Archive for August, 2007

An easy one for the weekend

Grandad August 31st, 2007

It happened regularly.

Then it stopped for over a thousand years.

It started again seven years ago.

Since then it has happened over a hundred times, but it won’t happen again for some months.

There are some who will say that in fact it won’t happen again for over two hundred years and that it hasn’t happened recently at all.

How to remove a wasps nest

Grandad August 31st, 2007

I suppose it is my own fault.

I wrote last year about the peculiar problems I was having with wasps, who nest in my neighbour’s roof and then invade my bathroom in their thousands. It’s not very nice to walk, half asleep, into a bathroom that’s black and yellow with angry wasps. Especially when you aren’t wearing much.

I spoke to the neighbour several times about it. He was very nice, but he didn’t do anything about it.

I heard that the best way to treat bees is to smoke them. It makes them docile. I can empathise with that. So I thought I would try the same with the wasps.

There was a little hole in the neighbours roof that they flew in and out of, so I put some paper in and set fire to it. It didn’t burn.

So I added some petrol.

That burned.

The neighbour took it very badly. I don’t know why. I did call the fire brigade for him, and they arrived very promptly, within four hours. I even offered to lend him my camping cooker. But he’s still not talking to me.

I don’t know what he is complaining about. I got rid of the wasps nest. And I don’t think they used their kitchen and living room that much. Actually, it was quite spectacular. Especially when the gas cylinders blew up.

They are demolishing the remains at the moment. They have a huge digger in there, and they are pulling down the walls of the shell. Every now and then, another section of wall comes down and all the plates in the kitchen rattle, as do the windows. And my teeth. Sandy is hiding under the bed and my nerves are in bits. Herself is having one of her nervous breakdowns.

More Prozac.

As I say, I suppose I must take some of the blame.

Maybe five gallons of petrol was a bit excessive.

The fans have hit the S.H.I.T.

Grandad August 30th, 2007

Once more, with feeling, I have a problem.

For those of you who are new to this place, I have [had] a friend Ron, who with our pal Dick runs a web design business. I shot Ron [accidentally, I might add] a few weeks ago but couldn’t tell Dick. So I had to lash off and buy “HTML for Dummies”, “MySQL for Dummies”, “PHP for Dummies” and “CSS for Dummies” and then pretend to be Ron. They are incredibly boring books, by the way. Don’t get them if you want a laugh.

My problem is that I seem to be a better businessman than Ron.

My first site was a great success, and the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since.

I now have lost count of the number of jobs I’m working on. I think it’s six or seven. And they all want me to finish yesterday. I had two phone calls yesterday - two more jobs…..!

I am now slowly sinking in a morass of dollar signs and curly brackets. I have nightmares about pixels and database updates. I have resurrected S.H.I.T.

I want to sit here and smoke my pipe and drink my tea. I want to write rude posts on my blog. I want to visit other peoples blogs and leave rude comments there. I want to relax and enjoy my retirement. But I don’t have the time any more.

Mind you, the money is f*cking good!

Put out your Recycle bin for collection on Fridays

Grandad August 30th, 2007

There are times when computers p*ss me off.

When I say ‘times’, I really mean ‘all the time’.

In the evening, I usually bung my computer into Hibernate. That way, I don’t have to go through the painful process of opening each program in the morning.

I fired up my ‘puter this morning, and it did its usual thing of trying to update everything at once. That takes an age because the anti-virus is fighting with Windows, and Windows is fighting with some other program, because they all reckon they have first dibs on my internet connection.

Anyway, the anti-virus won and updated itself. Then it farted at me and told me I needed to reboot.

B*ll*x! I had to frantically check everything to make sure it was saved, before the reboot. And of course that never goes smoothly. Half my programmes insist that they want to complain to Microsoft because they are stuck.

Anyway I rebooted.

As soon as I did, Windows got into the queue and it has started updating itself. Now I know that any second it’s going to demand another reboot. It can f*ck off. I’ve had enough of that for one day.

-oOo-

On another note - I emptied my Recycle bin today. I remember to do this about once every six months. It’s not like my usual bin which is emptied on Tuesdays.

