May Day
Posted: Thu 1 May, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »May? Already?
How did that happen?
On Off On Off
Posted: Wed 30 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Weirdness 6 Comments »Out of interest, has there been a law change that I’m unaware of? Is it now illegal to use indicators while driving?
I only ask because today in my forty mile drive to work (at least 75% of which is on dual carriageways) not one driver indicated before:
- Pulling out in front of me
- Pulling back in to the inside lane
- Leaving the dual carriageway
- Getting on to the dual carriageway
or - Going round a roundabout
So it’s become illegal, right?
Braille
Posted: Fri 25 April, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 1 Comment »The other day, I was in a local Sainsbury’s and noticed that the door to the toilets had braille for the toilet signs as well as the normal signography. (I know that’s not the right word, but I just can’t think of what the right word is)
However, the signs were screen-printed onto the door, and thus the braille wasn’t actually raised off the surface of the door at all.
Seen the problem yet? Yeah, me too.
When I pointed it out to the store manager (Yes, I asked to see him) his reaction was
“Oh, well no-one else has complained…”
Mute
Posted: Sat 12 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »Isn’t it amazing that you can still confuse some people by just turning their phones to silent when they’re out of the office, and the bloody thing keeps ringing?
Even after [cough] years with mobiles, some people just still don’t know how to silence them. Thankfully, some of us do know how to do so…
GPS Question
Posted: Thu 10 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness 7 Comments »A question for those of you who have a GPS system.
Where do you put it in the car?
By which I mean where on the windscreen, of course.
When I’m using it, the GPS/Satnav goes down on the bottom right-hand corner of the window. There I can see it without having to take my eyes too far off the road, and it doesn’t obstruct my view. To me that makes sense.
However, I notice that a lot of people seem to put the SatNav in the bottom middle of the windscreen, directly above the centre console of the dashboard. To me this just seems like a really awkward place, causing you to move your eyes right away from the road, and also blocking the view of a certain bit of road.
So I’m just wondering what other people who read this do.
When I’m Cleaning Windows
Posted: Fri 4 April, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Weirdness Leave a comment »All I can say is “Rather him than me“.
Window-cleaning in alligator and snake pens, indeed. In some ways I wouldn’t mind – it’d be interesting, you can at least say that – but at the same time well, I can think of plenty of things I’d rather be doing…
Suddenly Missing
Posted: Wed 2 April, 2008 Filed under: Driving, Weirdness 2 Comments »When driving, I’ve noticed there’s something I sometimes find quite distracting. It’s when a car suddenly disappears from the rear-view mirror.
It’s happened a few times recently – and OK, I suppose it’s better than having one suddenly disappearing from in front of you, at least. But it really is quite disconcerting to be driving along, knowing what’s in front and behind, then checking the mirror and it’s a completely different vehicle. Most bizarre – and distracting for a good couple of seconds, if nothing else.
Even worse (in my opinion) is when I’ve overtaken someone on a motorway or dual carriageway, then indicate to pull in and the car I’ve just overtaken has disappeared. That’s really distracting (particularly on motorways) and makes me wonder if the car’s in my blind-spot (which, on an estate car is pretty large) before I spot that they’ve also moved over to the first lane.
It’s just weird and distracting, that’s all.
Cave of Swallows
Posted: Wed 19 March, 2008 Filed under: Weirdness 3 Comments »(via Matt)
This is just fantastic – the Cave of Swallows, a 400m cave in South America. So deep you could hide the Empire State Building in it, and people can BASE jump down into it.
Utterly, utterly mad. And excellent.
Village-wide
Posted: Wed 6 February, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness 2 Comments »In some ways, the village where we now live is very weird. It seems like some things happen in phases all across the village – things like that everyone put up their christmas decorations in the same weekend, or that there was one weekend where simply everyone seemed to be cutting their grass on the same weekend.
This time, it’s even odder – although it’s not as village-wide. But still, I’ve counted at least eight houses near us that have cut down large trees in the last couple of weeks. I’ve no idea why it’s all happening at the same time, why there seem to be these phases, or anything – but still, it’s happening.
All very odd, and it makes me wonder what the next phase will be…
Redesign
Posted: Mon 7 January, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Weirdness 2 Comments »No, not here.
I noticed the other day though that my bank had decided to arbitrarily redesign their online banking log-on area, so that it looked very different from how it used to, yet they hadn’t said anything about it.
Now, when everyone’s banging on about identity theft and phishing scams that direct you to copies of banking sites etc. and get you to add in all your normal log-in details, don’t you think it would’ve been smart to actually let their customers know that they were redesigning it, rather than just doing it and pushing it out to the world? Particularly in the week before Christmas, when customers are likely to
- be using the site more often
- be rather more sensitive than usual to the risk of losing their details/money to some phishing scumbag scammer?
I spoke to their customer services department about it – partly because I wanted to verify I wasn’t falling to some DNS-redirection hack or whatever, but mainly because it just struck me as such a monumentally fucking stupid thing to do – and their response was
Oh yes, I suppose we should’ve done that, shouldn’t we? Oh well, too late now.
Admittedly, I’m paraphrasing slightly – but not by much. The first sentence is verbatim, the second is paraphrased.
Night Driving
Posted: Wed 12 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 6 Comments »As the nights have drawn in, I’ve found myself repeatedly thinking about driving standards. In particular, with regard to the way people now use their headlights.
When I was younger, and also when I was taking (lots of) driving lessons, I always thought that before you used full (or even dipped) headlights, you first used sidelights only – kind of a “for being seen, not for seeing by” thing. They got used ’til you needed to turn on the headlights/dipped headlights in order to see.
Now though it seems like the majority of people just switch straight to full headlights, without ever really using the sidelights at all. The Highway Code suggests that it should still be done with the sidelights first, then headlights – but it just doesn’t seem to be the done thing any more.
Now when did that start happening Or is it just something I hadn’t noticed until recently?
Oral Fixation
Posted: Fri 23 November, 2007 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness 3 Comments »I think I may have written about this before, but it happened again today so sod it, I’ll write about it again.
On my commute, there’s a guy who also regularly catches the same train. He is – let’s be tactful – slightly odd. He’s probably the same age as me, maybe even a bit older. Throughout the journey, he will sit, using his Blackberry phone/email thing. Well, I say using it – but most of the time he appears to just sit and read whatever’s on there. No replies, no real interaction that I spot, just (I assume) reading whatever’s on the screen. I suppose it could be a film or whatever – I don’t know if you can play videos on a Blackberry, for one thing – but equally he’s playing music through headphones from his iPod, so I kind of doubt it. I dunno.
But all the while he’s using the Blackberry, he’s also sucking his thumb. And that, to me, is definitely odd. It jars, seeing a grown man sucking his thumb. Sure, it’s a harmless thing to be doing – and far less offensive than the other people I see picking their noses or whatever – but the thumbsucker is (for me) a stand-out in the day-to-day routine and oddnenss.
Shortages
Posted: Thu 15 November, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 4 Comments »How on earth does a decent-sized “one-stop shop” run out of Coke? (As in Coca-Cola®, not coal or dodgy white powder from Columbia) Even more relevantly, how do two similar shops run out of Coke?
That’s what happened this morning – I went in to the normal place to pick up a couple of bottles, and nothing. No Coke, diet coke, coke zero, or even the diet stuff with lime. Plenty of Cherry coke, but that’s because it’s disgusting, and no fucker ever buys it.
So I nipped over the road to the other place. Same story.
How? The mind boggles.
Madness
Posted: Wed 14 November, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Weirdness 1 Comment »This story on the BBC has improved my mood considerably – it’s always good to know that we’re not the maddest people in the country.
In this case, well, despite Psycho Cat’s greatest idiosyncracies at least we don’t end up going in the car to collect him from his latest wanderings.
Renewal of Mail Redirection
Posted: Mon 12 November, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the weekend, I got the usual letter from Royal Mail about continuing my mail redirection from Attleborough to the new house. Now, I know that the process is a simple one – albeit one that seems to cause a lot of people problems. D4D™ comes up second (at the moment) if you type the renewal address (www.royalmail.com/renewal) into your google search window, rather than into the address bar in a web browser.
And lo, once I’d typed in the address in the correct place, all went smoothly. Most of my mail is already coming to the correct place, so it’s not a big hassle anyway, but I’ve renewed for another three months just to make sure. It took about five minutes all told, which isn’t bad at all – and is certainly better than taking a week to process…
White Deer
Posted: Thu 8 November, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »There are some sick people in the world.
Oddly enough, this hasn’t just been in the Forest of Dean. A couple of weeks ago there was a similar occurrence down in Cornwall.
Personally, I don’t understand it at all – it’s just, well, why? What’s the point? People are weird.
Cutting the Wrong Thing
Posted: Wed 24 October, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness 2 Comments »File under: Bizarre and “Eh?”
A Tyneside father is trying to get a hospital to allow him to cut the umbilical cord when his child is born. Fair enough – although the local NHS trust has a policy that doesn’t allow people to do this, and has done since 1997.
But the bizarre bit is the reason for this policy to have been brought into being. From the news story…
“In 1997 South Tyneside NHS Trust banned relatives from cutting cords after a baby’s toe was accidentally cut off.”
What?!?
Maybe I’m missing something – not having been present at the birth of anyone, for example – but how the fuck can you cut off a toe “by accident” while cutting the umbilical cord? Even on a really small baby, there’s still a fair bit of distance between the two, surely?
Car Servicing
Posted: Thu 18 October, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 1 Comment »The other day, I had to take the car into the garage for a couple of things – nothing massive, just a replacement headlight bulb, and a check into some squealy noises in the power-steering.
In the end, the car was in the garage all day, as I was at work. They did the bulb, checked for the intermittent noise, and looked at some other stuff.
When I went in to the garage to collect the car and pay the bill, I was fully expecting a bill for £80-£100, what with time, materials and the like. My estimate of what the bill would be was hugely wrong – awesomely, impressively wrong.
The bill actually came to – are you sitting down? – 95p. Needless to say, I didn’t bother paying it by credit card…
Scary Knitting
Posted: Wed 3 October, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness 1 Comment »One for Pix, this.
It’s true, you can knit just about anything…
C-List
Posted: Wed 3 October, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Weirdness 2 Comments »
According to this checker D4D™ has somehow managed to become a “C-List” blog. Far better than I’d have ever expected, to be honest. After all, D4D™ is well reknowned for its content – sweary, cynical, and of little or no interest to the world in general. (Well, except for the co-proxamol post and the one about Royal Mail redirection, of course)
Of course, all this ‘A-list this’, ‘B-list that’, “Z-list the other” is still a complete load of old balls, but hell, it amused me…
Time Flies
Posted: Mon 1 October, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »October? How the hell did that happen?
Time sure flies, and 2007 seems to be doing more flying than ever…
Long-Term Residents
Posted: Wed 12 September, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »I must admit, on my first reading of the story yesterday of the couple who have been living for 22 years in a Travelodge hotel (and I use that term very loosely) my first reaction was “Why?!?”, closely followed by “Freaks.”
It’s taken me a good 24 hours to get past that reaction- and if I’m honest, it still comes back to that on occasion. Personally, I couldn’t stay in a Travelodge for 22 days, let alone 22 years. I’ve written before about staying in one, and about their dodgy booking practices (although that appears to have stopped now) – but I have to admit that they’re comfortable to sleep in, if nowt else.
However, seeing one of the quotes from the couple, I can understand their motivation a bit more.
“The Travelodge room suits us so much better than our first-floor flat in Sheffield, which has no disabled access for Jean. It’s important as she now suffers from a bone disease and uses a wheelchair.”
Now yeah, fair enough – their disabled access isn’t bad at all, usually.
But still, twenty-two years in a Travelodge. Fucking hell. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Overtaking
Posted: Fri 7 September, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Driving, Travel, Weirdness 3 Comments »Over the last few weeks, as I’ve said before, I’ve been doing a lot of driving – commuting between home and Cambridge, roughly 110 miles per day. In that time I’ve also seen a huge dollop of bad driving. I’m not saying I’m a perfect driver – Gawd knows, I’ve made enough mistakes as well in that time. But there’s a couple of things that drive me mental every time I see them, and they both involve overtaking. Just for reference, this is usually done on motorways and dual-carriageways, rather than single-carriageway roads.
First, I don’t get the entire thing of starting an overtaking manoeuvre and then indicating. It drives me potty. OK, it’s slightly better than the tosspot BMW drivers who all appear to have their indicators turned off by default.
Second – and this is the big one – is the people who pull out to overtake, and then either stick at 5mph above whatever vehicle they’re overtaking (and so take forever to do it) or even worse, slow down! Why? What’s the fucking point? Well, except for being the sort of selfish festering bell-end who enjoys blocking up lanes and screwing things up for other road-users, of course.
Slack Service
Posted: Thu 6 September, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Weirdness 2 Comments »One thing that’s beginning to get annoying about living here in Norfolk is the way so many of the inhabitants seem to be utterly incapable of simple tasks like replying to emails, or picking up a phone.
Recently I’ve been trying to talk to the local bike shop about getting a service for the bike I bought a couple of years ago. I’ve slacked off on this, but I do want to get back into using it, but before I can do so, it needs a good service. So I’ve been trying to get hold of the CycleLife shop in Attleborough to get them to service the poxy bloody thing. Do they answer the phone? Do they bollocks. Do they reply to messages on the answerphone? Do they bollocks. In short, they’re a bunch of tossers.
We’ve also been trying to get some response out of the poxy plumber, who we’ve asked to do some work. I’ve called him three times, and emailed him twice. Herself has called him two or three times. And so far? No response at all.
I don’t know if it’s just people being rude, or if they’re too busy to take on new work, or if they’re just tosspots. What I do know is that it’s incredibly bloody annoying.
Bizarre
Posted: Mon 3 September, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness 1 Comment »I’ve got a post on this site where I was writing about my old hosting company, Easyspace, and their slack-arse technical support team. Fair enough. It was written back in November 2002 – so about four and a half years ago, now.
And today, I’ve had two comments on that one post. Maybe it’s being linked to from somewhere. It just seems bizarre to be getting comments on a post that old that don’t appear to be from spammers…
Grass Cutting
Posted: Thu 30 August, 2007 Filed under: Weirdness Leave a comment »It seems like last weekend was grass-cutting time in the village where we live. And yes, we did ours too – it’s just that it wasn’t part of any planned activity.
But over the last two evenings while out walking Hound, I’ve noticed that the grass has been cut in a whole range of locations around the village – not just the gardens, but also the edges to the fields where we walk Hound, in front of the duck pond, the area around the main crossroads, it’s all been cut.
Most bizarre.
Spammers
Posted: Thu 16 August, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness 3 Comments »This morning, I opened up my email to discover over a thousand returned emails to my business domain name. Ah, not good.
Turns out, some darling spammer had decided to use my domain name as the ‘from’ address. It’s not the first time it’s happened (although that one was from the old D4D™ email address) and they’ve all been deleted now – along with a change to the server settings to stop me seeing them again – but there’s very little else I can do about it, unfortunately. It’s just one of those things.
