Day 266: How I Got You To Love Me

When I was working in Sweden in 2000 I used to visit the local CD/DVD shop quite often in my lunch break to see what the average hip young Swede was listening to. I noticed a cd called Hagnesta Hill by a group called Kent that seemed to be making its way up the charts. I was particularly struck by the cover and even though I had never heard anything by this group and didn't even know what sort of music they produced I ended up feeling compelled into buying it just because the cover was so good.


Eventually I bought it, and remember having mixed feelings when I first listended to it. I really liked the first song, but wasn't so sure about the others. But I persevered and it grew on me bit by bit. I'm glad I did as I still regularly play it - in fact I listened to a few tracks from it today while on the treadmill at the Gym, until the treadmill suddenly stopped going round about 3 quarters of the way through my program, so I went and had a sauna instead.

Since buying Hagnesta Hill I have bought most of Kents other cds. I think they have got better with each release and their last one (Vapen och Ammunition) is one of the best cds I own. I have bought quite a few Swedish cds since working there as it has helped me with learning Swedish and keeping it current as I don't get much chance to practise it these days. The trouble with liking Swedish Groups is that they don't tend to play in the UK so the only way to see them is with a trip to my favourate land, but that is not possible as often as I would like. In fact the only concert I have been to so far in Sweden is Sting, who last time I checked, wasn't a Swedish Singer. That reminds me that I haven't written about that weekend yet - I'll save that for a different blog entry.

Anyway back to the main story. In the last few years I have manged to see Roxette in Brussels, Björk in Brussels and The Kings of Convenience in Glasgow and Edinburgh. So, of these only Roxette is actually Swedish and they sing in English. The list of groups I really want to see include: Eva Dahlgren, Marie Fredriksson (solo not with Roxette), Shirley Clamp, Lisa Nilsson and Kent. When I was working in Sweden I noticed that an album called The Best of Marie Fredriksson came out and got to number 1 in the charts and I also noticed she was going to perform a big outdoor concert in Stockholm, but at the time I didn't know who she was and hadn't heard any of her songs so I didn't bother going. But the concert was later released on DVD so I bought it and really regreted not going. On a later visit to Stockholm, Kent played a concert but I was unable to go as I was there on a short trip with my familly and on another ocassion Lisa Nilsson was playing a concert right next to our hotel at a venue called the Cirkus, and again I wasn't able to go. This Lisa Nilsson concert also came out on DVD so at least I was able to see it second hand.

But, and here we finally get to were all this rambling on is leading to, a couple of weeks ago I got my usual weekly email from BiljettDirect Ticnet to find out that Kent are doing a tour of Scandinavia next year and tickets were going on sale on monday 22nd november. So that monday I went straight to their web site and went through the process of booking them to find that only customers living in Sweden were able to book the tickets online. If you wanted to book them from another country you needed to ring the line. This caused me to break into a bit if a sweat as on the one hand I could use it as an oportunity to practise my Swedish, but on the other hand I felt sure I would make an idiot of myself by getting into a situation were I couldn't say what I needed to. So I kept beginning to dial the number, but then stopping as I chickened out. By lunch time I thought I had better just get on with it so I went outside, away from prying ears, and rang the number. I was presented with a message saying all the lines were busy, but I could book tickets by visiting www.ticnet.se instead and was promptly cut off. That was no good because I couldn't book the tickets at www.ticnet.se.

So I kept trying and getting the same message, but eventually in the middle of the afternoon I got a message saying I had been placed in a queue. Now my heart began really beating fast as I was listening to the lift music in the background - at any moment someone was going to answer the phone and I was going to go "umm.....". Eventually the fatal moment came and someone answered the phone. In the panic I didn't hear a word of what she said, but I managed to come out with "Kan Jag köpper två biljetter för Kent i Stockholm nästa mij?" and then added "Jag bo i England". She seemed to understand the general drift of what I said and came back at me with a string of Swedish, of which I managed to latch on to the single word "skickar" which means "send". So I came back with "Kan du skickar dem till mij?" and the responce was "Ja" so that was the first bit of the transaction done and dusted. By now I was in a real panic about how to procede so I said "Kan du taller Engelska?" and she replied "Ja" again so my final bit of Swedish was to say "Min Svenskt är inte så bra" to which she replied "I thought you Swdish was very good" which made me feel really good, but deep down I knew I had bottled it.

The remainder of the transaction was performed in English, but I ended up with 2 tickets booked for Saturday 28th May. The only complication was that I could not pay by credit card I would need to transfer the money into their bank account in Stockholm. I remembered that I had had to do this for the Sting concert I went to and knew it involved filling in complicated forms at the bank that usually involed havaing to go back to the bank a second time as I didn't have all the corect information with me the first time. And true to form, that is exactly what happened this time. So the money is currently in limbo between my bank acount and that of the ticket agancy and I am hoping they won't decide I'm not paying and re-sell the tickets before the money gets to them.

All that remains is to find a travelling companion, and that may already have been resolved by Adrian, who so kindly accompanied me to the Sting concert mentioned earlier.

Day 247 - That petrol emotion

So for all you bjigglerettes out there who have been on baited tenderhooks wondering if my car will ever see the light of day following its petrol leak, I can now bring you all the closure you have been waiting so long for. At the end of the last installment I had the car booked into the garage and was having to get lifts of various assorted friends, hangers on and taxi companies so that I didn't leave a trail of petrol all over the roads of Scotland. On the Wednesday morning I set off to the garage and parked it out front when I got there. I went into the office and waited to be served. One of the guy's that recommended the garage to me said the main reason for recomending them was that the guy who ran it looked like a pirate and soon enough in walked a guy who looked like a pirate. So I knew there an then that I had indeed made the correct choice of garage. There was no way that a guy who ran a garage and looked like a pirate was going to fleece me. I told him who I was and that following our phone call to discuss the problem I was bring ing the car in. "Ok" he said, "when do you want it back?" I told him I was having a long weekend (going away thursday and back next tuesday) and thought it was likely to take ages to fix as it may involve having to order specialised parts so basically I would be prepared to wait as long as it took. I then said "shall I show you where the leak is?" to which he responed "no". So I said "well please will you ring me as soon as you know what needs doing?" He said "yes" so I headed off to the nearest bus stop to catch a bus into work (so we'd better add buses to that earlier list of modes of transport). While I was waiting for the bus I began to worry. Because I said I would be away until next Tuesday he probably wasn't even going to start looking at the car until then, and then I'm going to have to order parts and get them delivered to the garage and then he's probably going to find that there is so much rust on the car that there is nothing to fit the new parts to, and I'd have to spend weeks getting lifts of all my friends, hangers on, taxis and buses (and ok I haven't really got any hangers on, but it makes me feel good to think I have). I began wishing I had said I needed the car back immediately and hadn't mentioned that I would be having a long weekend. In fact the only thing I had left to cling onto was the fact that he looked like a pirate so things might not turn out to be quite so bad.

Anyway the bus took exactly 1 hour to get me to work - if I had been in a car it would have taken about 10 minutes, but the bus decided it was going to take the most windy and laborious route it could. During the remainder of the day I was told by a number of people that I should definately have said I needed the car straight back and I wouldn't be seeing it for ages now. Each time my phone rang I thought thats them ringing to tell me I need a new petrol tank and its going to cost £5000 and take 8 months to fix. But they didn't ring and I ended up getting a lift home from a kindly collegue.

The next morning the garage still hadn't rung, and I also needed to arrange a lift to the airport after lunch now that I was carless. I sent an eamil around the office to see if anyone was going around about the time I was that could give me a lift. I got a number of offers back, but they were all leaving at such a time that would make me at risk of missing my flight, so I thought I'd better just book a taxi. At around 12:00ish went into the corridor (which is the only place I can get a hint of a signal on my mobile phone) and decided as the garage still hadn't rung I would ring them to see if they had got around to having a look at it yet. The pirate guy answered and I asked if they were in a position to tell me the worst about my car yet. He said "didn't you get the messge I left on your phone? We've fixed your car and its ready to collect". I was completely taken aback and aked how much it would cost. The reply was £40. I was amazed, but now I needed some way to get t9o the garage to pick up the car, and I couldn't take the bus becuase that wuold make me too late to catch my flight. Luckily Al came to the rescue and drove me down to the garage. He even filled up his bivvy can with petrol to make sure I would have enough to get me to the garage (you can see why he is such a hit with the ladies).

So I had manged to get my car back quicker than I could have hoped for and it had only cost me £40. So as far as I'm concerned you can't go wrong if you take you car to a garage where the guy running it looks like a pirate.

Is there a doctor in the house?

