Well done Dom

The Boy got all his grades in his GCSE's so unfortunately I couldn't resale his Reading festival ticket. Congratulations Dom, I'm proud of you. Enjoy Reading

Computers? cant give them away

When we moved from Hopgrass we has to downgrade slightly, ie in that half our furniture is in storage as it doesn't fit in the cottage. This is largly due to the fact that Hopgrass had 15 foot high vauletd ceilings and the cottage only0 has 10 foot and my office was the size of the Olympic statdium and we had more starage space than Pickfords.
In the office we had three desks each with a desktop pc with 17"CRT monitors, However we bought those PC's about 6 years ago and I think the fastest processor we had was around 400 MHz compared with todays 2.2 GHz, so when we moved to the cottage which has an office the size of a postage stamp with enough room for a desk, filing cabinet and bookcase it meant they had to go, but go where? - upto the stables along with all of the other office equipment that where. However I needed to keep one PC at home (I use a state of the art laptop at work - well it was last month) so the most uptodate PC we had at home was my son's which hhad a massive 800MHz processor and 256mb RAM, so I nabbed that as he had just got a laptop for school.Now I have a new laptop at work I can use my old Inspiron at home thus create 60% more space on my desk.
Now I thought I'll sell the old desktop but looking at similar items on Ebay it turns out it's worth about £35.It would cost more than that to post it. So asking around locally it seems that no one wants such a dinosaur. The schools have up todate units, our friends children already have PC's that are 10X faster and will support the latest games, my parents already have a PC which they only use to watch the fishtank screensaver when Coronations Street or Emmerdale is not on the TV and I haven't got any more storage room.It also seems that everyone else has this problem
Unfortunately I have this built in disease thing which prevents me from throwing anything away which still works. I have a shoebox with 11 mobile phones and adapters in it 4 of them are analogue! and as for comuter cables I have a cable that connects anything to anything from a sewing machine to a spacehopper.
The problem is that charity shops or youth groups etc are not allowed to accept anything electrical without it first being tested and approved by an approved electrical testing body (cost around £35) incase it electrocutes someone and they sue the charity shop or whatever.
So where do all these old PC's go? What happens to all the equipment when a large corporate company replaces all of its outdated PC's, is there a massive PC crusher somewhere. We recently had to pay £75 for someone to come and take away a dead photocopier from work, so I'm afraid it's to the tip this weekend. Memo to self 're-format hard drive before dumping'
Can some one tell me what they do with their old elctronic junk?

I don't like (Bank Holiday) Mondays

We sat around the table last night with our diaries trying to find 2 days when all three off us were free to take a couple off days off to visit my parents, however this proves difficult when trying to work around a bank holiday. Bin normally has a Monday off to do the housework as weekends are usually as hectic as the week, Saturdays for me usually consists of golf in the morning and paperwork in the afternoon followed by some sort of social activity in the evening, Sometimes Bin rides on a Saturday but certainly spends the morning at the stables and rides on Sundays. The Boy usually works all weekend or recovers from hangovers. This weekend he is spending the weekend at Reading festival whilst we have social engagements on Sunday and Monday interspersed with golf , paperwork and riding with any spare time spent on working on my guitars.
We eventually came up with next Tuesday and Wednesday as the only possible days. However I had planned to giving my car a desperately needed serious polish and clean out before we went away, this is where the problem with bank holidays come in. You get a day off but so does every other bugger.
Normally Bin would go to Newbury on a Monday, park the car with the valeting people and go shopping returning to an immaculate shinning piece of machinery, well with her car anyway, they just do the best they can with mine which just highlights the rust spots, but at least it’s clean inside, but being a bank holiday they are closed. The boy had promised to do it for me in return for letting him off the £35 he owes me for the surround sound usb card I got for him off Ebay but he’s too busy earning money this week and will no doubt be up to his knees in mud at Reading festival and off his head on cider this weekend which conjures up another thought, do I really want to drive to Yorkshire with a surly hung over teenager who probably hasn’t slept for three nights, in the back of the car? There again he may sleep all the way. So I guess it’ll be a quick splash through the car wash and I’ll try and pick up all the big bits off the floor, the dogs hairs will have to stay and we’ll have to remember not to wear anything black.
The other problem is everyone decides to have a party/BBQ on bank holiday Monday which means you get seriously shit faced and spend working Tuesday with Mike Tyson working out on a punch bag inside your skull.
Now bank Holiday Fridays are much more sensible, apart from the fact that everything shuts except garden centres and diy shops which if you buy anything from these stores results in you working all weekend, but at least you have Sunday to recover from any excesses.

