Red's Place

Phut, sorry to hear about the lack of speed. I went to Warwick today, and on the way back the visibility in the rain/snow/british-weather was very low, so of course everyone was doing 95mph! The M40 is nuts.

Looks like Mr Grumpy's blog is a little ill, comments aren't working. Guess I forgot a /blog/ in some settings file. I'd better sort that in the next 6 months ;)

Added another blogger to the list, with a new theme, say hi to Sue everyone....

Ahh, have some Sam Adams, and working from home tomorrow. Think I'll get an early night, dead to the world now.... zzzzzzzz

You know how it is, music is the all powerful. Forget religion, music is by far the one thing that matches, or creates a mood. However the wrong music can really destroy an atmopshere. (where am I going you ask?)

I bought some music from iTunes at the weekend, still the worlds most popular music service. Subscription sites don't make sense to me, we don't subscribe to any retail store. Apparently iTunes is doing 1.5 million songs a day. Wow!

Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time in the car yesterday, listening to CDs, and was trying to put together a mellow driving tunes compilation. Scoff all you want :) Nothing too fast, relaxing, maybe even stuff to "fall asleep to".

I've got a few tracks in mind already:

Dire Straits - Love over gold
Dire Straits - Telegraph road
Then Jerico - The Motive
U2 - Running to stand still
FNM - I'm Easy
Johnny Hates Jazz - Shattered Dreams
Prefab Sprout - Life of Surprises
Level 42 - Its Over
Snow Patrol - Grazed Knee

Any suggestions? Comments or emails welcome :)

Managed to get my arse in gear this morning and got up normal speed instead of the usual goslow. Anyhow, that meant I actually left at 6:45, and was at work at 7:45. Helped on the shitty traffic a bit, but bastard roadworks are increasing! Hampshire council is evil and uncaring vindictive sods!

Anyway got to work to find there was still ice on the roof of the car, quite a lot. First time for that (after the insides have been at 21deg for an hour).

The weather liars are saying it will be damn cold tonight. One radio station saying as cold as -10 in parts of Kent, and -5 to -8 elsewhere, even at Heathrow. Arse. That's not good.

Phut - that 1984 iPod movie is pretty damn funny :)

It's easier to lie and be safe
Time and time again I'm half stalled
One giant leap of faith is easy
When everyone you ask is so sure

The temperatures in the UK recently have been quite under the seasonal norm, however not as low as my car would think.

Tonight for example, as I started up in the pub carpark, it said it was -10degC outside. ROFLOL. Dave's car said it was 1.5degC only an hour earlier, and it wasn't Sieberian cold :) I guess I need to get that looked at when it has a service!!

Also today I (finally) bought myself a new coat/jacket thingy. Nice one by Berghaus made from Gore-Tex. Also got the optional (extra cost) fleece that can be zipped inside if you want to go to the arctic...!

(Did crap at the quiz, but need more people, 3 isn't enough when the other teams have 5 to 8... D'Oh!).

Mobile Phone Virus that is. This one is in russian and apparently does very little except send itself... pesky Nokia Series 60 smartphones again.

Phoned Canon earlier to find out how much it would cost to fix my camera, which is just 18 months old. The hinged door that covers the compact flash card has a clip that has very slightly broken, thus it does not stay closed. Unfortunately this door has a sensor so the camera will not power on unless you manually hold door closed.

They want £96 and it could take 28days. Good grief....

I need about 2mm of plastic and some superglue and suspect I could fix it myself...

The Commonly Confused Words Test has just given me an Advanced rating. Heh. Read more for the detail, or take the test!

Looks like I forgot to approve a handful of comments. Not sure why they needed approval, but welcome one and all.

I've also killed trackbacks from now on, as I had about 50 pending trackbacks (?) to approve from some so-called website called "Texas hold'em poker" spouting religious junk and apparently trying to put dodgy HTML into the comments. This software luckily lets me avoid HTML being posted. Anyway, if you weren't all blogspot.com users, you'd have TypeKey IDs now :) (now that LiveJournal and MovableType are from the same company, its us versus the Google guys!). ;-)

Ignore me, I've been working from home today, and obviously missing human contact. Time for ER...

Went out this evening to the Farnborough Bowl, with a mate from work. Luckily I was slightly ahead, but only just, out of two games my scores were both mid 80s. Ouch. She got mid 70s, so at least I beat her, just! Despite getting a couple of strikes in the first game, and a few spares in the second, I still managed to get enough frames with only one or two points. Arse.

