Christmas is looming.....again

it's that time of year where you have to rack your brain thinking of things to buy that the intended recipient might like, I have to admit I really don't like Christmas one little bit, mainly because its so commercial these days, secondly because I miss my children, and thirdly because I don't actually believe in God, which after all is what it's all about, I used to believe in God a long long time ago, I even got baptised, you know the full body immersion thing, but over the years little things crept up on me that didn't tally with the gospel or the bible and it left me in that place where I had a foot in both camps and the gap was getting wider, eventually I jumped to the dark side (use the force luke....)

you see I like things to be explainable or to have some tangible grasp on reality, something which the Bible and Christianity failed miserably on to me at least, and the knowledgeable people within the fold so to speak when posed with the many questions I had over the years which questioned their very faith simply said "well that's what faith is" and you see that has never been enough for me....

it was those huge gaps in Christianity filled in with huge wodges of faith which had no explanation other than the well worn "that's what faith is" which eventually made me turn into a Jedi on the dark side ;¬) it wasn't helped by some of the people within the church who used to refer to me as Derek Brabrook then whisper "he's backslidden you know" a term which I never really understood, because I was having great difficulty getting anywhere near the slope or their heady heights to slip if you see what I mean ?

I was still tripping over how we were seeing light from stars billions of miles away if the earth was only 6000 years old ? and why tyrannosaurs weren't chasing Adam and Eve around the garden looking for their next tasty morsel and how the hell snakes were the first on earth before their eggs......ahhhh sorry I forgot "creation " another HUGE leap of the imagination required, which brings me nicely back to Dinosaurs, how the hell did man manage NOT to become Dino feed if we were on the earth first ? surely any self respecting member of the Adam and Eve club would have made sure that Velociraptor's and Tyrannosaurs and any of the really big nasty dinosaurs were either killed off or had their sharp teeth filed down and claws removed !! surely ? and I won't even start to talk about why Genesis makes no mention of our reptilian past, mind you it's a good job because if Noah had put a pair of Tyrannosaurs in the Ark it's unlikely there would be ANY life left on earth except for some fossilised pair of dinosaurs who died of overeating in amongst a load of rotted wood, that is if you believe that such a boat/ship could have been made to carry two of everything at that time, even in biblical times to have an Ark capable of carrying two of every species it would have been enormous, then you have food to consider and water, but then again if Jesus can feed 5000 with a few loaves of bread and some water anything is possible....if you believe that is, personally I think the dinosaurs were killed off by a huge meteorite or a massive volcanic eruption either of which would have blacked out the sun long enough to kill off all but the hardiest of animals, and at least it's not as weird as some of the theories flying around like the earth is flat and the 1960 moon landings didn't take place, in which case where did 841 lbs of moon rock come from ? and how did the laser reflectors get up there ?


anyway lets get back to Christianity.....you see it's all these little things that cause me huge problems with Christianity, I don't have any problem with other people who believe and I certainly don't hold it against them if they get some kind of comfort from it..... but it's simply not for me, if you consider most civilisations have some form of afterlife and/or deity or have had in the past and the whole beauty of religion in that form is that you can never find out before you die if it's actually true..... which makes it the perfect religion, always new believers and you never get any dead customers turning up complaining

hands up anybody who knows somebody who has come back from the dead and said it's all true ?

which smart arse said "Jesus" ? ? ........there is always one .....get out !!! ;¬)

that's like the Pope saying he sells life insurance, actually I haven't looked into the Vatican they probably do ;¬) well you know they make you an offer you can't refuse ;¬)

Freya the incredible sleeping baby

Fingers crossed we have sussed why she has been waking up through the night, Andrea put her in one of those grow bag things they are a bit like a sleeping bag but with arms.... she only woke up once I think and Andrea got a full FIVE hours sleep last night....!!! we think it's because she wriggles in her sleep (Freya not Andrea) and eventually she is so far out from under her duvet she wakes up cold, but last night seemed to work :)

she ended up on my chest again this morning face down and to the side sprawled out like a drowning victim in a starfish pose, I only put her there because she was whinging laying next to me, as soon as she was on my chest she was off to lah lah land again, with the cutest little baby snore....that's mah gurl !!! ;¬)

