Air Maintenance

I know, it’s blatantly nicked from A Blogs Life but sod it, that’s the way things go sometimes…
After every flight, pilots complete a gripe sheet which conveys to the mechanics problems encountered with the aircraft during the flight that need repair or correction. The form is a piece of paper that the pilot completes and then the mechanics read and correct the problem. They then respond in writing on the lower half of the form what remedial action was taken and the pilot reviews the gripe sheets before the next flight.
Never let it be said that ground crews and engineers lack a sense of humour. Here are some actual logged maintenance complaints and problems as submitted by Qantas pilots and the solution recorded by maintenance engineers.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

Quick Question

Shamelessly nicked from last week’s Guardian magazine – but it made me think for a while, so what the hell…

What brand/make of car can be spelled using only Roman numerals?

(And yes, I did work it out without looking at the answers)

Additions

Updated

Not much of one really, but a new photo on the public art page, a new piece in the insomnia section, and also a couple of additional photos for the manchester photos page. I’m sure there’ll be some other stuff when I think about it. However, I’m sorry to say (in deference to the eyeballs of regular readers) that I will not be participating in redesign season for a while yet. Sad to say, I like this layout.

Can you spell scam?

Mickey Mouse image found in cave. Yeah, right. Sorry, but this stinks worse than Hitler diaries, Spaghetti harvesting and Piltdown Man all rolled into one.

Give generously

Gah, bloody Children in Need day again yesterday. Thankfully, I can avoid most of the televised stuff that goes on (the joys of discovering this thing on the TV called the “Off Button”) but the BBC does go mad on the bloody topic every year. Being Woganophobic doesn’t really help on this. I don’t know what it is about the wittering Irish tit, but he really gets up my nose. OK, the BBC could probably have worse presenters (maybe Michael Barrymore, or Bob Monkhouse) but for the moment their favourite is still the bollockbrained bergasol-covered one. Thing is, it’s not even Wogan who is my main bug-bear with the entire thing. It’s the bleeding-heart simpering keffwits who go round collecting money in towns, citys, rail stations etc. – mainly dressed up (see right) in some form of “amusing” outfit (for amusing read “ego bruising, but might make people give money out of sympathy“) who are basically guilty of (fairly) legalised begging. Just saying “it’s for charity” doesn’t make it legitimate, you bastards. And trying to make people feel guilty if they first say “No, thanks“, “I’ve already given some to that knob over there” or (OK, this was me) “Fuck off and bother someone with more money and less IQ” by then saying <whine>”but it’s for Children In Need!“</whine> is not going to make me suddenly perform a complete 180, delve deep in my pocket, drag out a wad of tenners and say “Oh, I didn’t realise! I thought you were selling the Big Issue! Why didn’t you say! Here, have £100“. It’s going to make me wish for laxer gun controls. I think it’s the attempts at guilt trips that always bug me about these appeal things. Particularly when they’re annual events – just one more shot of a wimpering kid with one tear dripping down and a ragged bloody doll in one moppet-like arm is NOT going to make me suddenly want to donate. Instead, I just get apathetic earlier and earlier, until it’s almost a year-long feeling. Maybe it’s just me and my Scrooge-like nature, but I only give to a charity when I know the money is actually all going to the cause I’m donating it to. I refuse to pay for Terry bastard fucking Wogan’s changing room (Apparently, these are now his official middle names, having had them changed by deed poll by some worthy prankster), or the admin of a huge appeal, or whatever else – I’d rather go up to a childrens shelter or playscheme and hand the money over to them – cut out the middleman. (particularly if it’s that cackling cretin) I think next year I’m going to organise it so I can go on holiday around this time of year, and avoid the poxy event entirely. Sounds like a plan.

Must be redesign time in the world

Blimey, all of a sudden, it seems like it’s redesign city out there. Sarah over at Not you, the other one has redone the site for winter. (and very nice ’tis too *grin*)

Vicky VodkaBird has created a new design/site (so it’s not really a redesign, but what the fuck) at 4FS (For Fucks Sake).org.

Good to see Elayne‘s site back up – missed reading that one, so it’s good to see her back online.

There was another one that’d redone itself, but in typical fashion, I can’t remember what it was, so I’ll shut up, and possibly update this when I find it again…

Update – Oh yeah, that was it, Peter over at Naked Blog appears to have done some tweaking. Or it might be me looking at it in a different browser. You can never tell these things…

Here comes the…

Surprisingly, I’ve had a really fun afternoon. Not what I really expected at all.

The reason? Well, a friend of mine is getting married next April, and she was looking at dresses. Amazingly, I volunteered to go with her – I’ve never done the wedding dress thing before, I have absolutely zero expectations of being involved in a wedding of my own, so “by proxy” looks like the way to go. Besides, I thought it might be interesting. (I’m weird like that).

Even better though, it actually was fun and interesting. Unfortunately the places we were in won’t let you take pictures, which is a bitch. (Some garbage about the designers won’t let them, but it’s difficult when the brides mother is 250ish miles away (and before anyone in the US goes “that’s not far” – this is the UK, and for us, it is, OK?)) and would actually like to see what the dress will be like without having to keep slogging up and down the country. Other than that though, I have to admit to being really pretty impressed with Virgin Brides, another part of Richard Branson’s ever widening empire. OK, so he can’t run a train company but the bridal stuff is pretty spot on. (I’ll let them off on the “Menswear” sign above the bridesmaids stuff, as they’d just moved it all round.)

The range of designers is pretty good too, although my own immediate favourite has to be Rena Koh – real 40’s movie star stuff, looks beautiful without being overly meringue-like.

So in one afternoon we’ve looked at dresses, necklaces, shoes, been in five different shops (and a giant raspberry to Debenhams for being snotty, shit, and generally far crapper than the reputation they dream of.

What worries me is that I’m looking forward to going again. (And also to seeing the entire thing on the day.)