Monday, September 29, 2003

 
I have been having a lot of trouble recently with closing down the old laptop. I keep getting an error message saying WND message for RNAdmin. It turns out it's a fault with Real player (no link because they don't deserve one), which now needs deleting. At least a Google search yielded the answer first time.

posted at 16:31.......link.......





 
Sunday saw me in the Chichester area to check out Mr Spencers fenestration. Following the wielding of a trusty tape measure there followed a lunch of an aromatic duck tortilla wrap washed down with a couple of pints of Stella.

What I should then have done was to go home and do some work, but of course the old GPS was calling my name, and as I'd come prepared I did a bit of geocaching up on the Downs. Glorious views from somewhere called The Trundle and a nice chill in the air which kept me cool(ish) whilst I hauled my massive frame a few hundred feet upwards. Buoyed up by my success at finding the first three I was after I decided to go after a fourth and failed miserably. Ah well.

And now I'll just finish off the quote for Graybo. Does anyone know if £1,000,000,000 is a trillion or not?

posted at 16:07.......link.......



Saturday, September 27, 2003

 
Last night, whilst bathing, an old joke came to me, one of those plays on song titles. I was thinking about telling Amy & Laura the joke as, like all kids, they like an awful joke now and again. The joke was as follows;

A keen cook decides that he wishes to make a new and entirely different jam that people can have. He starts by making it with all the fruits and combinations of fruits that he can muster, but it isn't really the taste that he's after. His second set of concoctions revolve around vegetables and hundreds upon hundreds are made with the end result that he still can't find the elusive taste that he wants. Ina f it of despair he starts to use cuts of meat and eventually, as he starts to zero in the taste and consistency that has been eluding him, he refines the search by using more and more unusual and outlandish animals. One day he hits on exactly what he is looking for, and makes a giant batch of jam made from a small rodent. He serves it to all the guests in his restaurant and it appears to be going down a treat. All of a sudden there is a yelp from the table in the far corner and a woman spits out two small gristly bits of meat. When the cook arrives she demands to know what this is that he has served. With a look of sorrow on his face he explains that he's given her two lips from hamster jam

It took quite a few minutes before I realised, no kids, or even young adults, are going to remember the song Tulips From Amsterdam.

Caught out by my age again!

posted at 16:27.......link.......



Wednesday, September 24, 2003

 
Good grief! I have just found out how you make mileage expenses claims these days. Twenty years ago if anyone wanted to check up on you they just looked at the mileage on two consecutive MOT certificates and check your monthly claims coresponded. Now you have to log every trip, the mileage, what customer you were seeing, and if you dont go the most direct way you are penalised!

I am rapidly coming to the opinion that driving, one of the things I love most in my life, is getting to be a complete bind.

There is so much checking up on drivers now, so much restriction, and most of it just to get revenue. A friend who was recently "snapped" going past a highly visible and prominently placed mobile speed camera, which neither had seen, wasn't sure whether he or his wife was driving as they had shared the journey and didn't know the stretch of road that the incident had happened. The blurb that came with it explained how this is nothing to do with gaining revenue but an attempt to traffic calm. On asking the police how they should ascewrtain which was driving and how should they plead, they were told, "we don't care who was driving as long as we get the money"!

With new police tactics to catch speeding motorists by averaging time over distance to see whather anyone could cover the distance in that time legally, and long distance cameras for straight stretches of roads, it's hard enough, but the Police have a new weapon. One force at least have been trying out a system that takes a "photo" of a car's number plate and, via computer, checks whether DVLA and other bodies have it listed as licenced, insured and MOTd. Kev knows one of the normal coppers who works alongside the traffic division that were testing it. They had to turn it off to get any distance from the station as for the first fortnight it was flagging up offences so often they never got further than half a mile away.

I'm thinking of starting a protest where we all drive with the guy with the red flag walking in front of us like the early days of motoring. Probably we should also get him to ring a bell and shout "unclean" as well! posted at 19:49.......link.......