Work is going ok, it's a bit hectic of late but at least I'm not sitting here bored to death, I'm off to a safety at work induction early December apparently it's so I can be let loose on the various sites we look after around the country.....joy....more whiteboards and obvious statements like "walk don't run, don't trip over and if you have to wear a suicide vest to work then please detonate it in the wilderness of Cumbria to avoid injuring others" type of thing, ah well it's only a two day course and at least I don't have to stay in a cloned hotel chain bedroom watching only one out of the four channels available because the rest look like they have been filmed in Norway during a blizzard......home comforts go a long way :)

and I've just got a quote for heating oil 1500 litres is going to dent the bank balance to the tune of £651.89, I wish the Americans would get the hell out of Iraq, so I can turn the heating up a bit ;¬)

Shocked !!! to say the least

My brand new shock absorbers arrived the next day delivered by a Godzilla of a woman, it wasn't until she got to within five feet of me I realised it was a woman !!! (in fact I'm not convinced she was a woman, he might have had moobs ) I'm also doing the anti roll bar as well so Saturday so should be fun....up to my eyeballs in grease and grime down an inspection pit.....Joy

but it's got to be done I'm not forking out ANOTHER £70 per tyre eight months down the line

I've not heard anything back from the Child Deprivation Agency, but you watch they'll turn up with the bailiffs demanding I sell my step children to support my biological ones....(hmmmm how many sheckles do you get for kids these days ?) .....

anyway nothing exciting to report it's much of a muchness these days, the only thing of note was that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs have put me on an emergency tax code, which is an improvement on being dead I suppose.... it's getting expensive to live in this country what with fuel tax, VAT, tax, more tax and then some .....you guessed it TAX.

I saw on the news they are taxing pigeon fanciers but not trampolinist's or arm wrestlers ? go figure !!! they'll get you in the end mark my words (window tax next.....again.... !!!).... I'm seriously hoping the hauliers start blockading the fuel refineries.....I'd do it myself but I don't think a Peugot 205 XL 1.1 litre or a Nissan Terrano (low slung version) is much of a threat to them to be honest, but if they do..... lets see how long it takes for price to drop......which reminds me I must get a quote on heating oil.......it's all happening

I've given in

Yup, I have shopped around enough for shock absorbers for the Jeep, with prices varying from the sublime to the completely ridiculous £30 each is the final price I have settled on, the Nissan garage in Cross hands where I bought the Jeep wanted £86 each plus fitting !!! plus I've just put two new tyres on the front @ £67 each + VAT and considering the last pair only lasted 8 months, it is time to bite the bullet.....

It was a friend who told me about "Milner Off Road" based in Derbyshire, they specialise in all things Japanese and 4x4..... it's the first time I have used them so I will reserve judgement on the quality of the parts, but I've done a bit of research on the net and by all accounts they are pucker !! we shall see :)

The Xbox recluse aka "Master Chief" had his 16th birthday bash at our house over the weekend, he invited all his friends I'm not sure how many were there but a fair selection and a few girls as well so a good mix, we left them to it and besides cleaning up a bit of devastation before we went to bed, it went well or "Legendary" as he put it.... and no dead bodies to sweep up the next morning so that was a relief

Freya seems to be growing up so quickly she has quite a character already.....and a killer smile :)

let the battle commence.....

Well the CSA have excelled themselves, as the behemoth of wasted tax payers money lumbers into view waving bits of funny coloured paper at me dragging their club in the dirt with a nail sticking out of it....whilst dribbling drool from their fat lip..... not only have they not acknowledged my appeal which was lodged quite a few weeks ago, they have sent a threatening letter stating all the amazing superpowers they will unleash on me to extract payment from me, I think it's a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing to be honest with you, a bit like a dinosaur but with fewer brain cells, so I have attached my two previous letters stating that I am appealing yet again, and the reason why I haven't paid my first instalment because I'm APPEALING (you idiots!!!) .....duhhhhhh...... if they want bureaucracy they can have it....as much as they like in triplicate and by the spadeful.....I must upgrade my printer to 60 pages a minute at some point

