wow, 

thank you Helen for drawing this

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Welcome to Ali's blog. A blog that has absolutely nothing to do with juggling monkeys. It doesn't really have anything to do with much, just me rambling on about random things.

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Friday, April 11, 2003
Oh and it looks like we're going to have to camp as we can't stay where we were going to on Sunday night, so not only am I climbing a mountain I'm braving the outdoors overnight! I know, that's not right is it? I may have gone mad.

My finger is sore. It's a work-related injury. Sellotape is dangerous. Okay, I should probably explain so I don't sound quite so pathetic, though I don't think I'll come out sounding much better. It's those sellotape dispenser things you see, I hate them, I don't think they're very helpful at all, I find it much easier to just bite the sellotape, I guess they're good in that you don't have to find the end, but other than that what use are they? and why do they have to be quite so sharp. I cut myself on it yesterday, I wasn't even using the stupid thing, I was picking up books from by it and I scraped it. It's quite painful having about 4 small parallel cuts on your little finger. The really sad thing is, this isn't the first time. I can recall at least 2 other sellotape dispenser related injuries.

Helen was saying that our accident book at work would make amusing reading. We never actually fill it in, maybe we should start enforcing the filling in of it, when it was full we could stick a label on it and put it in circulation with the other books, I bet people would read it. I'm trying to think of some of the ridiculously simple accidents that happen, one of the librarians fell over a chair the other day, he went flying backwards towards the window, whilst still recovering from that and with pain in his leg he banged his elbow on the counter. I've dropped books on myself a few times, plus there's the millions of paper cuts we get. There's a castle in our library, I know, how on earth do we fit an entire castle in a library? Okay, it's not actually a real castle, it's a kind of playhouse thing, just wooden walls, it has boxes of picture books inside, it's really annoying, 'cos it's too hgh for you to climb over the walls, but the entry is so low you have to crawl in, that results in some bumped heads. Usually I don't go in, I just kind of lower books into the box from outside.

Hmm, the accidents aren't sounding that amusing now, maybe I need to think of more of them, and build them up a bit.

It's a good job we don't have a stack in our library. I never actually went in the one at Uni, I was always convinced that I'd get in the middle and someone would move them, crushing me to death. I don't know if that's ever actually happened. I know people have been killed in paternosters, but I had a go in them, I didn't feel so scared of them because you're not in an enclosed space, it may be dangerous, but at least you can see if you're going to be cut in half. I was just trying to work out how you spell paternoster and if there's a site about them, so I was searching on google, what I've found is that paternoster means "Our Father" you probably knew that and I'm demonstrating my ignorance, ahh well, I'm presuming then that they're called that because you pray when you're in them? I guess I should search further to find out if that's actually what they're called. Okay, so I've added lift to my search and yes, that is what they're called, found an article dealing with them facing extinction. It informs me that the name comes from the rosary, as the pattern of the lifts is like the beads in a rosary. I see. The article says that they must be removed from Czech buildings because they don't meet European safety requirements. Does that mean the paternosters in the Attenborough Tower will be going too? Helen has just entered my room, she informs me that she and James researched Paternosters and that they weren't called that because they looked like rosary beads, oh and Helen says I'm ignorant for not knowing it was "Our Father", apparently everyone knows that. Not me, no, I know no Latin, I can't even remember how to say the sailors are in the tavern even though Helen taught me it last weekend and I spent ages repeating it. Helen's brought me the address now of the site James found but hah, it was like a rosary.

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Thursday, April 10, 2003
I'm going to climb a mountain on Monday. No, seriously, stop laughing.