Mind you, the bit that did amuse me was that I also received one of those spam emails to my normal email address.
Historical
Posted: Wed 15 August, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, I did a search – yes, OK, I was bored – for Lyle D4D in Google, just to see what came up. And wow, there’s a lot of stuff in there. Not all of it connects to yours truly, of course, but at the same time there’s also one hell of a lot that does – including some bits I’d forgotten.
For instance, there was all the kerfuffle when Wileys made me change the site name from “Destruction for Dummies” for legal reasons (Sadly, the initial takedown notice disappeared when I moved away from Haloscan comments – another long time ago, now)
But among the bits I’d forgotten was the “How to Swear” post that I guest-wrote over on Uborka back in June 2004. And I have to say, I’ve thorough enjoyed re-reading that one!
Fuzzy
Posted: Tue 7 August, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I can always tell when I’ve actually (finally) managed to get some decent quality sleep, because my head feels like someone’s filled it with feathers, then beaten it with a velvet-covered sledgehammer.
It’s weird, because I should feel bright and invigorated, refreshed after sleep. But what I find instead is that my brain says “Oh, bloody hell, I remember this sleep thing. I want more of it. Now.”
No prizes for guessing how I feel today.
Whisky Galore
Posted: Mon 30 July, 2007 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »Blimey, there’s a whisky distillery just down the road from where we live. Who knew?
I even see the place every day when I travel on the train. Fantastic. Now I may have to go and visit at some point – even if none of the whisky will be sold before the end of 2009…
Teddy Bears
Posted: Tue 10 July, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness 2 Comments »One of the villages near us is currently holding what they call their ‘Teddy Bear Trail‘. Roughly sixty people around the village have created various Teddy Bear effigies, and placed them in their front gardens.
There’s a Teddy Bear Trail, so people can walk (or drive) round the village, and try to find all the bears.
It’s creative, but it’s also – frankly – bloody weird. Good for the community, I guess, but definitely weird.
Mind you, we’ve driven round to see most of them, so I suppose it’s fulfilled its purpose as well. Although we were driving round, shaking our heads, and commenting that some people are fucking barmy.
Still, it makes for some fun, and a D4D™ post!
Thithles
Posted: Wed 23 May, 2007 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »On my commute to and from Cambridge, there’s a field where I’m sure they’re just cultivating thistles. Whole big dead straight rows across the entire field, and the only things apparently growing in those fields are 2-foot-high thistles.
It looks very odd.
Invisible
Posted: Mon 14 May, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 5 Comments »One thing I did notice this weekend while driving, thanks to the shitty weather, was how certain cars just disappear in particular types of weather. (And yes, yes, I know, every time I do a long drive, I do a post about driving standards – or lack of them – afterwards. Live with it) With road conditions the way they were – heavy rain, lots of water on the road surface – there was a massive amount of spray in the air, and I realised that white and silver cars just disappear in those conditions.
On the way up, I saw the aftermath of an accident where a silver-grey car (unsurprisingly, a BMW) had obviously been driving with no lights on, and another car (amusingly, another BMW) had come up behind it at speed, and just stoved in the entire back end of the car, run straight into it. I’ve no idea about injuries – by the time I went past, it was only the police directing drivers round the wreckage- but it was impressive.
On the return journey, in the really heavy rain and spray, I was amazed by how many people still didn’t have even sidelights on, let alone headlights and/or foglights. Yes, OK, it was daylight – in theory – so lights didn’t need to be on, but the visibility was so bad, it was worth having lights on so you could be seen, even if they weren’t necessary to see. And the majority of the cars with no lights on were – you guessed it – white or silver. And they just disappeared. You be going along, knowing there was something ahead because of the spray, but you couldn’t see the car at all.
At some points, I even used the fog lights – although I had enough of a memory-span to remember they were on, and turn them off when visibility improved again- because the range you could see dropped right down to about 30 feet max. at some points. And still drivers didn’t turn their lights on. Bizarre. I swear I’ll never understand the mentality of some drivers.
Coincidence
Posted: Mon 7 May, 2007 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Many years ago, I shared a house in Oxford with a close friend who had just had twins. Her partner of the time hadn’t been able to cope with the complex responsibilities of becoming a father, and had buggered off into the great unknown, so for nearly a year I shared a house with her, and helped with the first year of the twins’ lives. It was a fantastic – if utterly chaotic- time, as I’d just come out of a set of jobs managing pubs and hotels, where I ended up utterly hating people. (and children in particular)
I’d emphatically had enough of hellspawn brats who were allowed to run amok while their parents got pissed at the bar, or while they had a ‘quiet’ meal in the restaurant. It was only quiet becuase their snot-gobbling little mini-demons were – you guessed it – running amok elsewhere. The last place I’d been managing before jacking it all in entirely had also had a kids play area of the ‘Wacky Warehouse’ type, which was deemed to be pretty much Hell on Earth so far as I was concerned.
So when life conspired to put me in a house with two very young babies (we’re talking about two weeks old, at most) it was quite a double-edged sword. I didn’t know whether I’d be able to cope, but it was something I had to try. In general I do like children, and get on well with them (some would say it’s down to similar mental ages) and I wanted to know whether the events and lows of the previous three years had caused me permanent damage on that score.
As it turned out, they hadn’t. That year with the twins was great, bringing them up, dealing with all the normal joys – sleep, illness, nappies- amd sp pm. as well as starting off on a track that was very new at the time- websites. Yes, that was the year that did one hell of a lot of the grundwork to bring me to where I am now. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?
At the end of the year, though, things changed. The father came back on the scene, having now decided he was ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood- and for reasons I’ll never really understand (not that I really think about them any more) my friend took him back in, and let him come back into their lives. Of course, this also meant that I was now kind of surplus to requirements, so I took my leave, and moved on.
I stayed in touch for a while, but never went back to see them, or the twins. I knew they moved away, somewhere out in the country, but never really made any effort to stay in touch after that – and it was reciprocal, they never stayed in touch with me.
On a whim this week, though, I had a look using the power of t’internet, to see whether they’re still together, that kind of guff. A couple of Google searches, and one through 192.com.
The results? Well, they’re still together, which is great – and I’m pleased to see it. It means they got over those initial problems, and that she was right to take him back. But the real “Bloody Hell!” bit is that they’re in Norfolk. And they live in the village between where we live now, and where we’ve bought the house.
I’m not going to go looking, but I suppose that the odds are high that we may one day collide. I wonder if I’d recognise them? I wonder if they’d recognise me?
Pyromania
Posted: Wed 2 May, 2007 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Is it me, or is the news this week dominated by fires for some reason?
- Last Friday/Saturday – Fire in Oxford Street, London
- Monday – Fire in Dale Street, Manchester
- Tuesday – Fire in old colliery, South Wales
- Tuesday – Gorse fires in Wales
- Wednesday – Boy aged 3 rescued from fire in Bridlington
- Wednesday – Fire at a care home in Strathclyde
And that’s not all of them, it’s just a selection.
But it does seem like there’s a theme for the week…
Unknown Caller
Posted: Fri 27 April, 2007 Filed under: Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »Sometimes I love Google.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve intermittently been getting called by a number I don’t know. Always when I’m in a meeting, or whatever, so I never answer the bloody thing.
Anyway, today I got another call, and decided to find out a bit more. So I put the number into Google. Nothing useful came up, so I ended up starting off with the area code, then narrowing it down further. And in the end I got a result. So now I know who keeps on calling me. I won’t link to them or owt just yet, ’til I know what the chuff they’re playing it. But at least I’m now armed with a bit more knowledge.
Signage
Posted: Sun 15 April, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Weirdness 2 Comments »Last weekend, a couple of new road signs appeared in Attleborough. They’re the flashing ‘slow down’ type, which are supposed to be effective against speeders. Yeah, yeah.
They’ve been installed in a 30mph area, but they’ve actually been set to somewhere around 20mph.
As such, they just flash at every single vehicle, telling them to slow down even though they’re well within the speed limit for the area. And as a result, they’re just being ignored. If they were set accurately, they might have some effect – but in this case no, people just ignore them.
Or, in my case, wave two fingers at them, and tell them to fuck off. I’m charming like that.
It’s what?
Posted: Thu 12 April, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »This one may be just me not paying attention, but has anyone else seen the new advert for Citroën cars ?
I only listen to the advert, rather than watch it, but every time it makes me look up.
Basically, they blither on about cars, prices etc., and then I hear
The shit Citroën C1
I think they mean chic, but maybe the pronunciation leaves something to be desired…
Smug
Posted: Fri 30 March, 2007 Filed under: Weirdness 2 Comments »This is very sad, I know.
But I’m slightly chuffed today, because I managed to know what the problem was in this week’s episode of House – before House did.
And because of that, while I know I’m deeply sad, I’m also feeling a little bit smug…
Take the Hint
Posted: Wed 28 March, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 1 Comment »While we were away last week, Radio One were doing a big promotion about getting someone to join the cast (pardon the pun) on Castaway, the BBC’s latest attempt at ‘reality’ TV. Within the promo, there was one person from the existing cast who was quoted as saying
If I walk into a room with ten people in it, eight of them will hate me within ten minutes
Now maybe I’m missing something, but if that were me, I’d try taking the hint, and realise that perhaps I’m not the nicest person on the planet. I’d do something to change it.
But no, this nong sounds quite proud of it…
Phone Calls
Posted: Tue 27 March, 2007 Filed under: Weirdness 1 Comment »Today’s award for “fucking bizarre event of the week” goes to the phone call I just received.
Phone rings. It’s not a number I recognise, but OK, I answer.
“Hello?”
“Hello, can I speak to [name] please?”
{Brain shuts down}”Eh?”
“Can I speak to [name] please?”
“Sorry, you’ve got completely the wrong number.”
“Oh, OK, sorry for bothering you”.
“No problem.”
Now in itself, that’s not bizarre, I agree.
What IS bizarre is that [name] was the name for Herself’s sister…
Family
Posted: Tue 27 March, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Introspective, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Attending my parent’s 40th wedding anniversary over the weeked was a very odd experience. It all went well, don’t get me wrong, but it was still strange.
Most of it, really, is down to just the way my family is. We’re not really a close family in many ways, and while I do stay in (fairly) regular contact with my parents (a phone call every couple of weeks, usually) and my brother (a text message every couple of weeks, and we see each other about once a year, usually) I don’t see the rest of them from one year to the next. And usually less than that.
So seeing pretty much all of them at once was deeply weird. And trying to remember names in order to introduce them to Herself was, frankly, a process that was always pretty well doomed. I got so many wrong, mainly by giving them the names of their siblings, which isn’t as bad as it could be (calling one great-uncle by the name of the other great-uncle, now deceased for three years was about as bad as it got – but still pretty bad!) but still fairly galling and embarassing.
The very strange ones, though, were my cousins, who (we worked out) I hadn’t seen in about ten years, if not more. Time flies, and all that crap. Having at least one complete stranger come up to me, know my name, know the basics of what I’d been up to, and having NO clue who they were at all – only for my brother to later confirm that he was one of my cousins – was pretty much the high/low point of the day. Mind you, at least I was honest, and said to him that I hadn’t a clue who he was – although I dont think he believed me.
But it made me think a lot about family, and about my role within it. I can’t deny, I’ve always been pretty much the black sheep of the lot, the one who’s not in touch, and has no intention of changing that. But at the same time, it now feels kind of weird to be so out of touch with my relatives. All the cousins now have partners, and in a couple of cases children – but I couldn’t tell you their names if my life depended on it. Only one comes to memory, and that’s because it’s a bloody horrible name, for which the kid will most likely be soundly beaten throughout his school days. As for the various partners, nope, not a clue.
I couldn’t tell you what the various birthdays are, or ages – hell, I have to make an effort to figure out my brother’s age (30 next year – heh) – nor could I tell you even where most of them live. Yeah, OK, I know the towns where they live, but addresses? Forget it.
And yet they all seem to know what I’m up to, where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, and the like. I assume my mother must do some information dispersal about that, but it’s still weird, where they know what I’m doing, and I don’t know (and, to be honest, don’t really care) what they’re doing from one year to the next. Or indeed in some cases from one decade to the next.
Still, it all went OK, and it meant I got to take a fair number of photos as well ( willing / unknowing audiences are great) which I’ll also get prints of, and send them to the parents. Well, once I’ve edited them, and got rid of the crap ones. (I know there’s a couple of those, for sure)
Dropping Calls
Posted: Thu 22 March, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »Sometimes you just have to wonder how people have managed to live so long.
It’s amazing to me, the number of people who still seem amazed that calls to/from their mobile phones drop out when they’re on the train. Every time the call drops, they take the phone away from their face, and look at it in amazement, as if it’s never happened to them before. Ever. Not even ten seconds ago.
And even then, they don’t get the concept. They call back, start talking again, and bong, the call drops. You’re in an area of shit reception, you moron – it won’t change in the space of ten seconds. (OK, in fairness, it might – but the odds aren’t good, let’s be honest) As always, it’s not rocket science – but it might as well be.
Even more traumatic, of course, is when they call back, and the phone won’t connect. It has no reception, you moron – look at the little icon with the radio mast, it’s got no fucking bars on it! But that’s a horrific concept straight out of the eighteenth century, isn’t it. No mobile coverage? Where are we, the moon? No. Norfolk. The county that motorways forgot.
Crosswords
Posted: Tue 13 March, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »When I’m travelling on the train, at least once a week I sit near a person who does various crosswords. They’re nothing heavily brain-straining (Actually, that’s just my estimation of the things – I’m sure other people do find them more difficult) as we’re talking about the crosswords in magazines like ‘Take A Break’, ‘Bella’, or whatever.
Anyway, what makes me think every time is that this person gets out a crossword-solving thing (Kind of like this device) where they type out the letters they’ve got, and it returns a list of possible words. And they do this for a good three-quarters of the crossword.
Now maybe this is just me, but where’s the fun in that? If you’re going to do the crossword, fine, do the crossword. If you’re at the end, and completely stumped, fine, use something that’s supplemental to your own vocabulary, brain and/or literacy level.
But somehow using something like that device to answer all the questions, rather than figuring them out for yourself, well I don’t know, but to me that just seems like cheating. But maybe that’s just me, I don’t know.
Best Subject Line. Ever
Posted: Mon 12 March, 2007 Filed under: Weirdness Leave a comment »I just got an email (a spam one, obviously) with this as the title
Inhaler Penguin
Now for some reason I just think that’s great.
Notification
Posted: Mon 12 March, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Technology, Weirdness 4 Comments »In the course of my current work, I use laptops a lot. I suppose desktop machines may do this too, but I don’t know – the one I use at home doesn’t really have that problem.
Anyway – whenever I turn on the laptop (whether my own, or the one at work) in the office, it’ll flag up a little notifier in the bottom-right hand corner of the screen saying something about “Unable to detect any wireless networks”.
Now, fair enough, I don’t mind it telling me that it can’t find the network. What really annoys me though, is that – particularly in the case of the work laptop – I have wireless networking switched off at the hardware switch. It’s not operating. Full stop. There’s no wireless network in the office, so it’s pointless having the damn thing turned on.
