Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
A Small Series Of Inconsequential Events
Some people say that Determinism is a bad thing. (Hark at me, coming over all John Hurt-like). I happen to think it's rather lovely. I like to think, sometimes, at moments of enormous ego-mania, that me lying on this sofa is the sum output of the entire history of the Universe. The single outcome of not only the human race, but the entire longevic input of billions of years of evolution is a slightly drunk man, lying on a settee, wearing a nightie.
That aside (don't ask me to talk about Philosophy, I failed the first year of my Philosophy degree¹ ), I sometimes look around me, and wonder "how the fuck did I get here?"
And then I remember that it was a completely asynchronous series of accidents, and I kinda like that.
It starts off with me sat in what I seem to recall was a changing room in a technical college in Ballynahinch, flicking though the UCCA handbook. I'm sure there were lots of things that happened before that — but for some reason that's stuck in my head as the start of it all.
I recall literally flicking through the book — I'd chosen four places to go, and I needed one more to pad out my form.
*flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-flip*
*insert-finger randomly on page*
"Charlotte Mason College, Ambleside. Teacher training with Art."
That'll do...
...
¹ I'll come back to this. This is the begining of a series, and that's probably installment #25.
Only one near where I lived but I did change courses halfway through the first one I chose
I changed courses three times. I'm an undecisive little bugger sometimes.
Floodgates
Wow. OK, so there is a massive spamming session going on right now. Erin's had a hundred and fifty attempts to leave gumpf about "exciting business opportunities" since 7am.
It's weird because none of them are aimed at a specific day — so they've all been dumped on the first page — at least the three that slipped through the net did.
General Assumptions
This is mostly irrelevant, but I ended up staying up to well past 2am last night, watching the Cream Reunion on BBC4. The only relevance is that it goes someway to explain why I was not at my best when the postman knocked on the door half an hour ago, and gave me a bundle of letters and a parcel.
(The parcel was some more macro extension tubes I won on Ebay I think my camera is now technically a microscope...)
So I'm looking (past tense) at the letters, and wondering whether to open them — one is obviously from a local gallery, one is presumably some form of newsletter from MIND, and three appear to be from Sainsburys Pet Insurance...
...hold on a minute... three?
Sure enough, when I open them, it's the usual "time to renew your cat's insurance" shpeel: "blah blah blah Biscuit blah blah blah Tish blah blah blah George"
You know, you kind of assume that when an insurance company pays out for something like a cat's cremation, they'd have the nounce to work out that the owner might not want it insured any more.
...
I called them — which given my hangover probably wasn't the best thing to do
"Hi, um, my cat's, um, dead. He died last March. Have I been paying for insurance for him since then?
The poor woman on the other end of the phone must've thought she'd got an over-emotional cat-owner calling her, and, to her credit, was deeply apologetic.
"Oh dear, um, I'm afraid our system is down. Can you call back on Monday ... wait, we'll call you back instead. I'm so sorry"
It's just occured to me how difficult a job it must be to work in Customer Service at a pet insurance place. I imagine that the vast majority of calls that the people who deal with claims get, are exceptionally distraught and difficult.
It's probably a thankless job as well.
I wonder if they have to go through special training to deal with emotional cat (and dog) owners — and I wonder if the calls are more, or less, emotional than the calls that people life insurance places get...
It gives a whole new slant on receiving catcalls!
Early Writings
My friend Jo sent me a link to this in his photostream earlier on today. It's the letters page from the second issue of the student newspaper I used to edit — back in 1993.
Elgato Joy
(via flickr.com/people/si08han) 
That would be me watching television wirelessly on my PowerBook, then 
How's that working then, come on, spill.
When I work out exactly how I'm going to set this all up, I will. Basically, my Elgato EyeTV arrived earlier. It's plugged into the G5, and I'm using a bit of software — CyTV — to stream it over the network.
Heh... The University I ended up going to was also the last one I put down. Similar thing, I had four down and needed a fifth. I remembered one of my teachers saying he went to Birmingham and enjoyed it.. so I stuck it down as my final choice.. And the rest is history