Head Rambles

Grandad July 4th, 2009

For the life of me, I cannot understand peoples’ fascination with cities.

Cities are noisy, dirty, smelly places.  They are hard on the senses and on the feet.  They are full of unnecessary noise, traffic and worst of all, people.

The bigger the city, the worse it is.  People sing the praises of London and New York, and state that it is their life’s ambition to go there.  My idea of hell would be to spend eternity in New York.

I love the tranquillity of the mountains.  They are ever changing and easy on the eye and the foot.  The only sounds are the call of the skylark and the distant bark of a deer.  A day in the mountains relaxes the mind and the senses and fills the lungs with fresh air.

Of course, I do occasionally have to make some purchases, and that requires a trip to the shops.

I was down in the village yesterday.  I called in to the greengrocer and had to tie Sandy outside.  This caused a bit of consternation as a little girl couldn’t leave the shop as there was a huge fierce dog outside.  I had to reassure her that Sandy is a big pussy, unless of course she hears a non-Irish accent.

After that, I had to call into the butcher’s.  They don’t have anywhere to tie a dog outside, so the butcher held Sandy outside while I rummaged the shelves.  We then did our transaction on the doorstep and had a bit of a chat.

It was a lovely day so I called in for a coffee.  They know Sandy well there and she is always welcome.  I have my particular taste in coffee, which they also know.  It is known in the shop as a ‘Grandad’, of course.

As I sat there in the sunshine, supping my coffee and puffing on the pipe, people passed by on the pavement.  Some just greeted me, and some stopped for a chat.  It was very pleasant.

There was some traffic , of course.  The odd car or tractor trundled past but there were no sirens or car horns.  It was a tranquil village going about its daily business.

I tried to imagine myself sitting at a pavement café in London or New York.

I banished the thought immediately.

It was much too unpleasant.

You can keep your cities, thanks.

• Around the village
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Grandad July 3rd, 2009

I received an offer of a job yesterday!!

Our company offers you an excellent possibility to earn quickly.     
It is a good chance to earn easily 2.000 – 5.000 EUR in a month, 
and it will not take more than 1 hour a day. For this you should 
have one or several bank accounts. More accounts you have more will 
be your gain.

The procedure is following. We make a transfer on your account, 
usually it is around 5.000 – 8.000 EUR. As soon as money comes, you 
withdraw it in cash. For your service you take 20 percent of the amount 
received. Then you send the rest of the money back by Western Union. 
For example, we make a transaction of 5.000 EUR to your account, 
you go to the bank and collect the total amount. Then you take 1.000 EUR 
as your remuneration and send 4.000 EUR back to our receiver via 
Western Union Money Transfer Service. Western Union fee is paid by receiver.

Our company is located in Estonia. We need only bank details 
which are necessary to make the transaction of funds on your account. 
We don’t ask you any supplementary data and there is no risk for your 
privacy. You run the only one risk of becoming undesirable client 
for the bank.

You can email all your questions to the address job@taxvac.com

Looks good, doesn’t it.

They send me their money, and I send it back to them again, and I get paid for it.

Hang on…..

They have a system where they shift their own money out and back again and for each shift they lose 20%?  That seems like an excellent way of losing money?  Are they incredibly bad at mathematics?  Are they just plain stupid?  Are they looking for the job of Irish Minister for Finance?

Or are they going to post me a [dud] cheque, and I send my money back by Western Union, so that they gain my money and lose a dud cheque?

I am going to reply to them and accept their offer.

I will send them some of my details.

I will also insist that they send me their money by Western Union first.

Hah!

• spam
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Grandad July 2nd, 2009

Things have been a bit chaotic here in Head Rambles Manor of late.

You may have noticed a passing mention of computers going belly up?  That was just part of it.

For some reason, every time I start a day, which I seem to be doing now on a daily basis, something conspires to thwart my efforts at a quiet life.

I actually managed to allocate myself a quiet afternoon the other day.  No sooner had I sat down than the place was invaded by a K8, two grandchildren, an idiotic dog and a kitten.

Actually, the kitten was fun.  It decided that it didn’t like guinea pigs for some reason, and did its damndest to attack our Minnie.  For the sake of peace and quiet, our Minnie was in her cage, so the kitten climbed on top and tried to take swipes at her through the bars.  Minnie, being a very wise guinea pig, just ignored the kitten which didn’t help matters, and just made it all the more determined.

I forgot I had left the trapdoor on the top of the cage open, and the daft kitten went and fell into the cage.

I have never seen a kitten move so fast.

The fucking thing shot out like a scalded cat [even though it was quite cool in the cage] and decided that guinea pigs were enormous dangerous creatures to be avoided at all costs.  Minnie, of course just carried on munching whatever she was munching and never turned a hair.  I like her attitude.  She takes after me.

I have also been busy with the business of shutting down the business, whenever I can get on line.