 
I say there is no good news, and yet I can inform you that I will have the blogging equivalent of an audience with the Pope. This weekend I will be in the presence of Graybo!!!!

posted at 19:46.......link.......





 
I speak to you all once more from the cafe down the road.

I would gladly bring tidings of great joy if there were any but unfortunately things ain't looking too good on the Kev front. He has been winding himself up for the last few days, definitely not sleeping and probably not taking his tablets with the result that he's breaking down again. I'd probably say more but it's getting to be the same old same old.

He's on a very long journey and I don't think any of us know his destination yet.

posted at 19:42.......link.......



Sunday, September 21, 2003

 
COMPUTER.

If we start from the point I don't have the connection at home at the moment, I will get a chance to pick up e-mails tomorrow from someone elses house. If you've sent me one recently, I will pick it up and reply but the reply might be a couple of days away.

I also have a feeling that in the last e-mails that Kev sent me he also sent a virus that wasn't picked up by any of my protection, so if you get some wierd mails from me let me know. Hopefully I can sort it before any more damage is done that the bits I think are presently a problem.

And now I'm going to have a quick flick through some sites for the next 15 minutes before heading back home.

I'll be back, as a future Californian senator might say.

posted at 15:33.......link.......





 
HEALTH

With all the stres we've had just recently I must admit I went a bit "Tits Up" last week, but all is well again now. Blackpool is now but 4 weeks away and, whilst I can't exactly call it a rest, it is a break and I really need it. Don't sweat though, I'm fine and will be more so now the others are returning.

posted at 15:31.......link.......





 
KEV

As mentioned already, he is going to start back doing some work. The advantage he has at the moment, apart from a phone line that works, is that all his calls are free due to his NTL phone package, so he's going to be in charge of ringing round his old customers, "selling" out supply only busines to builders, and making calls I don't want to!

His computer is busted. His nephew, on being unable to turn the computer off, decided to pull the plug out of the mains. BANG!

posted at 15:27.......link.......





 
WORK

Despite the best efforts of Messrs Lloyds TSB things are going reasonably well. Work is coming in although mainly by reccommendations as I haven't the time to really do much generation. Kev is going to start doing some stuff from this week and Karen should have returned from Bristol today, so we will be much nearer a full compliment than we have been for ages.

We will be changing banks at the earliest opportunity, that coincides with our new bankers being able to ofer the service we want.

We have someone starting with us soon to do canvassing and generate some appointments, so if you live in the Chessington area, run for your lives.

John who has been installing for us has been got rid of as he was becoming more and more unreliable, but copmpletely out of the blue, Adam, another installer that we know is going to come and pretty much work fulll time for us in exchange for some negotiable things like how much money we are willing to chip in for a new van for him. Adam is a good thing, as he is a perfectionist and we can let him loose on our ex-Everest customers.

posted at 15:20.......link.......





 
SURPRISE!!!!!!!!

I'm back, although for a time it will be a bit intermittent. This is the first time I've been able to log on to the site for a bit so I better let you know whats going on. In the meantime I'm grateful to Graybo for runing a poll to see where I got to. On the e-mail front, I might get a chance to pick mails up tomorrow.

I'm speaking to you from an internet cafe, (very good rates, 50p per hour!) just down the road from the house. No, Linda hasn't thrown me out! Basically, our company bankers, and please do interpret this in a cockney rhyming slang sort of a way, have caused immense problems for us for the last few weeks. Without boring you to death, it's meant one of the things has been I haven't been able to draw my wages, or at least not much. The upshot of this is that BT have decided to suspend the phone until I pay them, which is fair enough, and I haven't got a chance to log on anywhere else as Kev's computer is broken at the moment. More on that in a minute. BTW, please excuse any spelling mistakes as this keyboard is slightly out of alignment, key size wise to mine, and I keep hitting the wrong keys. I did hope to be reconnected by today but it's now likely to be another week or so, but I shall come down here as often as possible to keep up with things.

