Skype

Has finally sold out for a substantial amount to none other than the evil empire itself ....Microsoft

I can see people leaving in droves myself included, which is a shame because it "was" a damn good VoIP application with excellent security, once Microsoft get their hands on it, it will be turned into some pay to speak bloatware application, or worse still the call quality will be reduced on the free side and if you want better call quality or video then you have to subscribe to a "premium" rate version.

I think there will be a hole in the market for another "Skype" soon.... it is a sad day indeed.

Not a lot news wise, except the Sullen one has been banned from having more than one friend over unless it's a special occasion such as a birthday or similar mainly because her bedroom is directly below ours and this weekend just gone she had about 4 or 5 friends over and the racket into the early hours was completely unacceptable and I didn't get to sleep until gone 4am being the light sleeper that I am.... mainly it was loud laughing but some of them could be heard quite clearly just with them talking and then there were the doors being banged shut every 10 minutes.... on a few occasions I very nearly got out of bed and threw the bloody lot of them out....But thought better of it because Andrea had said they could stay.... but it's simply not happening again, if she wants to have a random party she can go somewhere else to do it....I won't lose any sleep over it.....literally....

Xbox boy is still waiting for the green light from the Army after they told him he was a nervous wreck on anti depressants after getting his medical records mixed up with somebody else.... To be honest it's dragging on a bit now, but he knows if he doesn't get in the Army then he has to find another place to live, He's nearly 20 years old he should have fled the nest years ago. When I was 16 I wanted to get out in the world and explore it and find my own feet....despite having a very comfortable life with my parents at the time.....It seems this generation aren't quite so keen to do that, I don't know why....

Freya still has an ear infection although it's not as ragingly bad as it used to be, but she's on antibiotics again.... poor thing.

FOMO boy still hasn't learnt his lesson regarding answering back, but we are keeping up the pressure...he seems to have taken up one handed juggling with anything he can pick up, be that a phone, a bottle or anything in fact....highly annoying (and he knows it)….He’s also got the habit of picking up other peoples phones and using them…. A habit we are trying to get him out of, considering other peoples phones are private….something he doesn’t seem to grasp yet.

Having said that  he did learn a valuable lesson yesterday after he took a teddy bear off Freya in the car insisting it was his and he wanted to play with it....I tried to remind him that he was 11 years old and that Freya was only 3 but his bloody mindedness kicked in and he refused to give it back to Freya who was in floods of tears in the car, and because I was driving there wasn't a lot I could do about it....so I waited until we got home and I turned off his internet access on his computer.... it took him about 10 minutes to realise it didn't work and when he shouted down that "his" computer didn't work I corrected him and said "it's my computer and I'm playing with it" .... I think he got the point rather quickly... I'm a firm believer in punishments that can be understood easily... :) I did turn it back on again but only after he gave up and fired up Xboxboys Xbox 360.

We WILL win, he just doesn’t know it yet……

How Ludicrous

The United States Government have said they will not release photographic evidence of Osama Bin Ladens date with death...

Personally I don't particularly want to see Bin Laden's corpse, I shouldn't think there would be much to see with a bullet wound to the head. All this will do is fan the flames of the conspiracy theorists who will see this as proof that he isn't dead or that he died in 2001, and it seems that not even the US administration can get the story straight as to whether he was armed or unarmed....Either way I don't see how not releasing photographs will not inflame anti American feelings... EVERYBODY knows the Americans did it....

You also have to wonder why when they had 40 minutes on the ground and probably a lot more travelling to and from Bin Laden's compound the Pakistani air force failed to scramble to intercept the encroachers in Pakistani air space. Regardless of the anti radar coatings and stealth helicopters used......they wouldn't have been totally invisible....

It smells of fish to me, there is something that isn't quite right with the story, I'm not sure what and we'll probably never know why there are differences in what is being told to us...Ah well

Of course the sick jokes have started flowing the funniest one I've heard thus far is that Osama bin Laden's name if you turn it into a pseudo anagram is .... wait for it ......

Lob man in da sea

quite a creative one I think 

Xbox boy isn't flavour of the month with me at the moment, mainly because the Army sent him a letter saying he had been rejected/deferred due to being prescribed anti depressants and his history of anxiety attacks...

WHAT ????

