I Hate This Person

You know how it is when you work at something, think you might be getting somewhere and then you come across somebody else who just does it far better than you, and with far less apparent effort. Well...take a look at the blog here:

http://topicdrift.blogspot.com/

Effortlessly funny. All of the time. And so much of it. I feel like the Wright Brothers would have felt at Kittyhawk if, after their maiden flight, they were buzzed by Concorde. I don't know who this person is. I'm hoping they are a crack team of scriptwriters with too much time on their hands. But anyway, read, enjoy and thank me later.

Slow Turnover

The engine in Ye Olde Car is getting slower to start. That is, it usually fires up quite quickly, but rather than going ur-ur-ur it goes ur----ur----ur before going vroom. I'm starting to wonder if there will come a time where it goes ur. And nothing else. I should probably consider buying a new battery.

Only in my car the battery is in with you (in fact I sit on it - but with a chair in between to make it more comfortable and less potentially painful). And it is not full of water, but instead uses jelly. Although I've no idea what flavour. This makes the battery very expensive and special order only. And so up until now the expense and the fact that when I disconnect the old battery and plug in the new one it will probably break the central locking and stuff has put me off.

But then again after over seven years I'm probably due a new one. But I will resist the temptation to open the old one and find out what flavour it really is.

Crisp Strategies

Here are the facts, ladies and gentlemen:

• I take a packed lunch, including crisps, to work every day of the week.
• There are five days in a week.
• There are four packs of barbecue flavoured crisps in the 24 pack Walkers Variety bag that we buy each week.
• I like barbecue flavoured crisps best of all.

This means that I have to endure a day without my favourite crisps (and for someone with a life like mine this is a big deal, believe me). So, given the above facts do I:

• Take Cheese and Onion on Monday (deferred gratification)
• Throw a dice - if I can find a five sided one- to decide which day I take the BBQ crisps(hand of fate)
• Take Cheese and Onion on Friday (suffering on the happiest day of the week)
• Take all four packs to work on Monday - since other family members have been known to eat them (forward planning)

Turns out that the last solution is the best. The only problem is that I might eat all of the crisps on a Monday......

Long Distance Photography and Evil Squirrels

I've just got some lenses for my new camera. I got them (like just about everything else I seem to buy these days) from eBay. The plan was to buy some second hand, older style, lenses as part of a job lot of camera and lenses, and then pop them on the new beast.

As a plan it has worked very well. I can now zoom in on things from a reasonable distance and get good quality output. I was framing up some nice pictures of the squirrels in our garden when I remembered that:

• squirrels are vermin (basically rats with good PR)
• squirrels are evil (if you don't believe me - just type evil squirrels into Google)

Derek is not happy with squirrels either. They have taken up residence in his loft and he can hear them munching through his infrastructure during the night. We have discussed different ways of disposing of the unwanted guests. I'm for the General Norriega approach on this one, where you play things like Barney the dinosaur loudly through special speakers in the loft. Then again, perhaps this might not go down well in his neighbourhood.

(By the way, just found out that the word Google is not in the spell checker here. Who'd have thought....)

And This Wire Goes Where?

Went out home entertainment shopping with Dad today. If there's one thing I like more than spending my money it is spending other peoples'. Dad is buying a big plasma telly and so we reckoned he should get a new DVD player sound thingy to go with it. I think they caught as at a weak moment because they also persuaded us to buy a special video cable to deliver the super quality video signal to the big screen, which cost an amount I'm kind of embarrased to relate. They must have a big, high security, vault they keep them in. I can imagine scenes as new forms of heist are planned:

Fingers: "Now, you and Nobby distract the guard whilst I go in for the SCARTs"
Nobby: "Are you gonna get the Amstrad composite ones too Boss?"
(SLAP)
Fingers: "Have you learnt nothing...."

Then we went back to his place to wire it up. In the bad old days you got a big thick manual with ten pages of english and then the rest in every language known to man, plus a few I'm sure they made up when they were bored. Nowadays though things are much more flash. Everything was immaculatly presented, with a big thick book all in our mother tongue. We spent an hour or so assembling speakers and pushing wires into holes and then we let it fly. Nice sound. Good thing his place is detached. And if it wasn't, with this thing it probably soon would be....