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Wednesday, April 09, 2003
I have actually put some cool stuff to sell on ebay now. If anyone is interested in A signed Stargate DVD or Farscape DVD vol 1 then go and bid on them :-)

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Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Well, I've spent a pretty long time listing stuff at ebay. I don't think any of it will actually sell, so I'll have just wasted several hours and £2.10 (at least there's a special offer at the moment so it's only 10p instead of 15p to list things with a starting price of less than a pound) listing a load of junk. I don't even know why I have most of this stuff, it's not like it's stuff I like. You could go have a look and laugh at some of the weird stuff that I seem to own look at My ebay page I mean, why do I own so many love CDs? Or Flubber? I don't even watch South Park, yet I have South Park screensavers. It's weird. Does anyone else find this if they clear out their stuff? A whole load of stuff that they don't like and have never liked, or is it just me? I guess I quite often get given things that I don't like, then they sit around for ages. Mad, I hope someone buys something. I've just thought of some other things to list, have to think about whether I can be bothered now.

I feel like selling stuff on ebay, hmm, what shall I sell? I could look around the house and find things. There's lots of books around, I could sell them, but I might not get much for them. I could try selling really weird things. Some people will buy anything. Mind you some of the good stuff that people try to sell never gets bought, I can't really figure that out. I guess there's a lot of people like me buying stupid things for other people. I'm going to go and search the house now, and probably pinch Helen's scanner, no, don't worry, I'm not going to sell her scanner, I'm not that mean, I just don't have one, so I need hers to scan items.

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Monday, April 07, 2003
I have come to a conclusion about Helen and feel that it is imperative that I share my knoweledge with the world. She is in fact The Appliance Assassinator. Or would Appliance Annihilator sound better? Yes, probably. I was thinking earlier about things she's killed, I think she has some sort of electrical field around her which blows stuff up. Maybe you think I'm exaggerating, let's examine the evidence shall we? Whilst the list may not seem terribly long to the uninitiated, bear these important facts in mind:


  1. How many things have you exploded in the last 5 years? (5 years ago was the first year we shared a house, all of the incidences I will mention occurred during periods in which we were living in the same house, in total we have only lived in the same house for less than 3 years, so this is quite a lot of things for 3 years of living).
  2. When she first blew something up and told me I seem to recall her mentioning that it was not the first time and that she thought appliances may not like her: On a number of occassions she has joked about the fact that she kills electrical things, using humour to deflect suspicion, what better way to cover the fact that it's the truth!



  • Microwave - we have no proof as such of this as the microwave was left in the house by the previous tenants, it may have been broken already, we do know that Helen tried to use it and it didn't work.
  • My sandwich toaster, okay to be fair this has been fixed, but it did explode quite spectacularly when she used it and I think she said there were flames (it melted through it's own lead, to be fixed the lead had to be shortened considerably and the plug reattached).
  • My old Tv, okay, Helen didn't break this, but she was in the room when it went up in smoke. Personally I've never seen a television do that, we'd had it for years with no problems, can it really be a coincidence that it exploded during the week that Helen was staying at our house? I can't remember who actually turned it on, I admit that it was probably me, but again I say she would have been very close to it, so it could have been within the range of her destruction.
  • My kettle - she even admits killing this, she tried to boil water and it melted itself. So did she cause my kettle to commit suicide? I was not at home and so it is hard to know.
  • She used to get sparks off plug sockets a lot.
  • And she gets shocks off my car a lot too.
  • The boiler doesn't like her either, it goes out and refuses to relight until I come and do it. That's not even electric, so I don't know why that is.
  • The TV ariel used to work when Rachel lived in the house. It doesn't work now. Okay I admit that I think it was when I moved things around that that happened, but that's only an assumption, it could have been Helen moving in that did it. Okay, I think it's getting a bit tenuous now, I'll stop attributing completely unrelated acts to her.

Maybe she has some sort of electrical field around her, she could be Electricity Woman, a very uncatchy name for a superhero I feel. I have to admit that she wasn't anywhere nearby when my video broke though. But then that didn't do a spectacular smoking thing like the things she touches. That just stopped working. Maybe I should stop being mean now, if I say too much she might use her powers to break my DVD player, or my computer *gasp*. Not that, please. Or even worse she could start thinking of odd things to say about me on her blog, mind you she already accused me of being a pyromaniac. I'm not, I just like to help the fire. It was a controlled fire, it's fine. Oh, except the burning tree that I was walking round with :-) It was a very small tree that was meant to be on the bonfire, I was using it as some sort of olympic torch or giant sparkler, or at least I was trying to, it didn't want to stay lit once it came out of the fire, it stayed alight for a short time, but then just glowed. Still it looked quite nice.

