Tech Support: the Admin version.

Today I was sitting happily subjugating spreadsheets when one of our researchers came in, to provide me with an interesting example of a dichotomy in technical knowledge.
"Hello! I have a difficult IT question for you. The external mouse for my laptop isn't working, and I was hoping you could come along and fix it."

So, I trotted along to her room, to find that what she was waving around was... not remotely a mouse. It was, instead, a receiver for a wireless mouse which she'd dug up from the depths of the stationery cupboard. (Where I'd hidden it for exactly this reason. There's no mouse to accompany it.) Now, it was round, but it had one teeny little button, and a huge dip in the middle, and wasn't hand-sized at all. In short, it didn't really look like a mouse.

I didn't have the fortitude to explain, so I ran off with it, and returned with a shiny new mouse.

What makes this interesting to me, is that this same researcher is completely fluent in statistics programmes and GPS and mapping programmes, all of which are so complex that they make my toes curl* just looking at them.

People are so interesting!

*not in a good way.

Picture post: More from East Lothian in May

While I was in North Berwick, some people I am in chaoots with came down for a visit and a picnic. We stopped off at the butcher for Serious Sausage Rolls (they're HUGE and taste good and are very filling. Just what's needed when going exploring), and then went to explore Dirleton Castle, stopping off at the very pleasingly round doocot first:


We then walked round to the castle entrance, which is still very imposing:


The castle was attacked by cannon; the damage wasn't ever repaired:


The entrance reminded us all of the castle in Knightmare:


We had a good poke about round the castle. This is the passage to my favourite room:

(The doors are as small as they look - people were shorter then.)

In which my father has a sense of humour.

There's a major dinghy sailing competition in North Berwick* this week, with sailors from all over the UK. Most of them are adults, and many of them usually sail on lakes.

One bloke (an adult) wandered up to my dad, who is performing cat-herding duties on the beach. He looked across the beach - where the tide was half way out, and said, "Is this place tidal?"

My father replied, "Oh, only twice a day."

This bloke had driven himself and his boat up from England. Apparently he managed to do so without looking at a map.


*North Berwick is a seaside town, which - if you look at a map - is very obviously next to the North Sea.