Don't get me wrong I'm not against paying child maintenance one little bit, now that I have a salary it's only right and proper, but I don't like being treated like some bottomless money pit they think they can dip into whenever they like when I get nothing in return .....not even a receipt !!! this would have been far simpler if my ex wife had encouraged OUR children to keep in contact with me, and have some level of communication going, instead now there is this vast chasm of unfamiliarity between me and my children, and I am beginning to doubt we will ever meet up again, which is very sad because the person I was with my ex is not the person I am now, DJB is BACK !! and he has been away a long time.....lets face it if you eat something bad it makes you feel sick.....and 22 years of feeling sick would even alter the Popes sense of humour (if he has one)... besides if there was some human element or reason for this demand for payment I would have a completely different outlook on it, my wife's ex can see his children whenever he likes, he rings them and talks to them....there are no limits put on the contact he has or that they have with him..... if only my old tarnished ex wife was as "normal" as my new shiny wife..... ohh look a full squadron of flying pigs above !!! ;¬)

on a slightly brighter note, Freya is starting to smile not bad for a month old !! it's definitely not wind, and she hasn't quite mastered it yet, but she definitely does it in response to something that tickles her sense of humour......she definitely takes after her Dad she can sneeze and fart at the same time ;¬)

The jeep is going in to have yet another two tyres fitted to the front tomorrow morning it's chewing them faster than Preseli Tyres can fit them, but as of yet I haven't found a sensible person with sensible prices for the shock absorbers.... and considering it's going to cost more than I paid for the other car it's not happening just yet......besides we have other expenses like heating oil, enormous phone bills and two teenagers who seem to eat more than a sumo tag wrestling team........then there is Christmas...... lets not go there just yet, I know it's coming but if I just put this duvet over my head I might just miss it !!!

Finally a bit of weekend to myself :)

The Saturday consultancy went well, rather than have to reinstall the whole Windows 2003 server I opted for a hidden away utility on the server called DCGPOfix.exe which is a last ditch effort to save the default domain policy from being cast away into the ether with a fresh install, I held my breath after Microsoft warned me several times of the severity of my actions, and at the last prompt of "are you really really really definitely sure you want to do this heinous action ?" I said "Y"

it went away and did it's stuff all of two seconds work and I rebooted the server with baited breath as I started collecting the CD's together for the inevitable reinstall of the server operating system (not that I have any faith in anything Microsoft or anything) .........anyway it booted up and low and behold something that Microsoft made ACTUALLY worked !!! I checked all the workstations and applied the group policy and voilà all was well with the world and I breathed a sigh of relief, I promptly did a domain policy backup and secreted it away on the server in some dark corner just in case it needed to be brought out again and restored in anger, and swore at the software company that had dared to dabble in the default domain policy with the expertise of a colour blind American Gunnery Sgt giving a fire mission on blue targets......incomingggggg !!!!!

Anyway I packed up my stuff and left feeling quite chuffed with myself for not having to spend the next 7 hours there re-doing what had been done before because of some idiot who thought he knew better....(stick to Lego you'll have a higher success rate and do less damage)

Freya kept us up last night or should I say she mainly kept Andrea up, but it's hard to be angry with such a gorgeous girl..........she even has a dimple !!! regardless of dimple we are both quite tired....

I'm off to London this afternoon for a 9am start in the big smoke, not really looking forward to it, but it has to be done, meanwhile I can smell the roast dinner cooking....it smells delicious... it makes me want to go to London even less !!! actually it's Surrey but it's close enough to the M25 to qualify as London

there probably won't be anything on this blog for the next two days, you'll have to find some other drivel to read ;¬)

When does it end ?

