Random ditherings

That was the week...

2009-10-05T20:33:16Z

that nearly wasn't.

Wed - didn't leave for France coz Liz has a meeting for Fri that can't be ducked.
So spend the time arsing about with some bits I've been meanign to do to the Land Rover for a while, adding a few more pages to our main website, and other odds and sods.

Thu - more of the same really. Nearly finish LR proj but find even more tools I don't have, bits that the "complete kit" doesn't include taht I need, etc.

Fri - finish LR proj. Quick trip to client who's moving in to a new house to pre-program her router for when her new DSL goes live next week turns into three hour session for assorted reasons but now done. Arrive home 3pm to find Liz back an hour early whinging that the LR isn't loaded. Point to pile of stuff ready to load and demonstrate it can be loaded in ten mins flat. Leave house at 4pm sharp as planned. Trip to Folkstone - arrival window defined by Shuttle booking as six to ten - expect to be there soon after six, in fact get there at a hair after the 1920 train has closed so sit around and get the 1950. Drive until just before 1am which puts is in Chartres - actually I *like* driving at night in france, the motorways are practiaclly deserted and for some reason I can stay awake and alert for ages which doesn't necessarily apply when driving during the day - no,I don't understand it either, but during the day Liz and I trade seats every three hours or so...

Sat - arrive in Issoire around 13:00 so hit the cafe in the supermarket and then phone the people who've invited themselves to Sunady lunch to find otu how many of them are coming and what they're bringing. Fill in resulting blanks with purchases and head for house.

Sat pm - arrive at house at 15:30 just before the folks who are delivering our new trees. Spend pleasant evening with them in garden and restaurant. About this time realise DSL router is total toast. Dead. Pining for the etc... Collapse.

Sun am - can't lie in - tree-folk are leaving at 10:00 - prolonged summmer means they have to rush back to nursery and water stuff. Feed them b'fast, plant trees, see them off, sit down for ten mins - lunch guests start to arrive... it's 4th October - snow on some highe rground woul dnot haev surprised anyone. Daytime temps of 24 degrees, and the pool still usable (if a tad on the brisk side!) has us all gobsmacked. Lots of BBQ beer wine and chat ensue until around 22:00, when we gracefully admit defeat in a game of scrabbled played in French (using english letter distribs) and we crash out.

Mon - get up, clear pu after BBQ (not that hard actually, lots of folk took home the pots they brougth salads (etc) in and had all brought plates in so we just loaded dishwasher and did a few handwash pots. Brekky. Beetle up to neighbours to return spade and check the Home Plugs and WiFi APs we had sent them were working. Then use their link to try to on-line shop for new DSL router. NOt easy - tehre's no frech "Google Shopping" and on top of that 99% of french ISPs are telcos and supply a DSL/TV/PhoneATA unit with teh service, so most of the shops only stock stuff to connect TO your Livebox (et al) not *instead* of it. Darty finally mange to find us a Belkin DSL/"N" router for (far too much). But it's doing the job.

Home in time ot watch the sun set - still 22 degrees out there. At least two more days the same are promisied. Hand-watering of new trees therefore indicated. But pool STILL usable a week into October - unheard of!!!

Sadly, we're *already* starting to plan the winter close-down of pool and house as we have to leave on Sat/Sun, Liz's work again... but we're back on 28th Dec for NY this year - yay!!

Lord Of The Rings

2009-08-30T19:06:14Z

An elderly, white haired man walked into a jewelry store one Friday evening with a beautiful young gal at his side. He told the jeweler he was looking for a special ring for his girlfriend.

The jeweler looked through his stock and brought out a $5,000 ring.

The old man said, "No, I'd like to see something more 'special'."

At that statement, the jeweler went to his special stock and brought another ring over. "Here's a stunning ring at only $40,000," the jeweler said.

The young lady's eyes sparkled and her whole body trembled with excitement. The old man seeing this said, "We'll take it."

The jeweler asked how payment would be made and the old man stated, "By check. I know you need to make sure my check is good, so I'll write it now and you can call the bank Monday to verify the funds and I'll pick the ring up Monday afternoon," he said.

Monday morning, the jeweler phoned the old man. "The bank called. There's no money in that account," he said.

"I know," said the old man, "But let me tell you about my weekend!"

ccomley @ 2009-08-26T13:46:00

2009-08-26T12:47:46Z

In a Bangkok temple:
IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ENTER A WOMAN, EVEN A FOREIGNER, IF DRESSED AS A MAN.

Cocktail lounge, Norway:
LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.

Doctors office, Rome:
SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Dry cleaners, Bangkok:
DROP YOUR TROUSERS HERE FOR THE BEST RESULTS.