My appointment was 9.05. In the morning.
This would seem a logical time, for so many reasons. Firstly, it means a quick detour before going to work, minimising the time away from the tedious, mortgage paying nonsense. Secondaly, first thing in the morning means the Doc has little time to overrun his alloted time from previous patients, so should be just about on time, right?
So, I arrive at 9, knowing his time is valuable and not wanting to be the first cause of overrun, so that everyone else can be saved from waiting in the, umm, waiting room amongst the single mothers and pensioners who are only there to pass the time and stink out the place with their deep scent of depression and hopelessness.
As a sidenote, for the technical people amongst us, the practice (why is it called a 'practice' anyway, I want to go to one that's called the 'perfect') has a new system installed. To save valuable time and resources, the doctor no longer buzzes reception to let them know he's ready for a patient. He now clicks on his EDS supplied GUI, which is connected to one of those long, red LED display boards. The main purpose of this is to waste a few seconds, then phone reception, explaining how his computer thing has 'crashed' again and allowing the IT expert behind the desk to show her technical prowess by telling him to 'go out, and then back in again'. A couple of minutes later the buzzer goes and a name appears on the screen. Good job we've got these advancements going in to save time.
Anyway, as 9.10 appears and leaves, a body passes me from the front door and proceeds directly into the doctor's office. "Wait a minute, that's a bit unfair." is my initial thought, before realising it was, in fact, the doctor. So, he's late. Fantastic. I get a little peeved that I make sure I'm not holding anyone up, and realise that he can sometimes be held back through working on a more serious problem on someone else, but I'm not sure not getting his arse out of bed in time to neck his first half-bottle of whisky of the day counts as unavoidable.
Oh, there goes the buzzer. My buttocks strain from the anti-ergonomic chair in anticipation, as someone else's name appears on the screen. Great, now I need to wait on the old boy trundling into the doctor's room and straining to supply a piss-sample from his wrinkly old tadger. So, have to wait another 15 minutes before going in to get a course of antibiotics for the sore throat.
He doesn't write prescriptions any more. He clicks on his EDS SuperDoc system, which prints it out and he just has to sign. Or doesn't. He pulls out his old-fashioned pad and fills it out. "Have you tried coming out and going back in?", asks I, helpfully.

Day 225: A forest in disguise

Some time ago I made brief mention of the fact that I bought a 32 year old Volvo for use as a runabout while I am in Scotland. I, then, singularly failed to mention it in any further postings, so I will rectify the matter here.

Before getting this car I had been renting one each Monday morning from Edinburgh airport and returning it on Friday. I had thought that there must be a better way of organising all my weekday travelling needs than forking out for a hire car each week, so during a quietish time in Germany around 18 months ago I started looking through all the makes of second hand car that were available on autotrader to see what took my fancy. I only had 2 criteria: it had to be cheap and it had to be cool (i.e. not just some bog standard normal car). Oh, and also it had to be Swedish (well it didn't really need to be, but if it was it would be worth an extra 1,000 points on the deciding whether I wanted one or not scoring system). So while browsing I came accross a car called a Volvo P1800. It looked quite cool, but the front of it reminded me of a car I used to really like when I was younger and had even tried to get my Mum to by one. I had never known what the model of this car was, I just referred to it as a Volvo Sports Estate or some such thing.
So now I had a plan. I needed to try and find out what the model of the Volvo sports car was and then buy one. The first bit was the easiest - after a bit of searching I saw it was called a Volvo 1800ES and it was the best looking car ever made. Buying one was a bit harder. I managed to track one down, so rang the seller who said he couldn't say it was in showroom condition, but it very nearly was. he said it was kept in a garage and had had a full bare metal respray 7 years earlier. So I drove over 100 miles to go and see this car to find that it smelled of damp and looked like it had been painted with a brush.

Anyway after seeing 1 other car that turned out not to be all I first thought it was I managed to get hold of one with a full years mot that didn't cost a huge amount of money. I bought it in London, drove it to Yorkshire, then Scotland and then from Scotland to Yorkshire and back all in the first week. It had a few dents in it and a few bits of rust, but on the whole I was very pleased with it. Infact I far prefered driving this to the near new rental cars I had been spending my money on. I even found that someone had shoved a caristhestar business card invitting me to register the car at their site one day. I worked out that if the car lasted me for 19 weeks and then blew up I would have spent the same in those 19 weeks as I would on a hire car. So far I've had the car for 25 weeks, so in my books it has already paid for intself and I haven't been shy about going around saying how reliable its been and other famous last words such as how I haven't spent a single penny on it since I got it etc etc....

So after being told by countless people that I am tempting fate and me ignoring it completely my car now has a petrol leak. It was discovered last thursday when I picked Al up to go to the Gym. Someone had seen us drive off and noticed that I left a trail of liquid behind me as I sped into the distance. After they let me know I had a look under the car, but nothing seemed to be dripping so I took the car home on Thursday night and looked under it again on Friday morning before I left for work. There was still no sign of a leak, but when I got out of my car in the work carpark I couldn't fail to notice a line of liquid leading all the way around the carpark to my car. I imagined that my petrol tank had probably rusted through and the only option was going to be to get a new petrol tank, but I had no idea who on earth I would be able to get to fit it. I was beginnning to think that as the car had already paid for itself (compared to the cost of renting a car) I may as well just take it round to the nearest scrap yard. But at lunchtime I went out to look at it more closely and yet again there was no sign of any leakage whatsoever. So I turned the engine on and went and looked again and there was now a steady drip of petrol. I turned the engine off and after a few moment the dripping stopped again.

So at themoment my conclusion is that it may not need a new petrol tank after all, but as I know nothing about cars I guess I could stil be wrong. I have it booked into a local garage for Wednesday morning so I will post an update once they have had a look.

I think I should add, that after this post I feel a bit like a train spotter, but in reality I'm not really into cars at all - I just couldn't think of anything else to write about - so sorry, but there you go - life's like that, so deal with it.

Quizzes are bad, m'kay?

Oh dear. I'm not feeling so good.
The Company had a quiz night last night. A few of us went along.
I think the rest is pretty obvious, but I'll labour the point for the bored amongst us.
Free drink (first three, terms and conditions apply), free food (unidentifiable foodstuffs, tasteless) and a bundle of questions. 160 people, teams of six.
My team sucked. It's not that we were stupid, we just didn't know the name of Britney Spears' husband. We had a decent mix of ages, but no girls, so the Sex in the City questions were a waste of time too. To cut to the chase, we finished about 13th out of, umm, 160/6. This was made worse by the other half of our department, who were sitting right in front of us, taking the lead before being pipped by 1 point in the very last round.
Highlights - The team that took the sheet asking for the phonetic alphabet and filling in "ay, bee, cee, dee, eff, jee,etc". One of our team mates answering the "heart of midlothian" author question with "William Wallace", then arguing his case by mentioning the Wallace Monument.
Sample questions -
Next line of the song required....
There were voices down the corridor, thought I heard them say...
I want to reach out and touch the flame...

Who was the architect of the Scottish Parliment?
Name 5 inert gases.

That'll need to do, I'm tired.

I got the bird

Just a quick antidote from last night...

I was sitting quietly, strumming away gently on the guitar trying to master a chord change or two when I heard something fall over in another room. I wandered through, expecting to see a picture on the floor and a hole in the wall, but nothing seemed amiss. There was then another crash, this time identifiably from the bathroom. As I stood in the room, trying to figure out what had fallen, twice, there was another one. It seemed to be coming from under the bath itself!
As visions of the bath collapsing through a water damaged floor into the foundations of the house, I removed the front panel of the bath. As I took it off, a black object scuttled from the darkness across the floor. "Shit! A Rat!", was the pant-filling thought running through my
head. Then the black thing took flight. "Shit! A Flying Rat!" was the next moronic thought. "Oh wait, it's more likely a bird" was the schizophrenic conversation going on inside. As I scuttled through the house, with the pose of an inexperienced helicopter passenger alighting, I opened all the doors and windows until the occupying forces found a retreat route.
Underlying question - how on earth does a bird type object get into such a position to start with?
The investigation continues.

Day 208 - The lives I've never led

Prior to joining the Gym I needed to get kitted up with gym type stuff, so the obvious choice for me was a Sweden football shirt. My fellow team memebers thought a football shirt was not the correct thing to wear to the gym, but when I get an idea in my head it isn't about to get shifted by other people talking sense to me. So I went to my local JJB shop and went straight up to the Sweden football shirt section to find that they had 1 in stock. Unfortunately it was XXL and I think that even though I need to lose a few pounds it may just have looked a bit baggy on me. I asked if they were getting any more in stock, but they sucked in their breath and said "You just can't get hold of Sweden shirts at the moment. They can't be had for love nor money". I wondered again if I should get the XXL one, but after a couple of hours pondering I thought I'd better leave the shop, so I did. I then spotted that a Marks and Spencers food hall was in the latter stages of being built and would be opening soon. I though that this was good as I was getting a bit fed up with what Safeway and Asda had to offer in the old food department.

So over the next week or so I visited the sports shop a few more times to buy socks and check if they had any more Sweden football shirts (and also take the oportunity to see if the M&S food hall had opened yet). A couple of times I nearly bought the XXL one, but something always held me back. I didn't even buy it when the price was reduced by £10.

Last night I did the old checking if M&S is open yet routine and I found it was now open. Despite the fact that I have a streaming cold I though I needed to celibrate with some nice food from M&S, a bootle of Cava and a DVD. So I bought the food and Cava from M&S and then went to Asda to buy a DVD.

I ended up buying the butterfly effect as I had heard from few people it was good, although I knew nothing about it other than that. So I sat down with my glass of Cava and small bowl of piri piri cashew nuts and began watching, and I must say it was a really good film. It got me thinking about such things as what would have happened if I had stayed in Sweden in 2000 rather than going back to do some work in Yorkshire. I guess one thing that wouldn't have happened is the creation of this blogg. I have watched a few films since starting this blogg and in the most they have all been, not only good, but also films that could change your life.

Something big is going to happen........

A brief history of mine

Back.

Yup, managed to survive the trek across Europe and return safely and in schedule.