I've had enough now....(well nearly)..... I didn't get much sleep on the day I drove back from Deeside, last night Freya kept us awake on the hour every hour with the accuracy of a digital clock, three of the team are off, two of them with the dreaded lurgy and one on holiday, so that leaves two of us manning support, with an ever increasing call queue mounting up, on top of that my IT skills are booked this Saturday probably ALL day, and on Sunday I drive to London for a two day course...... ohhh to just flop in front of the TV and relax and have nothing to do.....or less......I'd settle for less right now




other than that life seems to be ticking along nicely if a bit busy of late



the only other fly in the ointment is the BT call barring, which after Andrea spoke to India Telecoms Group as they are known in our house, actually it's much less flattering than that but lets not go there, she was told that I apparently had to give them a 4 digit PIN, which they never asked for when I set it up, so consequently we still cannot make anything other than local calls or calls within a 35 mile radius until the PIN, which I apparently told them arrives at the house via snail mail, and that could take 7 to 10 days..... if it goes on much longer I'll just have to ring them up and tell them to remove it, although knowing them I'll probably have to use the PIN I didn't tell them to do it

My stepdaughter did make me laugh last night, she was complaining she couldn't ring any of her friends because her phone credit/contract had been used up for this month and the home phone had call barring on it, (duhhhhh precisely.....) I think she thought the bill hadn't been paid, but I assured her it had...albeit grudgingly, besides it's on a direct debit straight from my bank account, I explained that she was quite welcome to ring her friends on their land lines but that I'm afraid wasn't good enough......so we gave her the option of having call barring taken off and at the end of the month and all the calls she makes and anybody else in the house to their friends on their mobiles taken out of their pocket money, she opted of course for the call barring to be taken off..... then the penny dropped rather dramatically that she wouldn't have very much pocket money to spend if we were paying out £75 on calls, 65% of which were calls to mobiles..... maybe the realisation that the land line isn't free especially to mobiles is finally being brought home to them, in fact I wouldn't mind one bit if any of the kids chatted to their friends for as long as they liked (because it's free) as long as there was a copper wire between them and not AIR !!!... although to be fair I have a feeling this months inflated phone bill was down to the Xbox recluse, I would much rather spend the money on the kids that gave them some benefit than hours of endless wittering about who is going out with who, and how so and so dumped X, and wasn't it really really funny......not....


They both have mobiles and when the credit runs out on them "we" and it's very much a "we" and not a "me" do not expect them to start running up the land line bill, I expect it will end in tears of some sort..... but they don't cost anything ......thankfully

Mr Grumpy, Tired, Knackered and most definitely right :)

I made it back from Deeside.....eventually

I left there at about half past midnight, I tried a Travelodge near Wrexham on the way back but it was full, so I was kind of committed to driving myself home really.... down the not very straight A483 right through the centre of Wales, anyway the first pit stop I stoked up on food (well it could be loosely called that I suppose) and Red Bull and started my bleary eyed drive back home after my 2 day shift up north, I had the mother of all headaches from not eating since breakfast which was made worse by the Red Bull when it hit the spot, but the sugar rush was brilliant !!! anyway it was that or fall asleep and drive over a ravine.... as it turned out I avoided the many ravines and I now fully understand why my first daughter Emma used to throw up on the way to see my parents who live in South Wales when we lived in Leeds (another grim place) I don't think it has an entire straight piece of road on it !! it does make it considerably worse if you have Red Bull and an anaemic chicken and mushroom slice swilling about in your stomach

the only drama on the drive back was me managing to smack a pheasant into the afterlife with my pool car.....You have no idea how many feathers a pheasant has I can assure you it's lots !!! and if you're partial to pheasant there is a ready plucked and tenderised one done a la Diesel Vauxhall Vectra Estate just about 2 miles north of Newtown lying in a ditch.... thankfully there was no damage to the car....after I wiped the copious amounts of pheasant bits off the front air dam I breathed a sigh of relief.....pheasant's are quite probably THE most stupid bird on the planet only slightly above that of a Dodo in the intelligence department....."what are those bright lights coming towards me......ohhhhh pretty lights...lovely prett....SMACK"

the only other news is that my darling wife has panned in the back of the beloved Terrano, it's not much damage looks a lot worse than it is, she thought I was going to go ballistic about it, but it's only a car there are more important things in life......like being happy :) ..... which I am.... if a little tired these days

Hurry up and wait

Here I am stuck in the north of England in Deeside, with this thing <------- being drip fed an ISO image of Netware 5.1 SP6, over a network which seems to be connected via 2400 baud modems or probably via some moistened string.... to fix a server which went down over the weekend....the image is only 475mb arrrrghhhhhh...... it says 235 microsoft minutes so that could be months away in my experience of Microsoft promises on time

only once I have the ISO image can I fix the server......so hurry up and wait it seems, I was also supposed to be seeing another customer tonight but it's not looking good...in fact it's not looking anything at all

