Driving in Slow Motion

Drove "the great white whale" back from Reading today. Against the wind and uphill all the way. I thought that the phrase "up north" just referred to our position on the map, but after the trip I'm pretty sure that it actually means that you do have to climb continuously to get here.

Performance was not the van's forte. The man who delivered it said things like "..and they'll do 90 miles per hour too...." when talking about the aforementioned mobile shed. I think it would only achive this if you pushed it off a particularly high cliff, I was fighting to get above 70 for most of the trip. At least this meant that I was street legal all the way home.

Overtaking was the most interesting part. I'd draw up behind somethng, check the mirror, signal, pull out, hit a teeny tiny hill and then find that I was just about going backwards in the fast lane. With a queue of shiny Mercs and other posh cars fuming behind me. Actually, I quite liked that bit.

Conference Capers

Slide 5 student developer conference today. Been moving at speed for just about the entire day. I was trying to make sure that everything happened when it should, as well as giving three of the talks. Somewhat scary. But what a happy time. Everyone was all smiles. Think I may have pushed my luck a little by telling the "Orange for a head" joke while we waited for the judges to come back with the result of the student competition. They came in just as I was delivering the punch line (I use this term loosely) and looked very confused.

However, most folks said they would come to another one (after all, having heard my worst joke they have much less to fear second time around). You can find out more about the whole shebang, and even get hold of some pictures, by visiting www.slide5.com

Driving the Great White Whale

Captain Ahab used to go on about the Mythical Great White Whale. Huge, untameable and out there. Today I've been driving it. I ordered a 12 seater minibus to transport myself and a few select chums down to Reading to take part in a conference. I was a bit worried about such a large vehicle, but figured I'd be ok. Today they delivered unto me a 17 seater. Very big and very white. And very shiny, just 250 miles on the clock and still with that "new van" smell.

Took it round the block to see what happens and all the controls did what I expected, except for the accelerator, which seemed to increase the noise made by the engine but had little effect on actual speed. Anyhoo, gathered up the passengers, who just about had a seat each (in the end I only had 8 people wanting lifts 'cos Iain is taking a bunch down tomorrow). Then we roared off into the sunshine. Van's don't have air conditioning, but they do have windows. Very hot. The van had a fan, but it was more about making noise than doing much useful (bit like the engine in this respect) so we opened the windows and thereby slowed the mobile greenhouse down even more.

The good news is that we got where we were going in the end, and by the finish I was getting quite adept at spinning the van round and fitting it into parking spaces. But I've not tried any handbrake turns yet.

Late Cool Shades

Got my new shades today. Only ordered them a month ago. Went into ASDA, picked the pair that I wanted, did the deal and nothing happened. No phone calls, nothing. Rang them up last week and it turns out they'd got the wrong Mr. Miles. They had been ringing someone else up to tell him that the glasses he hadn't ordered were now ready. And getting no response.

When I rang up and asked them where mine were they figured out what had transpired and ordered mine on ultra high priority. And today they came in. Quite cool. And darker.

And So To Scarborough

scarborough graduation 019
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

The hall at Scarborough is much brighter, so the pictures look much better....