In other news, we went to a computer fair yesterday and no-one had any idiot outside badges :-( Do I mean badges? Those little things that go on the computer case, are they badges? Anyway, them. We saw them once years ago at a computer fair and laughed at them, why didn't we buy them? I've wanted one ever since, I don't know why really, it's not like anyone can even see my computer since it's positioned under the desk, it makes it quite hard to put floppy disks in, but how often do I do that? Floppy disks are so last century.

And onto tangent number three, I found myself watching Enterprise today. I missed the first 20 minutes or so as I was cooking dinner, but I sat and watched it with Helen as I ate and then found myself wanting to see the end, drat. That must make nearly 3 whole episodes I've seen now if you add all the part episodes together, I did watch one full one once, possibly two, he doesn't say oh boy, so where's the fun?

Well, I decided to rearchive everything to tidy up the site a bit, so there's no more old blue style blog in the archives. Course that means that I've removed all the bits I used to have in the side bar, but I don't think there was ever anything exciting in there anyway, it's much neater like this I think. I am bored this morning. I keep trying to think of things to do, of course there are a million and one things to do, it's just that I don't want to do any of them, don't you just hate that? I could play a game or something, but I'm not really in the mood for that, maybe I'll go and have another cup of tea, I boiled the kettle after I'd hung my washing out. It's a nice day today, it's typical, yesterday when I would have quite liked to go for a walk it was overcast, today when I don't feel like leaving the house it's lovely outside. I went out briefly to the post office, and then to hang out the washing but other than that I'm sitting inside with the curtains drawn, how ridiculous. Maybe I should just make myself go for a walk... nah, can't be bothered. I could read something, if we had a decent garden I could sit in it and read, then at least I'd be outside, but the patch of grass we have is tiny and mostly shaded. I could go to the park, but again can't be bothered, I'm a lazy moo. Maybe I should go and write something, at this rate I'll have wasted the whole morning, it'll be time to go to work and I'll have done absolutely nothing, that's just silly. Well, whatever I'm going to do, sitting here blogging isn't going to get me to do it any quicker, instead I'm just stopping you from doing anything either 'cos you are reading my posts, I have no idea why, go do something more interesting, like watching paint dry. I'm going now.

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Sunday, April 06, 2003
Wow, this blog entry is really long, yet I haven't actually typed much, I've just been copying and pasting stuff that I've written in the past, what a lazy way of filling pages.

Oh, I deleted my pointing site, I figured it was a little redundant now that I have a blog to share my thoughts on. It didn't really have anything there anyway except some book reviews and a page about me. I guess I never actually said stuff about me here and it's possible that people that don't know me might read this. I think only 2 people who know me in real life actually read this, if any of you from real life read this tell me, I'll be amazed, one of the two doesn't really count either since it's Mark who I met online anyway. So anyway, since I've removed the page I thought I could paste the about me stuff here and then it wouldn't die completely. I might change bits if I can be bothered.

Who Am I Really? And does anyone actually care?
Hallo, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to die... No, that's not right, that's not me, let me try again. Hello, my name is Dr Hildegard Langstrum and I am quite, quite mad... No, still not right, though the quite, quite mad bit is probably true. My name is Guybrush Threepwood and I am a mighty pirate. No... My name is Michael Caine. No!! My name is Ali, that's it, Ali Yates. Much less interesting. Ali as in a girl Ali, not a boy Ali. Ali is short for Alison jicyww. However, if you wish to remain alive and with all limbs intact I would advise refraining from using the long name.

(Okay, I don't know, that seemed funny at the time, sorry).