I was put up in a Premier Travel Inn about 10 miles away last night from where I'm currently working, there was nothing "Premier" about it, it's situated right next to a chemical factory and the whole night I kept waking up to the most awful smells drifting through my room, and it had nothing to do with the Indian meal I had to force down myself because it was too late for "proper" food.....

on the plus side I did manage to have a few pints with my mate Chris (well I had pints of man beer the shandy boy drank differently) anyway he lives a stones throw away from Chester so we did manage to put the world to rights......again

I am determined to leave this god awful place as soon as I am able....

I know why I moved from the north all those years ago..... it's bloody grim up here

I spoke to Andrea to give her the bad news about my non imminent arrival home and I could hear Freya coo'ing and ahhh'ing in her arms.....it plucked at the heartstrings a bit, she is growing up so fast now and has a lot of expression in her face, she has even learnt to frown but it's usually when she is about to fill her nappy..... I should imagine it takes quite a bit of concentration getting it right, and she gets it right quite often these days ;¬)

she is a very peaceful baby, or is at least when I get to hold her Andrea no doubt has experienced her full spectrum of strops being with her 24/7.....

anyway I must go and wait some more .... apparently it's 128 microsoft minutes now and the afternoon is disappearing fast ..............

fade to ..... "please release me, let me gooooooooooooooo"


update Deeside revisited :-

it's a quarter past four and the ISO image is all but here with 27 Microsoft minutes pending delivery.....and the good news is the disaster recovery procedure has worked, so the pressure is off me to try and fix this server without causing any loss of data, although they would prefer it if I did bring it back to the land of the living intact, because there is "some" data on it they want back so I may be leaving this God awful place sooner than I thought, the people that work here are fantastic, I've had a real laugh but I've had this potential loss of huge amounts of data hanging over me at the single press of a key.....

you watch I'll un-zip this iso image and it will fail the CRC check...... the toffee hammer and rusty razor blades behind a glass case are within easy reach, if only I had something for this banging headache I seem to have had all day ..... :(

Another day......well it follows really

it's getting quite hard to spend any time with the new kid on the block, no sooner do I get her in my arms at home than somebody else is nagging me to hold her, but I did have a little snooze with her in bed this morning which was nice while Andrea woke up the older tribe members, she is getting more demanding now at two weeks old, I do feel sorry for Andrea being disturbed by her through the night but there isn't a lot I can do about it really...... not being equipped to meet her needs so to speak.....

I will be able to help a lot more once her reliance on "booby juice" lessens, she doesn't have many needs at the moment, a cuddle, warmth, food and a dry nappy and she seems to be happy :)

I'm working again this weekend :( same place.....sigh..... apparently they have a network problem, but I'm not convinced to be honest I shall see when I get there, either way I don't like working weekends it makes you feel as if you haven't had a break

My best mate Chris is "hopefully" coming down either after Christmas or before on the train, but that's another story, nothing has been finalised yet, it will be nice to see him it's been ages or seems it, hopefully Donna his long suffering wife will come too to coo and ahh over the baby, while Chris and I put the world to rights on the decking........again (providing it's not sub zero out there).... I do miss the pair of them to be honest we always have a laugh when we are together......well I do, I can't remember if they do or not ;¬)

anyway I'm just waiting for the off here at work, all systems are go green lights everywhere.....and relax .............

