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Bomb da Bomb

We've had a bit of excitement this Sunday, when an Army unit came to town to defuse this old WWII bomb found on a construction site. The bomb, all 500 pounds of it, was dropped back in 1943 or 1944 by a RAF airplane to take out the railway but never exploded and the defusing operation made it possible to discover why: it was dropped at a lower altitude than necessary, so the little thingie that was supposed to release the striker onto the detonator never unhooked. Therefore, no kaboom.

Anyway, to defuse it and then transport it in an isolated quarry where it was safely set off, 4000 thousand people had to evacuate before 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning (half of them probably stayed in bed pretending they left). It was a big operation (over two hundred people involved to make it happen) and a major event for the town. I'm not even remotely happy with the pictures I took but the event is unusual enough that I had to upload at least a few of them. I may add some more once I sort out the other cards.

What's on that desk?

I wage a hopeless battle against clutter on my desk: every once in a while I tidy it up and in a few hours it reverts to its natural state of major entropy. So, just to amuse myself, I've decided to list, roughly once a month, all the stuff that's on my desk. Note: mine's a custom-made desk, L-shaped: the | is two meters long, the _ is 70 centimeters. So, there's a lot of space above it and also quite a lot below it (shelves, drawers, the like). A lot of space means a higher tolerance for clutter, which is good, but it also invites it more, since, well, there's space for it. Anyway, let's go:

Stuff that's always there:
  • A small metal shelf, holding from top to bottom: the ADSL router/gateway, a wireless gamepad, an external hdd and a usb hub.
  • lamp
  • printer
  • cordless phone
  • mouse charger
  • 4 satellites of a 5.1 audio system
  • a wood thingie shaped as a cobra that holds my headphones
  • headphones
  • another usb hub
  • a California Raisin figurine that looks like Michael Jackson during the Bad album era
  • monitor (22')
  • a table calendar with photos of kitties
  • 2 pen holders with pens (gasp!), pencils, eraser and the likes
  • mousepad
  • wired mouse
  • wireless mouse
  • keyboard
  • 5.1 audio system remote
Stuff that's there right now but has its normal place somewhere else:
  • buffy season 7 dvd boxset
  • angel season 5 dvd boxset
  • a green cup
  • a cat-shaped plate with a used tea-bag on it
  • digicam battery charger
  • digicam
  • assorted notepads
  • laptop
  • book on ancient Egypt's art
  • book of an Andy Wahrol's works exhibition
  • diary
  • flashlight
  • cellphone charger
  • house keys
  • pocket rule
  • newspaper
Under the table, always there:
  • drawers with assorted crap: old cd drives, ram chips, all manner of cables, blah blah
  • pc case
  • printer paper
  • photo paper
  • printer's ink cartridges
  • empty boxes of computer stuff
  • empty boxes of photo stuff
  • joystick
So, this is the sitch right now, fairly manageable and decidedly not messy, since I tidy it up this morning. How much worse will it be in a month? The experiment has started!