Sunday 26 December 2010

Well.....

That's Christmas out of the way again.... I was rather shocked and surprised that Andrea had bought me a 19" wide-screen TFT after my near death repair experience with my old Dell 17" monitor (which is working perfectly now I might add) .... but the new 19" wide-screen is very nice I must say....

Fomo boy got a brand new bike complete with front and back suspension and an adult sized cycle helmet after his face skidding exercise outside the Laugharne doctors surgery on his old bike... amongst some other trinkets such as a fusball table (sp) etc etc...
The sullen one got a Nikon S3000 camera as advertised on "Hollyoaks" well done that ad man it worked....

Xbox boy got a Samsung ES74 digital camera as his main present which he seemed pleased with...

Andrea got a necklace and bracelet and a scarf from me (how bad do I feel after opening a 19" wide screen TFT monitor ???) Ahhhh well we hadn't discussed ground rules.... fatal I guess

I'm currently recovering from a VERY nasty cough/man flu/pig flu episode, I'm even on the red smarties from the doctors to knock a chest infection on the head ... I think it's working time will tell .... needless to say I'm not getting much sleep and last night I spent the best part of the night sitting up in a chair as that seemed to reduce the incessant nocturnal coughing.... Normally I would have gone downstairs but my father in law and mother in law were struggling with a slowly deflating air bed in the front room at temperatures more akin to the Arctic than South Wales....

However we did have a very good Christmas dinner which went down very well with all that attended and it was washed down with copious amounts of wine and beer... although I didn't partake that much being prone to retching/coughing fits that seemed to drag on forever....

No arguments or disagreements overall ... things went rather well and harmoniously.... 


The only blip to the proceedings was Andrea's ex doing his usual last minute arsery at Christmas time insisting that several hundred answer phone messages had been left on our "blank" answer-phone  and Andrea's mobile and that apparently the "expensive" annual drop off at Gordano services had been arranged months ago.... (not)..... as usual it was last minute and totally unacceptable considering we had guests arriving for Christmas.

It was made worse by Andrea's ex's new woman (follow me ?) texting the sullen one and saying how unreasonable Andrea was being about not wanting to fork out £££'s so that her ex could see his kids....That did grind a bit and it's blatantly obvious that his new woman is being fed one line and his kids another....There are no secrets in our house everybody is fully aware of how things are and have been from the start and he isn't doing himself any favours with the kids.... there is no wool being pulled over any eyes.... whatsoever.....

To be perfectly honest I'm quite a bit fed up of all this pussy footing around,  I've always been very much tell it like it is...... I have no beef with her ex wanting to see his kids, in fact I actively encourage it, I would be the VERY LAST person to stand in his way as would Andrea......... and I wish I had the opportunities he's had.....but I don't see why we are some how seemingly and erroneously on his part duty bound to fork out any cash for him to see his kids....

That is his responsibility not ours..... We pay for everything else they require and need for the remaining 360 odd days they are with us, with bugger all NO financial burden upon him whatsoever, I suppose if he was paying any maintenance then we might be more "agreeable" to sharing petrol costs..... but as it stands ....no....simply no.....not happening....We have enough outgoings without adding to them and especially for someone else’s benefit.

I can see the day that if he carries on pulling arsery/stunts like this that things will be a changing.....He's lucky the CSA haven't got him in their sights ... but that's probably because his ex wife isn't as deranged  draconian as mine.... and she managed to get the house for a knock down price, the kids and several thousand pounds via the CSA.

but he's pressing ALL of the wrong buttons at the moment....


Anyway ......


Happy Christmas !!! :)

Monday 13 December 2010

This has truly shocked me

Tesco and a few other big retailers have been selling Halal meat without telling the public, all of Tesco's New Zealand lamb has been slaughtered following the Muslim method which is as follows :-

"According to Islamic tradition, the animal is brought to the place of slaughter and laid down gently so as to not injure it. The blade must be kept hidden until the very last moment while the jugular of the animal is felt. The conventional method used to slaughter the animal involves cutting the large arteries in the neck along with the oesophagus and vertebrate trachea with one swipe of an non-serrated blade. Care must be taken that the nervous system is not damaged, as this may cause the animal to die before exsanguination has taken place. While blood is draining, the animal is not handled until it has died. If any other method is used its meat will not be halal."

Disturbing video showing how inhumane halal prepared meat is

(don't watch it if you have a weak stomach .....seriously ... don't)

Now I know halal slaughtering is allowed in this country to satisfy the Muslim beliefs but personally I know it's not a very humane way to kill an animal, it will be conscious through the whole process until it's brain is starved of oxygen via the massive loss of blood.

That said what the hell does Tesco and the other supermarkets think they are doing selling Halal meat to non Muslims when ALL of their New Zealand lamb is slaughtered using this method but has not been labelled as halal ??? I'm sure if the general public knew that all of their Lamb was "halal" and how it was slaughtered their sales would slump.... apparently one third of their chickens are also halal....


