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Whitney's Journey
Sep. 12th, 2005 03:12 pmThe helpdesk officer's computer has just exploded. Well, more accurately it was the power supply, but the office is now filled with a plasticky burning smell. There was a problem with another computer's video card this morning as well, so there seems to be a disease going round them at the moment. It livened up the day a bit, at least.
I will shortly be free of detonating computers, because this is my last full day working here - I have this afternoon and tomorrow morning, then my role as a VLE Administrator (Temporary) will be over and I'll go back to being a Student Programmer (Mediocre).
Friday afternoon seemed to take ages, as all afternoons leading up to life-changing events do. I got out of work and decided to ignore Whitney's advice on taking the bus, instead walking up George Street to the Queen Mother Library.
When I turned the corner on to Bedford Road, someone who sounded like he was from Spain shouted across the road to me, asking if I knew where Bedford Place was. I hollered back that I wasn't sure, as I wasn't from around there (something that I said to try and politely avoid being asked directions, as I know very little about my way around Aberdeen - I know how to get to work, the beach, and that's about it). Unfortunately he was friendly and asked whereabouts I was from. On the spur of the moment I replied Bristol, which I haven't lived in for about seventeen years, but it was the only thing that came in to my head at the time to save embarrassment at not knowing the way around my own local city. It turned out that he had family there, so he asked me more about myself. We continued the conversation as we walked down the road, with me shouting my entire fabricated life story piece by piece to him across two lanes of traffic. According to this improvised fiction, my parents live in Aberdeen, and I get my accent from them even though I live in the south of England. The experience was rather surreal, and I was rather glad when he found the place he was looking for and turned down a side road.
Eventually I got to the University of Aberdeen library, and had enough difficulty getting in because they've secured the place against outside students and peasants getting in with a turnstile system. I asked where I could use my laptop, and they said that I could just ignore the "No laptops" signs everywhere because of it not being term time. I set myself up, and spent a couple of hours playing Megazeux. It's another of those games which seems to charm me in to liking it.
After what seemed like ages, I went down to Cataloguing to pick up my mum, and we went to the airport together, arriving about fifteen minutes before the plane was due to land at 16:35. I went in and saw that the plane had been delayed until 17:40. I went out again and informed my mum as such, so she went away to do some shopping.
I decided to fill up the time by devising some sort of purpose for myself, and that was to walk all the way up to the nearest garage and top up my mobile phone, which I hadn't used for months and had a total of 12p of credit on it. That didn't take long enough, so I just walked in random directions around the airport and played Maze of the Kings, which I noted had the worst acting in any game ever (and this area is hotly contested).
The plane was "on approach" for at least twenty minutes, and I was waiting at the UK Arrivals gate for Whitney to emerge. Getting fed up of that, I wandered off to find Whitney emerging from the UK Arrivals 2 gate, which hadn't existed the last time that I had been in the airport. The plane had waited on the runway at both Heathrow and Aberdeen for ages due to "weather issues", because evidently no one had expected it to rain in Britain. We collected her soaked luggage and went off home to moan about it there.
I will shortly be free of detonating computers, because this is my last full day working here - I have this afternoon and tomorrow morning, then my role as a VLE Administrator (Temporary) will be over and I'll go back to being a Student Programmer (Mediocre).
Friday afternoon seemed to take ages, as all afternoons leading up to life-changing events do. I got out of work and decided to ignore Whitney's advice on taking the bus, instead walking up George Street to the Queen Mother Library.
When I turned the corner on to Bedford Road, someone who sounded like he was from Spain shouted across the road to me, asking if I knew where Bedford Place was. I hollered back that I wasn't sure, as I wasn't from around there (something that I said to try and politely avoid being asked directions, as I know very little about my way around Aberdeen - I know how to get to work, the beach, and that's about it). Unfortunately he was friendly and asked whereabouts I was from. On the spur of the moment I replied Bristol, which I haven't lived in for about seventeen years, but it was the only thing that came in to my head at the time to save embarrassment at not knowing the way around my own local city. It turned out that he had family there, so he asked me more about myself. We continued the conversation as we walked down the road, with me shouting my entire fabricated life story piece by piece to him across two lanes of traffic. According to this improvised fiction, my parents live in Aberdeen, and I get my accent from them even though I live in the south of England. The experience was rather surreal, and I was rather glad when he found the place he was looking for and turned down a side road.
Eventually I got to the University of Aberdeen library, and had enough difficulty getting in because they've secured the place against outside students and peasants getting in with a turnstile system. I asked where I could use my laptop, and they said that I could just ignore the "No laptops" signs everywhere because of it not being term time. I set myself up, and spent a couple of hours playing Megazeux. It's another of those games which seems to charm me in to liking it.
After what seemed like ages, I went down to Cataloguing to pick up my mum, and we went to the airport together, arriving about fifteen minutes before the plane was due to land at 16:35. I went in and saw that the plane had been delayed until 17:40. I went out again and informed my mum as such, so she went away to do some shopping.
I decided to fill up the time by devising some sort of purpose for myself, and that was to walk all the way up to the nearest garage and top up my mobile phone, which I hadn't used for months and had a total of 12p of credit on it. That didn't take long enough, so I just walked in random directions around the airport and played Maze of the Kings, which I noted had the worst acting in any game ever (and this area is hotly contested).
The plane was "on approach" for at least twenty minutes, and I was waiting at the UK Arrivals gate for Whitney to emerge. Getting fed up of that, I wandered off to find Whitney emerging from the UK Arrivals 2 gate, which hadn't existed the last time that I had been in the airport. The plane had waited on the runway at both Heathrow and Aberdeen for ages due to "weather issues", because evidently no one had expected it to rain in Britain. We collected her soaked luggage and went off home to moan about it there.