Farnborough Bowl (in the Rec, for those who know the dubious town centre) isn't half bad, although on a Friday night there are too many young teens in there. Although the noise of the pins keeps them in check :)

Went for a funky curry afterwards as we were both starving. Great service and good food in a place next to HSBC. Nice one.

Phut - don't fall asleep on the way home! I've BTDT, you remember the alleged 'flying car' incident about 9.5 years ago?! Just pull over somewhere and have a 5min powernap. It really works.

Going shopping with Dave tomorrow to get a digicam, means I need to be up in sensible time on a Sunday... No comment!!

No, not me, but the best blogs have been honoured apparently. Anybody read any of them? Not me.

And for you pesky commenters, I've been in contact, and hoping to do soemthing this weekend. Watch this space. (or not).

Was sent this earlier by a colleague... Its a little long, so I've created it as an Extended entry.

Questions and Answers about Canada, allegedly from a tourism website.

(or the Craig as I read at first!).

Some green Guinness and a silly hat, as well as Craig and Von. Yes, it has to be the St Paddy's Day at the P of W in Fleet.

Apparently that was the error any of you would have received trying to comment on my last post. I believe its fixed. Backup script didn't correctly rename the file back when it finished processing... D'Oh.

Spent the day in the Farnborough office. A nice change, managed to get a reasonable amount of work done, but really missed, and my hands and neck can tell, the nice large 21" monitor I have in Portsmouth. Hope they'll let me take that to the Farn office when I finish down there.

The weather today was fantastic. Was sitting by a window all day , and it was gorgeous sunshine and blue skies :) Woo!!

Helping someone get on the net? Think you're experienced? Whatever you do, even on dialup, make sure you're protected. Dialup should not be used anymore, its hard to protect. Get broadband (often same price or cheaper) and get a home router. Ensure all your machine have up to date antivirus. It needs to be updated daily, or better hourly.

This article from the Washington Post should not be news.

Anyone got any good ideas how we tackle this electronic mischief? I think of it as the electronic equivalent of arson. Devastating to those who suffer.

Yes, Mr Phone (aka Paul) is now blogging, using some blogging software that sounds a little like a movie... :) Checkout his latest entry, LOL !

Looks like our hosting department dropped the proverbial ball this week. They ordered all the kit, but due to an accounting mistake they didn't order the router. So we have some shiny new servers, but we are unable to actually connect to them... D'Oh! Yet more wasted time... Muppets!

Opticians tomorrow morning, find out if they think my eyes are dead, or I'm just tired. Finding headlights and all bright lights are just too much recently, not good. Dentist in the afternoon, which I know will not be a pretty sight...

So, its the long Easter weekend, starting tomorrow. Good to be away from the ratrace for a couple of days!

I've been trying the Thunderbird email program for the last week, setup my mail server to copy all mails into a new mailbox, giving me a backout strategy.

Whilst I think its very good, its still not up to the usability levels of Outlook Express, in some simple areas such as keystrokes. However as a "power user" (I hate that phrase) I will still be sticking with Forte Agent for email, as well as news. Waiting on version 3, which is due anyday now I believe.

Yes, I've put a whole slew of extensions into Thunderbird, and made it palatable, and that helps drastically. (Having a reply button that doesn't close the original mail is weird).

So, how was Easter? Not bad all in all, weather was pretty good on Good Friday and Easter Saturday, but the Sunday was grey and overcast. Bank holiday/Easter Monday was quite good, since then its been really bad, back to Jan style. Today tops it all, Fog all day! Ugggghhhhh. Need sunlight... need sunlight!!

Spent most of today getting the test system working properly, after making major changes last week to bring test in line with live, found that it wasn't quite right and data missing. However in the process we uncovered a defect that was also on the live system, which must have been there since last Summer! Fixed now, and it seems it wasn't noticed. Phew.

Got a TV repair man (sony authorised agent) coming tomorrow to look at the blurred 1/3rd of the picture on the left side, and the too much brightness issues. He reckons it could all be setup issues, so that sounds good. £65 for callout and inspection and £100 if he has to solder anything, or parts if they have to be replaced. Good news is he'll come to the house, as that TV is damn heavy, but its nearly 6yrs old now!

Its pretty quiet in blog land, only Sue and Mr Phone seem to be posting much, wassup guys?