So, I'm home! Not much to say there..had to buy a whole stock of groceries today, and get used to driving again :P (not really, I wasn't gone *that* long)

In other news:

First, there has been a reshuffling of teams at my job. I'm still doing the same old, just under a new boss. Who doesn't know me from Adam. Who can't really vouch for me or stand up for me when it comes down to 'where can we cut costs?'. Because even the bank is underperforming in this economy (mostly due to the purchase of a certain failing rival who apparently overrepresented their asset values in the buyout). Aaaanyway we're all scrambling to make ourselves useful, because the bank is segmented enough for the higher-ups not to know us, and to honestly think we could be replaced by Indian tech support.
It's amusing that I should suffer this worry, due to me being lazy and taking an easier job this time around. Oh well, simultaneously I suddenly have job offers this week. Luck may hold out.

Second, can I take a moment to sing Amazon's praises? While in Germany I went to amazon.de and ordered items for local delivery and my amazon prime account actually took effect, so I had free 2 day shipping. That was excellent. Then today I discover bbcshop.com does not ship outside the EU, and of course due to the ridiculous region encodings system bbc shop america doesn't offer the Attenborough 'life collection'. Because it was never released for the US. So I hit amazon.co.uk, and they happily serve it up, and my US account works equally well on the UK site, and shipping was somehow only 3EUR!
So I officially love Amazon even more than I did before

As a sidenote, region encoding is still a ridiculous, ridiculous system. Yet apparently there are not enough non-US-release DVDs for people to continue making a fuss. I sort've hate that something terrible and wrong can only be corrected if the indignation reaches some kind of critical mass. Even if only a few of us are affected, it's still a terrible system! Lucky for me, the old xbox will play any region for me, as will my PCs. Only my expensive blu-ray player turns up it's nose (and, I suppose, if it got over the region issue it would still choke on the PAL :P)
Yet noone is still complaining about region encoded DVDs. This reminds me of discovering that nobody lobbies the BBC for American shortwave anymore. I must be part of a sad minority who wish BBC still saw shortwave as a vital method of communication worldwide. And their internet streaming is terrible (there are standards for streaming, yet nobody uses THEM, either. augh.)

OK enough complaining! The complaining threatens to overwhelm the happiness for amazon, haha.