In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE OUGHT TO SEE THE MANAGER.

On the main road to Mombasa, leaving Nairobi:
TAKE NOTICE: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE.

On a poster at Kencom:
ARE YOU AN ADULT THAT CANNOT READ? IF SO WE CAN HELP.

In a City restaurant:
OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK AND WEEKENDS.

In a cemetery:
PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWN GRAVES.

Tokyo hotel's rules and regulations:
GUESTS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO SMOKE OR DO OTHER DISGUSTING BEHAVIOURS IN BED.

On the menu of a Swiss restaurant:
OUR WINES LEAVE YOU NOTHING TO HOPE FOR.

In a Tokyo bar:
SPECIAL COCKTAILS FOR THE LADIES WITH NUTS.

Hotel, Yugoslavia:
THE FLATTENING OF UNDERWEAR WITH PLEASURE IS THE JOB OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

Hotel, Japan:
YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery:
YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET COMPOSERS, ARTISTS AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY EXCEPT THURSDAY.

A sign posted in Germany's Black Forest:
IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN ON OUR BLACK FOREST CAMPING SITE THAT PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT SEX, FOR INSTANCE, MEN AND WOMEN, LIVE TOGETHER IN ONE TENT UNLESS THEY ARE MARRIED WITH EACH OTHER FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Hotel, Zurich:
BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Advertisement for donkey rides, Thailand:
WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE ON YOUR OWN ASS?

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen:
WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

A laundry in Rome:
LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME.

MeYOW

2009-07-22T20:07:54Z

Is it my imagination or is

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/07/22/funny-pictures-food-i-luv-you/

a Really Big cat?

Year of the Horse Fly

2009-06-25T20:55:14Z

Argh!

Usually, each summer, there's a horse fly around the pool. It tries to eat bits of us, we try to swat it. It usually manages to get in a nip or two, then we swat it and taht's it. Couple of weeks later, another ones comes along...

Today I declared war. I spent an hour in the pool doing nothing but swat horse flies.

I got TWELVE of the buggers.

On the upside, I had to stop, there were no more players. Maybe that'll be it for a day or two...

Showing hands.

2009-06-08T17:42:24Z

Sunady evening saw off a very nice pizza at Pizza Express in amersham followed by an evening with Show of Hands at the Elgiva.

Top notch.

(SoH forthcomign album should be well up to standard, BTW< if the new stuff they mostly sung to us is to judge by.)

Advertising.

2009-06-08T12:26:08Z

You're a Large Company. You want to keep selling Stuff despite the fact that the Credit Crunch (TM) is supposed to mean no-one wants to buy anything.

So you check down the back of the sofa, smash a piggy bank, and tap your granny for a few quid, and scrape together a few million quid, and have a Big Telly Advert. You spend many squid on the filming of the ad then many more on the peak time ad spots.

Then what?

Well, if you're Land Rover, you've invested in the call centre and response people to handle calls, emails, texts, and people pressing the red button on their Sky box, you send them out an info pack, you tell them your local dealer will be in touch. And then you do something to piss off your local daeler (perhaps - just guessing - you advertise a HUGE discount on new cars, then expect the dealers to put up that discount from their cut, so that they would rather concentrate on their stock of used cars than sell a new one) and they never call your new potential customers back.

And if you're Unilever you spend millions advertising a nwe edition of your popular Magnum ice-cream range, you get customers REALLY eager to try a Magnum with bts of chocolate browne embeded in it... and you don't bother to send any to the shops. OK - granted this may have been that the shiops didn't *order* any, but if I was spending that much on a product launch, I'd damn well put some of the cash towards making SURE the retailers stock the product, be it a price incentive, a retailer ad-campaign, or just sending the boys around to install the stock in the fridges...

Warning!

2009-05-25T13:20:15Z

IF you really had bad puns, then I have to warn you, if you find you're watching a telly advert where a "rodeo" cowboy is riding a giant grouse, under NO circumstances should you wait for the punchline...

Icky!!! :-(

2009-04-26T20:25:42Z

Have a shelf or two of books here in France left for visitors. Seeded the shelf with dupes and smiilar, nothing we'd miss, so we don't mind if someone gets half way through a book and takes it with them - but we like folk to leave another one in its place. And sometimes folk just leave books.

But I draw the line at being used as a method of disposing of a copy of "My Booky Wook"... whoever you are, *you* bought it, *YOU* take it to the tip!!!

Back in France.