But Windows is unable to detect that actually, there’s no active hardware for finding a wireless network – so there’s no flaming chance at all of discovering that network. But it still flags up the message, every bloody day. I know there’s no wireless networks found, because the bloody sodding wireless network card is turned off, you stupid, stupid machine.
Grrrrr.
Catching Up
Posted: Wed 7 March, 2007 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the weekend, I had quite a strange experience.
Many moons ago (Many, many, many moons ago) I worked at a hotel in Rugby, Warwickshire. Every so often, I’ve thought about getting back in touch with the people who’d been there, or alternatively just going back for a revisit. (Yes, I’ve thought about revisiting other ex-workpaces as well, but haven’t previously mentioned this one)
Anyway, when I got to the hotel I was staying at on Saturday, I leafed through a magazine that was in the room about good food and drink in the area – and in there, the general manager of the Rugby hotel has a column. It turned out that he was working for another hotel in the area – well, about 40 minutes away from where I was.
So on the Sunday morning, I drove over, on the off-chance. I figured why not, I’m in the area, blah blah.
Anyway, it turned out that he’d left just before Christmas – but then his father, who had been the owner of the one in Rugby, walked in instead. He owned this place too, and so his son had been the general manager. But we caught up, and talked for about half an hour all told.
It was a really pleasant time, and was something I’m glad I did. But all the same, weirder than weird!
Green
Posted: Tue 27 February, 2007 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »You know how belly-button fluff is always that manky dark blue colour?
Is it just me that finds that the gunge that builds up on the back of the nose-piece bits on glasses is always green?
Drink?
Posted: Wed 21 February, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness 15 Comments »The other night, I went to make a drink before going to bed, and decided on a raspberry milkshake. (cue memories of Alberto Frog and his amazing animal orchestra. Or is that just me?) No idea why, but I actually like them just before bed. Weird, but true. Anyway, the conversation went something like this :
Me : I’m just going to make a drink [does so]
Herself : That’s not a drink, that’s a milkshake.
Me : Um. I’m going to drink it. It’s a drink.
Herself : No, that’s milk. Drinks are mainly made of water
Me : Ooookkkkkkkkkkk then.
So, who’s right?
Holmes Place
Posted: Sat 17 February, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness Leave a comment »You’d think I’d have had enough of Holmes Place over the last year – and you’d be right.
Yesterday, though, I got a call from the Wokingham gym, telling me that they’d been bought out by Virgin Active, and would I like to go for a free visit there, and take a partner with me?
Me : How blunt do you want me to be?
HP/VA Person : As blunt as you want. (Ooooh, that could’ve been a bad move…)
Me : OK then. I wouldn’t rejoin Holmes Place, regardless of who owns you. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone, even my worst enemy. In fact, I’d go so far as to actively encourage anyone thinking of joining to not do so.
HP/VA Person : Oh.
[there followed an explanation of all the old crap about contracts, HP being unable to provide a gym at all, and threatening me with a bailiff if I didn’t pay the entire remaining sum.]
Me : So overall, I wouldn’t trust HP as far as I can throw them, nor their new owners. And in my opinion, they’re scumbags.
HP/VA Person: OK, well, thank you for being so honest in your response.
Now, I have to say, I think that she actually handled the call really well, and there was nothing nasty about the entire thing. An apology would’ve been nice, but now I’m done with them, I know it’d be too late for one anyway – and so did she.
All the same, though, you’d think they might’ve taken me off their ‘to call’ list…
Taking the Piss
Posted: Wed 14 February, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 1 Comment »I was looking the other day at the Interflora website – as you do – and couldn’t help but check out the extortionate prices for roses etc., bearing in mind the proximity of Valentine’s Day.
Anyway, I had to laugh when I saw this particular bouquet, and particularly the price of it. One hundred red roses for £500!
So yes, that’s £5 per rose.
Some people have more money than sense…
And in the meantime, Happy Valentines Day. Or something.
Unlit
Posted: Sat 10 February, 2007 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »Driving in to work yesterday, I was absolutely amazed by the number of idiots out there who hadn’t even turned on their headlights.
OK, this was primarily close to Cambridge, so it was around 8:30 or so in the morning. But all the same, it was pretty foggy yesterday morning, and the visibility was pretty shit. So it’s still surprising (for me, anyway) when I see other drivers – and particularly those in light-coloured cars that blend into the fog even more) without lights or foglights on. I know that I’ve written about this before – and quite recently but it still shocks/surprises/scares me when I see it happening.
Of course, the even scarier thing in Cambridge is the cyclists. Yesterday morning, not one of them had any lights on at all. Again, still cold, grey, misty/foggy, yet they all seem to believe that they’re either indestructible, or that the dozy little twadgers have some god-given right of way so that they won’t suffer any collisions or accidents.
Yes, yet again, I find myself worried by other road users. I suspect that this may become a standard mantra.
Box Junction
Posted: Sat 10 February, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 6 Comments »Just down the road from where I work, there’s a big four-way crossroads, which is invariably snarled up and jammed. There are actually two reasons for this :
- It’s been designed by an utter tosser
- People are tossers
Reason One is fairly standard – after all, it’s just a four-way crossroads with a nightmare of traffic lights.
Reason Two, though, is different, although it’s related to Reason One. Because the traffic lights screw things up, the planners/designers decided to make it ‘safer’, and covered the entire junction with yellow cross-hatch markings. It’s a box junction.
Box junctions aren’t difficult to deal with – well, unless you’re a BMW driver – and the simple rule is At signalled roundabouts you MUST NOT enter the box unless you can cross over it completely without stopping.. Not rocket science, is it?
But the reason this junction is a nightmare is because everyone ignores that concept completely, and instead buckets into the junction, try to turn, and then realise they can’t get out of the junction. And oooh, look – suddenly they’re blocking the next flow of traffic, which invariably includes a sodding big bus. Oops.
I have no idea how this can be fixed, and nor do I have any idea how you can get drivers to look ahead and figure out that there’s nowhere for them to go. Personally, I can’t see a problem with a car that detects the road markings, and if you stop on a box junction, it gives you a small electric shock. That’d soon stop it. Just call me Mr Pavlov…
Mind you, if I could come up with the answers to either of those things, I’d be a very wealthy man.
It’s fun to stay at the…
Posted: Wed 7 February, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness 1 Comment »via Stuart ‘KitchenTable’, I just couldn’t resist this…
It’s fun to stay at the…
Clocks
Posted: Sun 4 February, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness 3 Comments »Since moving, I’ve been sleeping a lot worse than I was in Bracknell. We had a new clock in the (en-suite) bathroom, and I knew that when I woke up, I could hear the poxy thing ticking, which then kept me awake.
Anyway, about ten days ago I finally lost the plot with the poxy thing, and moved it out of the bedroom.
We’ve replaced it with a (thankfully silent) water-powered digital clock (don’t laugh – it’s an interesting idea) and since then, I’ve slept a lot better.
I hadn’t realised just how much that ticking was keeping me awake, but it’s obvious now that it was. I’m just glad we’ve realised, and been able to change the situation. Plus it means I’ve been able to catch up on some much-needed sleep.
Bizarre
Posted: Wed 31 January, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Weirdness 6 Comments »When I moved to Attleborough, I discovered there was another blogger in the town, Mr Lionel Rarsh. Hardly a shocker, knowing there’s another loon in the same small market town. After all, I suspect there were several in Bracknell, except no-one would dare admit it. Coming from there, I mean.
Anyway, in an email today it transpires that he lives exactly three houses away from me. And in a street/road of about 30 houses, those odds are pretty fuckin’ high, it has to be said.
Bizarre indeed.
Dog Timekeeping
Posted: Sun 28 January, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weirdness 1 Comment »I’ve written before about how Hound is very time-driven, which is always a bizarre experience. While I know she’s actually fairly autistic, and has her patterns that she gets twitchy if they’re not fulfilled.
But at the same time, she’s still time-driven. Last night, she was wanting to go out for a walk at 8:15. For a variety of reasons, it wasn’t oing to happen ’til half eight. So I told her to wait 15 mnutes, and then we’d go out. (Yes, I know the insanity of talking to one’s Hound like this but he, there we go) She went off to lie down. The next time she got up to nag for her walk was…. 8:30.
However, I do wish that she understood about weekends. Weekdays, we leave the house at about 7.30, and Hound goes for a walk once Herself has dropped me off at the station. Weekends, well, it’d be nice to have a lie-in, but Hound usually thinks that it’s still time for her walk at 7.30, and bounces on the bed.
I have to say, getting dog-breath in the face as a wake-up call is so not a good first experience of the day.
Racism?
Posted: Fri 19 January, 2007 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Before I start, I just want to say that actually, I’ve no idea what was said on Big Brother that’s caused the racism hysteria , and to be honest I don’t really care. From what I’ve heard, neither Jade nor t’other one who’ve been accused are exactly laden with brains, and thus it’s more (as Gordon says) an indictment of ignorance and stupidity. But all the same.
What really pisses me off about the entire thing is that somehow it’s enabled bigoted hate-rags like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express to get all snotty and holier-than-thou about racism.
These are the media Andrex that are forever harping on about asylum seekers (Mail example, Express example), immigrants (Mail example) and a general ‘send them back where they came from’ attitude to life. Oh, not forgetting the odd dollop of sneery ‘told you so’ smut and gossip, just for ‘balance’.
So how do hate-mongering pieces of shit like that end up being “OK” , while Celebrity Big Brother is castigated by those self-same racist, arrogant bunches of media-whoring tossers?
Solicitation
Posted: Wed 17 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, House Purchase, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Maybe it’s just because I’m new to this property-purchasing lark, but I find myself utterly gobsmacked by the charges from solicitors.
OK, the majority of the bill cost is actually the stamp duty for the property purchase, which amounts to £2,400 , but still, the quotes we’ve had so far have all added another £1,100 or so to that price.
Mind you, it does make me glad we didn’t go for Property One (as discussed here) where the stamp duty would’ve been £7,800 or so because of going over to the 3% band – so all told, including solicitors fees it would’ve added about another £10,000 to the price.
Oh, and then let’s not forget the estate agent’s fees too. No idea what they’ll come to yet…
All the same, it just seems like more fuckin’ expense. We can handle it, but jesus, this process gets damn expensive damn quick.
Oops
Posted: Tue 16 January, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Whoops. I think that we’ve unintentionally dropped some people right in the shit. I hope we haven’t, but well, if we have, that’s life.
Basically, one of the houses we viewed a couple of weeks ago now was fantastic. We both fell in love with it, but had some questions that needed to be asked. Questions about things like planning permission – which we’d been told had been granted to the previous owners, but had lapsed as the current owners hadn’t done anything. There was also a small matter of a shared wall that needed repairing.
So I contacted the local council, and asked them what the deal was. Oops.
Turns out the property has never had a planning application made against it – since at least the 70s. And that shared wall is – um – part of a Grade 1 listed building. In short, “Oh, bollocks”. They also dropped in the little fact – which the current owners hadn’t divulged – that there were a number of trees on the property that were covered by a Tree Protection Order (TPO)
And I’ve just had another email from the council, saying that they’re going to be sending out an inspector today, to check those trees, and the property in general. OK, that’s all well and good.
Except, um, I think that the current owners have cut down two of those trees that’re covered by the TPO. And that could drop them right in the shit, with fines of up to £40,000 if I’m right.
So we didn’t intend to drop anyone in it, but in fact we may have done so. Oops.
Getting Involved
Posted: Tue 16 January, 2007 Filed under: Getting Organised, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Now here’s something to scare the pants off most people : I’ve often thought about whether I should get more involved in political stuff. After all, I’m forever griping about stuff, and then don’t do much else about it except rant on, so maybe I should do more than that.
Anyway, that made this piece by Greg Hartnett about ’12 ways to get involved’ quite interesting to me. Who knows, maybe I’ll start angling to do more once we’ve moved, and are slightly more settled into the village…
Warning Signs 2
Posted: Thu 11 January, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »On the way in to work this morning, I noticed another great sign at Ely station…
Warning : This heater gets hot.
Definitely one to file under “No Shit, Sherlock”
Warning Signs
Posted: Thu 11 January, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Weirdness 2 Comments »I normally find some amusement from the warning signs and notices that currently seem to be appearing everywhere.
Yesterday, I was looking in the local M&S, and had a look at one of their prawn mayonnaise sandwiches. Impressively, it had the warning
May contain shellfish
What gets me, though, is the “May”. It’s a bloody prawn sandwich – if it doesn’t contain shellfish, I want to know why! After all, at that point really it’s just a mayonnaise sandwich.
Negligible
Posted: Thu 28 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, Weirdness Leave a comment »Back at the end of October, I got a letter about how much money I owed Inland Revenue for the tax year 2005-06, which was sent to me first class (and cost about 58p to send) along with a postage-paid response envelope.
Just before Christmas, I got a “statement of account” from Inland Revenue, again sent first class, again with a postage-paid reply envelope.
The amount that all this paperwork and postage is for?
88p
I’ve paid it today, by debit card. (Which should cost them even more) All told, I reckon it’s cost them about £2.00 to process £0.88. Which is impressive in anyone’s book.
Dump
Posted: Fri 22 December, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 4 Comments »Walking to the office from the station this morning, I couldn’t help but notice this.
Someone – some weird, utterly fucked up human being – had decided to have a crap in the middle of the path.
Now, I’ve now idea how fresh it was – all I can say is that it wasn’t steaming (and no-one had yet stepped in it) – but all the same, what on earth would drive someone to drop their pants in public, take a shit on the street, and then walk off?
The mind boggles.
Frost and Fog
Posted: Wed 20 December, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 3 Comments »Last night, I did the drive back from Poole to Attleborough. I left at 5, which was already a bad move – it took an hour just to get to the M27. Absolute nightmare.
Anyway, I got home at 9.30 in the end – so once things got going, I actually made exceptionally good time – the Laguna was an absolute joy to drive, and had some decent speed, which made the journey a lot easier as well.
What was surprising, though, even to a cynic such as myself, was how many drivers seemed to forget that
- they had fog lights on
- they had full-beam headlights on
and on a couple of memorable occasions - that they really should put their lights on once they’d left a services area.
Considering that the weather was foul – although I definitely now have no problems driving in fog – it was amazing to me just how many fucking idiots there are on the roads. I know it shouldn’t, but it did/does.
This morning it was the same thing – the entire drive was pretty much blanketed in fog, and in some areas ice/frost as well – and yet there were people (mainly in white cars/vans, which didn’t help) who didn’t even have lights on, so their vehicles just disappeared into the fog. Very scary.
All went well though, and that’s another set of ticks in the “Done That” list – but jesus, people scare me.
Festering
Posted: Wed 13 December, 2006 Filed under: Festering Season, Getting Organised, Weirdness 1 Comment »
Amazingly, I’m quite organised this year. I’ve managed to organise pretty much all the necessary presents by today, and while there’s one that still needs to be collected from where I’ve had it delivered, and I still need to figure out what my bloody parents want, other than that I’m done.