You can be sure that the Pork is most definitely ok though ;¬)

First off I'm 100% Atheist and I wouldn't want any of the meat I buy blessed to Allah or any other God, but what I find completely outrageous is that ALL New Zealand Lamb at Tesco's is halal !!!

Christians in particular would be horrified to know this because they aren't allowed to eat any offerings to other God's 

It's true animals are bred for food and as such we have a duty to at least give them a dignified and painless death without them thrashing around on the floor whilst their terrified heart pumps their entire circulatory system over the floor until they lapse into unconsciousness ....

I for one will not be buying Tesco's or any other supermarket's lamb until the EU labelling comes into force forcing them to label halal meat as such...

I'm not anti Islamic at all there is enough room on this planet for everybody Christians/Atheists/Agnostics/Muslims/Buddhists .... I do however take offence when I and probably many others are misled like this and not given a choice in the matter !!!

Christmas is looming (again)

I'm not generally known for my enthusiasm for Christmas in fact what makes it worse is that it's hyped up to be Jesus's birthday when in fact it's nothing of the sort. It was a pagan festival which was hijacked by the Christian religion of times gone by so that it would be more readily accepted by the heathens of yesteryear....

Now I'm not denying that a bloke called Jesus existed because he did according to Roman history but I simply do not believe he was the son of a god, I think he was an ordinary bloke who had a bit of a god delusion going on....I cannot understand why Christians get so excited by Christmas when they must know that Jesus was born in or around July...

If it's symbolic then fair enough but then how much else of the Christian faith is purely symbolic and how much of it is actually based on hard facts... Ahhhh don't get me started ... I'm suffering from pre-Christmas stress syndrome.... where everybody runs around manically buying presents for each other which will sit in a cupboard or drawer and not see the light of day until they visit several months later....

I'm not a fan of Christmas, never really have been... but Freya will enjoy it as will the other kids/teens I'm sure and I certainly won't pour water on their fun.... :)

so onward and upward to celebrate this most British of traditions of excess and waste :)

Sunday 12 December 2010

Near death experience

Well ok slightly exaggerated there, but close... I'm composing this on my Dell 17" monitor which "used" to have the annoying habit of it's raster (screen) collapsing to a rather funky )  ( sort of shape... I knew what was causing it because a well aimed thump on the top of the monitor cured it for either a few hours or a few minutes.... but it was getting progressively worse as the months have been dragging on .....Sometimes it was like playing the Dell monitor bongo's at times trying to keep the screen from what was rapidly becoming it's natural state of  )  (  
So eventually I had my "Right that's it" Basil Fawlty moment and decided to take it apart and resolder the offending bad/dry joint....

All well and good I thought until I removed the several hundred self tapping screws that kept the back of the monitor on and I opened up the monitor to reveal a monitor made by the now defunct Russian Lada factory.... the whole circuit board was encased in a metal shroud made from second hand razor wire from the Inner German Border fence... so after slashing my finger within the first two minutes I wasn't holding much hope out of being able to take this Philips made monitor apart.... 

Eventually I figured out what I needed to pull apart and did so disconnecting about 15 or 20 leads... Eventually I had the back of the board in front of me and I started inspecting it for the tell tale ring of solder around the larger joints... I've got to be honest I couldn't see any.... switching it on was a no no because I had disconnected so much of it to get to the back of the board... so the only thing I could do was solder everything that looked a "bit" dodgy....

Now I'm a trained electronics bench engineer and I have repaired so many of these old CRT's that I could at a push do it blindfolded and that's where complacency creeps in... You are "meant" to discharge the anode of the CRT (it's the big rubber sucker device you see on the back of the tube) by taking a hefty screwdriver and attaching a equally hefty piece of wire to the metal of the screwdriver then you attach the wire to the chassis and slip the tip of the screwdriver under the anode cap.... as soon as the screwdriver tip comes to within arcing distance there is this big flash and bang and the CRT tube is discharged and safe to work with... 

I skipped this step thinking "well I won't touch anything I shouldn't so I'll be fine" ..... mistake number one !!!

I moved around the board with the soldering iron making sure the iron touched the board first in case of any latent electricity then I would touch the solder to the part I wanted to re-solder .... I got quicker and quicker until eventually I got it the wrong way around solder first then the iron... unfortunately for me it happened to be one of the only ones that was carrying the full 35,000 volts off the anode cap... The flash was quite spectacular for the instant my brain had to compute what had happened the next instant can only be described as being hit by a freight train at 50 mph and finding myself half way across the floor....35,000 volts through the arm is quite probably the most refreshing experience anybody can have..... it certainly wakes you up...

Luckily for me I don't have a defective heart.... as I found out in 2002 when I was submitted to the hospital with a suspected heart attack...(yes I drove myself there whilst my ex stayed at home....caring individual as she was) it turned out my heart was fine and the only thing defective was my ex wife...which was solved later that year..... I had just suffered a panic attack....