We set off on Friday morning, and early start was required due to having to travel from Glasgow to Prestwick, a mere jaunt of 45 mins or so. We did, of course, have the delay of arguing about something totally innocuous, which is a tradition when we're travelling. It usually results in us deciding not to go, me jumping in the car and driving 200 foot before stopping and going back. So, this meant we were a few minutes late leaving, and I had to hammer the 1.0L Corsa along the M(A)77, a shitty little road which is claiming to be something it's not. We got to the airport in plenty time, and I dropped the passengers off at the door before parking, to save them the walk. The car park wasn't too full, so I got to choose my space, then sauntered into the airport myself. A "Gate Closed" sign greeted me. It had just been erected as the scouting party arrived, but had been up for a few minuted before I got there. To give them credit, they checked us in without a problem, but it could have been messy.
Flight was pretty uneventful, got to Milan, which was hot and sunny, a nice change to what we had left back home. Done a bit of jumping on bus to town, metro to nearest station to hotel and taxi the last leg. The room wasn't ready, fortunately the lovely receptionist spoke perfect English, with either a scunthorpe or swedish accent. Yeah, I don't know why I couldn't tell which either. We headed to the bar to wait out the cleaners, leaving our baggage at reception to save humphing it around. When the lovely lady came over to tell us the room was ready a few minutes later, we headed back to reception to ask for our bags. "They're in your room sir." was the bemused response. A nice touch, UNA Scandinavia gets a little mention for that one.
We wandered around the area a little, enjoying the sunshine and looking for food. It became clear we were outside the actual centre, about 20 mins walk. It was surprisingly difficult to find any place open for food, so we ended up wandering into a kind of bakery which did slices of pizza, on a kind of really thick base. I have to say, it was tastier than a cheese and onion pastie from Greggs. To get into the centre of town we were advised to get a tram. You buy a ticket for 1 Euro at the hotel reception, or one of the magazine stands dotted around and it's valid for 45 minutes travel on the trams, or one journey on the Metro. Standing at the tramstop for mere minutes gave me time to figure out which way town was, and which number tram to get. The system was pretty easy, even for the Itialianly challenged like myself. A number 33 arrived, we jumped on, and I attempted to hand over my tickets to the driver. He waved me up the tram, obviously completely uninterested in such trivialities. I idly wondered how they knew your ticket had been used, but thought nothing too much about it.
We arrived in the dead centre (Duomo) to the view of an amazing exhibition of the redirection of poor people's cash into a high profile advertising campaign for the catholic church. We decided to just have a glance and then go get some food, saving the proper investigation for Saturday.

Gym #2

Went again today.
This time Paul and DJ joined us, so the only one missing is Pao, who
won't go 'cos he reckons it's rubbish. Actually there was probably a
better explanation for that, but I kinda switched off since he was
boring me.

We all went on the treadmill and plodded for ages. It was quite good I
suppose, we were knackered at the end.

Did fitness tests, Dom is +7, I was -14, Paul was obviously 0 and DJ
scores 0 too.

Don't really have any interesting stories about it - altough DJ and a
strap-on came up in conversation.

Anyway, I'm off to Milan tomorrow, and the weather looks decent, so
fudbuckets to you all

Mr Universe

So, we did it. Went to the gym.

It was great, we did a fitness test. At the risk of unleashing the wrath
of Dom, I'll post the results. That way we can update the scores as they
(hopefully) increase.

Actually - bollox to that - I'll zero the scores to save embarrassment.

So -

Al - 0
Dom - 0

Hopefully this won't be a competition, it's more meant as a record to make
us feel good about ourselves.

Unless I do better, then it's a competition.

We'll keep you posted with updates at least weekly. Unless we don't feel
like it.

Oh, little story for posterity

We get to the gym, get our shorts on and pop on the scales just as we're
going into the gym itself.
"80kgs" says Dom, "me too!" exclaims me, strange coincidence since our
builds are quite different.
So, one workout later we get showered and dressed, grabbing all our wet
towels and gear in our bags.
"Want to see if you've lost any weight?" says I jokingly on the way out.
"Yeah! Good idea!" says Dom, and jumps onto the scales, now fully clothed
and carrying a sports bag full of wet stuff.
"90??!??! How come I've put on 10kg after a workout???!??!".
I smiled serenely and never cracked a light.

This is a test post

Did you know you could update the blog by emailing it?

I know how to do it but I'm not telling you.

Not not here
Hrmm. It was looking like I was going to be leaving the land of the insane for a while. But I'm not. This is purely due to the addition of funds which will be used to stabilise the pile of money I currently sleep on. It does get a bit squished after a while unless you fluff it up, or add more; and I'm not much of a one for fluffing.
So, I suppose some effort should be put into entertaining the masses with tales from my laugh a minute life.
Oh dear, I got nuthin'

I (re)joined the gym today. I've been getting much chiropracted and actupunctured for a while now and have permission to exacerbate the damage by lifting heavy things, so I'm going back tomorrow. Interestingly a number of workmates have decided to join me. Dom will be there, fighting the flab, Paul may well come along, toning some abs and Dave will be there, umm, probably just deriding us for being unfit and not using the equipment properly.

In other news: I'm off to Milan this weekend for a fun-filled experience of testing Paolo's Italian cursing lessons to the full. There will be wine.

Oh, and before I forget, I watched Alien Vs Predator last night. It was shit.

Matchday Report
We all went out the other night.
It was a bit of a plan for a while, but we finally managed to organise a bit of a night out. Our good friend Pao had arranged a table in a lovely little Thai resturaunt in Edinburgh, one he frequents while he's living his nomadic lifestyle up here in Sconny Botland.
Now, I would have thought this through a bit more. We're not exactly renound for being the quietest of groups, or politically correct. As an example, one of the conversations consisted of Andy winding up the group about something, I've no recollection what, but the resultant put down from, umm, one of us, "Ah, but we know what women's fannies taste like", said with just the right amount of venom, gives an idea of the quality of our verbal output. So, it might not be a venue that Pao frequents any more.
We also drank in a pub called The Blue Blazer which, despite our reservations, turned out to be a leather thong free zone, and actually had a fair old collection of whiskeys, beers and other non-gay drinks.
Needless to say, I missed the last train home. So, we proceeded to drink a bundle more things and get acceptably drunk, then get a vastly overpriced taxi home.
Ratings
Pao 7/10 - Extra points for booking the venue, but loses points for some confessions that will never be repeated or believed
Andy 6/10 - Loses points for being a bit unwell, but gains a few for sharing the cost of the taxi
Paul 7/10 - Points for being the drunkest when I arrived, but not falling over all night
Dom 8/10 - Some never to be forgotten lines escaped his warped mind as the evening wore on
Al 10/10 - As always, witty and chatty, with countless entertaining stories to regail the crowd with. (The crowd, of course, were smart enough to refuse to listen)

So, same time next week then?

Haaarrrr!
Right, since I'm here, I want to point out a few things...

Firstly, Talk like a pirate day is on the 19th of September. Those more astute, (or cute), than me will have already figured out that this is a Sunday. Now, I know this doesn't work for christmas or anything, but we're going to move it to the Friday before, for work purposes.
So, that means the 17th of September, instead of being a dress down day, will now be a dress like a pirate day.

I watched Star Trek : Nemesis last night. Only because it was on Sky you understand, I haven't turned into a sex-starved sandal wearer or anything.
As well as being fundamentally pish, there are things that just annoy me about the thing. Why on earth (or elsewhere) is it that the transporters never work when they're needed? They seem to be fine when your just pissing around shagging aliens, but as soon as anyone is in any trouble they are screwed (usually interference). Now, I know it's pretty technical stuff to make them work at all, and I'm not dissing all the fine work that's carried out in Starfleet headquarters, but the point is that every other species seems to be able to transport people straight from the Enterprise on a mere whim. Gives us Earthies a bad name it does.
Oh, and the sensors never seem to pick up anything, unless it's something very dangerous that the captain always wants to investigate.
Example:
From 1 billion light years away -
Sensor Guy - "Captain, I'm picking up some squadiggle whatcha readings from a far away planet"
Captain - "Set a course and engage, fanny-baws"
From 3 feet away -
Captain - "Right, where's it coming from then, fanny-baws?"
Sensor Guy - "I can't tell, the readings are too faint."
Captain - "Prick"

Oh, and I'm no expert in Starfleet Protocols, but they kept going on at the start how the Captain couldn't go on away missions, or could, but only if the second in command didn't, or something. But, as soon as the opportunity arose the whole lot of the senior knobbers pissed off to the planet, leaving newt in charge, which had been Hick's plan all along.

Day 171: A Fringing we did go

The first inaugeral outing of the official Björk Bjiggler Fringe Goers Club had their first visit to the Edinburgh fringe last night (at least it was my first visit - the others had all been before I think).

Al and I went together in his car. We set off in good time as we planned to get a bite to eat before our 19:15 performance, but due to the traffic being so clogged up it took us rather longer than anticipated to get there, but I was very impressed with Als ability to take us straight to the right place even though he didn't know the streets of Edinburgh that well and he wasn't sure exactly where we were going anyway. Getting parked up and getting into the pleasance couryard with a pint in hand was with us the work of a moment. I went into the white porta cabin (as instructed when I booked the tickets) to collect the tickets to the Keith Barrett Show and was told that I had also booked some tickets for a later show and did I want to collect those at the same time. The ability to do this saved our bacon as the first show finished late and we would not have had time to collect the tickets before the second show if I had not been able to collect them here.