Other than the outstanding parental stuff, I’ve just ordered the last present that needs delivering. So all told, it’s pretty organised at the moment – all very scary.
Now, who have I forgotten?
First Class?
Posted: Fri 8 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »Can someone tell me, just what is the point of buying a first class ticket when you’re on a regional train?
I can understand it (up to a point) on the big long cross-country jobs – I used to take advantage of club class, first voyager, or whatever the feck they called it when I was travelling reguarly between Manchester and Reading, because most of the time it was the only way to guarantee getting a seat. Even better, it was normally a seat that wasn’t dead opposite a squealing child, or some mad git trying to talk to everyone. And you make sure you take advantage of the free snacky things and so on that come as part of the “benefits” of ‘first class’ when you have to pay that much extra, so it kind of works out. (well, it doesn’t, but if you get enough freebies off them, you can almost convince yourself it’s worth paying double the price – and having a seat for four+ hours is a definite advantage over standing for the entire journey.)
But when it comes to the small regional trains, the only difference between first and standard class is that you’re in a different spot on the train. There’s absolutely no extra benefit. Well, maybe again you get a seat – but on all the services I’ve used of late (whether it’s London – Bracknell, Cambridge-London, or Cambridge-Attleborough) have all had free “normal” seats.
So what is the point of the first class bit on these little local services? Other than, of course, to fleece egotistical twats who think it makes them special, and to fill the coffers of yet another train company? </cynicism>
Paste’n’Go
Posted: Thu 7 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Weirdness 1 Comment »One other thing (which Jann mentions in a comment below) I experienced yesterday with Firefox was that all of a sudden all my keyboard shortcuts stopped working.
I couldn’t use [tab] to switch between form fields (which is one of the things I do a lot of, for some godforsaken reason) , couldn’t use Ctrl+Enter in the address bar, nowt.
Turns out, it’s a bug in the Paste’n’Go extension – that had an update yesterday as well, and it just blew the keyboard shortcuts away.
If you disable that extension, all the keyboard shortcuts come back…
Pizza Hut
Posted: Tue 28 November, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 4 Comments »Why on Earth would anyone queue to get into fucking Pizza Hut ?!?
Lunchtime today, going in to the city centre, and yes, a queue of people outside bloody Pizza Hut.
Even better, in true irony, Pizza Express over the road was totally empty…
People are strange.
Rental Car – Again
Posted: Thu 23 November, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »I’ve just gone through the process of sorting out a rental car for next weekend, which should make life a lot easier.
Basically it means that on the Thursday, I can pick up the car, sort out stuff in Cambridge, then I either go up to Norfolk on the Thursday night, or I can get up to the new house directly on the Friday morning.
The bizarre bit, though, is that it is only costing me about £5 more to rent the car Thursday – Monday than it is to rent it Thursday – Friday. My brain can’t quite process the logic of that one, I’m afraid…
Bizarre
Posted: Fri 10 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 2 Comments »As I think I’ve said before, I’m a member (or gullible sucker, whichever) of one of those mail-order book club things.
Usually, they’re not too bad, and at least I get the books I want while not paying through the nose for them from Waterstones etc.
Anyway, this month I’d ordered The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, one of my favourite authors. And that’s definitely what the delivery note said they’d sent, too.
Only when I opened the box, it wasn’t the Book of Lost Things at all. Instead, it was this…
Yes, “Mustn’t Grumble” by Terry Fucking Wogan.
Now really, how the blinking chuff do you get those two mixed up?!? The mind boggles…
Total Nutter
Posted: Thu 9 November, 2006 Filed under: News, Weirdness Leave a comment »OK, I was wrong about the Strangest Story of the Week.
It’s actually this bloody idiot who for some reason decided to try lighting a firework that was, um, stuffed up his arse.
I honesly can’t even begin to think of any reasons why someone would think this was a good idea, let alone amusing. But there we go – I’d say it was a Darwin Award waiting to happen.
My favourite quote, though, has to be:
“We received a call stating there was a male who had a firework in his bottom and it was bleeding.
“He sustained fairly significant injuries in the fact that there’s huge damage to that particular area.”
Mastering the fine art of understatement…
Surreal
Posted: Wed 8 November, 2006 Filed under: News, Weirdness 2 Comments »And the award for “Most Surreal Story of the Week” goes to this little gem.
You just couldn’t make it up.
Out Of Whack
Posted: Wed 8 November, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »In fact, my entire week is completely out of kilter following that long weekend.
It is Tuesday today, right?
Tax Return
Posted: Fri 27 October, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 1 Comment »This week, I got a letter from your friends and mine, the Inland Revenue. Following on from my self-assessment tax return, which I sent off in time for the “we’ll tell you how much tax you owe” deadline at the end of September, and please bear in mind that I’ve been on PAYE (AKA ‘paying the tax decreed by Inland Revenue’) for the entire tax year.
So – the letter arrived, along with fucking reams (I may exaggerate slightly) of paperwork explaining how they’d done their calculations, what tax had been paid, when, why, what it should’ve been, what it might be, what it is, and all sorts of other shit.
At the end of it, they finally tell me the amount that I owe for this year – bearing in mind (again) that I’ve only been doing PAYE this year, so really it should be nothing at all.
But instead it’s… Are you ready for this?… 88p
They’ve spent about 85p on the fucking postage!
Getting Off
Posted: Thu 26 October, 2006 Filed under: Getting Organised, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »I was reading Diamond Geezer’s post about how people get on trains this morning, and remembered something I’d been going to write about a while back.
Basically it’s quite similar to DG’s post, but I still find it fascinating that when it comes to trains and platforms, so many people
- Just get to the entrance to the platform, and simply stop, making no effort to move down the platform, and having no consideration for other people. (I know, it’s London, and I really shouldn’t hold out any hope of consideration for others, but there we go – sometimes I’m an optimist)
- Don’t know where the exit they’ll be using is at their destination station.
I find this particularly odd on the train from Waterloo to Bracknell, where tons of people just cram on to the train and find a space anywhere – then you see the same people walking all the way along the platform when they’ve reached their destination. To a bunch of people so obsessed with wasted time, delays, and anything that interrupts their little routines, I find this really weird.
When I’m using that train (or in fact any train where I know the route, the destination, and where I’m likely to end up) I try and get a seat at the place where the exit is closest when I get off the train. When I was going from Reading to Manchester (or vice versa, actually) I knew it was best to be at the front of the train, because at each end it’s the final stop, so the front is going to be closest to the exit. Conversely, when I’m going from London to Cambridge I stay at the back of the train, because that’s where the exit will be at Cambridge.
Maybe it’s just something far too logical for most people, I don’t know. It just seems weird to be in such a hurry all the time (in the example of London commuters/people) yet not be organised about things at the same time, so that you don’t have to keep on fucking about walking the length of a platform.
Turns of Phrase
Posted: Thu 26 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Weirdness Leave a comment »The other night I had to talk to a bank’s “customer services” department. I’ve been trying to set up a savings account, and they offered one of the better rates around (roughly 4.75%) so I sent in an application. Two months ago. They’re only just processing the application now, and were calling to find out whether I knew my (now-ex) employer’s company number, because they couldn’t find the company on Companies House, and directory enquiries couldn’t find the phone number. (In fairness on that point, I can’t find the phone number either)
So they called me, but wouldn’t/couldn’t
- accept the number if I gave it to them
- accept the company number if I gave it to them
- use the company’s website to find the number
or - find the company details in the HSBC system, even though the company banks with HSBC
Which rather led me to question just what the point of the call was. Unfortunately, the woman I was speaking to couldn’t actually tell me what the point was, except to go through the cyclical argument of “well, it’s on the form” – “but you can’t find the information, and it’s irrelevent anyway, so why do you need it?” – “because it’s on the form”
Eventually, we had the following conversation snippet
Me: OK, this is now utterly farcical. Can I speak to your supervisor please?
Her: Sir, I’m the on-duty supervisor tonight.
Me: OK, can I get a call from your manager tomorrow then?
Her: I don’t know. It’s not the usual procedure…
Me: Fine. Can I speak to someone who’s even vaguely competent, or at the very least capable of independent thought?
Her: …
I don’t think First Direct have any of those…
Anyway, I’m now going to use a different bank – First Direct can get stuffed if that call is representative of their attitude to customers.
Defecation’s what you need (if you wanna be a Record Breaker)
Posted: Mon 23 October, 2006 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »
I have to say, there’s something ineffably gross about this story of a man who has been smearing shit over train carriages in the South-East.
So far he’s done this on about thirty trains, which has cost about £60,000 in cleaning costs and damages.
Really it just makes you wonder how some peoples minds work, doesn’t it?
Adopting Madonna
Posted: Mon 23 October, 2006 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I must be missing something relevant in the farce about Madonna adopting a boy from Malawi.
Personally I don’t give a monkey’s toss what Madonna does or doesn’t do, and I think a lot of the hype around this story is just that – hype.
But I do have to wonder (in the little brain-time I’ve given this) one thing. If the boy has a father, what the blue blazing fiddly fuck has he doing in an orphanage?
Or do I have the wrong meaning of “orphan” stored in my head?
Breakfasts
Posted: Sun 22 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the last month, I’ve been in a selection of different hotels and B&Bs, and one thing I’ve noticed is the sheer difference in quality that’s around. However, there’s also a weird little equation that seems to keep on coming up – it’s not just in the last month I’ve noticed this, but over the last rumty tumty years.
The more a hotel is per night, the poorer the breakfast is
I still don’t really understand how this works out, but I know that the cheapest B&B I’ve used is the one with the best breakfast – and the one that cost me the most was easily the worst. (And yes, that was the one with the watery scrambled eggs)
Very odd.
Inconsiderate Twats
Posted: Tue 17 October, 2006 Filed under: Charm School, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Tonight, while out having my evening meal, I saw something that I personally consider to be one of the rudest things I’ve ever seen.
I won’t describe the person involved, except to say they were about 18. Even that’s not overly relevant, but there we go.
Anyway, this person took a call on their mobile (or they might’ve made the call, I wasn’t paying that much attention at the time) in the restaurant, which- while it’s not something I tend to do, unless it’s really important (and this really wasn’t an important call) – isn’t really something that bothers me all that much. What I did find incredibly rude, though, was that this person then proceeded to wander round the restaurant, around a whole range of different tables where people were eating, while on the phone. I’ve no idea why they did it – it wasn’t like they were having problems getting reception, they just wanted to wander around while talking.
Personally, if I’d been one of the waiting staff, I think I’d have probably told this person to either sit back down with their family, or fuck off outside and take/make the call there, rather than the way they chose to do it. It was coming close to me just telling the person to fuck off anyway.
I just don’t get that mind-set – why the hell would anyone do that?
Friday 13th
Posted: Fri 13 October, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »Friday 13th? And I’m supposed to be travelling?
Oh dear…
D-4D
Posted: Thu 12 October, 2006 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness Leave a comment »Ah, knew there was something I was going to post, but then forgot.
When we went down to Poole the other day, it caused me some amusement to know that I was in a Toyota Land Cruiser with their D-4D™ engine…
Maybe it’s just me, then.
Crustless
Posted: Thu 12 October, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 4 Comments »I can’t find a link to it, but I have to admit, I think that the idea of Kingsmill bakeries selling a loaf without crusts is utterly bizarre. Genius in a way – knowing the way that some children refuse to eat bread crusts, for some godforsaken and unknown reason – but still bizarre.
And I wonder what happens to those crusts? After all, the bread must (I assume) still be baked and get a crust, which must (again , I assume) then be trimmed off before the loaf is packaged up. So what happens to it?
Are there just a whole parade of very fat ducks waddling along outside the Kingsmill bakeries, stuffed full of fresh bread crusts?
Web Numpties
Posted: Tue 10 October, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, News, Security, Thinking About..., Weirdness 6 Comments »On the subject of numb-brained persons, and their inability to deal with common knowledge, is it really a shock to know that a large number of people are still total twunts when it comes to computers? No, not really.
Fair enough, this entire story is about “honeypot” PCs and seeing how long it takes them to be attacked – but by definition these honeypots are unprotected – no firewall, no anti-virus, and (most importantly) a complete numpty at the keyboard.
The survey found 17% of people had no anti-virus software and 22% had no firewall. A further 23% said they had opened an e-mail attachment that came from an unknown source.
I’m sorry, but if people can’t be bothered to use an anti-virus tool, and to activate either Windows’ own software firewall, or get one of their own, then they bloody well deserve to be taken for a ride. As for opening up email from unknown sources, I kind of wrote about this over the weekend, but still, nearly a quarter of people have opened random emails with (one assumes) a subject line that makes them think it’s OK to open? I despair. Mind you, again, people who do that just deserve to be ripped off – it’s like an idiot tax.
At home our broadband connection comes through a box with a built-in firewall and router. There’s also at least a software firewall on all the machines in the house. And all of them use AVG’s anti-virus as a matter of course.
After all, it’s not like it’s difficult to get a decent free bit of anti-virus software like AVG. And OK, while my favourite software firewall has now disappeared (thanks to Symantec, who always were a bunch of scum-sucking weasels anyway) it’s still not difficult to find and install the likes of Zone Alarm, or even to use the entire anti-virus/firewall combinations released by companies like Norton, McAfee, et al.. It’s just that the “Oh, it’ll never happen to me” attitude still prevails, and it’s likely to continue to do so for the forseeable future, and for one prime reason. People are numpties. Simple as that.
Personally I think that all broadband connections – be it ADSL, Cable, ISDN, whatever – should use boxes with at least a basic built-in firewall. I know Windows XP SP2 activated the software firewall by default, and I think that’s a good thing too. I would like to see new PCs come with a decent (and free) anti-virus scanner – although of course Dell et al probably get a huge dollop of cash for pre-installing shit like McAfee on the computers they provide – so that everyone has access to the basic protection, from Day One, without having to shell out extra money.
If PC makers, Broadband providers and so on simply work on the assumption that people won’t bother, and just provide these simple things as a built-in, then a whole load of these problems would go away. Most standard PC users don’t bother uninstalling what comes with the PC, they want to just plug-and-go. So give them the security straight away. Don’t assume that either a) people will know they need this stuff or b) that they’ll go and download and install it as the first thing they do. They won’t. They’ll leave it ’til the PC is a heaving festering lump of viral content, pop-ups, and email shite, and then complain…
The computer’s gone wrong! I didn’t do anything! It’s the computer’s fault!
Wrong Trains
Posted: Mon 9 October, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but I have to confess that I still find it amusing when people get on entirely the wrong train.
This morning it happened to two people in the same carriage as me. The service was a non-stop train from Kings Cross to Cambridge. It said so on the platform boards that list all the trains, times, platforms and destinations. It said so on the individual platform displays that tell you where the train currently at the platform is due to go, and when. It said so on the tannoy system on the train, before the doors closed and it pulled off (giving idiots time to get off the train first)
But no, still these two numpties had got on the wrong train. One of them wasn’t even going anywhere near Cambridge. The other thought it was a stopping service.
Really, how dim do you have to be to make that kind of mistake?
Gullible
Posted: Sun 8 October, 2006 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »I’m intrigued – how many people actually open up those spam emails that have subject lines like “Necessary Notice of Default from Bank” ?