Well it's legal now

We took Freya to the registrars this morning to write her name in stone, gone are the days the registrar dipped their quill into the inkwell it's all computers these days, endless tapping away at keyboards and eventually printed out through a HP laserjet 6.... how romantic ! and all for £3.50 at least the government hasn't jumped on the idea that you have to be born if all goes as planned and charge accordingly for it ......yet.... mind you they do fine you £750 if you don't register a birth within 6 weeks, so maybe they have covered all bases ?

nothing much happening at work I'm trying to unravel a previous colleagues enterprise installation of Mcafee Antivirus, there is no documentation and with 170 file servers (ish) it's getting a bit difficult tracking down which server is looking to which update server and which mirror repository is actually the real one, it's a pile of spaghetti really with no logical start or end.... But I'm half way through it and it keeps me busy through the times the rest of the LAN team aren't running around with their hair on fire fire fighting the latest disaster, it's a bit disconcerting realising that I am the only one on the team with any in-depth Netware knowledge left, if something catastrophic happens and I'm not here, a minor disaster could turn into a complete meltdown.... but they are looking for another member to join us, thankfully most of the servers are well behaved and I keep an eye on them and nail things before they become too serious

as for home life, things are settled other than the xbox recluse has a tidying ban on his room, and until he pulls his weight a bit his bedroom remains a no go zone for Andrea, his bedroom is a tip, mainly because he spends 95% of his free time on his Xbox or the computer....but he is going to learn the hard way it seems, the only person to give way on this will be the wannabe "master chief" because Andrea isn't lifting a finger until he does his bit, all of the other kids help to varying degrees except him

death or glory....... ;¬)

(she'll win she has toughened up a lot these last few years, and if the kids get away with anything....it's because we let them....)


and hopefully this new addition to the family won't like that devils food "Macdonalds" ....... there I said it

Teenagers and mobile phones Gahhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!

We got our phone bill through for this month and it's £75 !!! it jumped from an average of £35 - £39 to £75 in a month !!!.... so after I picked myself up off the floor and finished breathing into my handy brown paper bag to avoid hyperventilation, I discovered that over 68% of the calls were to mobile numbers, now the kids had been told in no uncertain terms that mobile numbers were a complete no no, except to their father and only then when he wasn't near a land line or in a complete emergency like one of the kids arms had accidentally been cut off by a passing headless horseman because the phone bill was spiralling out of control.....yes they agreed nodding in unison......information in one ear ....dribbling out of the other....(can we go now?)

but to no avail they still use the land line like it's a 1980's CB radio.... to be picked up whenever they feel like it, to call whomever they like for as long as they like, or to try ringing the same mobile number over and over oblivious to the fact that it cost's £0.25p a shot to "try" and connect them, I have no idea what they are doing because most of the calls last for less than 5 seconds but cost more to connect than the actual cost of the call, and there are loads of them, I did have a handy stick I could shake at the phone bill but it snapped through over use, I'll have to use the one I shake at the electric bill and immersion heater now, but even that one is starting to show signs of imminent failure.....sighhhhhh

anyway after telling them, warning them, telling them again to stop it or I'll tell them to stop again.....the big guns have been wheeled out......as of tomorrow all national, international and mobile numbers are call barred on the home phone, unless the pin number is put in first, so now they have more chance of being hit by a 1970's American spy satellite in a decaying orbit than finding out what the pin is during their lifetime, and if it's not available it can't be abused...

The only other option is to bury them under the patio....but that's illegal apparently so I'll give it a miss......plus we don't have a patio anyway ;¬)

Not just any post but an M&S post

I am wearing not any ordinary woollen jumper today but an M&S jumper, in a very nice black colour and I used to love it, unfortunately it was put into not just any tumble dryer but our very own tumble dryer consequently it is now considerably smaller than it was and starting to moult like an 11 year old Labrador bitch when you touch it..... I got out of the car this morning and my trousers looked like they had been spattered with black ink, and it was only when I tried to brush it off I realised it was fall out from my previously immaculate jumper.....

So I rushed into the kitchen and started a procedure which I wish I hadn't, I wet my hands and started to brush off my trousers which worked fabulously, right up until I started on my jumper, needless to say my hands looked like a werewolf's by the time I had finished, and it was showing no signs of reducing, the more I brushed the more woolly my hands got.....

So I spent a good 10 minutes brushing myself down, only to be walked in on by one of my co workers who stopped dead in his tracks when confronted by my incredibly hairy hands.....anyway it gets worse, I washed my hands off in the sink and the sink is one of the ones that has a saniflow pump underneath it.... you know exactly where this is going don't you ?

yes the saniflow greedily ate all my fluff then made the most horrible screeching sound......

