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Category: miscellaneous

  • Woolly

    I’ve just had a spam mail that has offered me the opportunity (according to the subject line) to "become a mammoth". What a great idea! With my amazing bulk, huge hairy coat and impressive tusks, I could walk around Ruralville striking fear into both of the customers at the post office! I could become a special attraction at the pub to help draw in more custom! I could even carry the shopping home from the supermarket without using a polluting car and provide an ample supply of manure for the garden! It seems like a win-win situation to me – where do I sign up?

  • Going cheap!

    Whilst using SiteMeter to check the browsers that you all use to read this (IE 6 – 68%, Firefox – 22%, Netscape 3 – 1% – you poor thing!), I spotted one of those sidebar ads for eBay.

    Discount Meta Tags – new and used meta tags. Huge selection!

    Umm, say what?

  • Google

    Fed up with Google redirecting visits to google.com to google.co.uk (or whatever your local variant is)? You can stop this annoyance merely by visiting this page. Tip culled from LMG.

  • Review

    Oh blimey! There are only a few hours to go, most of which will be spent in the pub next door, and I haven’t written my end of year review yet! OK, time pressures mean it’ll be bullet points:

      Highlights, in roughly chronological order:

    • my trip to Saumur
    • birthday trip to Lisboa
    • the grand tour of the low countries
    • selling my flat
    • finally getting to live full-time with Hels
    • the grand tour of Germany
    • getting married! (obviously!)
    • the honeymoon in Sicily
    • getting our own home in Ruralville
    • kittens!
      Lowlights:

    • not selling Hels’s flat
    • generally not having enough money or time for all the things we want to do
    • ummm… that’s about it really

    All in all, 2004 has been excellent. PFE continues to plod along, family are healthy and happy (mostly!) and I married the perfect girl for me. You can’t ask for much more than that really.
    Happy New Year to you. Come back to the same place this time next year for another exciting annual review!

  • Open letter

    To the driver of the white Astra van that passed me at around 60mph in the 40mph zone on the A27 at Lancing.

    Would you like to explain your driving style to the teenage girl, tears streaming down her face, who was tying flowers to the railings by the pedestrian crossing? You know – the crossing with the big Sussex Police notices asking for witnesses to a "Vehicle/Pedestrian Collision" that occured there at 2.10pm on Tuesday.
    Or are you simply on a mission to ruin another family’s Christmas?

  • It, DVD

    As a splendid housewarming gift, SIL and her husband purchased a Sony DVD player for us. So, last night, Hels brought home I, Robot from the video shop next to her office. However, the picture kept changing from colour to black and white and back again. We checked the connections (first using a SCART cable and then switching to the triple-coax lineout) and still the problem persisted. Hopefully, it’s not a problem with the machine, as that would truly be a pain.

  • Socket set

    I was disappointed by this article. I was hoping that the monkeys might be trained to repair my car more cheaply than the staff at the local garage. Mind you, they could already be trained monkeys anyway, by the look of them.

  • Downside

    I’ve found a downside to our new home. Whilst our neighbour’s dog’s kennel is well within range of my WiFi, he doesn’t seem to have appreciated the fact. Instead of spending his time looking at the latest doggy fashions on his pooch-friendly laptop, he sits barking. A lot.
    In all seriousness, his owners chain him to his kennel when they leave in the morning, and the poor little fella sits there barking for an hour or so until he settles down. I don’t think it’s very fair on the dog – his kennel doesn’t look overly warm or comfortable, and he’s on his own for a large part of the day.
    So, what should I do? Get some doggies treats to give to him to keep him quiet? Speak to the neighbours about it? Or call the RSPCA inspector out?

  • Just how many…

    …shades of off-white are there? I’ve just been down to HomeBase, thinking I could get a wedge of testpots for us to daub artfully on the walls of the New House™. However, the truth is that without my new (to me) free (when purchased with any Peugeot 306) wheelbarrow and a very large sum of money, there is no way that I was going to get a representative selection. So, this evening, H and I will sit with the colour charts and try our best to decide which ones to get testers of.
    And, incidentally, how can Farrow and Ball justify charging three times the price of anyone else for their magnolia paint? And would anyone want to paint "Dead Salmon" on their walls? Who comes up with these names?

  • Only Fools and Pizza

    I’ve just been down to the Italian market that is on this weekend in The Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells (mainly to go to the nearby cashpoint and also the greetings card shop). I purchased some bread for my lunch, handed over my £5 note and took the bag. The chap behind the stall said "That’ll be two quid mate! Luvvly jubbly!"
    I want my money back. It said "Italian Market" on the flyer, not "East End Market".