Is anyone really that stupid?
I mean, as Scaryduck pointed out earlier this week, there’s plenty of people who still fall for the entire “you’ve won a lottery you’ve never entered” scam, so I suppose there’s plenty of numpty twats out there who do open up those spam emails.
But really, its worrying to think that people still haven’t got the idea about these things, isn’t it?
Back to Normality
Posted: Sat 7 October, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »One of the geekier things that’s currently good about coming home is the ability to get back to a wireless network. (Obviously there’s a lot of other good things about coming home from the week at work, but I’m on a geeky thought process here)
It’s been very odd over the last couple of weeks, not being available online after work, and not having the connectivity I’m used to. (God, this is sounding more pathetic by the minute, isn’t it?) Admittedly not entirely a bad thing, as it’s given me the opportunity to catch up on some letter writing and so on, but all the same, very odd to not be able to mooch about online the way I’m used to.
Still, that’ll change from here, as I’m getting somewhere very posh in the coming week, and then the B&B I’ll be staying in will be letting me use their network, so all’s going to be cool on that score.
It just means I’ll need to be slightly more disciplined, and still keep up with writing letters etc. (and all the other writing projects I’m thinking about) as well as working on the websites and so on.
Accuracy
Posted: Fri 6 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Do you ever look at an email that’s been “personalised” (i.e. data about your preferences, or the other things you’ve bought from the same company, has been used to modify the content so that it’s more ‘targeted’ towards you) and just think “Man, they’ve got that one so wrong”.
Today’s example came to me from those uber-twunts of the gig-ticket world, TicketMaster. The subject line, to get my attention, was – um –
Lyle, don’t miss Lionel Ritchie
Wow, how wrong can one line get?
Desperation
Posted: Thu 5 October, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »Another thing I watched on TV on Tuesday was a documentary on Channel Four about mail-order brides from Russia. It was an interesting thing, but dear God, I hve to say that I felt the blokes were pretty desperate.
And yes, I know, there’s similarities between my feelings about it and the stuff in the previous post. But for me, I just don’t really get the entire “must get married” thing, let alone being so determined to get married – to anyone – that you’ll go to another country in order to find someone/anyone. Mind you, I also simply don’t get how someone could go through that route, trying to find a bride in Russia, and not make any effort to learn anything in Russian at all. That, to me, is just fuckin’ weird, and shows some major levels of selfishness, and – rudeness. If I were to be in that situation (and I truly can’t see that I ever would be) I would at least make some effort to learn. But then, I suppose the difference is that I would want to have conversation with a partner – and conversation, or companionship, didn’t seem to be the primary goal for the men in the documentary.
Just bizarre, really. Well, to my mind anyway.
Negative Influences
Posted: Wed 4 October, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I was watching a drama on BBC1 last night, “The Amazing Mrs Pritchard“, and something struck me while I watched it. Of late, there seems to have become a trend in these dramas for there to be strong female roles, and the women’s partners seem to always have a very diminished role, and be a negative influence on the women, providing a downside of everything, blocking the development, and wanting the women to stop their plans for [whatever]
I realise that drama needs conflict, needs that portrayal of issues, and that the protagonist being supported all the way through by her partner would (in theory, at least) not be dramatic or whatever, but I do find that these cliches are really becoming quite wearing.
After all, if a drama were to portray things the other way round, with the female character holding back the development or dreams of the male character, it would be portrayed as sexist, biased, and many other things. But when the “norm” of negative portrayals of men happens, that’s fine.
I don’t mind as such, and I’m not concerned about it on sexist levels. I do however, think it’d be better if both portrayals were allowed to happen, and for there to be balance, rather than bias.
Yellow
Posted: Mon 2 October, 2006 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »Oh yeah, I was going to write a bit about my holdall, wasn’t I? (Well, I said I would, although that doesn’t necessarily mean it was going to happen)
The holdall I use is probably one of the best buys I ever made. It’s made by Caterpillar (whose boots I swear by), and is bright yellow ripstop nylon. Nothing fancy, not even a solid base or anything. But it’s tough as old boots, and has now seen me through eleven years of use. It’s fantastic. It’s been used along the way for laundry, general luggage, up to two weeks away from home, as well as being a general carrier of crap, clothing, CDs, DVDs, shopping, and anything else that can get stuffed through its zip.
But the best use for it at the moment is – to be blunt – scaring the shit out of people in London. Particularly on escalators. So many people flinch when they see this big yellow bag coming into their eyeline as I belt down the left-hand side of the escalator, it’s really funny. Mind you, I’d probably flinch at the same sight, if I didn’t know it was my bag…
Frustrating
Posted: Sun 1 October, 2006 Filed under: Getting Organised, Weirdness 1 Comment »The USB TV Tuner thingy arrived fine, and has been installed on the laptop. However, I can’t test it ’til Monday, as for some bizarre reason, Bracknell doesn’t get the necessary Freeview signal at all. So I’ll have to wait until tomorrow evening before I can check it all out properly.
Most bizarre. Bracknell gets Sky and Cable TV with no problem, but not Freeview. Strange.
Gideon
Posted: Thu 28 September, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »What on earth makes the Gideon people believe that people in hotels or B&Bs will want a bible to look through?
It’s something that’s always befuddled me, and the point is just getting reinforced yet again this week. I’ve never wanted to read a bible while in a hotel. OK, come to that, I’ve never really wanted to read a bible.
But if someone’s enough of a believer to want to read a bible in a hotel room, surely they’re more likely to have brought their own one with them?
Or am I missing something?
Stanislav Petrov
Posted: Wed 27 September, 2006 Filed under: General, News, Weirdness Leave a comment »Amazing, the things you find out sometimes.
Twenty-three years ago today, Stanislav Petrov saw multiple missile launches reported by his early-warning satellites and waited, knowing the satellite had been reported faulty, rather than reacting instantly to those American missile launches by launching the Soviet nuclear missiles under his control. He’s since been awarded two “World Citizen Awards”, and can be seen as pretty much saving the world from World War Three.
Trains
Posted: Mon 25 September, 2006 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »Amazingly, the journey to Cambridge today went really smoothly. Although I have to say, I was right when my now-ex-employers moved to the London office, and I really truly couldn’t handle the commuter train to get in to London before 9am. OK, getting on where I do helps, as there’s normally still seating, but then halfway through the journey it’s still jam-packed like the Black Hole of Calcutta. Fuckin’ horrible.
All the same, though, it was OK. I got to Waterloo, onto Tubes that were busy but nowhere near full, in to Kings Cross, and then up to Cambridge. All on time, (in fact I even got an earlier train to Cambridge, and thus arrived at 9.30 instead of the planned 10.00am) and no problems at all.
No-one is more surprised than I.
Bizarre
Posted: Fri 22 September, 2006 Filed under: Photography, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday I had a sudden thought. Not a common occurrence at all, but anyway.
Why not have a look to see if Cambridge has a Camera Club?
Thought I.
So I did a quick search, and lo, Cambridge Camera Club hoves into view. Great, that’ll be a good way to spend an evening once I’m there next week.
Um, no. Membership is now closed ’til September 2007. So what’s the point of that then? Photographers are only allowed to join once a year? Not even get a chance to see if they like the place?
Bag o’ crap.
e-Commerce
Posted: Thu 14 September, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the last few days, the iTunes music store has been annoying me. OK, I know I’ve got some fairly obscure tastes on occasion, but even so, when looking for things like “Leonard Cohen” the list is missing some fairly relevant stuff. The last couple of albums, for instance. Let alone some of the older stuff – and finding the album I particularly wanted, which is a collection of cover versions of his stuff, well, that’s just never going to happen.
And I can’t find anything on iTunes for a bundle of other bands – OK, some of them are old now, but isn’t that what “The Long Tail” was always supposed to be about? But no, nothing on there for Timbuk3, The Pale, or a couple of others.
Anyway, back to Leonard Cohen, and in fact it’s easier to go back and find the exact album on Amazon, and add it to the basket.
However, Amazon’s not perfect either. I was also looking for an A-Z map of Cambridge, for obvious reasons. But hang on – a £1.50 sourcing fee? What the hell? And up to 14 days for delivery? Fuck off. In that case it’s far easier to go direct to the company and order it direct. No sourcing fee. No postage. A flat £3.50. And I’ll get it by Monday. Perfect.
Commuters
Posted: Thu 31 August, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »One thing I do find really amusing while commuting to London is the other people on the trains, and on the Underground.
I have to admit, I just really don’t understand the drive and rush that surrounds these people. On the way home last night there was one guy who was about two points short of a coronary (or stroke) on the Tube – OK, he’d obviously got a train to catch, but at every stop he was swearing, sighing, checking his watch, swearing, sighing, checking his watch, and once the train got moving it’d always be “About fucking time too”. To me, it was very, very funny. To him it was obviously some kind of “life or death” thing to get on the train. And when we got to Waterloo, he shoved his way through the people, ran up the stairs, ran up the escalators. And still missed his train.
I know, because I was on the same one he got on – a whole ten minutes later, going to the same place as the one he’d just missed.
So I have to ask, “Was it worth it?“. No, I didn’t ask him – obviously it was all a bit stressful, the poor dear. But what’s the point of getting so stressed and apoplectic about that kind of thing?
Admittedly, I’m on the other end of the scale, and truly don’t give a shit what time I get in to the office. So I can stroll through the platforms and tunnels etc. of the Underground, and it’s no problem. (Although I should point out too that my “stroll” still ends up overtaking most people) But I just can’t be arsed to get stressed about missing a train – and definitely not about missing a tube train, as they run every couple of minutes anyway.
I just don’t get the entire “rush everywhere, every second is important, time-is-money” crap that so many of these people seem to spout.
Like Bueller said, “Sometimes you just have to slow down and look around“. It’s much more fun.
505
Posted: Sun 20 August, 2006 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness Leave a comment »Is it really sad for me to notice this
and be quite chuffed to have seen that number in all its palindromic and repetitive glory?
Yeah, thought so.
Strange
Posted: Wed 16 August, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 6 Comments »Would you worry if you worked in an office of techies and developers, and not one of them could manage to close a call properly on a DECT cordless phone? (Sorry, “normal digital cordless phone” – like this. i.e. it cuts the call by pressing the red “call end” button, same as on a mobile phone)
BMW
Posted: Sun 13 August, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness 3 Comments »One thing I will absolutely not miss about this area is the sheer number of BMW drivers that’re around. (and yes, I do include drivers of the new Mini in this sweeping statement – it’s made by BMW, ergo they’re BMW drivers
Yes, I’m sure Norfolk will have some as well – but this area seems to breed the buggers. And as you may know, I think BMW drivers are just awesomely bad. It’s a sweeping generalisation, and I’m sure there’re some BMW owners who are capable of driving well. It’s just that I’ve never met any of them.
I reckon you could get pretty good odds that on any given day, you’ll see a large proportion of piss-poor driving that’s done by BMW drivers. Jumping lights, wrong lanes at roundabouts, cutting people up, middle-lane-driving on motorways, speeding while flashing lights at people to get out the way, ignoring “no entry” road signs – I’ve seen them all. Coupled with an apparent inability to use complicated devices such as – oooh – mirrors, indicators, or (at night) the “dipped headlights” lever.
Of course, it’s not just BMW drivers that’re bad. It’s just that it seems like there are more bad BMW drivers than there are bad drivers of other car brands.
Whatever it is, though, I won’t miss the fuckers one iota.
Chaos
Posted: Fri 11 August, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 11 Comments »OK, so supposedly the UK police have foiled a terrorist ‘plot’ to blow up a bundle of planes. Aye, right.
Maybe I’m just an utter cynic, but isn’t it great how
- this got released one day after Our Illustrious Leader flew off (long-haul) on his hols
- this got released one week after the decision to make the UK ‘shit-scared level’ publically accessible
- it supposedly makes people feel ‘more secure’ by making them wait longer at airport checkins
What it does go to show is just how shit the current security checks are when you get to an airport. In fact, let’s face it, they’re all there to make the public feel safer. “Oh, terrorists can’t get on our flight, because we’ve been checked once, and all our stuff’s been X-rayed.” We’ll just gloss over the entire farcical fact that once you’ve gone through that X-ray machine, you’re in the food area, where you can get served meals with metal cutlery (order a steak – see what you get to cut it with!), buy perfume bottles you can shatter into heavy glass knives, and buy gift sets with the dreaded nail file and/or scissors.
At the moment you’re not allowed to take on most of your hand luggage, instead it has to be checked in to the hold. Now OK, that’s fair enough. But hang on, um, if there are explosives in that hand luggage, they’re still going to be putting it on the sodding plane!
And on the subject of explosives, OK, you’ve uncovered this plot to blow planes out of the sky. Right. You’ve buggered up the plans and announced them to the world, but the current security scare is because “there might be people we haven’t detected yet”. Now, any prospective terrorist who’s got a brain cell won’t be heading to the airport. Oh no. They’ll be going to the train station, or the bus station, or the motorway service station, where there’s no security, and causing chaos that way instead. If they’ve got the explosive, they’ll use it – just not on a plane. That’s not cynicism, that’s common sense.
Personally I’m a total cynic, and don’t believe this “plot” at all. It does, however, provide a viable story (which could equally be made into a Hollywood action movie) for the resultant media hysteria, as well as the security forces being able to say “Look, we’re great, we broke this ‘plot’ – we need more money in the next budget so we can keep on breaking up these plots” and for the government to trolley out the same old shit about “we need ID cards, so this sort of thing won’t happen, and it’ll be easier to process people through airports etc. Oh yes it will. Honest” It works on the slightly warped logic that people will feel safer because we’re “stopping terrorism”, and we’re aware of these plots to kill people, so we’ll tell you all about it, scare the shit out of you, and you’ll fucking welcome the extra security measures and totalitarian surveillance that we bring in on the back of it. In fact, you’ll bloody well want to have your lives on camera, your calls listened to, your ID stamped in a barcode on your forehead, because it’s Special Home-office Intelligence on Terrorism.
Or SHIT for short.
iTunes 2
Posted: Wed 9 August, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised, Weirdness 5 Comments »So, in yesterday’s post, Gordon commented that he’d had iTunes running for three years without a problem. Great, Bully for you. I will, however, just point out this comment he made on my earlier post about iTunes being a piece of crap that insisted on ordering things its own way, rather than some form of logic involving, oh, say a folder structure.
I used to have all my MP3s in a similar structure. Once the files are in iTunes though I don’t care where they are but that does mean you’ll need to tag the MP3s.
OK, so it’s run fine for three years. But the start-up was a pain in the arse, because of having to re-tag and edit all the files that iTunes can’t be arsed to do automatically.
As that post I wrote showed, ten days ago I’d only just started with iTunes. So I ended up with 6,000 files I needed to re-edit. Frankly, fuck that – I want a piece of software that “just works”, not some fucking hunk of junk that insists on me changing my workflow to suit it. So I uninstalled it, and went back to RealPlayer, which “just works” and suits me fine. I’ll maybe use iTunes for buying tracks, but I’m more likely to do that now through the website. (EDIT : Turns out I need iTunes installed to use the iTunes store)
But – hang on – RealPlayer’s now missing a buttload of tracks. Half the files have disappeared, and it’s saying they’ve been deleted off the hard drive. So I check – off to c:/music/faithless and – what the fuck? – there’s only two albums there. Which are, funny enough, the ones iTunes had no problem with. So where’s everything else?