The letter had spelt his first name wrong so we assumed they had got his records mixed up, so he was told to get a letter off his doctor to prove he had never been on anti depressants or suffered from anxiety attacks......

but he didn't have the money to pay for the letter (£20) so we paid for it, he came back with the letter and it had our old address on it, but he said that it didn't matter because that’s the address the army had anyway (rolls eyes in disbelief)....

Fair enough (or not).... anyway fast forward to last night and low and behold he has had a picture taken of his latest tattoo on Facebook, which quite frankly looks like its design was chosen whilst eating a kebab and tanked up on beer. Now I'm no fan of tattoo's at the best of times, but he had a rather good one on the same shoulder which (in my opinion) has been totally ruined by this random scorpion... I guess it's his skin to do as he pleases with ..... it's him who has to live with it for the rest of his life... but that isn't the point.

He didn't have £20 spare to sort out his Army medical records cock up.... it seems his tattoo was more important than his future career....

So I'm less than impressed with him at the moment....on his lack of priorities 

Sullen one is still limping around with a leg brace on after her rugby accident, but seems to be coping....In fact it's not really fair to call her Sullen one anymore because she's not quite as sullen as she used to be these days.....

On the other hand unfortunately FOMO boy is still wearing boots which are too small for him, and he is seriously going to have to watch his attitude, and curb the desire to answer back..... Andrea is dealing with him at the moment quite successfully, she isn't quite in need of a full on air strike and artillery barrage just yet.... but he's within range and target is acquired.....

Freya is well just Freya, she is getting over a rather nasty ear infection which treatment was delayed because of the bank holidays but she is responding well to her antibiotic banana medicine which she hates.... You can usually tell when Freya is ill the volume control gets muted for the duration of the illness....

Not much else to report really except Andrea is preparing for the impending Edinburgh marathon, which she is excited about, but by her own admission isn't at her fittest because of her Quad injury, but she seems confident she'll get around it... it will be a nice break for her and she'll get a chance to see her brother and his wife up there...

As for me... I'm plodding along as usual....

Laden, Cooper and Windsor

Well it's been a rather eventful few weeks,

A Royal wedding, Osama Bin Laden and Henry Cooper.

The first one I really couldn't care less about and I don't honestly see what all the fuss is about with two people getting married.....Royal or not.

Osama Bin Laden's demise however is a bit of a multifaceted nightmare on stilts. I cannot see how taking out one man who albeit is the head of the terrorist organisation will somehow quell the zeal of the religious nut jobs who think nothing of blowing themselves and anybody within the blast radius to bits. I think it is a bit early to say Al Qaeda is dead in the water much like it's leader. I am pretty sure they will have a back up plan should their leader be killed, and it will only be a matter of time before somebody steps in to replace Osama Bin Laden and some other atrocity is executed.

Then of course if you're a cynic like I am there is always the possibility that Bin Laden was already dead (circa 2001 in Tora Bora) and this has just been staged as a political vote winner for the next presidential election, and of course slotting Bin Laden is worth millions of votes....In much the same way the Falklands War won Margaret Thatcher another term in office here in the UK......but of course there is always oil in the background......

It is strange how quickly he was executed, removed from his compound taken to a ship then buried at sea to follow Islamic burial rites....however Muslims are only buried at sea in the most extreme of circumstances and only then if they are encased in a clay burial coffin it is preferred they are buried under ground with their faces pointing towards Mecca....You could argue that they didn't want his burial place to become a martyrs grave, but wherever you bury somebody if they are a martyr in their followers eyes it doesn't really matter if they have a grave to visit or not.

You could of course argue that they did a DNA analysis with his sister's brain who died.... but then that only works if you believe everything a government tells you.

It could well be true that it was him but in light of recent governmental skull duggery I tend to not believe everything I read or see on the news.

Oil prices escalating out of control, Libyans still very much are killing each other, general unrest in the Arab countries further hiking up oil prices.... and ohhhh now look Osama Bin Laden slotted... The dollar rises, oil prices drop and the added bonus Obama gets another term as president.....

Some of us weren't born yesterday.

But now onto more important things like Henry Cooper's death, A truly magnificent boxer in his day with "Enry's Hammer" that iconic left hook which completely floored Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay at the time) and left him hanging on the ropes, or the fight he was wrongly defeated in with Joe Bugner....A wrong decision if ever there was one.... A true gent and a boxing legend gone at the age of 76... It seems you get to a certain age in this life and all of the people you were aware of growing up start pegging out for want of a better word.... I guess that's just the way the cookie crumbles, the older you get the more aware you are of how little time you have here on earth to make the most of it.