Head Rambles

Grandad June 24th, 2008

I have decided to take the plunge.

I have been toying with the idea of buying a Satellite Navigation System for some time now.

I am not one for ‘Toys for Boys’ and am usually wary of gimmicks.  I have had my mobile phone for about eight years now and have no intention of upgrading it.  I don’t have a flat screen television or any of those console things.

Driving down the country last week though, I was convinced.  Our K8 lent me her SatNav [I hate these abbreviations] for the journey West.

Two things convinced me.

The first was that I hadn’t a clue where I was half the time.

I have been travelling the highways and byways of Ireland for nearly sixty years.  In all that time, there was a comfortable familiarity in all the towns and villages.  I always knew where I was.  I knew every stretch of main road in the country, and apart from the odd bit of road widening, everything remained the same.

Now it’s all fucking motorways.  I haven’t a clue where I am.  I get lost going up to Dublin.  I usually end up getting dizzy from circling endless roundabouts, trying to find my way out of the maze.

The second thing that convinced me is that they are fun.

We were travelling back from Galway on the old main road.

“At the next roundabout take the second exit” said Yer Wan in the SatNav.

I came to the roundabout and there was a new exit that led to a new stretch of motorway.  I remembered that from before.  So I took the third exit.

The little car on the screen took the second exit and then realised I had misbehaved.  So it did a wobbly and settled onto the road I had now taken.

“Wrong exit,” said Yer Wan.  “Do a U-turn now!”

“Fuck off,” says I.

“Do a U-turn NOW!!”

“Fuck off,” says I.

Yer Wan sighed and thought for a moment.  She thought I needed placating.

“Drive for 120 yards and do a U-turn,” she said sweetly.

“Fuck off,” says I, as I swung onto a roundabout and entered the slip road for the new motorway.

This completely confused her.  As far as she was concerned, I had just driven into a field and she didn’t like that.

“DO A U-TURN NOW!” she screamed.

“Nope,” I replied as I brought the speed well over the speed limit and barreled along the new stretch of motorway.

The little car on the screen was now suspended in space.  She hadn’t a clue what was going on.  She got frantic.

“Head for the nearest road,” she implored.

I increased my speed a bit.

The SatNav burst into tears.

She kept trying to send me across the fields to adjacent roads, and I kept ignoring her.  She was in a bad way, and was obviously having a nervous breakdown.

Suddenly, on the screen, I saw an older stretch of motorway appear, and I was heading straight for it through thin air.

I entered the older motorway at about 140, and I heard an audible sigh of relief from the SatNav.  “Continue on this road for 50 miles,” she said in a how-the-fuck-did-I-get-here kind of voice.

I behaved myself after that, but I could tell she was nervous.  She had been outwitted and she didn’t like that.

So when my SatNav arrives, I’m going to programme it to go to London.  Every journey.

I want to see how long it takes to drive a SatNav insane.

• On the road
• Comments(29)

Grandad June 23rd, 2008

Once again, I have been trawling my search requests.

As usual, I am getting tons of requests for porn, which I refuse to give.  I mean to say - ‘old ladies giving blowjobs’?  What kind of sick fucks are there out there?

There are a lot of requests about getting rid of wasps nests.  There seems to be an international problem there.  My advice is fire or dynamite. 

There are some requests that are a little strange and I will endeavour to answer some of them.  They are reproduced here exactly as I received them.  As ever, my public service commitment is outstanding.

cant make out the voices in my head: Have you tried listening?  Or turning up the radio a tad?

i am the chosen one:  I am so happy for you.  What were you chosen for?

drinking old stale wine:  Not to be recommended, but if you must, you must.  I think you may have a small problem.  Have you noticed any pink elephants lately?

without subscription of sky, can we see the paid channels: Think about it, you twat…  How can you see the paid channels if you don’t pay?  Moron.

killing someone and the use of crushed glass: Interesting.  Have you tried putting it in their food?

god, i have a few more questions: Good.  Let’s have them….

come back tomorrow: Why?  Are you going to ask something interesting?

why do we call right hand as our right hand: Because it’s at the end of your right arm, you fucking eejit.  What do you want to call it?  Fred?

crook bertie ahern:  That’s not a question.  That’s a statement of fact.

do i need a big cock: That depends.  Do you have a big hen?

what are u have to be to drive in ireland: Insane.  By your spelling, I’d say you qualify.

what side of the road do you drive in ireland: I’m asked this one quite a lot.  It depends on how many pints I have had.

what does a blackbird look like: Like a bird. Only it’s black.

a turd on legs: We have already mentioned Bertie.

how to put sunglass on top of your head: If you need the Internet to tell you that, then I suggest you search for “brain transplant”.

how to fit head tits on to a toy truck with nothing to hold it !: What the fuck?  I need more information….

i hate sport: Me too.

how to make a sex toy out of things round the house: I suggest you start with the vacuum cleaner?

i enjoy kick my son balls: People have weird pastimes.  Does your son mind?

i don`t know what knid of dog my dog is can you help me: Easy.  Under your dog’s tail, you’ll find an opening.  Stick your head in there as far as you can, and you’ll find a metal plate showing the Manufacturer, Make, Model and Serial Number.

• Internet
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Grandad June 22nd, 2008

Hah! 