While we were waiting in the couryard we spotted a few famous people like that american who has been on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, that comedian who isn't very good that got arrested for dressing up as Ossama Bin Laden at a royal party and an irish person who was off the telly. Someone came up to us and said "is this the back of the queue?", we said "What queue?" and looked round to see that a queue had formed and we happened to be standing jsut were it ended. We said "no were weren't in the queue" and walked off to see where we had to go to see our show, only to find that you needed to queue, but by now the queue was about 5 times as long as it was when we were in it earlier. Even so, we ended up on the front row, which was good, but meant I ended up being in the firing line a few times. I must say that the show started and I started laughing and didn't stop laughing until almost the end.

As mentioned earlier, the first show finished late so we had to high tail it accross town and joined Paolo in the queue just before it started going into the assembly hall to see Jeremy Hardy which was very enjoyable and a good compliment to Rob Brydon as it is a different type of humour that gets you thinking about just how crap just about everything is (apart from moving to Sweden).

Anyway it was all a bit of fun - a bit of fun it was.

Day 170: A fringing we will go

Tonight is a big night out for the Björk Bjiggler team and assorted hangers on as we will be taking on the Edinburgh Fringe en mass and seeing all the top shows. For the first part of the evening we shall be splitting up due to the fact that some of the party feel it is more appropriate to go and see Budhist drumming rather than a quality show such as The Keith Barret Show. Needless to say and I will be having the last laugh there.

We shall then be high tailing it across town for me to pick up the tickets to the Jeremy Hardy show, which need to be collected at least 20 minutes before the show starts, and meeting up with the others who will probably have all been brain washed by now and be wanting to go off and join some cult or other.

Anyway thats the bit that has been organised thus far, after that the fringe is our oyster (in much the same way as a 99% wio and 1% sys can be quite dificult to resolve when there are only 45 processes running at the time and none of them are really doing anything very much) , so we probably won't bother going to any more shows and will just slope off to our respective digs and just generally stay out of trouble.

So, hopefully we'll see you there.
Full update and review will be provided tomorrow.

Aly in DisneyLand
Not a bad title, eh? That's 'cos I've just been to DisneyLand you see. The one in Paris that is, not the one in California, or the one in Florida. I actually think one of them is called Disney World just to distinguish it, but I don't care.
I was going to save another title for something else, but will use it now since it was pretty funny, although only to me.
Aly shoes the plooky lass
I think you might need to be Scottish, or even a weedgie to get that, but trust me, it's funny.

Anyway, on with the show.

I flew with Ryan Air for a reasonable sum to a place called Beauvais, which is quite a bit outside Paris. I was prepared for this though, and had booked a car, which I'd upgraded to the next level. So, I got there and picked up a "yellow" Peugeot 307 Turbo Diesel, which was a neat car. Oh, "yellow" is in quotes because it's French for green. I say that because the guy sent me round to the car park to get the "yellow" one, you can guess the rest.
So, proceeded to kick the arse out the 307 down the PPV roads to an IBIS hotel just outside EuroDisney. After traveling back and forth along the length of the motorway I spotted an IBIS hotel so jumped off at that exit and went to the hotel, which was the wrong one. It was nice though, and had an outdoor heated pool, so we cancelled our reservation and checked in. (Ha, good deal of £60 for two nights in other hotel due to internet last minute deal lost then).
Did the Disney thing for a couple of days. It was weird, we'd get a thunderstorm, it'd batter down with rain for 10 minutes, then dry out immediately. (I'll tell you though, the sight of Pluto sprinting down the street trying to get out of the rain will stay with me for a long time).
So, did some fast loopy things, some slow mechanical things and spent a bundle on shit food.

Headed down to Provins next, booked into a Formula 1 hotel, for the novelty factor. You just go up, insert credit card, select room type and get a receipt with a code number to get into the room. Cool stuff. Went to room, logged in, opened door, seen there was no bathroom, walked out, went and booked in to another place. Got a chalet in some campsite so the young one could run around and play. Got some really nice weather then next couple of days, and plenty to do here. Oh and Provins was really cool. A little medieval town with lots of cobbled streets, and all that nonsense. Recommended.

Had to head back for the flight on Monday, stopped off at some massive mall outside Disney Land and hung out there for a while before heading north. I'd memorized the route due to gf's complete ineptness with a map. Headed up the A1, all you do is head for Amiens. After an awfully long time, decided to stop and check the map. Ah, you should come off the A1 onto the A16, ooops. Figured out we were an incredible distance from where we were meant to be. Had to drive another hour or so and pretty impressive speeds (190kph, not bad for a wee car) to get to the airport, fudflaps*

*A Dom invention from today, had to be used.

Any road up. That'll do for that. Don't ask about my holiday, that was it.

I'll try and get something slight less tedious for next time.

Day 163: In the slaughterhouse all corpses smell the same

Sorry for the blatent ph plagerism, but it makes a good title and I've been wanting to use it for ages. Also, as ever, apologies for a blog that has been rathar too quiet of late. The Bjork Bjiggler Blog Reading Society have been getting very restless lately and dark rumblings have been heard eminating from their midsts, so I feel it is my duty to supply some more fodder upon which they can engourge themselves until the next posting sees the light of day, which I can assure you will not be too far into the future. Our good friend and contributor is currenly in France, probably, spending his time not smoking Gauloise and ensuring that he has accumulated his usual amount of thought provoking incidents (often referred to as "pish and drivel") to enthrall us all with upon his return.

I find that there is nothing more able to throttle the flow of creative blog writing than the ability of the modern keyboard to screw around with what you are typing so that what ends up on the cscreen often bear no resleblance to what yuou actually typed. How mant times do you find yourslef typing a four letter word only to find that the kwyboard has inserted 3 ro 4 extra characters. The oether favourate tricjk it has is to transpose two of the letters you have typed at random. The result is that each time you do a post you have to spend more time correcting the errors introduced by the keyboard that it took to writing the thig in the first place. The other thing is that the keyboard seems to be able to detect how much your typing is improving and introduces more errors as you get better. When I first started typ[ing on a ciompuetr keyboard I was quict slow, but didn't make many typinfg errors, but now my keyboard skills ahve improved to such an extent that althoygh I am typing at a speed that would put many a touch typist to shame, my postings are just littered with errors and additional, but unwanted characters.

Time, and relative dimensions
I'm bored.

In the absence of any really content, or inspiration, I at least pilfered the resident clock (watch?) from somewhere and put it up there on the right. Nice, eh?

Isn't it strange how we spend a large proportion of our lives waiting to get that part back and get to something else?

I know, let me explain. I had a mishap with my shower at home last September or so. Something caused it to blow a fuse and burn out it's wiring. In itself, a pretty mundane and easily coped with situation. I did, however, go through a few attempts at getting it fixed. I had the wiring replaced, fixed the fuse and *pop*, it went again. I changed the whole shower and fixed the fuse. *pop*, off it went again. As it turns out, the wiring was replaced, apart from a 1M part which went from the fuse box under the floor to a join. I'm not happy with working directly on the fuse box, so wanted an electrician to come in and have a look.
The first time I phoned he was busy, so was going to call me back. It took a good few days before he did, then said if it had to be a weekend/evening he would have to check his schedule and get back to me. After a week or so I called, he was on holiday, would be back the next week and would call me. Obviously this didn't happen, so I called again, this time he was just going on another holiday and would call on his return. He did call this time, but I wasn't in so it went to voicemail. I called back and left a mobile number, but no word back as yet.
So, all in all, I realised I've now been without said shower for about a year. It doesn't seem that long and just serves as a reminder how time passes so much faster as you get older. A year seemed like such a long time when I was young, now it passes by without notice. And I'm sitting at my desk now, basically waiting for 7 more hours to pass before I can leave. These are times that'll never be returned, just like the few minutes you wasted reading this.
Still, gotta laugh, eh?

It's been so long
And I'm not sure I remember what to do.
I seem to remember that the main point is to utter drivel, but with a certain observational comedy contained within.
So, let's look at petrol.
As we all know, the cost of said commodity is pretty damn high these days, and I've got a car that drinks it quickly when I drive a bit fast, which seems to be all the time these days. I have, however, in the last couple of weeks, had occasion to borrow other people's cars, usually to do with capacity issues with my own or someone wanting a shiny convertible for a hot summers day. Now, I'm not sure if this is planned, but I'm sure it can't be due to the lack of forewarning, but every time I step in another car the petrol gauge is showing either on or below the red mark. I actual fact, the Petrol warning light is lit on most occasions. I personally can't drive with the light on, or even close to the red, due to my panic about running empty. I also see no point in putting less than a full tank in when I stop for a refuel. So, I've spent about £300 in the last week in petrol, and half of that in other peoples cars. I'm not really complaining, really I'm not, but I do wonder if I'm the only person on the planet that actually buys fuel. In which case I'm personally responsible for all the pollution and environmental changes it's causing.
So, sorry about that.

Day 127: Some of your Scottish detectives are belong to us

It is more than a long time since my last post, but I thought I'd better make the effort to put pen to paper so as not to disappoint our regular readers who have been swamping my mailbag with requests for more posts. It just hasn't been the same without me.
Lots of stuff has happened since Day 79 (some of which I may go into more detail about later) including:
- visiting Sweden
- buying a 32 year old car
- completing ratchet and clank 2
- cooking a traditional Swedish lunch for my colleagues
- having my laptop stolen (along with my iPod)
- playing Kingdom of Loathing
- watching a whole stack of DVDs
In fact on the old DVD front, I used the purchase of my new car to enable me to bring a portable tv/video up to Scotland so I can watch my old video collection up here, as we don't do videos any more in my real house.
I have been particularly enjoying watching my old videos of Scottish Detectives: such as Rebus, Taggart, Morse and of course the old highland master himself Poirot.

