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I don't know why, but I keep going back to this video, so I thought I'd post it. I think they've really captured the “Rob Green incident” really well.

Karen was out getting her hair cut, so dad was on party duty. Took William to one of his friend's birthday parties - they arranged a trip round a fire station which was pretty cool - don't all kids love fire engines? Then off to the park. I'm reasonably impressed with this picture as it's snapped from my mobile phone.

The other think that was cool was that one of the fireman asked me if he could look round my car whilst the kids looked round the engine. Just boys and toys!

And I thought it was just me. My car has the latest “voice recognition” technology, but it doesn't seem to understand me. I figured it was my accent and that it only understands American. Karen can vouch for the fact that I end up shouting at my car when I need it to do something. I find it rather ironic that it's a “safety feature”. I actually find that when I try and use the voice commands, I end up taking my eyes off the road more to look at the console in the hope that it's going to put something on the screen that hints to it understanding something of what I've asked. In the good old days, you want to call someone, you pick up your phone, dial the number and you're done. In the name of safety, we have a procrastinated process of screeming names at the voice recognition trying different accents to get it to try and understand us.

So, after that quick rant. If I've got problems..... these guys don't stand a chance:

Been a long time since I've posted a blog, I felt I'd share a quick experience with everyone. Hopefully most people will have noticed that it was Easter last weekend. As is the tradition on this day, at least in the US anyway, all the kids go and do an egg hunt.

Stupidly I agreed to go along to the local one that William was participating in. I guess there's a first .... and last for everything. So we trundled up to the location of the egg hunt. Found a parking space and proceeded to make our way into the park. Karen then figured out we were late, which was news to me as I hadn't been aware of a time we were walking towards, so she ran off with William to get him setup. I lost sight of them and proceeded up the hill to the milling crowd on the assumption that this was where the action would take place. My instincts were correct - this was indeed the right location and I was soon reunited with wife and child. My job was to man the camera and take pictures of the little one as he foraged for eggs in the designated area.

The designated area was a rectangle marked with yellow tape. Several next to each other in order to separate the kids. Apparently there were instructions surrounding the event - only kids in the designated area and a six egg maximum. Well, the whistle went and all the parents dived in. Rule number one out the window. In fact, it was too hectic that I didn't even get a photo off. Shortly, William came back as he couldn't find anymore eggs and Karen went in with him and that's when I took this first picture:

So the above is after it had started to calm down. Now, we only found out the rules after the event had completed. Upon returning, I asked William to walk back in and then come back towards me so I could take a picture and you will notice that his “haul” is a little over the six egg limit.

Interestingly, all the above actually took less time to take place than it did to write this article. All the fun was to happen next - bouncy castles, kids playing, parents talking to each other and all that good stuff. Well, so I'm told. I told Karen she could stay as long as she wanted which, surprisingly was about an hour and a half. I went back to my car, switched on the radio and fell asleep listening to it.

Next year, I'm working on cutting out the middle man and simply staying in bed.

I guess I'm about a week or so late posting this, but have had other things to do. Well, if you call playing video games and generally worrying about work given the economy, other things. So, Mr O and myself went to watch a couple of NASCAR races at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana and Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Very exciting for me given that I’m following Juan Pablo Montoya and got to watch his car blow up in Fontana and see his team mate take him out in Vegas…. Hmmmm. Also, can anyone say “five in a row”? Jimmie Johnson managed to win both the Sprint cup races we saw and looks like he’s going to be in the running for another title.

Alright, enough of the sports report and now onto more irrelevant things. It’s difficult to miss the fact that Danica Patrick has entered stock car racing. She’s doing about 12 races in the Nationwide series and I think going full time next season – we’ll have to wait and see. It was pretty apparent that there was a lot of interest in her at the race track. The longest lines were at the #7 Go Daddy stall and there were a lot of people talking about her. She’s a pretty good drive as we’ve seen in Indy Car, but I wouldn’t say out of the ordinary. I was trying to figure out whether the interest in her was because she’s a woman or because she’s an attractive woman and that many people were hoping that they would get lucky if they ever met her. Based on this last premise, I was rather pleased to snap the shot below. Kevin Harvick had just passed Danica to put her a lap down. I was rather pleased with myself for this one as it’s a picture of Danica in the lucky dog position – one I’m sure that many have dreamt about. Now the best thing about this picture is that if you look carefully, you can see a bit of Busch too. (Oh but for school boy humor).

All that pales in comparison, however, if you do an actual search on pictures of Danica. Below is one such example that I found which, is far better to look at than my blurred picture and a couple of double entendres.

Oh well, continuing the theme of irrelevant, I did snap another picture that lends itself to the caption competition. It’s been almost three years since I’ve posted a picture there, so I’m quite pleased I got one. Feel free to take a look and add a caption to the Caption Competition Picture #3.

Last, I’m sure there are thousands of people out there waiting for the photos to be posted. I’ve sort of processed most of them, but lethargy got in the way so you’ll have to wait another week before you get to see these.

Seems a few people I've spoken to haven't seen this, so I figured I'd post it. A fine showing from the British Bobsled team even if I say so myself.

Congratulations have to be given to Jimmie Johnson for winning his fourth consecutive NASCAR championship. Obviously Jimmie's been on the edge of his nerves since his bad luck at Texas - not necessarily worried about whether he was going to bounce back and win his fourth championship, but rather worrying about whether or not he will get recognition from EastBayRag.

Clearly achieving something that has never been done before in the history of your sport is good, but until it's been ratified here, does it really mean anything? Being serious for a minute, however, I am actually pleased for Jimmie, Chad and the 48 Lowes team. Given how close the competition is, this is a very big achievement.