Anyway I digress I pulled myself together and carried on re-soldering cursing myself for not discharging the CRT... and eventually I got the monitor back to together and it has stopped doing it's funky )  ( dance and I no longer have to play the bongo's on the top of it.... So result.....

The moral of the story is :- No matter how good you are at doing something never take any short cuts because it will come back and bite you on the arse

Tuesday 7 December 2010

The Anthropogenic Global Warming Cult




Or in fact any global warming zealot, they are not dissimilar in their strength of belief to that of any devout religious person...In that it simply doesn't matter how much evidence there is against them, they still continue to believe blindly .... but I guess that is faith for you, you can't counter it with science no matter how overwhelming it is ....
 
I've been reading some comments on Richard Blacks Blog on the BBC and although I don't agree with him I have to admit I love reading the comments other people are putting on there.... they are hilarious.
It is almost as if AGW/GW is a new cult where complete belief is required or quite simply you are a denier, a blasphemer, a person willing to strip mine all of the national parks for their coal,oil and gas reserves... and/or murder future generations of children.....and a few polar bears thrown in for good measure.....

It seems now that their previous computer models were wrong and for the past 15 years there has been no discernible increase in global temperatures, well nothing that would tie in with the famous hockey stick, even some of the hottest media zealot scientists whose bread has been amply buttered on both sides since this latest green scare reared it's ugly head are starting to admit, that the climate isn't behaving in the way they have predicted and that they cannot explain why the Earth's climate simply isn't heating up....





Even the IPCC have given guidelines that any computer model must be able to predict our current climate accurately and be peer reviewed before it's output will be accepted for climate predictions in the future.... So at last it seems that a little sense is prevailing rather than the hysteria of "We are all going to die, and all the puppies are going to drown because of rising sea levels"


I failed to get excited about AGW, no doubt man has had an impact on the climate but I think some of us think far too much of our importance when it comes to how the Earth naturally manages our climate and has done since the Earth has had a climate...

Meanwhile I'll continue chuckling at the zealots... some of them are hilarious ... meanwhile I have to pour boiling water over my 47Kg Calor Gas bottle so we can cook because it's so bloody cold this winter....

and finally ...... It used to be only the likes of Monty Python who could rip the urine out of political hot potatoes. but now it seems anybody can do it... and rather well ... :)






Monday 6 December 2010

The cost of keeping warm

We had our delivery of oil the other day, well I say the other day it was about 2 weeks ago now... and we've had a belter of a cold snap with temperatures hitting record lows around the country.... needless to say our boiler has been on quite a bit...and that has just about kept us from freezing.... I was more than a bit shocked when testing to see how much oil we had consumed when I pulled out the sight valve to see the oil level drop by half IN TWO WEEKS !!!


At this rate we will need a refill at the end of the month and oil prices have sky rocketed so that will be a welcome bill right about Christmas time...NOT !! All we can hope is that this nasty cold snap will pass and our boiler can ramp down from its current ravenous consumption of heating oil....

The only other notable event was my near death experience at 3am in the morning on the way back from dropping Andrea off at the station so she could attend a running event in Birmingham... So after waving her off at the station, I made my way back on the A40, I got about half way down the road when it just poured down with rain, at first I thought "brilliant!! it will melt all this ice and snow" but that thought soon melted away when I glanced down at the temperature readout on our car and it stated quite categorically that it was minus 6 degrees centigrade....

It was right about that moment that I noticed the back end of the car starting to drift gently, I quickly realised that I was driving at 55 - 60mph on black ice, and not just a "bit" of black ice either... the whole road was a sheet of black ice...I could see it freezing as I drove..... The temptation to slam on the brakes was so overpowering but I knew if I did then I would eventually come to an abrupt halt but probably against a tree or crash barrier and in a completely uncontrolled fashion....

So I gingerly danced with the car as it weaved from side to side making minute changes to my steering to correct the drift coaxing it in the general direction I wanted it to go....mainly I was trying to keep it in the middle and avoid the edges at all costs....... knowing full well if it went too far one way or the other it would be sayonara....and very probably painful....

If you could have traced my path down the dual carriageway it would have looked like a gentle diminishing sine wave....weaving from side to side .....unbelievably or maybe by pure chance I also managed to get it around a  bend in the road before my speed reduced naturally to a more sedate speed, not helped by the low friction road surface ...

My only comfort was another car on the other carriageway suffering the same terror.... we were separated by the crash barrier so no chance of impact with each other  and all I could see in the fleeting glimpse I had of the other driver was that he had an equally ashen white face and  the very same look of abject terror    written all over his face as he weaved past me jinking gently in the mist and rain with his hazard lights flashing...

I did think it's a bit late for that mate I've been skating for the past mile...I eventually got home driving at a sedate 20mph..... phew !!!