An ashtray is YOU!
I've kinda stopped smoking. Not in a real sense, but haven't had one today yet, and am hoping to continue that record for the rest of today at least.
I'm not sure if the right strategy is 'one day at a time', but the thought of never smoking again is just too much to contemplate in my fragile state.
I found an old patch this morning, which was part of the trigger for giving it a shot. Well, that and the fact that gf stopped on Sunday, and I should try and do it too. Also been feeling pretty damn shitty the last few weeks, for which smoking can be blamed to an extent.
I'm going to a chiropractor tomorrow to see if they can sort out a constant ache in my chest, which is caused by my crappy posture and knackered bed. Of course, this meant buying a new bed too, which is being delivered next tuesday.
In other news, I got a freeview card for my PC at home, which allows you to pick up the free digital channels. Got it home and found my aerial was kaput, so have to pay 70 smackers for a new one, ho hum.
Oh, and it takes a truckload of time to format a 200GB hard drive.

Applied Reasoning and Assumption
Seen that advert? You know the one. The one where they go on about Road Tax, and how, if they avoid Road Tax, the probably avoid Insurance. And if they avoid insurance they probably avoid MOTs. And if they avoid MOTs, they will likely not take care of their cars. And if they don't take care of their cars, they'll almost definitely drive into a pram. Bastards. So we should shop them to our good friends in the Police immediately. Goddamn it. They should be shot.
Oh, and if you don't have a goldfish, you're a wanker.

People Were Killed?
Nobody told me.

It's all just a game anyway

Day 79: Musik för barn

(to be sung to the tune of "Jolly red nose"):

Nose, nose, jolly red nose
what gave Paolo a jolly red nose
nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and cloves
thats what gave Paolo his jolly red nose

As Paolo has taken to drinking a Tazo Chai during the afternoon I thought I would post the above as most of the ingredients mentioned are containied in his Chai (only the nutmeg is missing - and I did invite him to add some nutmeg as there is a pot of nutmeg on the coffee counter - but he declined).

Bittersweet Symphony
Weekend Report (Belated) - Well, only Sunday really.
I was planning on heading home from gf's to get some stuff done, but since it was a nice day we decided to make the most of it and go enjoy the sunshine somewhere. There were a couple of things to take care of first. Gf and son had to go to Mass, since they are of that persuasion, which runs from 10am to 11am. This was working out fine since gf's car had to go to the garage to get some clunking checked out. So, the solution was there for all to see. I would take the car to the garage while she was attending the Karaoke event. She would have my car, and pick me up shortly after 11. All was right with the world.
Off I went, pretty early, to the garage. Dropped off the car, was to be finished by 2pm. As the time was quite early still, only 10:20 or so, I decided to walk to the nearby park. This was a 15 minute walk and I wasn't sure of directions, but managed to get there okay. There's a pond in the park, so I sat on a bench beside that admiring the surroundings. As I looked over, there were a couple of footbridges painted in a pale blue, and behind that was an area filled with half a dozen different types of trees in various colours. A pretty neat situation to be in really, very picturesque. A couple of ducks flew overhead, and then a couple of pigeons landed mere feet in front of me and proceeded to go into some mating ritual which involved a rotating dance with necks entwined, followed by touching beaks in what only can be described as a kiss. The male (presumably) then jumped on the female's back, at which point they flew away together. Although this was probably the female changing her mind, I was quite pleased since this avoided watching the sordid business and allowed me to just concentrate on the beauty of nature.
I realized at this point that I was a victim of the Playstation generation. Us 80's kids have been indoctrinated into requiring constant sensory input to avoid boredom. As I was watching the scene unfold, I was thinking how much better it would be if the ducks were fighting, and when a duck won a fight they would get an weapon upgrade, and you'd see the hardest duck that had been there for years, with it's laser beam generator attached to the side. And the ducks could shoot bigger animals and steal their bodies.
Anyway, I decided to walk to the edge of the park in anticipation of gf arriving. It was just after 11 now, so she was going to phone and see if I'd maybe got finished at the garage and headed home. So, near the exit, phone went. "Hello", said I, in my cheerful, fulfilled mood, "How are ya?". Tears were the response. As all sorts of things were in my mind for what could be wrong, and the feeling of dread hit the pit of my stomach, I gently but firmly asked what was wrong. Apparently my car had been broken into whilst parked outside the Chapel. Some junkie monkey had smashed the passenger window, ripped out the stereo, damaging the dashboard as much as possible in the process.
As I tried to tell her everything was okay and figure out how to get back, given that two cars were now effectively off the road, the phone was going. She was calmed down a bit now, and I'd organised a lift, so took the other call. "We've got a system down" was the message waiting, "Can you do something about it?".
Sometimes you wonder if real life has realized you're enjoying yourself and decided to kick you in the nuts.

Referential Integrity
So, probably more suited to TF, but let's have a look at this nonetheless.
While we're in the middle of ostracizing our military operations for not behaving in a way acceptable to our common sensibilities, such as pissing on inmates and killing kids, its becoming clear that our media is there protecting the Geneva Convention and making sure any contravention is reported.
Oh, wait, that was last week. This week the media is the enemy, they lie and are caught out by profit seekers due to their quest for the latest scoop.
No, wait, it's actually the Brits that are good, the media is fine, it's just the Americans that are bad.
Ah, bollocks, as it turns out, we might be the bad guys too.
Luckily our government is here and will sort it all out, just as soon as it finds out about it.

Fortunately, our "special relationship" will not be affected

I give up.

Okay gmail users - bit of a phishing alert.

I got an email offering unlimited invitations


Gmail Team
to me
More options 3:11am (7 hours ago)
Dear Beta Tester,


We are glad to bring you some new features to enhance your beta testing experience here at Gmail. Some of these features include:

� Checking your e-mail via telephone, anywhere in the world.

� A simple, easy to use spam manager where you can filter almost any kind of unwanted e-mail.

� Ability to create unlimited invite codes for all of your friends, so that they may too experience the wide range of diversity of Gmail.



We are proud to announce that all of these features are now available to current beta testers. Unfortunately, we will not be offering these services to members that receive an invitation from this special service. You can activate these features anytime by visiting http://activate.gmail.com/

We encourage you to send your feedback, suggestions and questions to us. But mostly, we hope you'll enjoy experimenting with Google's approach to email.

Speedy Delivery,

The Gmail Team


Unfotunately, this is just a phishing exercise to steal gmail accounts.

Did I fall for it?

Umm, yes - the lure of unlimited accounts was just too much.

It did lock out my account, but a quick secret question and I was back in, and changing the password.

I'd assume it's an automated password change, every time I log in now I need to type a .gif word from the screen, since the hackers are obviously auto-logging in and locking the account (kinda).

Altogether, pretty neat code, email is in good english, web page looks good. Good phish by offering the gold plated invitations to us greedy webbers.

If you see my account on ebay, it wasn't me!

The first bite is with the eye
Sometimes I'm in the mood for a dessert after lunch. I do, however, have some things that I just don't like such as rhubarb (Spawn of the Devil) and Banana Cake/Loaf (Too close to fruit for my liking).
So. My invention today was. Take 1 Mars Bar(tm), regular size. 1 Bowl of tepid lumpy custard. Slice the Mars Bar in half longways, then lengthways. Take two sections of the prepared Mars Bar and place in custard, retaining the rest of the Mars Bar for a friend. In my case, I don't have friends, so I ate it.
It is quite sickly, and I would only recommend it in the face of these adverse conditions where you NEED a dessert and no palatable alternative exists. So, emergency use only.
Oh, for the perfect dessert, remove as many of the lumps as you can.
Or get Apple Caramel Crumble with Custard from another source *droooool*
Hope this helps,
A

So, our illustrious owners are going all IPO at last then?


Wonder if it's anything to do with all the publicity surrounding gmail. Though some of that is quite negative.

Oh well, just a thought, seems topical. And allows us to gloat about having gmail accounts by the handful. (Sorry Pao!)

Oh, and for those of you that keep hitting us with the 8 Queens of Death Solution searches, I guess I should make sure you're not disappointed.
A4,B1,C5,D8,E6,F3,G7,H2
Killed us for a while too, till Paul solved it. Think that might have been the original reason Dom was writing that damn game.

Toilets
I like using the visitors toilet. It is an enclosed room, with a sink and walls and stuff. I appreciate the privacy this provides.
There are, however, two problems. Firstly, it's not obvious from the outside that it's a single toilet, and it would appear to the uneducated eye that it may be a normal multi-unit toilet facility. In addition, the lock is not too strong. This results in occasions where the door is tried, the potential user thinks the door is just stiff and tries harder , at which point the lock gives way and the door swings open revealing you in full Greyfriar's action glory.
There is a story related to this, involving a gentleman who was in full pud-pulling action as the door was forced open, and proceeded to pull his top over his head to hide his face. This is known as the 'Ravanelli Incident'.
The second thing is that it's always busy.
The other toilets are more open plan, in the normal urinal and cubical fashion. This results in the Urinal etiquette that has been described below. It also has another down point in that you have to walk the full length of the office, past a whole bundle of people who could potentially track your toilet habits. It also has the loudest doors on the planet. They are on the usual fire door things that make sure they close after use. They're also loose fitting, so the wood hits against the frame. Very hard, and loud. This has the effect of making you jump, which is not a good idea when you're on the job.
I like my own toilet. I like being in my own house, alone, when I go to drop off the kids. I like to sit till my bum is numb and my legs are like jelly.