Incase anyone is interested, we had a very good charity weekend at the golf club last weekend, unfortunately our team did not fare well, in fact we came last – out of 25 teams this may have something to do with the club setting up a bar along side the 7th tee, everything was going well until then!

A little song for me

Happy Birthday to me, Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday dear Martyn, happy birthday to me.

TADA

Binge Drinking

The current round of articles in newspapers about binge drinking is doing my head in. Apparently with the new licensing laws, according to the press, is going to turn us into a nation of alcoholic Whirling Dervishes. What I don’t understand is what difference is an extension to the licensing hours going to make?
I, and I think the majority of the population, am unlikely to decide that 11.30pm is a good time to go out for a drink.. Most people go out to drink early on as we’re usually to knackered or pissed to make it past 11.00. If the younger element are going to get hammered out of their brains and dance naked in the street whilst knocking a coppers helmet off, I don’t believe the time of the evening has anything to do with it as most. Pubs and bars are open all afternoon anyway and it’s just as easy to get bladderd at 2.00 pm as 2.00am, at least you can find your way home in the light or get a taxi and have the evening to sleep it off – so why are the media getting so concerned about binge drinking being affected by extra hours. It was my understanding that the new licensing laws were being introduced to reduce last minute rapid consumption of the contents of a bottle of Jack Daniels, I believe that’s still possible at 6.00pm.

Enjoyed a good round of golf on Saturday, no problems with back or elbow, just incase anyone was interested.

So much for All's Well

I was really looking forward to golf yesterday, I felt fit, my elbow was fine, teh weather was great as we Teed off, pared the 1st and 2nd then on the 3rd, with the bit between my teeth and my partners having drove the green I took an almighty swing, topped the ball, which went no furhet than his Tonyness's chance of re-election, and pulled a muscle in my back. This didn't not seem evident at the time but started to gradually stiffen up by the 7th and as I bent over to put out on the 9th my back screeched 'No more' and so I had to retire. Lets hope it's only a twinge.
Socially it was a great weekend with a dinner at the Palm to celebrate LM's birthday and a wonderful afternoon at Normans to celebrate his 60th, many thanks to both for most enjoyable sessions.

Disappointed

We saw ‘War of the Worlds’ yesterday and I have to say I was a little disappointed, especially as this had been heralded as the best Spielberg movie yet and the ‘greatest action movie of all time’.
Well obviously the people who wrote those reviews either saw a different version of the film or were completely out of their heads on mind altering substances. Whilst the special effects were stunning as was to be expected, the story is basically about Tom Cruise’s characters relationship with his ex-wife and children whilst total world annihilation by Martian invaders happens to be occurring in the background. All this is made worse by Cruise’s nauseating daughter who does nothing but scream throughout the film and his teenage son who basically needs a good slapping.
The opening credits had a voice over reciting H.G.Wells’s first paragraph of the book by a guy who sounds like he’s on 4 packs of Marlboro a day mixed with helium, not a spot on Richard Burton’s version on Jeff Wayne’s musical version.
Basically this film strayed too far from the original story and quite honestly I enjoyed ‘Weekend at Bernies II’, shown at the weekend a whole lot more!

All's Well

Well the golf went well and the elbow stood up for 18 holes and I even managed to go round 2 under so its full steam ahead for the Stirland Cup next weekend and the chaity open on the 20th.
Congrats to the couple from Newbury who won Jim's BMW Z3 in the raffle draw on Saturday night, I'm glad it was won by someone I didn't know, however Jim did a great job in raising the money part of which was donated to his charity the Jessies Fund - Music helping children, a UK charity dedicated to helping seriously ill and disabled children by using music as a form of communication.

A friend has sent me THE EBAY SONG which is a must listen too for anyone remotely addicted to Ebay such as me,read the lyrics with the song it's hilarious.