I have decided that the best tactic, that involves the maximum profit and the least hassle is to send bills out to everyone, and wait for the responses.  So far it’s quite good.  One punter paid a couple of grand and he was just a name I plucked out of the phone book.  As soon as I get all the cheques in, I will just switch off the servers.  I honestly couldn’t be bothered with all the nightmares of shifting them to other servers.  Too messy.  They’ll thank me in the end when they stop getting any spam.

On top of all that, I have had the usual routine stuff, like gardening, games with the dog and hunting the odd American.

So you see, I haven’t had that much time for updating this thing.

But then, no one reads it anyway.

• Rambles
• Comments(17)

Grandad July 1st, 2009

I had to go into town today.

I was wandering around getting damp, as one does, when I saw I was about to pass a newsagent.

I have been in the shop before.  It’s a nice colourful place lined with magazines and sweets and things.

This time though there was a great big fuck-off sheet of plywood behind the counter that looked awful.

‘Aha!’ says I to myself.  ‘They have broken a window.’

But I immediately realised that there was no window there.  What had been there was the cigarette display.  And then I remembered.

The fucking Nanny State is at it again.

As and from today it is illegal to display cigarettes in shops.  Yes – it is against the law for anyone to see them!

A lot of people read this site.  Most come looking for a bit of pornography, or to find ways to remove a wasps nest, but that is beside the point.  The point is that with the number of visitors I get, I must have a fairly broad range of philosophies and ideologies.

At least one of you has to be a Neo-Nazi rabid anti-smoking fascist bastard, and I am appealing to you.

Yes, you [you miserable scum from the bottom of the cess pool].

Could you please tell me what the point of this latest law is?  I beg of you.  I really want to know.

Am I supposed to walk into a tobacconists and see an ugly sheet of plywood and say to myself ‘Oh shit! They don’t sell tobacco any more!’ and walk out avowing never to smoke again?

Do you seriously think that children walk into shops and are so overawed by the display of cigarettes that they have to buy them?

Please tell me, Arsehole. I really want to know.

And while you are at it, can you tell me why they aren’t bricking up the pubs so that children aren’t tempted by them?

Why aren’t cars sold with their doors welded shut so that boy racers can’t kill us?

What really riles me is the utter pettiness of this latest move.  It is a snide little dig that is going to do absolutely fuck all good except annoy people, and cost hard strapped shopkeepers more money that they can ill afford.

God give me strength!

• Politics , Rants , Smoking
• Comments(17)

Grandad June 30th, 2009

Over two and a half years ago, I wrote about our idiotic Council.

I told how they had managed to destroy a perfectly good stretch of road.  It was one of the most attractive roads in the neighbourhood, with its mossy stone walls and birch trees.  It was narrow and winding, which meant everyone had to drive at a reasonable speed, allowing them to enjoy the beauty of it.

The arseholes in the Council spent a fortune on it, removing a bend or two and adding a couple more.  They resurfaced it, and widened it.  The old stone walls are now gone, and are replaced with massive, very expensive looking stone escarpments.  I don’t know what the cost was, but it was a lot.

Of course, when the boy racers saw the new surface they tried to race it.  However, for all the money that was spent, the road still isn’t any faster or safer.  They still had an 80 kmph limit on it, which was always the limit.  Anyone who drives at that speed will kill themselves for sure, and good riddance.

I drove down it recently.  And what have they done now?  They have reduced the speed limit to 50!  Big fucking deal.  I don’t know why they did that.  No one could drive faster than 50 anyway.  There is nowhere they could place a speed trap.  Changing a speed limit involves changing signs, and it also involves changing by-laws.  It is yet another case of throwing money at a problem that never existed in the first place. 

The arseholes in the Council are always complaining about the lack of money.  They have to cut back on all sorts of essentials because the coffers are dry.

For the last couple of weeks they have been working on my road.

The started by drawing little yellow boxes around any little dimple they could find in the surface, and now they are cutting out those dimples and resurfacing them.

It is a fact of life that the better the road surface, the faster the traffic.  They are removing what were natural speed bumps and making a racing track on a road where children play. Once the work is finished, the speeds will go up.  Then they will have to spend more money trying to slow people down again.

How much of their non-existent money are they spending on that exercise?

Arseholes.

• On the road
• Comments(12)

Grandad June 29th, 2009

I’m back. Sort of.

I managed to rob the other laptop when Herself wasn’t looking.  Heh!

My own laptop finally died the death.

And before any of you dumbfucks with Linux or Macs start shouting, it was a hard disk failure.  Got that?  Hardware.  Nothing to do with whatever software I was running.  And don’t tell me a Linux or Mac has never had a hard disk fail.

Now I have to run the gauntlet of the shop where I bought it.  Doubtless they will try to shift me to the manufacturers, but I know my Sale of Goods Act!!

Wooops!!

As I type, I just had a call from the shop [I sent them an email to phone me about five minutes ago].  I am impressed with their response so far.  And the told me to bring it into them and they will deal with it.  Irish business are improving somewhat.

Who says the recession is a bad thing?

• computers
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