“Round and round she goes… where she stops nobody knows!”
It's been quite an up and down week really. Distractions continue a-pace and doors keep opening and closing all over the place.

"May You Live in Interesting Times"
Some maybe-not-ancient maybe-not-Chinese maybe-not-curse comes to mind and if I don't trust myself, can I trust what anyone says to me?

"Be careful what you wish for"
Nothing is truer than that at the moment. Euphoria came and went, guards have come down, souls have been bared. Now all that remains is uncertainty.

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Shit, I seem to have turned into a teenager who has swallowed a book of emo quotations.

In better news, marks to IBM for having returned my laptop clean and working after only a week. I feel all empowered and in love with technology again.

As dilligent readers will remember, yesterday I had an interview in Amsterdam. No news on the job yet, but as part of getting there for 10:00 CET I had to get a plane from Birmingham at 6:20 BST. This shouldn't be too bad - check in online, boarding at 5:45. I was pretty happy with getting up about 4:15, having a shower etc. and then getting out of the house at 5:00 to drive to the airport.

Only what really happened was that I pushed my alarm clock under the pillow when it went off and woke up again at 4:57.

Never have I gotten out of the house so quickly.

In the end I was in the terminal building by 5:30, which isn't bad considering...

And the interview? Seemed to go ok - and I am trying to suppress the "fear of change" that moving overseas would mean to my social life and hobbies.

I was at a conference today on e-Saftey (the old term "Internet Safety" not being sexy enough) and the first main speaker was from the National Crime Squad. Superficially he made a lot of sense, anecdotes about armoured Land Rovers during his service with the RUC and talking about the internet as "any public space". But then he started going off as police officers sometimes seem to - trying to shock us and, I realised after, instill a real sense of fear.

Fear about paedophiles; fear about babysitters; fear that we had to help the police and fear that we're probably all criminals in one way or another.

It was all faintly distasteful. Another copper I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

Later it lightened up a bit later with the Juvenalian question "Quis custodes ipsos custodies?" which had been put up as "Quis custodiet ipod custodes?" - "Who's guarding the guard's ipod?".

I don't like fear. Instilling it is just rude.