I'm from the UK and live in Leicester, I came here to study Psychology and Biology at Leicester University and stayed to do a P.G.C.E. I then taught a year 3 class at quite a tough school for a year and have now become one of those annoying teachers that left the profession after a year having become fully qualified. Sorry. Anyway, I am now working as a library assistant at Enderby library (the person in the pic there isn't me, it's Brenda, she's lovely, I work with her, the pic was thankfully taken before I came to the library).

I'm a Christian and I go to Church in the Community Leicester (it's an NFI church). I really enjoy working with kids and have recently started running a kids club at my church. That's great fun. It involves me being very silly and manic. Which I like doing, but it can be difficult in front of other adults, I have to pretend there're no other adults in the room and just do it.

I am a fan of Stargate and got involved in lists to do with Stargate and making sites about it, I tend to like to nitpick.

Online I go by the name of Kernel or Kernel Jack, obviously this is related to Stargate, the reason for the spelling altering to Kernel is that obviously I'm not the fictional character Colonel Jack. I am a bit of a nut instead, see, kernel, bit of a nut, ha ha. Yes, okay. I know, not incredibly funny. I'm not very good at thinking of aliases, so Kernel has stuck. In many ways I would like to have a non-Stargate related name, but I have yet to come up with one. I guess now I have cheddar monkey, yay, this is because I love cheddar, cheddar is the best cheese, I could eat it all day long.

I'm only involved in online stuff to do with Stargate even though I like quite a few other things more, what's with that? I don't know. Well, I guess films are more of a one off and you can't do so much talking about them. Things I like more than or as much as Stargate include: God (obviously, he lot better than Stargate), The Princess Bride, Mystery Men, Monty Python, Red Dwarf, The Insyderz (an excellent Christian Ska band, they rock!), Monkey Island (computer game).

I quote from "The Princess Bride" and "Monty Python and The Holy Grail" a lot, oh and I quite often quote insult swordfighting (from Monkey Island). It can be annoying I guess. Never mind.

If you've read all this and still want to speak to me why not Email me. No death threats or spam though, thanks. Though spam related products are welcome, not adverts for them, actual things, you'd have to know my postal address though and I'm not likely to put that online now am I?

(Since I'm spouting old stuff that I've published elsewhere I could repeat my whole background that I put on Kernel Jack's Pad it's not plagerism if it's your own work, Helen wrote the editorial comments).

I have led a fairly boring life, I grew up in Devon with my parents, and my brother and sister (ed - and the creamed rice: Devon knows how they make it so creamy), although I was actually born in Solihull (near Birmingham).

As a child I was a bit of a tomboy, enjoying climbing trees and playing with cars, I also loved playing shooting games with my brother. The kind of TV programmes I liked back then were "The A-Team", "MacGyver", "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Night rider". Although I did also love the less boyish, violent ones, such as Playschool. My brother and I used to pretend to be characters from the A-Team. For some reason I was always Murdoch. Not that I mind, I am probably insane, and anyway he's the only A-Team member to appear in Stargate, yay, go gamekeeper!!

It is surprising I've lived this long, as my parents kept trying to get rid of me. On several occasions they took us on holiday a long way from home and then "lost" me. At Pontins in Skegness they left me with my brother (ed - bad idea) telling him to watch me, he then left me alone, I wandered around for a while and was eventually reunited with my parents. Then at High Harlin Campsite they again left me to be looked after by my brother (for some reason they appeared to have forgotten what happened the last time!) and he left me in the park. I managed to find my way back to the tent by walking round the whole of the campsite till I found it! There was also an incident where David handcuffed me, and lost the key (anyone else noticing some sort of trend?).

I can take comfort in the fact that I wasn't the only one my parents "misplaced". My sister aged 6 got into a lift (elevator to any Americans) at Heathrow airport without the rest of us, my Mum didn't know whether to try getting in another lift to follow her, leaving David and me, or to stay with us. In the end the lift came back and Suzanne was still in it. Moral of the story don't have three kids in 4.5 years.