2009-04-24T07:20:13Z

Interesting trip - missed the 1830 ferry coz Liz got stuck on a work related thing. So caught the 1820, which put us on the ground at 2145 Local. Decided we were making such good progress, hardly having to sahre the mway at all, that we'd press on to at least Rouen. Rouen at midnight... all the edge of town hotels full. Lots of beligan coaches in evidence. Can only assume some sort of festival. Pressed on down the A13.. more of the same, now lots of white vans. Finally found room at the inn in Evereux. 0120 by now. Still, a bed's a bed.

Thursday brought a pretty event free trip except when we reached Clermont Ferrand... where the motorway tag decided not to work. Again. This one is nwe, we spent the whole of our LAST trip in Octber handing it to the nice lady to barcode read it, finally got it replaced on our way home (the offices of the motorway companies are just *inside* the toll areas, you can only visit them once you start a toll-based journey leg) so this tag has been read once at Janville, once at Evereux, once at Abbeville, once at Bolougne, then on the way back once at Bolougne, Abbeville and Evereux again and... failed when it got back to Clermont. I'm not impressed. Then we buzzed the intercom to explain why we weren't goign anywhere and they eventually raised the barrier... and dropped it again too soon - by the time Liz had got back in, we were half way through. Bonk - on the roof rail fortunatly, and the barrier appears well padded. But the *sirens* - they clearly don't like toll evaders! :-)

Spent yesterday afternoon fishnig daed frogs and live newts out of the pool. Anyone want some spawn?

Doing the rounds.

2009-04-20T09:24:42Z

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?

WITNESS: I forget.

ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?

WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?

WITNESS: Are you shitting me?

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was Au gust 8th?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?

WITNESS: getting laid

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: How many were boys?

WITNESS: None.

ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

W ITNESS : Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?

WITNESS: By death.

ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

WITNESS: Take a guess.

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?

WITNES S: He was about medium height and had a beard.

ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?

WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?

WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?

WITNESS: Oral.

_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?

WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.

ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?

WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

______________________________________

And the best for last:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possi ble that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Worth a look

2009-04-20T08:33:07Z

Lies, damn lies, and... any statistics?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/10/dirty_data/

Duck!

2009-04-13T19:18:28Z

Well the plan was to load the cameras in the car, head for the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Arundel, meet some friends, and go shoot ducks for a couple of hours.

So we met - and spent four hours exploring the castle, then two hours in the Black Rabbit - which used up the available hours.

Still - fun times, worse days can be had on sunny springy bank holidays.

One word of warning - Arundel Castle is *not* for the shallow of pocket castle enthusiast, about £15 each to get in (all areas). And I've had whole meals for what tghe brownie and cup of tea cost in the caff.

Now this I like

2009-04-09T10:41:49Z

A quick and simple test.

Nice lateral thinking. instead of looking for the virus itself, which means all sorts of clever programming, just look for the *effects*...

http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html

Made me smile.

2009-04-06T18:58:11Z

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/06/treacle_mine_road/

Just goes to show... there's still life on Planet Earth.

Spooky explained.

2009-03-30T22:49:58Z

If like me you've found yourself thinking "that's oddly familiar" to the trailers now being bandied about on a couple of channels, over the new "Frmo the makers of CSI" prog called Eleventh Hours, it's coz it's a remake of an earlier brit production

http://tinyurl.com/cp5yc7

Telly Time

2009-03-26T22:31:14Z

We missed the start of the last series of Boston Legal, so have obtained it on DVD, meantime, as the next serise has started on TV, we're recording them all to watch after the prevoius...

Well anyway, he SKy box is a tad full so I'm copying these shows to another box, this means I have to watch the odd snipped of prog whislt starting and stopping stuff.

Even which short snippets are enough to remind me what fantastically good TV this is.

Anyone who hasn't seen Boston Legal - get there now.

Weee!

2009-03-23T19:08:45Z

I finally gave up trying to get VMWare WS working atop Linux and slapped Windows 2003 on the tin. Now I have VMware running on THAT and have already managed to install an *unsupported* client (Fedora 10) in a VM, eeeeesy! Am downloading two other ISOs I've been meaning to play with too...

Partly due to being IN for the first time in two weeks, I've made more progress today than for the rest of the month.

Just a LITTLE suspicious of tne funny noises coming from the hard drive. Never used a 2.5" drive in a desktop before so I could just be imagining it, but sometmies it doesn't sound happy. But... if it does look odd, I can start to back up the VMs to the NAS just about as soon as I can create them!!! :-)

This HAS to be the way to go vis disaster recovery et al.

Merry

2009-03-21T13:20:49Z

equinox, everyone.

You wouldn't believe it

2009-03-17T10:09:27Z

if you found it in a script.

Company X has a DSL service from us at one of the sites they manage.

