Archive for October, 2007

Surreality

Grandad October 22nd, 2007

I’m in bad mood today. What else is new?

I wrote my little anniversary post this morning, and ended it politely like Me Mammy always taught me to.

I then had to go out to the village.

First thing was that I found my gate blocked by a f*cking SUV! As I am surrounded by damned building sites at the moment, I picked a builder at random and nailed him to a gatepost. He eventually told me who owned the SUV, just before he passed out.

The SUV was moved [and that is going to be a pile of ashes by tonight] so I went to the village. I found a nice parking spot but another f*cking SUV swung into it just ahead of me. Is it any wonder I hate the things?

In the shop, I saw a notice pinned to the wall. To cheer myself up, I read it, as it was from the local Senior Citizens’ Club.

Dear Friends,
It’s that time of year again when we have our last get-together.
With supper, music and dancing.

What the hell is this about? Senior Citizen Culling? A Lemming Syndrome? I didn’t realise they held an annual mass-suicide.

I won’t be going. I have no intention of popping my clogs just yet.

On my way home I got stuck behind a tourist bus. In October! Do they not know any better? Do they not read by blog?? Luckily, I had my RPG with me [Sandy was sitting on it, so it was nice and warm]. That made me feel a lot happier.

Then I get home and find my blog is filling up with comments.

What’s wrong with you all? Did no-one ever to say good bye when you are finishing a conversation? Should I have said ’see ya’, or ‘talk to you tomorrow’ or whatever the modern idiom is?

I liked the comment from Rhodester -

You best not quit blogging now.. if you do, I shall bring the missus and visit Ireland. We’ll hang out in your local pub and beat everyone at darts while regaling you with tales of life in California. We’ll be loud, brash and rude, and we’ll wear Hawaiian shirts and take pictures of EVERYTHING, so we can post them to our blogs upon returning home. Our friends will read about it and see the pictures, then they’ll want to come, and come they shall.. in droves..

Reminds me of the 60’s!!

And it just goes to show [to quote the Irish Rail ad] “A lot done, a lot more to do”.

The madness and the mayhem will continue. If only to keep Rhodester out.

I have to go now.

I have a few more builders to cull.

The year is over

Grandad October 22nd, 2007

I first launched this site on the 22nd of October 2006.

It was done as a joke. It was also done as an experiment, because I knew nothing about blogging.

If I had read other blogs before starting this, I might have adopted a completely different style. But I knew nothing, so just wrote whatever came into my head.

It has been a bit of a roller coaster of a ride. It has made me many friends; some real, some virtual. I have been introduced to the world of podcasting. I have been asked to write for the Irish Times. I have appeared on television. All because of the blog.

It hasn’t been hard work, because I enjoyed it. I probably got most pleasure out of the comments. Many’s the time Herself has told me to shut up, because I have laughed out loud at some comment or other.

The site has grown in popularity for some unknown reason. Last week alone, I was visited by 17,000 people who read 29,000 pages between them. That is a lot of people.

Anyway, when I set out, I decided I would do it for a year, and that I would try and do a post every day. In fact I wrote 524 posts and received over 6,200 comments. Wow!

And now the year is over.

Thank you all so much for reading.

Good Bye.

Job wanted

Grandad October 21st, 2007

I really have had enough of this.

I have been struggling with this web design business now for a few weeks, and it just isn’t me.

I have also been struggling with the Interweb thing and it’s annoying me. People keep sending me invites to Social Networking sites that they swear aren’t Social Networking sites, but it turns out they are. And people keep sending me Memes that drive me insane.

My computer is beginning to get ratty too. It’s starting to give out to me every morning. There’s nothing wrong with it physically [apart from a bit of fluff under the keys], but it’s just getting bad tempered. Like me.

So I’m quitting.

I want a new job to pass the time.

I’m quite good at a lot of things, though I’m not up to much physically, as some of the important bits have fallen off.

The old brain is still reasonably functional. I can do crossword puzzles, and my highest score on Minesweeper [Expert level] is 98 seconds. I’m not a bad shot. I’m very kind to animals, but not humans. I have to work from home, because I’m damned if I’m going to put up with that iniquitous smoking ban thing. There must be some job out there that I’d be good at.

I need something that doesn’t require any effort but makes a lot of cash.

I thought of being Taoiseach, but I’m not devious or corrupt enough for that. Even I have standards.

I thought of becoming a tribunal lawyer. But that means going into Dublin a couple of times a year, and I hate Dublin.

Has anyone got any ideas?

I don’t want to end up like this….

Linux is a load of Billux

Grandad October 20th, 2007

I woke early this morning.