Hitler's Youth
So, just in case you didn't know.
I've been learning German, so that I can read Mein Kampf in it's native language. I don't really trust translations due to the amount of interpretation of the translator involved. I don't really care too much about the actual war Hitler, more what drives a man to behave and believe as he did.
My initial thoughts - He had a pretty poor relationship with his father. Dad was an alcoholic who would beat him at a whim. He did, however, have a close relationship with his mother, despite her lack of protection. This was at the turn of the century, so it is probably more understandable in that context. There have been many studies of when the young Adolf became anti-Semitic, I'm not entirely sure it's been convincingly proven though. It is said that during his late childhood in Austria (He moved to Linz with his mother, after the death of his father and on to Vienna shortly after to go to some for of classical art college) there was a strong anti Jew feeling, and it was thought that he developed his pathological leanings at this point. This is somewhat disproved by the discovery in his own documents that describe a relationship with a girl at this time. It is a strange relationship in that there was no contact between Adolf and a young lady who was some society persons daughter. He did, however, fall completely and totally in love with this girl and continued his infatuation for a number of years prior to moving to Vienna. At this point he sent her a note declaring his love and asking her to wait for him to return so he could marry her. (Slight sidenote - she is on record as saying she had no idea who the note was from when she received it - unrequited love indeed.). The pertinent point of this is that the girl was clearly, through bloodline and obvious name, Jewish. So, perhaps elsewhere needs to be looked at for the beginnings of his sentiments.
The young Hitler was brought up in schools which had a relatively strong German connection, and he developed an obsession with the history, both real and fable, of the Germanic culture. He was pictured at the rallies after the assassination of the Austrian bloke with a look of demonic excitement at the prospect of war. He was accepted into the German army shortly after, which gave him great pride. He has described his role during the first world war as being a 'frontline fighter, involved in hand-to-hand combat with his fellow man'. This is far from the truth. He was actually a dispatch rider, delivering notes behind the front lines. Still a dangerous job of course, but not one that would be respected by actual infantry veterans if made public during his political career.
He was injured in a gas attack at one point, where he was sent to a hospital in Berlin for treatment. While here, he was disgusted by the defeatist attitude of everyday Germans, and the lengths people, especially Jews, would go to in order to avoid being sent back to the front. There is some belief that this is the seed of his anti-semantic feelings.
So, was he a poof then?
There isn't actually any evidence to prove this, although there are some (boring) pointers which suggest this might be the case. Hearing evidence from housekeepers that there was never any evidence of sexual relations with Eva Braun, even though they spent a lot of time together at Hitler's retreat, it would appear that he may actual have been completely celibate.
I'll knock this on the head now.

Day 52: Har du en röd bil?

My name is Dom and I am a wheataholic. But the good news is I have been wheat free for 3 days and the pounds are simply falling off. If you would like to learn how you too could be wheat free send $10 and you could start being wheat free within hours - no postage necessary, terms and conditions apply.

Last night was the second lesson of my third term of learning Swedish and I enjoyed it very much. I am finally beginning to feel that I might be able to have a proper meaningful conversation with someone, rather that just being able to ask if they have a red car. So if any of our regular readers are going to be in Stockholm at the end of May watch out, lest you get accosted in the street and asked if you have a car that is a patricular colour (I know red, blue, green and yellow).

Day 50: Yorkshire Chainsaw Kafuffle

I can't remember if I mentioned that I bought a chainsaw a few weeks ago, but if I didn't mention it - I bought a chainsaw a few weeks ago. I got home and ripped the outer cardboard wrapping open and extracted it along with instructions and free headphoneas and goggles. The first thing I noticed was a big sticker stuck the the side of the chainsaw which said "Do not use this until you have filled it up with chainsaw oil". So I looked in the remnants of the box for the cahinsaw oil, but there was none. So I had just travelled all the way home from the DIY store with a chainsaw that needed chainsaw oil before it could be used and did it mention this fact on the outer packaging? No it didn't. So I wasn't about to go all the way back to the shop to get the oil so I thought I would have to just leave it unused until the next weekend.

I think I also may not have mentioned what the chainsaw was for. It was to remove a tree stump from the garden of my new house, that we moved into last december. I started off attacking it with a normal saw and an axe, but all that did was get me very tired and my arms very sore. So when I was in the diy store a few weeks ago I saw the chainsaw and thought it would be the way to go.

So once I had got the thing open and knew that I had no oil I carried on by reading the instructions. It mentioned a procedure for adjusting the chain tension and said you need to follow this procedure before using the chainsaw as well as at regular times while you are using it. It then went on to show that if you press the end of the chainsaw against the wood you are cutting it will fly up and split your head in two. At this point I decided that rather than get some oil I should take it back to the shop and get my money back as: a) I couldn't be bothered witn the hassle of having to keep adjusting the tension all the time (I would rather just 'wash and go') and b) I didn't fancy getting my head sliced in two and the chainsaw didn't even come with a free helmet! But, of course, I couldn't take it back to the shop because I had ripped the box to shreds while taking it out.

So, for the next couple of weeks the chainsaw was left unused in my garage until this weekend, when I went out and bought some oil and then thought I'd make a start at chopping up that tree stump. First of all I dug a hole around the stup then I filled up the chainsaw with oil and fired that bad boy up. The first thing I learned about chainsawing is that it is not like slicing a hot knife through butter, it is actually very hard work. You have to push really hard and you get very sore hands and arms and you have to keep adjusting the chain tension all the time. But, eventually I got enough wood removed so that I could fill the hole in with soil and there was no sign of the stump. I also had a decent supply of logs that I could leave to mature for a year.

Mid-life crisis
I figured something out yesterday whilst cruising in my hairdresser's car.
You know how convertible sport cars are normally driven by middle-aged men with baldy nappers?
The reason is - when you're driving along at a fair old pace with the roof down, the wind kinda comes at you from behind and swirls around your head. This has a whipping effect on your hair, resulting in it flapping against your head like you're being flailed by a cat o' nine tails. It's actually very painful, so you tend to get a bit peeved after a while. So, having no hair is a bit better since there's no such effect, you see.
This doesn't answer the question of why you see lots of women driving them, and they've got very long hair. This is an obvious one though - they're knobbing rich middle-aged men.
Message Ends....

Today is a day
It's been a lovely weekend. The sun was shining awfully bright, I got the roof down on the car for the first time this year, which officially marks the beginning of summer.
I've got a spot (boil) on the bridge of my nose, the size of a small elephant. Remember the one from Jungle Book that kept getting lost? That one.
I'm not sure what to do about it, I've tried poking it with sharp objects so it pops like a balloon, but no luck. Also tried a poultice, boiling milk and adding a bit of bread before applying to the nose for a long period so it draws out all the gunk. That didn't do anything either. My mum says to just leave it alone and put Savlon on it occasionally, but I'm not terribly happy with that approach.
Any ideas?

Day 46: Öppna ögonen

Yesterday lunchtime I spotted Vanilla Sky in HMV for £6.99 so I swept it up, headed for the checkout, but then got second thoughts. I'd never looked this film up on imdb before so I had no idea whether it would be good or not. So I turned round and put it back on the shelf. Back at work I asked my colleagues what they thought of the film and got a mixed, but generally favourable response. So I decided I would buy it on the way home and watch it that very night. However, just as I was leaving Ravi said why do you keep buying all these DVDs? Why don't you join Blockbusters and rent it. So, I took his advice and did just that.

And did I enjoy the film? Yes, it was really good thankyou. Another one of those films that opens your eyes, removes a few more layers of silken veil and causes you to re-asses your life.

It has been a few days since my last post and I have been meaning to add a post about a new idea from Geezer which will help train spotters get on with their job in a much more streamlined and high tech fashion. What they should do is put a barcode on each train and the trainspotters could have a pda (or laptop) with scanner attachment and simply scan the trains as they go past. They could then even get the details of those high speed inter city jobbies that rush through the station and you have to stand behind the yellow line lest you should be sucked into the vortex. This provides a good link to a pastime that was invented by my friend Adrian. I have yet to try this, but I intend to do so at the first available oportunity. All you need to do is stand on the platform of a station that has high speed trains and yellow lines on it, and when a high speed train rushes through the station you shout or scream at the top of your voice. You should find that no matter how close you are to somebody, they will have no idea what you are doing as they won't hear a thing.

This brings us nicely onto the subject of relaxation. Recently I have been listening to The Kings of Convenience quite a lot. My particular favourate track at the moment is Summer on the Westhill. Very calming and relaxing.

My subject for today is LCD and Plasma.
TV's that is.
I'm trying to decide whether to buy one or not. It's difficult to decide between the LCD or Plasma, though the quality in the latter is inherently better. The former, however, seems to have a better lifetime.
I've got a Sony widescreen at the moment, which had full surround sound, great picture, all round good performance. Had it for about 5 years, cost 1500 smackers, but feel due for a change.
LCD and Plasma have the benefit of being much thinner, so can be wall mounted, saving a significant amount of floor space. On the other hand, the DVD, Video, satellite box, and wiring have to go somewhere, under the music system perhaps?
Also, my living room is L-shaped, with on wall taken up by a bay window, and two which have doors to the kitchen and bedrooms. So, the wall that I would choose is the one that the large couch is resting against, so would involve rearranging furniture to use. I need to go all visio and see if I can fit everything in.
The other option is to use a stand and sit it on the floor, but then what's the point since it'll effectively take up the same space as the current one.
Why is upgrading to new technology so hard?