Luckily I’d still got a total back up on the old PC, and was able to restore the full music collection. But it still took five-plus hours to transfer everything back across the network. Oh, and why does iTunes insist on ripping new albums (by one artist, not “Various”, before anyone asks) into a folder called “Compilations”? Or is that just something I screwed up somewhere along the line?
Maybe it was a coincidence, and nothing to do with iTunes. Maybe it was just a fuckup, or (as Gordon implies) me doing something wrong. But whatever, I won’t be using iTunes to “manage” my music again.
Yuck
Posted: Sun 6 August, 2006 Filed under: Photography, Weirdness Leave a comment »All I can really say is Blech. Caterpillar hell.
iTunes
Posted: Sun 30 July, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, General, Sweary, Weirdness 2 Comments »With the new PC, I’ve also installed iTunes to deal with a lot of the music. This has turned out to be a bit of a double-edged sword.
For a lot of things, iTunes is great – burning CDs, building playlists, buying music downloads – all great. No problem with that at all.
However, it has fallen down big-style on one particular area. It just won’t read in all the files I’ve got. Well, I say that – it reads the files, but in a good 50% of the cases, it doesn’t get the relevant information. Now, Real Player has no problem with the files, and has always been able to keep track of who’s done them, which album, so forth, so fifth. But oh no, not iTunes. It won’t take into account the file structure ( i.e. they’re all kept in a file structure that goes /music/[Artist]/[Album]/[Tracks] )
So in order to make use of iTunes in general, I’m supposed to go through and re-identify about 6,000 files, enter in all the tag information – all of which is in the file structure, and it even shows in iTunes with the file structure identified. It’s just the information that’s fucked. Yet Real Player has got it all with no problem.
Have I missed something? Or am I just going to have to spend time going through the entire fucking file structure, editing all the ID3 tags for all the music that iTunes insists hasn’t got the right information?
Blocked
Posted: Thu 27 July, 2006 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I don’t know why, but my brain’s just not working right today.
I’ve got three posts in “Draft” version at the moment, and I can’t get the right wording for any of them. I hate being like this – thankfully it’s not a common occurrence. However, when it does happen, it drives me nuts.
I know what I want to say, I just can’t think of the best way to phrase it. I need to dump my brain somewhere, and for once D4D™ isn’t the place…
Shatter
Posted: Tue 25 July, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Hmm, maybe this is just me as well, but if you saw workmen heaving on a sheet of glass in order to pull it from its frame (we’re talking about a sheet of glass probably 8 feet high and 10-12 feet wide) would you decide to walk behind them as they were pulling with all their force?
The stupidity of some people – or maybe it’s just the completely blinkered lack of awareness of surroundings, I don’t know – just befuddles me. This morning I’ve seen not just one person do this, but seven or eight. The window is being replaced because the blackout film on it is bubbled up and knackered, but it’s one huge sheet of glass, and if it had shattered (as it eventually did) while some numpty was walking past, and they’d been hurt, you can bet that said numpty would’ve been first on the line to the personal injury lawyers, and it would never have been that numpty’s fault for walking past people obviously having a problem with a bloody big sheet of glass.
I despair.
Holiday In The Sun
Posted: Tue 25 July, 2006 Filed under: 1BEM, Travel, Weirdness 4 Comments »OK, now this one befuddles me a bit – and every time I read the words, I still don’t get the concept behind them.
Who the hell would actually go on holiday to Beirut?
What’s next? Parachute holidays to Afghanistan? Fire-fighting trips to Iraq?
Canon
Posted: Sun 23 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Photography, Weirdness 2 Comments »I knew there was something I hadn’t installed on the new PC, and today it came to me. All the drivers and software for the EOS20D – no drivers, no software, nowt. Ooops.
And just when did I discover this? Yep, when I was trying to move some photos around. Ain’t it always the way?
And then when I looked on the Canon site, it’s got all the bloody updaters and revisions for the software, but has it got the original files? Has it buggery. Cue a mad hunt through the CD Graveyard – really must organise that a bit better at some point – and eventually found the relevant CD.
So now I’ve installed all the original programs etc., and then I have to update them all. It’s fucking bizarre.
Ah well.
Fair?
Posted: Mon 10 July, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 5 Comments »OK, before I get started on this one, bear in mind that I’m a self-confessed numpty when it comes to football, so I’m probably barking up entirely the wrong tree with this one…
Anyway – what I was thinking about, particularly in light of the end of the world cup, is why is the final result (assuming full-time and extra time have been completed) dependent on penalties? To me it seems actually quite unfair, basing it all on a “sudden death” kind of thing after two hours of play – particularly since the goals that have happened become irrelevant. (And before any smart-arse pops up with the comment, I know that the penalties thing only happens when it’s a draw, so perhaps the goals from the main match are now irrelevant – but bear with me on this, OK?)
So why does it go to penalties? Why not base the final victory on something that’s at least related to the game of the last two hours? Examples that spring to mind would be ball posession – that the team that’s had the most posession wins; or base it on fouls and/or dives – where the team with the lowest figure (either in the match, or in the tournament – which would be a nightmare of record-keeping, but would provoke rather less fouls, dives, and bookable offences, I suspect) wins at the end of it.
Surely those methods are fairer, or at least more relevant? To base the final result on penalties seems to be far more “luck of the draw”. Perhaps basing it on something match/statistic-based would be a bit of an anti-climax, I suppose – but it would still at least have a basic connection to the game they’ve been playing for the last 120 minutes…
Spam of the Week
Posted: Tue 4 July, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 1 Comment »Sometimes (as I’ve mentioned before) my spam turns weapons-grade weird. Today’s effort is one of those times…
Hello my dear friend
I was looking tharough the web few weeks ago and found
your profile. Now I decidead to email you to get to know
you better. I am comiang to your country in few weaeks
and thought may be we can meet each obther. I am pretty
looking girl. bI am 25. Do anot repbly to this address
direcbtlay. Email me back at olcl@snail4mail.com
Yes, I’ve always wanted to meet up with a random foreigner who can’t spell/type. <sarcasm>It’s my ambition in life. </sarcasm> And yes, the email’s left there too – I figure spambots might as well catch up with a spammers email for once.
Flash
Posted: Mon 3 July, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »This really has to be seen to be believed…
Barmy
Posted: Mon 3 July, 2006 Filed under: Health, Weirdness 1 Comment »This evening, I’ve an appointment at the local gym, where one of the trainers is going to put me through my paces, and figure out what I should be doing in order to keep on losing weight.
Today’s temperature around here is supposed to be around 32°C. I’m going to be doing a shitload of work in the gym. In short, I must be fuckin’ barmy.
I expect to be a sweaty puddle in the recuperation area by 7.15pm.
Role Models
Posted: Wed 28 June, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »While I don’t understand it personally, I know that a lot of people will use various famous people as their style icons – dressing like Victoria Beckham, Naomi Campbell, [latest R&B pop person], fashion guru x or designer y, high street stuff, or whatever. Fair enough. Not my thing, but who am I to dictate to others?
However, on the train today was a woman whose style “icon” appeared to be Jade Goody. Which, really, is just scary.
Drip, Drip, Drip
Posted: Thu 22 June, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Thoughts, Weirdness 17 Comments »How on earth can a water company justify losing 894 million litres per day of water? That’s something like 675,000 litres per second.
Taking the assumption that a person uses about 135 litres of water per day, that loss is equal to the water supply for 6.6million people. Considering that Thames Water only supplies 8 million people all told, that’s a pretty fucking big loss, I’d say. In fact, if you take into account the people they do supply, as well as the amount they’re losing, if they were an efficient company, they could supply 14.5 million people. That’d make the shareholders happy.
So how come it’s the users of Thames Water who are penalised by drought orders and hosepipe bans, when Thames Water themselves are the biggest water wasters of all?
Lug’oles
Posted: Wed 21 June, 2006 Filed under: Animals, General, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »When I was walking Hound this morning, something occurred to me. I know, it’s a bit of a rare occurrence, but what the hell, it was 7am, and my brain was still hovering somewhere between sleep and conscious. Like the man said, the lights were on, but no-one was home. Autopilot all the way, baby.
Anyway, watching Hound, I suddenly started thinking – How cool is it to have independently controllable ears?
As we’d walked round, Hounds ears had constantly been pointing in different directions – well, unless she heard something particularly interesting, in which case both focussed in the same direction. I wonder what it’s like to be able to focus on two completely different sounds, and hear each one properly with only one ear…
Of course, it can make you look really stupid too, when one ear is facing forwards, and the other’s facing backwards, but still, it must be pretty cool…
Surreal
Posted: Tue 13 June, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 2 Comments »Depressingly, Herself insisted on listening to a certain football game over the weekend. Well, some of it, anyway.
At halftime, they went to some shonky stand near London Bridge, where allegedly lots of people were watching the match.
The shonky stand was sponsored by the “Official Beer of England”.
That beer was – um – Carlsberg?
Beached
Posted: Thu 1 June, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Maybe this is just me, but doesn’t it seem a bit bizarre to have a sand-sculpting festival in Brighton, one of the stoniest beaches (with the least sand) in the country?
In fact they’ve had to import sand from Holland in order to have the festival at Brighton.
Weirder than weird, in my oh-so-humble opinion…
Number Plates
Posted: Thu 1 June, 2006 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »OK, great idea, releasing new-style number plates that supposedly make them harder to remove/swap“. In theory, anyway.
However, what you have to bear in mind is that when people “clone” cars in order to evade things like Congestion Charge, speed cameras and the like, they don’t actually steal the number plates in the first place. They just make a note of what the reg is, wander into any car-parts place, and ask for a pair of numberplates to be made up with that registration. No need to prove you own that car, or anything.
So what would actually stop this issue would be changing the law to make it so that you have to produce – say – the tax disc, or the insurance documents for the car when you ask for numberplates to be made up, and they can only be made up in the same registration as that on the documents you’ve provided.
Common sense really, isn’t it?
BB VII
Posted: Tue 30 May, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »So another person has walked out of the current series of Big Brother. That’s four departures, only one of which was a “proper” eviction…
Mind you, I’m not quite sure that George got the idea of Big Brother, because his reason for leaving was “My reason for leaving the Big Brother house is the thought of fame and how I would like to continue my private life – and fame is too much for me.”. Surely that’s the entire reason most people go on the bloody programme, to self-publicise themselves and become “famous” ?
Motivation…
Posted: Tue 30 May, 2006 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I’m intrigued about one thing regarding the latest media outrage against John Prescott.
Are they wanting him to go because a) he was photographed playing a game while nominally “in charge” of the country? Or b) because he was playing croquet, “a game for the upper class”, while Prescott is supposed to be “working class”.
Would the media (and in particular, the Mail on Sunday, who paid for the photos) have been anywhere near as interested if Prescott had been playing, say, darts? Or five-a-side football?
Dodgy
Posted: Fri 26 May, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Now, this may come as a shock. A D4D™ post about football.
Now, I don’t know much about the game (which will come as a shock to no-one), but how come Belarus’ goal last night was allowed, when the goalkeeper was writhing round on the floor, having just ruptured his groin?
Obviously if he’d been a clumsy twat and had just fallen over, thus allowing the goal to be scored, that’s fine. But when he’s on the floor in pain, doesn’t it make sense to at least disallow a goal that takes advantage of that ?
Mary Whitehouse Lives
Posted: Thu 25 May, 2006 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 6 Comments »Sometimes you just have to wonder about some people.
The story of the woman prosecuted for sunbathing nude – in her own garden is one of those times. Not content with being “shocked” and “offended”, the woman’s neighbour (a man) rushed off to get a video camera, in order to film the “offence” taking place.
He’s quoted as saying
“I have been extremely shaken by this. It has been very upsetting and worrying. I don’t want to bring up my children in such an environment.”
Yeah, OK, you don’t want to bring up your children in an environment where nudity exists? Get a fucking grip. He probably makes sure his children are fully clothed in the shower, too. Twat.
No Rides
Posted: Wed 24 May, 2006 Filed under: Health, News, Weirdness Leave a comment »Somehow, I’m failing to see the attraction in this.
You have to be aged 18 and over to get in and tickets will cost £15 for the attraction which opens on 7 September.
The theme park will include life-sized silicone-made models which visitors can touch to discover erogenous zones.
Although I do love the line about it being “a sex theme park with no rides”. For a sex themepark “with rides” I assume you need to pay your £15 in Soho, or Amsterdam…
Water Shortages
Posted: Mon 22 May, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness 3 Comments »From a conversation with my father over the weekend…
Which supplier/provider can charge you for their product, and then tell you not to use it?
Only one utility provider can do such a thing. How do we let them get away with it? It’s not like we’re going to get a discount for not being able to use the stuff any way we want, is it?
Football
Posted: Wed 17 May, 2006 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »Ok, now here’s something that just befuddles me completely…
On the news this morning there was an interview (of sorts) with some of the fans going to watch Arsenal play [some other team] in the [thingy] cup/league/championship/whatever in Paris. Some of these fans had travelled overnight to see the match, but didn’t have tickets, and so were going to go and see it in a bar. Somewhere. In Paris.
Now, what is the point of going to Paris to see a football match – in a bar? Surely it’s easier/cheaper/saner to do that from your pub at home?
I can understand it if you’ve got tickets to the match, and you’re going to see it right there in front of you. Fine, I get that.
But to go off, and then still end up sat in a bar, watching it on TV – well, to me that’s more than a little bit silly.
Flossing.
Posted: Fri 12 May, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness Leave a comment »Not for those of a nervous disposition – the British approach to flossing between one’s teeth.
Only some people have confessed to using things like screwdrivers, key, and even ear-rings as “floss substitutes”.
shudder
Bad Day
Posted: Mon 8 May, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Weirdness 1 Comment »You know it’s going to be a bad day when you get woken up by the dog, crawling under the bed, because it’s raining hard outside and she thinks it’s going to thunder.
You know for sure it’s going to be a bad day when, walking through the trolley-stoppers (i.e. fairly narrow “one person at a time” walkways) you get run into by three-year-old hellspawn, and then blamed by the mother for walking into the little shit…
Observer
Posted: Mon 1 May, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 2 Comments »I don’t know what it is about this town, but sometimes finding a Saturday Guardian, or an Observer on Sunday is a total nightmare.
Yesterday was a case in point – OK, we didn’t go out ’til about 1, so that was part of the issue, but when I looked for a paper, I couldn’t find one at all.
The Esso garage was sold out, the BP garage only had ones with no supplements. It’s no wonder those hadn’t sold. Tescos had sold out – but only of Observers – in both the shop and the seperate garage section. They always sell out early, but never order more for next week. No idea why.