I thought as I had some time to spare I’d try putting Linux on my PC.

I had already copied down the file from the Interweb, so I put it on a floppy, and stuck it in my floppy drive. [no jokes please]. I rebooted.

It made some funny noises, but things seemed to go all right. But then it started asking me questions. It wanted to know where to put the Linux, and did I want to use my whole hard drive?

I have my faithful crappy copy of Windows on the PC that works most of the time, and I didn’t want to lose that. Or my collection of porn photographs. So I had to switch the PC off and start again.

This time I went into Windows and cleared up some space. Then I went back to my Linux again.

All went well. I found the space and I told Linux it could do what it wanted with that, and it seemed happy. I went off to make my fifth mug of tea.

I came back to find it was complaining about my hard disk. It said it was faulty. B*ll*x. It’s only ten years old , so it can’t be that bad. And the little pop-up thingy that was complaining wouldn’t go away.

So I had to start again from scratch.

This time it worked. Everything went in. It told me to reboot, which I did.

It looks nice. Uncluttered. Clean. Nice colours.

I told it to connect to the Interweb, but it refused. So I had to try to find what was wrong. And I ended up going around and around in circles. I eventually got it connected after another six mugs of tea.

So I started browsing the Interweb. No problem. Of course everything looked the same as it did in Windows, only much slower.

I went to see what else was there.

Nothing.

None of the programmes I need are around, except for a text editor, and a copy of Open Office. I opened that and tried to read some of my old documents, but it’s confusing. I’m used to my old ways. I’m too old to change.

I did find some games. Linux provides a lot more Games than Windows. But that’s a lot of trouble to go to just to play a game.

In the end, I went back to Windows.

Windows may not work, but at least I know where all the programmes that don’t work, are.

Time for another mug of tea.

I’d better go for a pee too.

As thick as a plank

Grandad October 19th, 2007

Those f*cking builders next door are really getting on my nerves.

Not content with power saws and hammers, they are now hefting huge sheets of plywood around. They have been at it since half eight this morning. They are throwing them around with gay abandon, and when one lands in roughly the right place they bang dozens of nails into it.

I have just spent half an hour in the garden. I know my licence says I’m only supposed to shoot tourists, but there are limits.

I have already accounted for four. They went flying off into the garden the other side.

What is amazing though is that no one seems to have noticed! The others just wipe the blood off the plywood and carry on throwing it around.

Now I know the origin of the expression “as thick as a plank”.

Smoking is good for you

Grandad October 19th, 2007

Whenever there is a survey about health, they invariably ask if you smoke.

They then ask how many cigarettes a day.

But they never mention a pipe. And I often wondered how pipe smoking equated to cigarette smoking. I meant to ask the Doctor. And then it struck me - why not look it up on the Interweb?

So I did.

And what I found surprised even me.

Apparently, a pipe-smoker who smokes up to four bowlfuls of tobacco a day can have a longer life expectancy than someone who doesn’t smoke at all.

Several reports have shown this. Including one by our friend the Surgeon General of the United States.

Of course the Anti Smoking Nazis would have us believe that even thinking about tobacco is enough to bring on a brain tumour, so the idea of smoking prolonging life is pure heresy.

So how can the pipe be healthy, if tobacco is so evil? Simple.

The key to the whole issue lies in stress.

When calculating a persons expected lifespan, there are many factors to consider - heredity, lifestyle, general health and mental well-being.

Of these, mental well-being is considered to be one of the greatest factors. Being happy and relaxed in you life is enough to add years onto your life expectancy. Relaxation is the key. Stress is the killer.

To me, every aspect of cigarette smoking screams of stress - frantically jamming the fag in the mouth; the rapid dragging on it and the final stabbing of the cigarette in the ashtray. Pipe smoking is a ritual. By its nature, it’s a relaxing process - the careful packing of the tobacco into the pipe; the ritual of lighting it [a quick stab of a lighter isn't good enough here], and then sitting back and enjoying it. I even find the process of cleaning a pipe relaxing. People even say that the sight of another person smoking a pipe is relaxing.

People accuse me of inventing the stuff I write about. I’m very hurt by that, but I’ll let it pass.

I will quote from the Surgeon General of the United States in his report on the dangers of tobacco.

Specifically, this report confirmed what had been suspected for quite some time, that cigarette smoking could be dangerous. However, the conclusion drawn from several studies about pipe smokers was that they tended to live longer than the general population!

So. Throw away those damned cigarettes. They stink, and they are dangerous.

Put it in your pipe and smoke it.

« Prev - Next »