Day 43: A seed in frozen earth

Well its monday again, but this week in addition to fighting through the fatigue of getting up at 05:00 ready for my non stop red eye flight from LBA to EDI I also have to contend with the fact that I am ill with some sort of flu like symptoms. Ibruprofen and lemsips are helping me get through the day, but I am looking forward to getting in an early night tonight with the hope of feeling a bit better tomorrow.

The other thing I need to get sorted out is my preparation for my next term of Swedish lessons at snel. I need to be able to tell everyone a bit about myself, why I want to learn Swedish and a bit about any previous trips to Sweden, and of course I will have to say all this in Swedish. Due to the way I am feeling today, I guess this is going to end up being a last minute job in my lunch break tomorrow.

Dumb is as dumb does
Bit busy today, so a quickie.

I've got a new PC - nice one, good spec and cheap. I also have a few Deacon Blue albums in mp3 that I wanted to burn onto a CD this morning to listen to in the car (Yup, car CD player plays mp3 - woot!). So, said mp3 files were on the laptop, which was all connected up and raring to go. Laptop has a CD writer, so all is well. Now, new PC has a new writer drive, so is super fast for writing CDs, but I hadn't really tried it. Solution - burn CD on new PC with network link to laptop to get files.
The burn was going well, 450MB and estimating 5 mins - so I thought I'd tidy up the house a bit before work. There were a few things lying around in the living room, so I put them away. The laptop was sitting in the middle of the floor, with the power cable trailed across the floor. I was debating whether to reroute the cable when I figured that I wasn't using the laptop anyway, so could just put it away in the bag, nice and tidy like. So, did all that, then went back to see how the burn was going. The dam thing had failed half way through and eject the useless disk. Dammit. As I clicked on the shared drive to restart the burn I noticed that an error appeared, the network had gone down. So, I walked through to check the status of the laptop. Realization dawns like a thick treacle over your brain sometimes, doesn't it?

Day 40: Se det är vackert utanför

Last night I didn't fancy watching any of my DVDs so I thought I'd better nip out to Asda to buy a brand new one. The first DVD I picked up was Dreamcatcher; they had one copy left, but I wasn't sure if that was the type of film I wanted to watch. Also I have often thought that Stephen Kings films are really good at the start but don't have such good endings. So I spent the next half hour going round and round the DVD section trying to find the perfect DVD for that night. Along the way I considered Green Mile (looked a bit depressing and set in the olden days), The Ring (too scary?), Vanilla Sky (they didn't have it), The Mothman Prophesies (already seen it, though it was some time ago), Unbreakable (as per Mothman Prophesies), and a few more that I forget just now. Anyway I ended up back at the single copy of Dreamcatcher so I bought it for £11.97.

When I got home I fixed myself a drink and set out a few snacks and started watching. During the first 10 minutes I realised that I had made a good choice as it was just the sort of thing that I really like watching. I realised that even if a film does have a bad ending it doesn't matter if you enjoyed the first 90 percent of it. After all watching a film is something you enjoy as you are doing it. Its like a life really - the end is never going to be good, but you certainly (hopefully) enjoy everything up to that point. I also realised that films with lots of snow in are really good too (but not stupid comedies). And if you are wondering whether the ending was good or not - I don't know because 20 minutes before the end I was so tired that I went to bed.

This morning I met one of my new neighbours and had a chat before driving into work.

Day 39: When the whole world says no - I believe in you!

Air was asking for a link to the Bang & Olufsen BeoCom 6000 phone, so I thought I would send it via the power of the blog. Thus allowing our regular readers (and hangers on alike) to find out about its many and varied features. Including the fact that each phone handset is assigned a hostname and also has an iPod style scroll wheel (although it is not touch sensitive like the latest iPods). Each phone is registered with the base station and if you add a name and number to the address book it is propagated to each of the other handsets registered to the same basestation.

ps anyone who can name the artist and song from which the above title comes can deservedly feel a warm glow inside.

Sook Ma Bobae
Not so sure about the spelling, but the sentiment is sound.

Well well, looks like there's not too much happening on the InterWeb today, all my standard haunts have pretty mundane stuff on there, best thing was the full size lego model of a Volvo, which I'm not linking to because I can't be arsed.

I've decided that we must be the first hit on google for the phrase "Pirate", I think this can be done by mentioning the word a lot and having other people link to us. Since I, again, can't be arsed with the latter, the former will have to do.

We've been asked to stick around here for another six months. This is great for the bank balance, and for you, dear reader, in that you'll be able to enjoy our pish and drivel for another little while. I do think, however, that we need to put a bit more thought into the postings to make them more informative and entertaining. Obviously by this I mean the other posts, not mine, which are already difficult to improve upon. So, c'mon guys, get with the program!

I watched a documentary or two about Stephen Hawking(s) the other day. I think it's his birthday soon, turns 40 tomorrow or something, which explains the saturation of coverage. The first thing I watched was on council telly, and was a dramatisation of his life from 20-30 or something like that. It was very touching, covering the diagnosis of his motor neuron disease and the gradual deterioration of his condition at the same time as him coming up with the Big Bang theory that he is so linked with. I have to say though, I watched the documentary on one of the bbc+ channels later on, which clearly demonstrated some inaccuracies in the story. Not unusual I know, but given the programmes were on basically the same channel, one after the other, it felt a bit strange.
I also watched some interviews with the guy, and have to say he's an arrogant twat. I'm not sure whether we can just accept that as justified because he's a genius (which brings me to another subject, based on the Isaac Newton thing I mentioned - but I'll leave that for now).
So, in summary - Hawking(s) - Genius and Wank in equal quantities, thanks for reading.

Pirates -

I follow the same pattern of thought as Billy Connelly, so bear with me on this.

Billy has a condition called Attention something. It means that he loses a grasp of what he's talking about as his brain makes links to other things as he talks. For instance, he might mention Pirates, then as he's talking about them, mention boats. This might lead him to think about the story about the new destroyer that was just completed and launched to great fanfare on the Clyde, where it duly slipped down the, umm, slip and straight across the river into the wall on the other side. This can sometimes go on for a while, skipping through subjects like a blob of sodium across a pond.

Anyway, so Pirates have been moulded over the past few hundred years such that their image now is of some sort of Robin Hood type characters. This is mainly due to stories such as Peter Pan, and musicals like Pirates of Penzance. Other musicals of note are Cats and Phantom of the Opera. I saw the punultimate show of Cats on Broadway a few years ago. It had been running for quite some time, so it was a bit historical. Now, most people think of pirates as being ragamuffins who run around in their ship plundering treasure galleons all the time. In general this actually refers to Privateering, which is a kind of licensed pirating. For instance, as Spain was killing off the Aztecs and the Incas and shipping the amazing amount of trasure home to finance the growth of the Spanish empire (Yes, they had one too), Britain was a bit peeved about this so licensed various people (including Francis Drake) to captain ship and go steal. Interestingly enough, Francis Drake started out by travelling with his cousin, Jim Hawkins before growing up and going it alone.
The biggest fleet of pirates was actually Chinese, some bird had an incredible amount of ships and people and ended up more powerful than a large number of nations (in terms of their naval fleet, at least).

So, that's what I've read so far, I'll update when I learn more, or can be arsed, whatever.

Day 37: A mystic river runs through it.

I watched Event Horizon last night, which I enjoyed very much.

My friend Adrian has suggested some London related film titles:
Crouch End Tiger Hendon Dragon
Dirty Harringay

So I think we should see what other place related film titles we can come up with.
Here are some more for starters:

Night of the Livingston dead
Home a-Rome (with Chinese subtitles)
Warwick and Piercebridge
Golders green finger
Gwent Horizon
From Russia with love

I'm back.

Apologies to our regular readers for my absence, and the dire lifelessness you've had to endure.

I was in Spain. It was fine thanks, weather was okay, apart from a bit of rain.

There is a theme park, and a couple of water parks. I avoided the water parks since it was cold and I didn't want to get wet.
The theme park, on the other hand, is quite good. It's actually a Universal Studios one, kinda like EuroUniversal or something. I went on some roller coasters and some fairground things and got sick.

You know what I hate? Bank Cards. I've got the usual cashline card, but use it seldom, so never remember the PIN. So, as I was buying the tickets for the theme park, they refused VISA without a passport, and I lost my card due to entering the wrong PIN three times. This resulted in a round trip in a taxi back to the hotel and the hilarity of being short of cash for the rest of the holiday, on Easter weekend when all the banks were closed.

Flight was delayed going out. It was delayed 1hr 20mins, which is standard for Airtours apparently. This wouldn't be too annoying apart from the fact that we had to get up at 3am to get to the airport. I don't have words for this.

The water in Spain is soft, or hard, I don't know. I do know that you couldn't get that squeaky clean feeling you get in a shower in Scotland, and it feels like you're constantly washing with some soap on your body, or something. That made me homesick.

I was reading a couple of books, one was a biography of Newton, but turns out to be a long discussion around the use of the word Genius. The other one is a study of the lives and times of Pirates, which is a favourite subject of ours. It seems quite good.