The other Esso and BP garages had sold out too. In the end, I picked up the last copy in – wait for it – Marks and Spencers. Because, like, that’s where everyone looks for a paper. *sigh*
I just don’t understand why, if the Observer is such a popular paper (and it’s worth pointing out that most places still had plenty of all the other papers, it’s just that I like the Observer) then why don’t all the shops order more of the sodding things?
Oh, and before anyone asks, we don’t get it delivered because a) the local newsagents has closed, with no sign of anything replacing it, and b) because even when it was open he wouldn’t do a delivery for just one day a week. Which probably goes some way to explaining why it’s now closed…
Price reductions
Posted: Fri 28 April, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Since getting the XDA phone, apparently I’ve had an O2 offer of “free internet”. Would’ve been nice to know about it, but there we go – that’s life.
Anyway, half an hour ago I got a message saying
We hope you enjoyed the O2 Active free promo. Charging begins from 01 June 2006, but remember it’s only £3 per Mb. For money-saving Bolt Ons, see o2.co.uk.
Then just now I got one saying
We hope you enjoyed the O2 Active free promo. Charging begins from 01 June 2006, but remember it’s only £2.25 per Mb. For money-saving Bolt Ons, see o2.co.uk.
That’s quite a price reduction for half an hour, isn’t it?
420
Posted: Fri 21 April, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »The number of the beast is no longer 666 – It’s now 420.
Brilliant stuff.
Cruising
Posted: Tue 18 April, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 4 Comments »I’m sure I could be more charitable, but no, “Nutter” seems to sum it up.
Bluetooth Headsets
Posted: Sat 15 April, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »What is it that makes people (Mainly men) think they look cool by wandering around with a bluetooth headset/hands-free kit hanging off their ears? I’m not against the devices in the right place (i.e. when driving) but the number of people you see walking around with a bluetooth earpiece is amazing.
I just don’t see the point of them. If you’re wandering around, you’re obviously able to answer the phone properly rather than use the earpiece. (and, by the way, look like an utter twunt while walking around talking ‘to yourself’) Maybe people think they look all cool and techie by using them, or maybe it fuels the fantasies of being James Bond / Captain Kirk / whoever else used a fucking headset. I don’t know. And it does seem to be primarily BMW drivers who use them all the time like that.
What I do know, though, is that to me, people wandering around wearing them just look like dickheads.
Bleat
Posted: Fri 14 April, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »OK, this is just something that always confuses me.
What’s the point of going away for a break when you know everyone else will be doing the same thing? Maybe I’m weird, but I just don’t see anything “relaxing” about going and queueing in airports or traffic jams in order to travel to somewhere that, when you get there, will also be absolutely rigid with people alld oing the same thing.
Oh, and let’s not forget, paying a buttload more for going away this weekend instead of another one. It all just makes me doubt sanity – mainly everyone elses, but also my own, for not wanting the same as what “most other” people seem to…
Weird…
Commuting
Posted: Thu 13 April, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 4 Comments »Anyone fancy a 370 mile daily commute?
The only reason I can think of is that the guy is a total headcase…
Strange Request
Posted: Thu 13 April, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Right now this will mean very little to anyone, but I need to do a bit of research, and I’ve no idea even where to get started.
So, the question is this :
How are people selected to go on jury duty? I don’t mean “what do you do on jury duty?”, but I actually need to have some basic ideas about how people are selected for a stint on a jury.
Is it random? Is there a method? Computerised? Or some bureaucrat sat in an office with a copy of the electoral roll, and a pen?
Simple, n’est ce pas?
Some Mistake Surely?
Posted: Tue 11 April, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »It’s taken me a couple of weeks to remember to post this (and a post about Tesco Labelling from Blue Witch) but we recently had to go to Holland and Barrett to get some Omega 3 oil capsules for Herself.
Because Herself is vegetarian, she uses the gelatin-free capsules by Vertesse, and non-codliver oils. Which is fine.
However, we also noticed “Cod Liver Oil in Vegetarian (gelatin-free) capsules”, which seems to be pretty bizarre to me…
Strange Requests
Posted: Sat 8 April, 2006 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness Leave a comment »OK, this one’s a bit worrying. Apparently, d4d™ comes in as the #1 result in google for What is the sentence for kidnapping owls. Bizarre.
What’s more bizarre is : Who the hell would want to know. And why?
Gobsmacked
Posted: Thu 30 March, 2006 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »I’m sorry, but how the hell do you “not notice” hitting (and killing) three people ? Particularly when you’re going 60mph, and also hit the broken-down car they were standing next to.
How?
Sleeping Position
Posted: Tue 28 March, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 8 Comments »Way back in the day, my then-other-half used to complain that I slept in a weird way. To me it’s not weird, it’s how I’ve always slept, and still do.
Anyway, I was thinking about this over the weekend, and I wondered if anyone else does it?
When I go to sleep, I tend to half-cover myself with the quilt, so that (for example) my front half is covered, and warm, but my back is in the air. I find I tend to be a lot cooler like this – being completely under the quilt I just get too hot, but if I sleep with an arm, and/or a leg out of the quilt, it seems to act like a heat-exchanger, and it’s comfortable.
Am I a freak? (hey, like we don’t know the answer to this one already) Or does anyone else sleep in a similar fashion?
… And The Living Is Easy
Posted: Mon 27 March, 2006 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Sorry about the title, I just couldn’t resist.
Anyway, yesterday the clocks went forward, so now apparently it’s summer. Or at least Spring. Or something where the clocks have gone forward an hour anyway.
And I have to say, I really do like systems where the clocks change automatically. Usually my alarm clock does it too, being one of the “radio-controlled” ones that links to some International Time Signal or other. Rugby, I think. But this time it didn’t which led to a bit of confusion. Maybe it’s time to get some more batteries for the thing. I’ve had it about seven years now, and only changed batteries three times, so yeah, maybe it’s getting to that time. Or – gasp! – perhaps I should buy a new one. Nah, see how this one does first.
Anyway, the mobile phone changed automatically, so did the landline, all the computers, Sky+, TiVo, etc. But there’s always a couple you forget, aren’t there? I didn’t remember the WordPress clock (for d4d™) and can’t be arsed to change it anyway, and then there’s things like wall-clock in the kitchen, and central-heating. In fairness, Herself has changed the ones that need changing manually – I completely forgot – but I still find it surprising just how many things we have in everyday life to tell us the time. It’s like an obsession!
Brain Music
Posted: Mon 27 March, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 1 Comment »Sometimes I wish I understood how my brain works. Hell, most of the time I wish I understood it. (Of course, if the human brain were simple enough for us to understand, we’d be so simple we still couldn’t do it)
Every so often, my mind will just carry around a completely random tune. Sometimes I can figure out why it’s there (say, if I heard it the day before) and sometimes I can’t. Even more annoying is when that tune stays with me overnight, and infests dreams etc, and then I wake up with it in my head too.
Last night, for some reason unknown to science (or me) it was TaTu’s “Friend or Foe” single, which also has the added “benefit” of being utterly repetitive and catchy.
However, this morning my brain appears to have travelled back in time, and has been going mad for “California Über Alles“, originally by the Dead Kennedys.
And I have no idea why…
Sirens
Posted: Sat 25 March, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 3 Comments »One thing that struck me as very odd when I came to Bracknell was the sirens. Every Monday at about 10am (but rarely on a completely regular/punctual basis – I suspect it has to be set off by hand, and is thus reliant on people not doing other stuff) the area is covered by a wailing two-note siren, eventually followed by a one-note ‘all clear’ siren. It took me ages to find out (OK, ask) what it was, and it turns out that because we’re close to Broadmoor (BBC Profile here and WikiPaedia here) and it’s a siren that gets sounded should anyone escape from there.
What surprises me more now about the entire thing is how little anyone reacts to it. Yes, OK, it’s a regular test signal, but for the most part people don’t seem to react to it at all, not even looking round to see what the hell it is, or anything. To me it always sounds like the cliched “Three Minute Warning” siren, so you know, if I heard it and didn’t know what it was, I’d at least ask, or try to find out where it was coming from. (Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I?)
Maybe it’s yet another instance of “it won’t happen to me” or “it’s not happening” syndrome. I don’t know.
Short-Term Memory…. Um?
Posted: Wed 22 March, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »On occasion, I’m beginning to worry about my short-term memory.
A few times now I’ve been looking at a webpage, and thinking “Oh yeah, I need to go there, haven’t looked at that in a while”, I open a new tab in the web browser, and then *blank* can I remember what I was just thinking? Can I hell.
I’m sure there was something else I was going to say here…. *grin*
Asking For It
Posted: Tue 21 March, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Thinking About..., Weirdness 1 Comment »In today’s “local” news on the BBC, it appears that police are warning drivers not to leave sat-nav units in their cars when unattended. To me, this really isn’t rocket science. Apparently to a lot of people it is.
When I walk anywhere, I tend to notice what’s in cars. I don’t know why – I guess I’m just nosy, really – but I do pay attention. And it’s quite amazing the number of people who do leave expensive stuff out on view when they’ve parked up. Now yes, maybe it is “only for a couple of minutes” – although a lot are at least overnight – but still, you’ve got to be pretty bloody dumb to leave the sat-nav in it’s cradle, with only a window to “protect” it. Same applies for the people who strong leave their phones in their cars, and even their wallets.
All in all, the “don’t leave valuables in the car” message has now been circulating for at least a decade, if not two. As we carry more and more valuable stuff around with us, it would seem sensible to be more aware, but instead people seem to still make use of the “It’ll never happen to me” mentality that drives me utterly bananas.
So far as I’m concerned, if you leave valuable stuff like sat-nav, mobiles, money, cameras etc. visible in the car – and a lot of people do – then you should be prepared to lose it. And of course if you’ve been a numpty and left it there visible, the insurance won’t pay out for it either – in fact, it’s like a tax for idiots. Works for me…
Reversal of Fortune
Posted: Mon 20 March, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »OK, picture this scenario…
You’re driving in a carpark, and have just gone over a (slightly) raised walkway when you realise there’s a parking space behind you (back over that walkway). Do you…
- Ignore it, drive forwards, and park in the free spot that’s about three car-lengths in front of you (although in fairness you haven’t spotted this one yet, as you’re so focussed on the one behind you)
- Check the mirror, and drive backwards slowly, checking for pedestrians on the walkway or
- Slam the car into reverse, and go backwards as fast as possible without checking for anything at all, and not even looking in the mirror
Knobby today, of course, did c) . So I slapped the back of his car with my hand, to let him know I was there, and not quite prepared to be run over. The dumb fuckwad hadn’t even seen me.
Mind you, the look of shock on his face when he realised was really quite amusing…
Increasing Weirdity
Posted: Thu 16 March, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 8 Comments »Sometimes I get spam mails that are just too weird for words. In this case I can’t even see what the catch is – I must be missing something…
Dear Sir/Madam
My name is Mrs. Jenny Brooks, I am a dying woman who have decided to donate what I have to you/ church. I am 59 years old and I was diagnosed for cancer for about 2 years ago, immediately after the death of my husband, who has left me everything he worked for.I have been touched by God to donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to you for the good work of God, rather than allow my relatives to use my husband hard earned funds ungodly. Please pray that the good Lord forgive me my sins. I have asked God to forgive me and I believe he has because He is a merciful God. I will be going in for an operation in less than one hour.
I decided to WILL/donate the sum of $2,500,000 (two million five hundred thousand dollars) to you for the good work of the lord, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows.
At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls right now due to the fact that my relatives are around me and my health status. I have adjusted my WILL and my lawyer is aware I have changed my will you and he will arrange the transfer of the funds from my account to you.
I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you abundantly, and please use the funds well and always extend the good work to others. Contact my lawyer (Barrister Parker Brown) with this specified email: [dodgy@email.com] and tell him that I have WILLED ($2,500,000.00) to you and I have also notified him that I am WILLING that amount to you for a specific and good work. I know I don?t know you but I have been directed to do this. Thanks and God bless.
NB: I will appreciate your utmost confidentiality in this matter until the task is accomplished as I don’t want anything that will jeopardize my last wish. And Also I will be contacting with you by email as I don’t want my relation or anybody to know because they are always around me.
Regards,
Jenny Brooks (Mrs)
Now, isn’t that just amazingly bizarre?
MultiMedia Messaging
Posted: Wed 15 March, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Ah, O2 you bunch of fuckwits. Apparently they have decided on an arbitrary limit of 100Kb for media messages (i.e. sending a photo from your phone to someone elses). At its default setting, the XDA I now have takes photos that are 104Kb in size.
Now, what kind of sodding use is that, when you’re trying to send one? *sigh*
Sectarian
Posted: Tue 14 March, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Ah, you’ve got to love a good bit of “OK ’til it affects me” hypocrisy when it rears its head.
In today’s great instance, Isaac Hayes has decided to stop doing Chef’s voice in South Park. Why? Because South Park is “bigoted” and has an “inappropriate ridicule of religion”. OK, now neither of those points are exactly revelations – if you’ve ever seen South Park you’ll know it doesn’t take any prisoners, and doesn’t really care who it offends.
What is offensive, though, is Hayes’ attitude. Over the years (as the creators say in the story) they’ve aimed at Christianity, Islam, Mormons and Jews. And Hayes has never complained. Now, though, they’ve aimed at Scientology, which just happens to be the religion Hayes is a member of. And all of a sudden it’s not funny any more.
How come? Is Scientology somehow better than any other religion? Or is it more of a “Not in MY Back Yard” (AKA “NIMBY”) reaction where it’s OK to take the piss out of something a person doesn’t believe in, but it’s not OK to poke fun at that person’s own beliefs? You know, I think it might just be the latter option…
Actually, I think that South Park might just be one of the more balanced programmes – in that it pokes fun at everything, rather than just one specific item.
Cold Feet
Posted: Fri 3 March, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »On a day that is, in short, fucking freezing, what on earth would make someone decide to walk to work in sandals?
(I should point out, this was something left over in my head from the other day, when it was attempting to snow first thing in the morning, and was bloody cold, but I spotted one person at the train station who was walking around in sandals. Madness)
Minutes
Posted: Sun 19 February, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Gah, how come it takes so damn long to take typed (word-processed) minutes from a meeting, and then convert them from the abbreviated note-form style into a presentable document?
The ones from last Sunday’s charity committee meeting have just taken me somewhere around three hours to re-do into something presentable. Admittedly that includes sorting out some of the financial data into formatted tables etc., and generally make it readable, but three hours is about as long as the original meeting, which means it’s taken me six hours all told to get it sorted.
Thats, like, pretty much a full working day. Bizarre.
Maybe I need to type stuff out better in the first place, I dunno.
PIN
Posted: Thu 16 February, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I can’t find the exact list, so I’m going to run this one from memory. Anyway, yesterday’s Times newspaper had a list of the most popular (and thus least secure, most easily guessable) PIN numbers that people choose. In a lot of ways it was really scary how unoriginal people are. In order, they were…
- 1234
- 4567
- 6789
- 9876
- 2000
- 1966
- 1999
- 1379
- 0070
- 1402
Apparently, 1966 is memorable for being England winning the world cup, 0070 is used a lot by people thinking of James Bond etc. (bit dubious about that one, myself), 1379 is the corners of the keypad, and 1999 is the year Manchester United won the triple.