I just fired up my PC, and looked at this site.

No comments.

Hardly any visitors.

No one abusing me.

No emails to answer.

I don’t have to think at all.

Fantastic.

My blog is having a holiday.

• Rambles
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Grandad June 21st, 2008

I don’t normally get my jollies out of software. 

Software is just something I install on my computer to cause it to crash.

But I installed a piece of software last week, and it actually got the pulse rate to increase [very slightly].

If you run a blog, then this software is a cracker.

DON’T INSTALL IT.  If you do, you will regret it, because it is hypnotic.  You’ll spend hours just watching it.

I have to curse thank Bock for introducing me to it.

It’s a thing that goes under the horrible name of Woopra.  It kicks Google Analytics into the middle of last year.

You have to sign up for it, which isn’t easy, because it is only in the testing phase, and they have to approve your application.  This takes a while.  Then you add a tiny piece of code to your site [a much smaller piece of code that GA, I might add].  Lastly, you install the software package on your puter.

So what does it do?

Basically, it does all that Google does.  But it does a hell of a lot more.

First and foremost, it shows things as they are.  Now.  At this instant.  You can watch people arrive on your site and watch them browsing from page to page.  You can see exactly what they are reading at any instant.  And if you want to scare the shit out of them, you can send them an instant message that pops up on their browser, and you can then have a chat.  It’s great when people come looking for ’senior porn’ - I can send them an instant message - ‘We’re watching you. You little pervert’.  They tend to disappear fairly quickly [usually less than a nanosecond].  I have caused a couple of my regular readers to wet themselves, and I apologise.  I won’t do it again, unless you ask me to.

It does have its little problems, but then it is more Alpha than Beta, so that’s to be expected.  It drops out occasionally, and can be difficult to reconnect but that’s rare.  They also haven’t implemented a method of filtering users, so all my hits are counted [except those to the Admin area].  On the plus side, it runs on the PC so it is a lot faster than Google.  Its graphs and statistics are very comprehensive with a very powerful drill down.  You can do searches, and set alerts.  It doesn’t have a proper help section yet, so a lot of it is trial and error, and I keep finding new features every day.  Because of the tiny code, it tend to be a lot quicker off the mark so its figures are more accurate than Google’s.  I’m getting more hits and page views than I thought!  It also has a nice trend feature in its graphs.  It knows how many visitors or page views I should expect for the time of day, and graphs that against the actual figures.  It even gas a ticker-tape that shows how your trends are doing for the day.

I haven’t mentioned this before, but there are a couple of sad fuckers out there.  They are pals.  Each of them only has one friend and that is the other sad fucker.  Their hobby at the moment is to trawl my site looking for offensive material.  They are absolutely obsessed with it.  Neither has a sense of humour so they take everything I say literally, which causes them a lot of angst.  They have never commented on the site, though one of them wrote to me, and the other is spreading slander about me.  They really are a very sad pair.

I watched them last week.  They went through the site page by page.  They paid particular attention to three or four pages.  They spent three hours going through the site, and one of them notched up around 250 page views.  They really are obsessed.  It was fascinating to watch though.  One was even mailing the other, telling him which page to view.  I was very tempted to send an instant message asking if I could help them find anything.  I resisted though. 

I didn’t want to spoil their fun.

• Blogging
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Grandad June 20th, 2008

It has become a bit of a tradition that whenever I travel the Dublin to Galway road, I stop off at Locke’s Distillery in Kilbeggan.

I also stop there if I’m on the Galway to Dublin road.

Not only is a handy place for a piss, but they serve good food and coffee.

Locke’s Distillery is supposed to be the oldest pot still in the world.  It still uses all the old traditions and methods, and its most striking feature is the huge water wheel at the side.

When we arrived, I was delighted to see the wheel churning away, creaking and groaning as it has for well over a hundred years.

While we were there, a coach driver came in.

“I have a coach load of tourists outside,” says he. “Where do you want me to put them?”

“Bring them through to the back,” says the manager.

I might add that Locke’s is one of Ireland’s finest tourist processing plants.  I almost felt sorry for the coach load.  Luckily there was a fortuitous thunderstorm which drowned out most of the screams from the back. 

Later, I had to nip out to the car to fetch something.  On my way back, I noticed the water wheel had stopped, which was very unusual.

I went up to the girl behind the counter.

“Do you know that the wheel has stopped?”

“Aw fuck!” says she.  “Someone must have thrown another Spaniard in the works.”

• On the road
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Grandad June 19th, 2008

Grandad is back in Head Rambles Manor, having wandered the highways and byways of The West.

It was not a pleasant trip, but then funerals rarely are happy occasions.

They are even worse when one is saying goodbye to a close relative and a close friend.

We will miss her and her wicked sense of humour.

Thank you to everyone who left comments after the last, somewhat cryptic message.  I wasn’t in the form for writing, and my head was in a spin, as I had to arrange hotels and dog minders and things like that. 

It’s one of the things I hate about growing old - the number of funerals.

It’s a sure sign of old age when the only time you meet some people is when someone else has popped their clogs. 

We used to meet regularly at weddings.  Then we started meeting at christenings.  Now we meet at funerals.

Bugger.

At least it didn’t rain.

• The Family
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