Public Class GeoffAppleby

What I did with my weekend

The weekend has been and gone, and it seemed to go pretty fast.

I have a theory about this. No, I'm not going off on another Alien Abduction rant, so you can sit back down and stop pointing your ray gun at me.

Have you ever watched Red Dwarf? I'm going to presume you said yes here, because otherwise there's nothing really to say. There was an episode (Season 3, Episode 1 - Backwards) where they go through a time hole. Now, in the Red Dwarf case, they ended up going 3 million years back in time, and to a dimension where time runs backwards, but besides that, I think this is what happened to me. and, to keep the stories straight, what happened to those people whom I came into contact with over the weekend too.

See, I can pretty much remember everything that's happened over the last two days, but right now it doesn't feel like the last two days.

Saturday morning I went to the local computer markets at EPIC. I picked up the DVD burner that I was after (actually, I was in two minds in the end - reviews for the Sony model have been very good, but I've no trouble with LiteOn hardware either. In the end, the LiteOn model was 30 bucks cheaper, so I picked it up for AU$101). I'm amazed at how cheap these things have got now. Blank DVDs have got cheap too - I found a spool of 50 blanks (TDK brand) for $34. Wow.

Then we went and had a look around the Ford car yard to start figuring out what car to get next (the current lease is up in 5 months, so we need to order in the next couple of weeks to guarantee that the replacement will be ready in time. The standard Falcon is about the cheapest, but it looks like we'll be looking more carefully at the Territory, just in case.

I spent Saturday afternoon installing the new burner and testing it. Sorry Rory, but despite your recommendations of CDBurnerXP Pro, all it's done for me so far is make two coasters. I installed Nero, and it worked straight off the bat (in all three attempts, I was trying to finally burn the December drop of VS2K5 - about 3.3 gig). This annoys me, because I hate Nero - until now, for all my cd burning requirements, I've only needed to use the ability already built in to XP, and a little help from IsoRecorder. I actually hate having to use anything other than built in OS features (or light-weight shell extensions), but it seems for DVDs I have no choice...dammit! :)

My little sis came and had a sleepover with us on Saturday night while her boyfriend was staying out of town. This was good, because I'm always happy for her to visit, but bad, because whenever it happens she sees (yet again) how boring we've become since I became a 'family man'. She doesn't seem to mind, so that OK.

Today was spent just bumming around.

And I don't know about you, but when you spend a day bumming around, especially when it's a hot day, it takes a looooooong time to pass.

So here's my theory - a time hole floated through my house today. At a guess, I'd say that it passed through at about 11 am, and when it moved on, it delivered us to about 4 pm.

Work with me here.

I think this is a more common occurrence than you think. How often does time seem to just fly by, with no explanation? At other times, it seems to just drag on and on and on right? Time holes are a natural occurrence, floating around everywhere, much like clouds, or high pressure systems, or something. When they float through you, they disrupt your time stream, and place you in a different time. When time seems to fly, it's really just moved you forward a bit. The amount of time traveled is completely dependant on the speed at which it is moving.

If it's moving fast, it knocks you forward a bit. If it's moving medium speed, it knocks you forward a smaller amount. And if it's moving really slow, it actually pushes you back in time about one second - and one second ago, you were, of course, about to be hit by a time hole, so the time hole hits you again and moves you back one second.

And one second ago, you were, of course, about to be hit by a time hole, so the time hole hits you again and moves you back one second.

And one second ago, you were, of course, about to be hit by a time hole, so the time hole hits you again and moves you back one second.

And one second ago, you were, of course, about to be hit by a time hole, so the time hole hits you again and moves you back one second.

Eventually the time hole passes, and time moves on as normal - but for a while there, time really seemed to drag, didn't it?

What I'm scared of is a time hole that moves really really slowly over me - but then stays still. I'd be trapped forever.

Even worse, if the time that the un-moving time hole keeps moving me back to was an instant before aliens beamed me up into their ship (who of course, when they beam me back down they do so into the exact same moment at which they took me). I'd spend eternity being anal-probed.

So, if I was the sort of person who believed in god, there's only one prayer left for me. One hope. One wish.

Please, if this happens, make sure it feels good.