But the sheer number of people who use “1234” is quite gobsmacking. I guess it’s the same breed of gimp that uses “Password” for their password – of, if they’re feeling inventive, “Secret”.
More to the point, we’ve had PINs now for at least twenty years – I suppose I don’t really understand how people can still get in a flap about remembering a four-figure number. I should, because I found out recently that my father actually writes all his down in his bloody diary – for which he copped an epic amount of flak from both me and Herself – but there we go.
Personally, I’ve never had a problem remembering PINs. I’ve got at least four different PINs for different things, phone banking, cards, SIM PIN and so on, and never have a problem. Mind you, I also have a nasty habit of remembering my Switch numbers too, which just amply demonstrates that actually I need to get out more.
And did yesterday’s predicted Chip-and-PIN chaos actually happen? Did it fuckaslike. Yet another piece of epic “Milennium Bug” hysteria.
*Shudder*
Posted: Mon 13 February, 2006 Filed under: Sweary, Weirdness 3 Comments »McVities have introduced – sit down before reading this – new flavours for Jaffa Cakes. There’s now Lemon & Lime jaffa cakes, and blackcurrant Jaffa cakes.
In the name of all that’s holy, why? The clue is in the name – Jaffa Cakes, meant to be made so the orangey bit tastes of Jaffa oranges. That’s why they’re called Jaffa cakes. What the fuck do you call a Lemon and Lime variant? It ain’t Jaffa, that’s for sure. Maybe “Kir Cakes” for the blackcurrant ones, or “Cassis Cakes”. Only then people wouldn’t realise that they’re alternatively-flavoured Jaffa Cakes.
Oi, Mr McVitie – Get your hands off our proper Jaffa Cakes, and leave ’em alone!
“Not Me”
Posted: Mon 13 February, 2006 Filed under: 1BEM, Weirdness 5 Comments »You know those Securicor vans with the really loud “BEEP BEEP BEEP! Caution, this Securicor vehicle is REVERSING!” alarms? They’re useful because, well, Securicor vans are supposedly fairly secure, have no back windows, and thus the driver can’t see out the back. So if you’re standing behind the van, the poor sod can’t see you, which could cause thumpage.
I’ve just been looking out the window at work – well, the reversing alarm’s loud enough I can hear it from across the road, through the window – and watching two blokes just miss getting squished because they’d somehow missed a) the announcement, and b) the connection that it might be linked to this purple van with Securicor written all over it, that was reversing towards them.
What was even better was that these two then start having a go at the driver! Like it’s all his fault that they’re a) deaf, b) blind, and c) fucking stupid. You just couldn’t make it up.
Half-Ton Man
Posted: Sun 12 February, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I realise it was on earlier this week, but last night I finally got round to watching Channel 4’s Bodyshock programme “Half Ton Man” about Patrick Deuel, who was admitted to hospital weighing 76stone (over 1,000lbs).
Thankfully the programme didn’t focus just on Deuel, but on other people who had similar weight issues, including one man who had managed to lose nearly 30 stone in weight, only to put it back on again, and then lose it. It made for fascinating viewing, but at the same time I found it remarkably sad. All the people involved talked about their need for food being similar to an addiction, but it was the guy who had lost, then regained the weight that summed it up for me.
“I got down to 150lbs, and went out to have a celebratory frankfurter. And one turned into two. And two turns into three, and into four. And of course you’ve got to have the frankfurter with fries. And the fries have to have cheese on”
“Other people who binge on food might put on 5lbs, maybe even ten. When I have I binge, I put on 20, 25, even 30lbs”
That’s exactly the same reaction as an alcoholic – one drink is never enough. It turns into two, three, four, the bottle.
I found the programme sad, but it also made me wander wonder (sorry) about the partners and family of the people involved. In Deuel’s case, when he got married when he was 40-odd stone, but at that point he could still walk, stand up, and so on. Over the next ten years though, he ended up laying on a bed, unable to move, unable even to turn himself over. A huge mass of fat, still eating – the doctor in the programme said that just to maintain his weight, he must’ve been eating 12,000 calories per day – and doing nothing else. In that situation, you’d think that at some point the wife would turn around and say “Hang on, don’t you think this has gone just a bit too far? Can’t you see this isn’t doing you any good?” – to at least say something to them, not keep on feeding them…
Phoning an Egg
Posted: Tue 7 February, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness Leave a comment »Some people just have WAY too much time on their hands.
Secure?
Posted: Mon 30 January, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »As most people in the UK know, credit and debit cards have been switching over to the “Chip and PIN” system, which is supposedly more secure against credit-card fraud and the like.
On February 14, anyone with a “chip and PIN” card will no longer be able to sign a credit-card slip for their purchases, and must know their PIN number instead.
Anyway, that’s a minor digression. The main thrust is that supposedly “Chip and PIN” is more secure. It’s supposed to stop credit card fraud, and all this bollocks. We’ll ignore the fact that anyone can “shoulder-surf” and get the PIN number. And the fact that the PIN number is the same whether you’re using a cash machine or doing a transaction – which means that if someone gets your PIN number and card (you know, by shoulder-surfing the number in a shop, then grabbing the bag on the way out – that’s just one example, of course) then they can get the maximum cash transaction out like *that* (clicks fingers), which of course renders the card owner liable, as they’re not likely to have called the card company in that couple of minutes and registered the card as stolen. And, of course, the bank will say “Well, you let someone see your PIN number. Therefore you’re in breach of your agreement with us, and thus liable for all losses on that account/card”.
Again, a minor digression there.
My point is this : If “Chip and PIN” is so secure, how come I’ve just seen the following transaction…
“Did you know your PIN number’s locked on this card?” (ie you can’t use the PIN, because you’ve had three goes and failed to get it right)
“Yes, I was trying to use it in the supermarket, and got all flustered with everyone behind me, so I forgot the number, and now it’s locked”
“OK, just sign on the slip here”
“Thanks”
“And there’s your card back”
WHAT? So you can have a locked PIN, which signifies three failed attempts at the number, and instead of cancelling the card, or keeping it, it’s been given back once, then used just on the signature again, and then given back yet again? How the blue blazing fiddly fuck is that a secure transaction?
Anarchistic
Posted: Mon 26 December, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Now here’s a thing…
Am I the only one who sees these nice new “gated communities” getting built, all eight-foot metal fences, remote-control gates and so on, and then just wants to take a couple of big strong cycle locks and lock the gates together, then see what the snotty-nosed arseholes do?
There’s one being built on the way to work, and every time I go past the signs for “secure gated community” I want to do it. No real reason, it just strikes me as funny…
Word of the Week
Posted: Thu 15 December, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I don’t know where the hell I’ve picked it up from, but this week’s Word is “Crufty” meaning dodgy, manky, or mucky.
I’d love to know where my brain picks these things up from, and why it sometimes fixates on them to a strange degree.
Shuttle
Posted: Mon 12 December, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 6 Comments »A while back – quite a while back, as it happens – I bought a new PC. All very sexy, a little Shuttle box, 64 bit AMD processor, blah blah.
Regular readers will have noticed that I haven’t mentioned it all that much. There’s a reason for that – it’s still not working.
I’ve tried pretty much all I can think of, short of cannibalising the hard drive out of the old PC and shoving that in to see if anything works that way. The list so far includes:
- complete disassembly and reassembly – including checking the seating/positioning of the processor
- Installing Windows XP, Xp64 and 2000
- Installing Mandrake and Ubuntu linuxes (Linii?)
- Swapping out various components, to see if there are problems on those
I’ve also changed from an SATA drive to a normal IDE drive.
The problem is that while nothing has so far installed properly or run properly, the errors are never the same. It’s normally that some file or other isn’t installed, or is corrupted, but then every so often you get an “IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL” error, or a different Screen Of Death. The Linux installs die with a totally corrupted screen, so I’ve no idea what the problem there is.
The only conclusion I’m left with now is that the motherboard itself is screwed. Unless anyone else has any other ideas about what it could be?
Driving By
Posted: Wed 7 December, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 6 Comments »There’s one facet of the story about South Yorkshire being gridlocked this morning due to a dead man on the M1 and a fatal accident on the A1 that’s rather more disturbing than any of the others. It’s this…
the body, which had been struck by a number of vehicles, was found near a footbridge, but it was not yet known if the man had fallen, jumped or been pushed from the bridge
Hang on, “struck by a number of vehicles“? How the hell does anyone in a car hit a body in the road and a) not stop or potentially b) not notice? Humans are bloody big things – they’re going to do damage to your car, regardless of whether they’re already dead or not. I’ve seen the mess a pheasant makes, and the one a deer makes – so I repeat, how the shit do you hit a body and not stop?
The mind boggles…
Overheard
Posted: Mon 5 December, 2005 Filed under: Weirdness 1 Comment »While waiting for the train this morning…
“Well, you know that orange and brown stripey t-shirt I’ve got?”
“Yeah”
“Well, it’s just like that, only blue”
Bizarre Spam
Posted: Sun 4 December, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »It’s not often I get a spam that’s completely bizarre, and makes little to no sense, but this most definitely fulfils those criteria…
Hey Angel,
Remember I told you about that e-mail I got the other day saying I could get my B/A, B/S/C, M/A, M/S/C, M/B/A, P/H/D, in 2 weeks without any study required and 100% verifiable ?
Well bro I gave it a shot and now 2 weeks later I have my BA and working on getting my Masters which I will have finished up in the next week and half!
I didn’t believe this either man, I was a bit skeptical when i first heard about it too , but the counselor made it clear it was ,.100% legit and the& op,portunity exists due to a legal loophole allowing some established colleges to award degre.es at their dis.cretion.
bro life cant get any better for me right now… I have jobs that wouldn’t of gave me a chance before calling me off the hook wanting me to come work for them, also the money i’m capable of making now is amazing!
Listen Angel,I’ve known you for over 10years man,I know you have been struggling with bills, and working 2 jobs including your wife is working full time now right ?
Well, Listen to an old friend for once , and do this one thing not just for me and my satisfac,tion of seeing you succeed , but just think how much happier you & your family will be when you are making the money you deserve at a job you actually like!
Take advantage of this opportunity right now man , the counselor told me the other day they aren’t accepting many more students for this offer so hurry and call this # 1-(2,0,6,) -984 -4134 it will be the best thing you ever did, trust me!
Just leave a brief message with the de.gree you’re interested and they will call back A.S,A,P.
Well bud, opport,unity only knocks once… and I opened the door. I’m on my way to being the successful man that I always knew I would be, just didn’t think it would be this fast and easy!
let me know how it goes
your friend, Head
The entire thing’s bizarre – and I should point out I’ve copied it 100%, weird punctuation and all. Weird stuff.
Overkill
Posted: Wed 30 November, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »The BBC website today carries a story about people being evicted from ‘London’s oldest squat’. To remove 150 squatters – some of whom have been in the properties for 30 years! – required the services of 200 riot police in twenty vans. Talk about overkill.
According to the story, the majority of the squatters left peacefully, although “some refused to move and barricaded themselves into the properties and one man threw a petrol bomb, before dropping his dog from a second-floor window”. (the dog was caught by the man’s friend, and was unharmed) So, from the sound of that, a couple of pieces of resistance – hardly warranting 200 police in full riot gear.
Talk about overkill.
What really gets me, though, is the mealy-mouthed weasel from Lambeth Council…
It is estimated unpaid rent on the properties over 30 years amounted to £4m, plus a further £400,000 in council tax.
Mary Lynch, of Lambeth Council, told BBC News: “We can’t justify letting people live in these houses rent free, council tax free, paying nothing towards the community when we have 12,000 people on our waiting list for houses.”
It plans to demolish the properties and replace them with new homes – at least 75% affordable housing – and a sports centre.
You can’t justify the people living there rent-free, but frankly what the fuck have you done about it? They’ve been in those properties for thirty sodding years, and the council hasn’t managed to come forward with court cases, evictions, bailiffs or anything in that time. Surely that comes down to the council being lax, and not keeping track of their own properties and methods?
And how come the squatters haven’t been able to claim that the properties are theirs, as they’ve been in residence for more than 12 years?
Timing
Posted: Tue 29 November, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Sometimes timing is strange. For instance, it takes me roughly 20 minutes to walk from home to the rail station in the morning. The train leaves at 8.50 (ish). If I leave at 8.25, I’m always at least five minutes late when I get to the station, and thus miss my train. However, if I leave at 8.15, I’m there by 8.35 and freeze my arse off on the platform for quarter of an hour.
So – why do the times change like that? To be honest, I have no idea. I’d like to know though – it’s one of those annoying things. You think you’ll be there just perfectly on time, and you’re late. You give it a few more minutes so you know you won’t miss it, and get there in record time. Bizarre.
Bad Driving – Part Two
Posted: Mon 28 November, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 4 Comments »In addition to the stuff I wrote about in the previous post, two more things…
I’ve just seen a learner driver, accompanied by her instructor, attempt to turn the wrong way – ignoring the sodding great blue and white “turn right only” sign – into the one-way system. Fortunately, the road was clear of oncoming traffic, but still, rather than stopping her and getting her to do a three-point-turn to go the right way, the instructor instead got her to carry on down the road until the first (thankfully close) turn off to the right, and go down there.
Now, maybe it’s a first lesson, maybe she hasn’t got to the three-point-turn bit, maybe he just thought it would be an element of added danger to be turning round, but Jesus H Christ, what an example to set. “Oh, you’ve gone the wrong way. Well, just carry on doing it, then turn off when you can”.
Which brings me to the second – bizarrely linked – thing. A man died in a motorway crash over the weekend (and injured three others at the same time) driving the wrong way down the M6. Apparently he’d driven 14 bloody miles the wrong way, down a motorway. Maybe he thought he was the only one driving the correct way. Maybe he was just a fuckwit. Either way, it’s a scary process.
Firefox Weirdness
Posted: Wed 23 November, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Weirdness 2 Comments »I’ve no idea why, but this morning when I started up Firefox it wasn’t displaying images at all. Checking the installed “Web Developer” toolbar (a god-send in so many ways) showed that I didn’t have images disabled there, so it needed a bit more delving.
Under Options in 1.5rc2 there’s now a tab called “Content” – and in there you can choose globally whether to load images or not. Somehow that was now unticked.
So – a simple fix, but why did it happen in the firstplace? I rarely even bother to go into the Options, so something odd’s going on…
Brainblock
Posted: Mon 21 November, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Why is it that my brain consistently gets mixed up between Kinja and Flickr? I’m forever mixing the two up, and saying Kinja when I mean Flickr (and vice versa)
Does anyone else have this problem? Or is it just me?
Cringe-inducing
Posted: Fri 11 November, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Is it me, or is placing an advert to find a partner for your daughter just a bit plain weird? Particularly when said daughter is 24, and – one assumes – perfectly capable of finding someone for herself should she want to?
I know I’ve a dodgy sense of humour, but I’d love it if the daughter were to turn round and say
Thanks for the thought, Mum, but actually I’m a lesbian and not interested in any of ’em.