Let us pound it through your brains

Today is panning out to be made of EPIC TECHNOLOGY FAIL

• I still don't have the Internets at home.
  
• Lightning seems to have stopped working for no good reason.
  
• I can't log into the work HR web site for some reason.
• My MP3 player went from 2 battery bars to blinky, wah-wah-wah-no-mo-music-fo-you during the walk to work.
• Also fwd and back seem to pick random tracks rather than the one I've just listened to or the one that was there before I hit back, realised it'd picked some random tune and decided to go back to the one that had just started.
  
• Every traffic light turned red just as I walked up to it. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
  
• My phone has decided that receiving calls and text messages in a timely fashion is an optional extra^[*] and that frankly I should be lucky that it doesn't just give me an electric shock at random intervals.
• Test failures, test failures and all the boards did shrink
  

Also, since the universe tends towards maximal irony - the external HD I was backing up on my shiny new Robot Minion failed midway through said backup and has taken to making plaintive emo mewlings of the "O tempora, o mores! I feel death's frigid hand 'pon my shoulder! The light! She is so bright! Life is pain &cetera &cetera ..." unhealthy clicking type. It is currently sitting, double bagged, in the naughty freezer thinking about what it's done. Woe betide I come home to find that it's painted its room black or something.

That plus insomnia plus the early warning signs of an imminent immune system collapse has made for grumpy Simon. In musical terms this feels like a good fit

On the other hand someone had TPd one of the street lamps at the corner of Beale and Harrison and a single, 20ft long ribbon was undulating gently in the breeze.

Set against the cornflower blue of the sky it was quite indescribably lovely.