Now, what worries me is that I am throwing away millions upon millions upon millions of bits of information here. Where do they go? Is it into landfill? Is there a huge hole somewhere that is gradually filling up with the contents of peoples recycle bins?

Or is the information actually recycled as its name implies? Am I re-using all those letters and numbers at this very moment? Am I writing with recycled text? What guarantee have I that a rude picture mightn’t decide to recycle itself into the next letter I write to my solicitor?

Now I’m worried again…….

If it ain’t broke - fix it

Grandad August 29th, 2007

This morning, I did what I do most mornings.

I made myself a cuppa, and sat down with the laptop, to check my mail.

“Server Not Found”

Bugger!!

Went to check a website or two…

“Page cannot be loaded”

Double bugger!!

I tried various things but couldn’t get connected.

Now, it’s still early in the morning so I’m not really thinking straight. I jump to the natural conclusion that my broadband has failed. Now this means a long phone call with my provider, where I will try to get my message through to someone who hasn’t a word of English. But I ring them anyway.

So I go through the usual hoops of pressing different numbers and listening to musak and ads and things and eventually get through to a real person. Foreign, of course, but a reasonable command of the language. I give him my details and explain that I have no service.

I have one of those cordless phones, and to while away the time I tend to wander around the place. I wandered over to my main PC [I am a man of the modern world - PCs all over the place!] and switched it on.

While I am telling this bloke that my service is down, the main PC starts downloading mail. All the usual penis enlargements start arriving in my inbox.

Shit!

I nip back to the laptop, and it is still dead. I realise then that somehow the wireless button thingy is not lit. Somehow, it got switched off. I switched it on, and there was my connection.

Double shit!!

And all this time, the bloke on the phone is protesting that he can find nothing wrong with my connection and I am insisting that I can’t connect. So what do I do now? If I admit it is my fault, then I will lose credibility and they will laugh at me and never take me seriously again.

The bloke then starts complaining that he can see traffic on my sector going to my connection. So I tell him that’s impossible. “There’s no connection,” says I “so how can there be traffic?”.

I demanded to speak to a supervisor. The supervisors there never speak to anyone [I don't think they have any] so I knew I was safe. He started to panic. He started pressing buttons all over the place. I could hear his keyboard clacking like mad.

“There.” I shouted, “Whatever you just did brought my service back!”

“But I did not do anything?” he replied.

“Yes you did,” I said “and my service is now fine. Thank you very much. You have been a great help, and I’m going to write to the management and tell them how good you are.”

I hung up.

I’m sure I have made him feel good. He feels he has accomplished something, and he has received a verbal pat on the back. The call wasn’t a waste of time.

Now I have to wade through the penis enlargements, and see if any of them are any good.

Lament to an old friend

Grandad August 28th, 2007

I went for a pint last night for the first time in a while.

I got chatting to Mick who is one of the barmen. He pulls great pints and is an affable sort of bloke.

“I haven’t seen yourself and Ron in here lately.” says he. “I heard you shot him?”

“Yeah. It was an accident. But he doesn’t see it that way”

“Ah! Some people are like that. They take things personally. Have you seen him since?”

“No. He sent me a letter bomb a few weeks ago, which was messy. It blew up a builder.”

“There’s no call for that,” says Mick “it’s hard when people bear a grudge.”

“Then a few days later he took a shot at me outside the coffee shop.”

“So that’s who shot Sargent Murphy? We wondered who that was.”

“Yup, it was Ron. I feel sorry for Murphy, but they say he can still have children if he tries hard.”

“You haven’t seen Ron since then?”

“Not since last week, when he dropped a concrete block onto me from a bridge on the M50″

“Nasty. Did he get you?”

“Nah! I saw him in time and swerved. He got one of those Smart cars that was behind me.”

smart.jpg

“God, but they’re ugly yokes, those Smart cars. Did he do much damage?”

“Let’s just say that the designers thought that they were smart, but they weren’t smart enough to design their car to take a nine inch concrete block dropped from a bridge.”

“Ouch! Messy?”

“Messy is not the word. Give us another pint will ya?”

I’ll miss Ron. He was such a placid bloke.

-aAa-

If you are looking for an old friend, try an online People Search to re-connect. The internet has made it possible to Find People from your past, but searching through Public Records and other databases to find the People we seek.

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