Finished all the puzzles on Super Collapse, it seems to loop back to level one at the end.

Cheers,

Day 36: Little fluffy clouds

Have you noticed that the minute your plane flies through a cloud all hell breaks loose. It starts suddenly dropping, the wings start shaking as if they are about to snap off and you find it hard not to spill your drink.

Have you also noticed that when your plane lands the air hostess always says "please don't unbuckle your seatbelt until the captain turns the fasten seatbelt light off", but the minute the plane stops you hear clicks all around you because just about everyone else has taken theirs off before the captain has turned the fasten seatbelt light out. I always leave mine on for a few minutes after the seatbelt light has gone out, just to make a point.

Have you also noticed that if you are sitting by the window of a double seat and someone sits next to you, they always put their arm on the joint arm rest as if it belongs to them. They are also usually fat aswell.

Day 31: Hot or Goatee?

On monday night instead of shaving off my weekend stubble I thought I would leave a goatee shaped bit of growth. It is still intact today, but I will be flying home for the weekend today so whether it will still be in place on my return next Tuesday is another matter. Al may have missed a once in a lifetime oportunity.

I saw the film Magnolia earlier in the week. I thought it almost qualifies as a film that would change your life, but not quite. I didn't really understand what was going on at the end. But I had a quick look on imdb and after reading the discussion section I realised that I now did understand and yes it probably is a film that could change ones life (if you let it).

One of the themes of the film was coincidence and it reminded me of when I used to work in Sweden. I flew via Brussels and I used to notice a distinctive white building near the runway as the plane took off for Arlanda. I thought the building might be the Brussels office of Sun Microsystems as it loked very similar to their building near Stockholm. Anyway, a few years later I got a contract based in Brussels working for Sun. On my first day I took a taxi to their Brussels office, but it wasn't the building I had previously noticed and it looked nothing like their building near Stockholm either. I was informed that I would be working on a client site near the airport and low and behold it turned out that their client had the building I used to notice when I took off for Sweden each monday morning and I spent the next 9 months working in that very building.

sicilian curses

I was just casually looking through the site stats and I foudn that someone had found this site by searching on google and the search term was "scicilian curses". So I put that into google and sure enough it found a link to this site. However this gets so much better and works on so many levels because of the following:
a) The search only found 1 result
b) The text searched on was spelled incorrectly
c) The entry it matched was one by Al where he said he hoped people searching for a nasty sicilian word would find our blog
d) In Als entry where he said he hoped people would find this site by searching for a particular sicilian curse, he has spelled sicilian incorrectly as "scicilian" and that is exactly what someone searched for and found his entry
e) Al didn't actually mention the word curse in his entry, but I mentioned curses in my original posting due to the fact that I originally wrote critical mass in order to familiarise myself with curses
f) It just doesn't get any better than this

I wonder if that makes us a google wack?

Day 28: Each peach, pear plum, out comes Tom Thumb.

So another monday, another flight on the LBA to EDI red eye and another blog entry to write.

We have almost reached our 1 month anniversary and we have to keep writing these things or we will suffer from the well known symptom of "bloggers elbow". This is were somebody creates a blog and then spends the first day typing in all sorts of text and then each day there are less an less entries until suddenly there are no more entries, and then nobody visits anymore, and the blog owners teeth gradually fall out one by one until they are left sad and alone living in a garret flat above a disused ballet school. But have no fear gentle reader for that won't be happening here. Al may be off to sunnier climes, but the rest of the gang are hear and by crikey we won't let the team down. (strains of land of hope and glory faid into the background).

Dom has just informed me that he has experienced yet another example of bad bathroom etiquette.

Let me ensure that all readers have a good understanding of this important subject to avoid any reoccurence.

Firstly, a good rule of thumb is to ensure that any selection of urinal results in the maximum buffer zone, or potential buffer zone from any current or future patrons. This is usually achieved by selecting one of the urinals to the far right or left, as is shown here
- - x
This gives any future atendees the opportunity to utilise the other extreme
x - x

Actually, let's run through this properly

Day 24: K|I|S|S

DVD players: love them or hate them, they allow you to watch a dvd on them; provided you also have a telly.

Don't you just hate it when people use the old "love them or hate them they are here to stay" type rubbish. I know I do.

Anyway the real point behind this posting is that a couple of weeks ago I ordered a new DVD player because the one that I currently have in my Scottish retreat won't play my dvds that I have recorded at home on my Toshiba RD-XS30. First off I went to Asda to see if I could get one for £39 that would play these dvds, but all their cheapo ones didn't mention what formats they would play. The only ones that said they would play dvd+-r or dvd+-rw where in the £79 to £99 price range. So I then thought of the fact that Al had bought a K|I|S|S dvd player (with integral hard drive and ethernet connectivity) and that these are meant to be able to play all dvd formats plus DIVX and just about anything else you can throw at it (and it is also Scandinavian). I didn't need the hard disk or networky stuff so I thought I'd see what their bottom of therange players looked like. I initially spotted the DP-450 which looked good, but then I spotted the smaller (and cheaper) DP-1000 that has the added bonus of easily being made region free. So, the DP-1000 it was to be then and it arrived yesterday. When I got home I resisted the temptation of plugging it straight in and thought I woulf get a shower, then do my ironing while watching Corrie and then I would plug it in and celebrate the new dvd player by having a chicken fried rice. Or so I thought. I plugged the dvd player in, and after a few seconds the front panel screen spoted the slogan "BOOT ERR". Oh dear. I powered off and on, but still the same. I even tried putting a dvd in and powering off and on, but still the ubiquitous BOOT ERR message. If only I had an internet connection in my house in Scotland, I could have downloaded a copy of the latest DP-1000 firmware and tried to load it to see if it would fix the problem. But then I thought I have an internet connection at work, so it was straight into the car and back into work to see what I could find. I spent the next hour scanning the kiss website and the kiss newsgroup (and no I can't be bothered to put links in just now). I ended up downloading the latest DP-1000 firmware (version 2.8.5) onto my laptop and went back home. My laptop happens to be a Mac and on the kiss website it only gave instructions for creating the firmware cd using Roxios's toast software (yes I know I could have put a link in here too) and I haven't got that. So, when I got home I tried creating a couple of cds in various ways, but each time I tried to download the firmware to the player I just got the old BOOT ERR. Oh well, it was now too late to watch a dvd anyway so I would just have to send it back to the supplier the next day. When I got to work I first sent kiss an email to see if they could come up with any sugestion before I rang up the supplier. They suggested uploading the firmware and it that didn't work i would have to send it back. SO due to my lack of success at creating a valid firmware cd on the mac we deiced to make use of Paolo's laptop for firmware creation duties. The email from kiss mentioned firmware version 2.8.4, but we knew that wasn't the most upto date so we downloaded and burnt version 2.8.5. We inserted it in the drive, connected the dvd to one of the televisions along the front wall at work and lo and behold we got the firmwar update screen. We pressed the enter button and it immediately came back with "update complete" and spat the disk out. Great! I thought. But, on powering off anf on we were straight back to the BOOT ERR message. So I rang the supplier and and they said they would send a courier round for it that very afternoon and I could expect it back in 5 to 7 days. Meanwhile Al suggested "Why don't we try and earlier firmware upgrade?" and I thought "Well Kiss did say to use 2.8.4, so now Paolo was straight on the case and a 2.8.4 cd was in the drive and waiting for me to press enter. I click later and the firmware starts uploading. This time it takes longer and after the old pwer off power on we have a live and working DP-1000. So I rang up the suppliers and cancelled the courier and we then had another go at loding in 2.8.5 and it went like a dream. Thanks to Al and Paolo for their assistance.
The morals of the story are as follows:
1. If I had bought a normal DVD player and it was broken I would have had to have returned it.
2. Scandinavian stuff is brill.

Can I just draw your sluggish porn-jaded attention to this doppelganger?

No, thought not.

Wednesday 31st march 2004 is now officially know as "busy wednesday" on the timeissinking critical mass pay as you go web blog. It will rank along such other days of note as: "greyfriars tuesday", "hasselbacken saturday" and "have your cake and eat it wednesday". Any further nominations for days of note should be submitted in the usual manner.

Holidays are funny, aren't they?
I go on holiday to Spain next week. I'm looking forward to it a lot since I haven't had much in the way of time off recently. On the other hand, all the things you need to do to get ready to go on holiday really annoys me. As is turns out, my corporation tax was overlooked by the director of my company (idiot!), so I'm having to chase round and essentially guess the number of 0's on the cheque. The next stage is to go to the Post Office to pay the cheque in. This actually works out okay since I also have to renew my road tax, which still seems to be the only thing on the planet that you still need to go to the Post Office for. They will also only accept cash for this. You will also get your baws booted with heavy shoes if you don't get it in time. (It's an automatic fine these days, generated by the DVLA database - none of this getting caught by an observant plod). So, and you'll excuse me if I ignore the slight inaccuracies about applying by post, using a debit card, etc, given the year, the technology and the fact that everything else can be done over the phone or Internet, why on earth is this still the case. Let me just point out again. The fine is generated by a computer database of people who haven't got their road tax in time. Ergo, the database exists. So, someone please explain to me the point of the piece of round paper which needs an expertise with a scalpel only the greatest brain surgeons posses to get out it's square container?
/rant
Oh, and to the initial point - gotta get clothes, haircut, currency, find passport, worry about weather, worry about terrorists and learn Spanish while covering the end of year company books, pay bills, and deal with general life.
Bollox