I quickly walked out of the kitchen and did an incredibly convincing "what the hell is that noise ???"....... an engineer is currently dismantling the saniflow.....I just hope he doesn't try and do forensic wool match on me or I'm sunk......;¬)

I got caught short by Freya over the weekend, I think this has happened to every parent on the planet, and it's all to do with timing, and face reading....

I was happily changing her rather full nappy, content in the fact that she couldn't possibly have anything left in her.... I had got to the stage where you are in between the dirty nappy and clean nappy swap, lifted her bottom up and was about to slide the clean one into place when...and this is the important bit, I should have been paying attention to the concentration written all over her face and her clenched fists, needless to say something had to give and it did, but you have a dilemma, do you quickly substitute the dirty nappy which is furthest away from her or quickly put the clean nappy under the offending bottom ? as it turned out my dithering was my undoing.... one perfectly clean blanket is now in the wash. I calculate you have less than half a second to make a decision at that critical moment, which is bizarre really because there shouldn't be any dithering because nappies are for catching poop ....sooner or later


at this point I'll take a nod to Roger who emailed me this morning and told me he is reading my blog, you're welcome Roger, just try not to read it when you're drinking coffee at work or wine come to think of it, keyboards hate the stuff ;¬)

I think I have 6 readers now (well 6 that admit it)....tomorrow the world !!!!

New Keyboard purchased

My blog should be easier to read now ;¬)

I considered waiting until I could place an order with my supplier, but with their delivery charges sky rocketing to a whole £8.75 per order it kind of makes a mockery of buying a £6 Cherry keyboard...........which happen to be my favourite keyboards probably because I have never had one back as faulty in all the years I have been supplying them, notwithstanding being doused in wine or another similar fluid....

I thought I had a few spare keyboards in the shed but I used the last new one on my stepdaughters ubuntu linux computer, anyway it wasn't until I inspected them that I noticed an axe had been put through them, needless to say they didn't fair very well from the encounter, and I have a feeling it won't be covered by any warranty

So off I went to Carmarthen's PC-World much as I hate ANY PC-World, because they are over priced and in the same line of business as me, after I waltzed in through the swishy doors my eyes came to rest on their keyboard offerings, from a basic PC-Line £8.50 keyboard right up to the latest and greatest from Microsoft for £149 !!! the only difference between the really cheap keyboard and the really ridiculously expensive one was

A) Microsoft Logo
B) Wireless

you could apparently set it to display one of several alternating colours whilst you used it (really useful....not) plus it was ergonomic which is a laugh because if you are taught to type to RSA standard as I was in the Army you soon realise that the whole keyboard layout is wrong for a touch typist in the UK, it would be fine if you were American because they are taught different keys with different fingers....

and seeing as I have no desire to light my face up in a darkened room with various colours or brush my fingers over laser etched key caps while I stroke the nicely embossed Microsoft Logo I plumped for the el cheapo £8.50 PC-Line one, which although isn't as nice as my Cherry keyboards and it only has three lights which are green, it works and at least allows me to use the S and W key, which is a definite improvement on my wine sozzled Cherry

that said it's been a lovely relaxing weekend, nothing stressy happened, kids have been well behaved, no riots or glassing's or fist fights, Freya managed to sleep through a rather noisy game of "Cranium" last night which we played and eventually lost interest, but that could have been all the Rioja we sank, some of which ended up in my keyboard :) and no we were not falling over drunk, just a little merry ... :) I even had time to dismantle and clean my rifle in the evening, which I am pleased to announce is now managing a 5cm grouping at 60 yards it's amazing what a bit of TLC does, which reminds me I must get the shock absorbers done on the Jeep soon

apparently there is a huge firework display in Carmarthen tomorrow, I may well attend it's been ages since I have seen a good firework display, I'll be dragged into taxi work for the kids anyway :)

Diater trike at keyboard central

I ent againt my on advice lat night and had ome very nice Rioja in quite a big gla anyay, a I ent to turn off the computer I knocked the entire content of my ine gla over my keyboard, I have to key not orking and I'm ure you can gue hich one they are ????

I ill have to ee if I have a pare keyboard knocking about, becaue thi one ha ritten it' lat blog entry


....... :(