I shall now go to smaller posts to update other bits of what is laughingly called my life at the moment.

posted at 15:08.......link.......



Wednesday, September 10, 2003

 
Sorry I've not been about for a few days and also sorry but I'm going to dissappear again for about another week. More when I return online.

Hope everyones o.k. as I haven't had time to go surfing recently.

See you all soon.

posted at 22:04.......link.......



Sunday, September 07, 2003

 
Resident of Norfolk - Do you like Hickling?
Tourist - I don't know, I've never Hickled!

Greetings from sunny Hickling up on The Norfolk Broads. What on earth am I doing up here in the back of beyond I hear you ask. Obvioulsy I don't, but I can well imagine you asking that. I'm here because it's my dads 70th Birthday today. I travelled up yesterday afternoon and there was a barbecue yeterday evening and a lunch out today. Followed by a three and a half hour drive home afterwards.

Hickling is a large village compared to where they have lived in the past, probably a hundred-two hundred or more properties, and if I bothered to do some research I'm sure I could give you the exact facts. What it has in common with all the others is I find it terribly quiet at night. No sound of traffic, neither road nor air, but a variety of birds none of which I can recognise but could guess at various members of the finch family, the tit family, and the odd wood pigeon. Last night on the drive back to the house from the local hall where the barbecue was held there were plenty of cats roaming the countryside but no foxes. All the foxes are no doubt living in the city, Nowrich, about 20 miles away. It's rare these days not to see at least one urban fox per day in London, and you can hear them barking and calling every night.

The other thing is everyone goes to bed early and gets up early, which is what sees me writing this to you at the ungodly hour of nine o clock on a Sunday morning, although going to bed at 11:30 last night was a rare treat.

Right, that's it for now, my stepmum, Merrie, is playing the organ at church this morning and I am going along. It's some time since I went to a Sunday morning service. I hope I can remember the hymns from my church choir days.

posted at 07:47.......link.......



Thursday, September 04, 2003

 
Heard in M&S today.

A young boy of about 3 comes out of the ladies with his mum.

Mummy, why is your bottom furry?

Mummy goes bright red, whispers something in his ear through gritted teeth, and gets out of sight as quickly as possible.

So what was the most embarrasing thing your kids ever did to you?

posted at 21:25.......link.......





 
The good news is the bad debt isn't. There's a problem with the windows which the client has been sorting out, but it would have helped if I'd been kept in the picture.

Thanks to DNC for his kind offer of help! It reminded me of something that happened back in the mists of time when I was working for Nat West.

Someone had been overdrawn and not playing the game and therefore our branch decided to "send round the boys", which on this occasion meant my mate Martin and me. It was my wont at the time, and still is, to wear black shirts with black suits, (I was a fashion icon in the mid-seventies! :) ) and on that particular day I was also wearing a near enough white tie. Anyway, whilst we're on the way round to see him, Martin and I were joking about what we'd be doing to him. Once we get there Martin does all the talking as he was the senior one of us and the guy coughs up and we leave to go back to the branch. When we get outside Mart says to me, you nearly scared the bloke to death! I ask him why and he tells me I'm stood in the background, (probably cowering behind a settee knowing me), dressed like someone from the mafia and I'm clicking my finger joints. I hadn't realised I'd been doing it, in fact it's something I've rarely ever done, but all that talk on the way there must have set me off.

Now of course, the banks seem to make the Mafia look like amateurs. No, don't get me started!

posted at 21:21.......link.......



Wednesday, September 03, 2003

 
We may have our first bad debt.

To be honest I don't think it will be. I think the customer involved is just making us wait since he had to wait longer than expected for his stuff to turn up. Hopefully he will cough up soon but he seems to have forotten how to answer his mobile phone or dial my number when he gets my messages.

I'm not bothered by it, yet, and as one of my first jobs from leaving school was a credit cotroller, I know a number of options I can take. Luckily it isn't for vast amounts of money otherwise I might have chosen Vinny Jones to reprise his role in Lock Stock...!

posted at 00:50.......link.......