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Epic Journey

It's been a fairly busy month for me this month, what with work and the inevitable playing that occurs after! The only problem for me though, unfortunately, is that the places I tend to drink in after work are so very far away from home.

So, there I am, in Shoreditch at 2.30 in the morning. The last train I could have got left at a little past 23.00, so it's night buses for me, but there's a fair amount of travelling involved still:

1. First, a walk up to Liverpool Street Station, from Shoreditch, but I was still drunk at the time, so I took the walk in my stride.
2. A cab from there to Piccadilly Circus, and the cabbie tries shafting me for an extra quid under the pretence of having to wait for a safe place to pull up, despite being at what seemed like the longest traffic lights in the world!
3. A night bus from there to Harrow Weald. Oh no, wait, the bus driver decided that Wembley was a much better place to drop everyone off instead. "Don't worry, the bus in-front is going all the way to Harrow", we're informed. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to have told the second bus driver, so both buses, sans paid up passengers, return to London.
4. Harrow can't be that far can it? Let's try walking there. Got lost a couple of times on the way, but eventually found Harrow-on-the-Hill Station.
5. No more buses to Amersham, let's try a cab. Hmm, phone battery is dead, no problem, phone boxes always have cab numbers in them. Find one, call it: "Sorry, that is too far to come out.", I'm told. Hang on a second, I found the number that they've stickered over the top of another cab companies number, and you tell me I'm too far away? Thanks for nothing. No other phone numbers around, directory enquiries it is. 118 118 takes an age to find a number, at a pretty cost to me in the phone box, and when I eventually get through to one, the other end hangs up before I can even say a word. This isn't going to well, but I spy a cab just dropping someone off across the road. My luck could be in!
6. "Amersham Station please," I tell the driver. Get taken to Chalfont and Latimer Station instead. Do all cab drivers try to fleece their passengers? I might be a little tipsy, but I know where I live thank-you-very-much-now-please-take-me-to-the-station-i-asked-for.
7. Finally get home, and boy does my wallet feel lighter. Come to think of it, my whole pocket feels a little light. Damn, I've left my keys inside the flat. Normally this would not be a major problem, as I could ask my flatmates to let me in, but they are staying in London at a hotel.
8. I make a quick call to an emergency locksmith, and get told that it will be £150 for the callout, and then a possible extra for the lock if it gets broken. It's already been a very expensive night so far, I'll give it a miss thank you.
9. Spot an open window to my room. Well, that's a bit of luck, normally they're always closed. My only problem now is how to get in, the flat is at the first floor level, but above a shop, which makes it a bit higher than most first floor levels. Ask the local newsagent for a ladder. It's a long shot, and as such, doesn't yield any successful results. Time to test those rock climbing skills maybe, 11ft up, sometimes on a ledge only an inch thick, in the freezing cold, wearing shoes not trainers. Oh, and the window opens out towards me, making it just that little more difficult to climb in it.

Needless to say I managed it in the end, although what I must have looked like to the passers by I can only guess. Thankfully I live in a town where everybody knows everyone else, or near enough. I wouldn't have liked to be arrested for attempting to break into my own flat!

The whole experience has taught me two things: one, not to leave without my keys again; and two, don't leave the windows open when I'm out, it's far too easy to get in!

p.s. for any would-be burglars, the windows are all kept securely locked now, and the deadbolt on the front door means you have to leave the same way you came in, and that's not going to be easy at all!

On the work front, I found the most amazing example of sheer brilliance! Now, anyone who knows anything about HTML will know that the <table> tag has a border attribute. It appears that the writer of the code I had to rebuild was also aware of this, and had set it to 0. Following so far? Of course you are. The part that amazed me was this next bit. Every other row and column of the actual data in said table was separated by a single pixel thick cell coloured grey, intended to act as a border between the cells! I had to stop and sink my head into my hands at this point. How could anyone have considered this the ideal way to split up the cells is beyond me, and it took a pretty while to remove the extraneous markup. This is from the same site that used images inside of links going to # with JavaScript attached in place of <input type="image"/> buttons. I can look back and chuckle now, but I do wonder sometimes how people who are responsible for building complex systems can so monumentally go wrong...