I also experimented with putting a carrier bag on my head when I was little, well if I was allowed to put boxes or paper bags on my head I couldn't quite see why my mum went so berserk! I didn't suffocate anyway as is fairly obvious from the fact that I'm still here. I think that if I was old enough to put the bag on my head intentionally I would be able to take it off if I discovered I couldn't breathe. (ed - your long sentences are more dangerous)

You may think that's the end of my adventures and that as I got older I stopped getting lost and doing stupid things. You would be wrong, when I was about 14 I went to Florida with my parents and friends, about 6 of us hung around together for most of the time, trying not to be with the grown ups. We were at Epcot and we saw this monorail and thinking it just went round Epcot went on it. Once it started going we realised it was going completely away from the centre, we ended up at Disney World where it was announced that everyone had to get off. We didn't have a clue what to do, so we just sat there for what seemed an incredibly long time (with no one else coming on) and eventually it went back to Epcot. Of course we should have realised when we had to actually go out of Epcot and get our hands stamped before we could get on the monorail, but it all worked out OK in the end.

Anyway I appear to have survived these incidences and come through it all relatively unscathed (ed - physically anyway). I think that that is possibly everything you could possibly want to know about me and more (ed - yes, you can stop now). So goodbye and thanks for listening (ed - listening?!?).

Look. She did it. Helen made me a picture, yay! I haven't really shrunk it much, I don't know, maybe it should be smaller, but then it'd lose detail and it's very cool. It has a monkey and cheese and a zeppelin and obligatory Indiana Jones references, what more could I ask for? Well, the moon on a stick obviously, but that's 'cos I'm ungrateful :-) I like it when they say moon on a stick.

You know it occurs to me that maybe I've been too quick to recover from the loss of my kettle. I never shared my grief with this blog, I emailed my homegroup upon the kettle's demise, maybe I should include that email here:


It is my sad duty to inform you all of the loss of an important member of our household. Though technically neither human nor an official member of the homegroup I'm sure that you will all join me in mourning the loss of the blue "dolphin" kettle. Earlier today the kettle died courageously in the line of duty, we are not sure exactly how, but it appears that it, or should I say he, became overzealous in its activity of heating water and melted his own socket.

I know that this will come as a shock to many of you, the kettle has provided many hours of service in supplying us with water for hot beverages. Never complaining, always willing to serve in order that we might drink tea. He died so very very young, he was not yet even two years old, a tragic state of affairs. Things may be a little difficult for the time being, but life and tea drinking must go on. For now we are boiling water in a saucepan, soon it may become necessary to buy another kettle, fear not, the new kettle will not be a replacement of the old dolphin kettle, there is no way that he could be replaced, but I'm sure that he would not wish us to live in a world without tea. He died attempting to provide hot water for a drink, it would somehow make his sacrifice meaningless if we didn't drink tea, by drinking tea we can celebrate the life and service of the kettle.

Please be understanding with me in my time of grief, it is possible that I will find it too painful to make tea at homegroup next week, so volunteers are appreciated.

If you wish to send cards or flowers to the kettle then we will arrange them with him for his open casket viewing.

Oh and if anyone happens to have a kettle they want to give us that'd be nice too :-) Though I doubt we'll make it as long as even 24 hours without buying one.


So, yes, have I been to quick in getting over my tragic loss? Maybe buying such a nice new kettle was wrong, but I like it and using a saucepan was most inconvenient and irritating.

Oh and Mark, I like the moon, coz it is close to us. I think you are crazy for not liking the Moon song.

The new kettle takes about an hour to return to its fully cool black state. Though that was with some water left in it. Maybe I should experiment and see how long it would take to cool with no water in.

I think the new layout is growing on me, its simplicity is quite nice. Possibly the thing that makes me like it most though is that if you stare at it for just a few seconds you see white lines when you move your eyes, from where you were looking at the bold yellow, cool. I had something else that I was going to say, but I can't remember what, but I'm sure it was fascinating and you'd have all found it really interesting, so just imagine that you read something really great here today.

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