the relevant
issues and the pros and cons of the matters under discussion. At no point did
anyone resort to the (frankly pathetic) petty quarrelling and
name-calling that characterizes the parliamentary process.
As I drove to work my phone pinged. The Wherigo caches I'd
hidden yesterday had gone live. But I had messages about them. One was working
fine; but despite all the testing I'd done, six had downloading issues. That
was a pain in the glass (as “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TM”
might
say).
I had a theory as to what the issue might be, but there wasn't much I could do
without my lap-top. I disabled the problem and cracked on with the day. In
between cracking on I had a look at the exact error message that was coming
from Wherigo dot com, and I had an idea… I knew exactly what the problem was.
I came home, walked the pups round the block and then
sparked up the lap-top. I took out the completion code that was mentioned in
the error log, uploaded a revised cartridge, and watched it all go belly-up
again. So much for my genius idea…
After a bit of farting about I found that the problem was
that when you start the little game on the app on your mobile (which is what
the Wherigo actually is) the Wherigo asks for your name, and then as the
game goes on, it calls you by your name.
Or it is supposed to.
This bit worked absolutely fine (and is still working
absolutely fine) in the Wherigo I created a month ago. But it was causing total
system failure in the one I uploaded last night. So as the dogs slept after
their walk I stripped out all references to the player name, and re-wrote all
the interactions between the player and the game. It only took an hour or so…
I managed to upload a cartridge which didn’t crash at about
six o’clock, and within half an hour several people had downloaded it. Bearing
in mind that the first version was un-download-able, I saw that as something of
a result.
“er indoors TM” boiled up some scran
which we scoffed whilst watching more “Outsiders” and an episode of “The
Great Pottery Throwdown” in which several of the contestants had major
disasters… which was entertaining.
As I gloated at the potters’ misfortunes I set about a tub
of Cadbury’s Roses which “er indoors TM” had been hiding
since Christmas. She likes to have one sweetie a week; I scoff the lot in one sitting.
So much for diet, eh?
And in closing, today would have been my Mum & Dad’s
sixty-sixth wedding anniversary…
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