We duely send them bills.

They habitually stamp "Company X does not accept invoices which do not carry a valid purchase order number" and send them back.

We phone and argue. We did once get a PO number, we put it on their invoices, but they deemed it "used" by the first invoice they saw back and then reverted to plan A (see above). We asked them how they pay their BT bills, BT, surely, do not ask for and then quote PO numbers on ever phone bill.

Anyhoo, we gave up, it being, after all, the nicest part about banging your head off a brick wall.

So now they owe around £650 and we have cut them off.

They say why, we read out a list of unpaid invoices. "We don't appear to have those, can you send them again please"? We check - we have already sent them - and they have sent them back see above.

We've been asked specially to re-send them for the attention of . We shall, we assume said person can also approve (as may be necessary) the additional invoice for re-enabling the cased line. It won't cost much, but it will cover the additional postage, time spent re-printing invoices, time spent phoning them, etc...

Cyclage.

2009-03-15T22:33:51Z

Two years ago I bought a pushbike. Took a few turns around the village but teh hills are not beginner friendly, and my knees are definitly beginners.

Last year we bought a carrier to hang the bikes on the land rover.

TODAY we finally assembled the carrier and PUT the bikes on the land rover.

The master plan was to take the Phoenix Trail from Risboro' to Thame.

Did I mention my knees are beginners? We made it about 1/3rd the way, then just about made it the 1/3rd back. Enough for day 1. My legs have aches in places they din't used to have. Glad we didn't push on, we'd probably have ended up walking back in the dark.

Further next time. Which will NOT be next year, you cynics!!!

ccomley @ 2009-03-08T18:32:00

2009-03-08T18:38:48Z

Last Week: Pretty much every day at the same client - getting their new office building ready for them to move into, then helping move, re-assenmbling IT clobber and so forth. Good news - when I handed over the invoice for the phone system and said "soon please", I meant "within the month would be appreciated" as they can be a tad tardy, but I found it in our bank two days later. Which was nice.

Back there tomorrow (phone numbers switch over, need to be sure they all reach the correct destionation) and on Tuesaday (second DSL link switches over, need to test it and then re-integrate with their Loadbal/Failover setup.

So the most knackering week in ages. BUT also the most chargable hours in any one week in many many months.

So much of Saturday spent banging out bonus zeds. Also manged to find time to shop and to build a vat of three bean chilli.

Today, veg out in front of telly, watch Wasps beat LI, and now finishing cooking teh chilli, oen load for supper, the rest to freeze.

Hopalong

2009-02-27T23:16:43Z

Nice sunny day today, had to put my fleece in my pack, way to hot to contemplate wearing it until on my way home after dark (coz I put the car roof in he boot!) and it *would* have been hard to remember that we had inches of snow just two weeks ago... except for the number of people on extra legs!!! Maybe they've all been to Val D'Isere...

Timing - it's all in the timing.

2009-02-03T12:23:10Z

How Not To Sell.

2009-02-01T19:29:47Z

I've had three Garmin GPS units, dating back to long before most people had even heard of them let alone considered having one in their car.

The first one could do little more than point you in the right general direction along with a distance counter. Even so it worked very well, the hard part of driving to somewhere you've never been before is uusally the last mile or so through backstreets and suburbs or unfamiliar one-way systems. If you have a constant arrow sayign THAT WAY, and a clue if it's 2 streets or 2 miles away, or "you've just missed it", it takes hours off the finding of.

But my latest one is now slow and creaky by modern standards. It can only take as much map as you can load into the dedicated expensive memory card, it takes up to five minutes to re-calculate the route when you ignore it's directions, if you're going several hundred miles, and it doesn't show you anything at all during that time...

... and the mapsets I've got are four yers old now (saving I have just bought a newer set from young Mr Fleming of this parish) so I was idly wondering what a new one would cost - in particular, would it cost less than just replacing the map data for this antqiyue.

SO I visit garmin's website.

CLick on "in car".

And am presented with a matrix of no fewer than TWENTY FIVE units to choose between. Near-identical pictures (esp as they're all stretched to fit so you can't tell large ones from small) and meaningless model numbers. In order to even guess if any given unit may be of teh remoteet use, you haveo tick it's box (you can tick severla and "compare" and wait for more info to show up.

After three goes I'm not even close to seeing one I like the look of, it occurs to me, this is jus tthe most annoying website I've seen in years! At the very least, chaps, put a brief description under each model. Better yet, thin down the model line, I can't believe there are really 25 separate market nooks you coudln't serve better by having five or six models and few optional extras. Meantime, I can't even tell if the units come with EU basemap or not... I'm off to review TomToms.