I almost missed this one if it wasn't for hearing a ticket offer on The Bone (local radio station) going into work one morning. Chickenfoot were playing at the Greek Theater in Berkeley (or Bezerkeley as the band were trying to get the place renamed). Chickenfoot's a new band of old heroes - Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony and Chad Smith - all of whom have had distinguished careers on their own. I've heard their music and I really like, so it seemed like a good concert to go to. Found out that one of the guys at work was going, so he decided to sell his ticket and get two more and we went together (well, sat together anyway, we traveled separately).

Interestingly, his single ticket was further back from the stage. Not sure if we just timed it right when there had been some returns, however, we ended up with a couple of seats in row 6 - can't complain at that. In fact, the only thing I can complain about was the walk from where I parked my car - traffic was horrific getting to the venue due to its location in Berkeley and when I got there was told the disabled parking was full and so was the nearest car park. I was somewhat lucky that a space opened up on the street so I only had 4 blocks to hobble instead of 6 from the next nearest parking lot.

Enough grumbling, the show was fantastic. Mark who I was with commented that there wasn't a wasted note in the entire evening and I have to agree with him - it was really impressive. There were a couple of things that really made if for me - the first was that the band themselves were clearly having a lot of fun, Hagar commented a couple of times that he felt like he was the luckiest man alive to be doing what he was doing and there was no reason to doubt him. There was a fantastic dialogue between Sammy and Chad throughout the show with input from Mike. Joe didn't say much, but he doesn't have to - when you can play the guitar that well, you really don't need to say anything.

The second thing was that I've had a desire to catch a drumstick thrown into the crowd ever since I went to my first concert some 27+ years ago (Iron Maiden on March 5th 1982 at Leicester De Montfort Hall, although technically the first band I ever saw would have been The Rods as they were the support at this show). Well, 27 years later and a seat in row 6 and I got lucky enough to catch one of the (many) drumstick's Chad tossed into the crowd. I have to add the “many” comment as Chad did indeed generously impart many drumsticks which did increase my chances of getting one. Never-the-less, it was a clean take (all those year's playing as a goalkeeper not wasted) and given that I only have one free hand, that was pretty cool as there were many fumbles with all the other sticks that were being contested followed by a scramble on the floor to find it.

The only thing I disagreed with during the evening was in the middle of the set when I felt compelled to scream “42 Montoya” at the top of my voice. I doubt he heard me, but Sammy started it when he dedicated the song “Turnin' Left” to “the driver of the number 48 .... Jimmie Johnson.” The song itself makes me laugh as it has a chorus of “we go round in circles&rquo; which seems more than appropriate. Don't know if Sammy would have had the chance to see the qualifying results, but Jimmie did make the pole for this weekend's race at the Monster Mile (Dover). And I certainly wouldn't be someone to bet against Jimmie achieving what is now being called “The Chase 4 History”, however, my man Montoya is alongside Jimmie for the start of the race and you know he's going to take the race to Jimmie. Guess we'll see tomorrow who wins on the day, but I suspect we won't know the Champion until we close the season at Homestead, particularly given the number of drivers that have a realistic chance of claiming the title.

I feel moved to report the story that I'm sure everyone has already heard about which is that of the police hunt in Papua New Guineau for the sex cult leader. Apparently the leader of a sex cult promised local villagers a bumper banana crop if they had sex in public. The cult leader avoided capture by using two of his wives as shields before making his escape.

I've searched the web, but can't find any pictures. What I really want to know though is whether he disappeared into the bush?

My latest attempt to get some of the stimulus money has failed! I learned yesterday that the government was doing this cash for clunkers program where they would give you between $3,500 and $4,500 for your old car so you could part exchange if for a new economic vehicle (over 22 mile per gallon - US gallons before you start wondering why the number is low).

I thought this made sense and it was something that I should look into given that the affectionately termed “pile of crap” that I'm driving around in is falling to bits. Well, turns out that my heap of junk doesn't qualify as a clunker. Apparently it should perform at 19 mpg and a qualifying clunker needs to be below 18 mpg. I feel that there should be some kind of appeal process where I can get my turd mobile means tested. One look at it and anyone in their right mind would class it as a clunker, but no.

I guess there's truth in the saying “should have bought a V8” for more reasons than just the power.

A week ago I went to see Whitesnake and Judas Priest in concert. (Either the penny's dropped now or it's not going to).

Get a real job
Anyone ever talk to you about a career when you were at school? I know that's all out the catflap now with Gen Y and the Millennials, but there was some sense of needing to figure out what you wanted to do in your career when I was at school. Far be it for anyone to suggest that you do something flippant like join a rock and roll band. Interesting then that some of these bands have been performing for circa 40 years. It would be interesting to see what the current generation thinks about the fact that these guys have been around doing their stuff for that long ..... particularly in the current economy now the fear has been put into this generation that it is not the employer that is privileged to have them on board, the privileged is for one to have a job.

British Steel
My next interesting contemplation is the fact that Judas Priest fly the banner of “British Steel” based off the heavy metal term. Now, I lived in Sheffield for a few years which is (or was) the home of the British Steel industry. That industry is long gone and I do wonder whether the UK has made more money exporting heavy metal, particularly with groups that led the charge in the 80's NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal). As sad as it may seem, this may actually be true.

The Rebel
Now, during the concert I thought it would be good to stand. Unfortunately, we were at the front of the seating bit and the folks behind us didn't want to. It's hard to explain the layout, but we were the second row of the back bit of seating. I was on the end of the row and next to me was a gap then a 3 to 4 foot high concrete wall for the steps that lead down to the lower level. Being considerate, I got up and walked over to the concrete wall so I could stand and not block anyone's view. Unfortunately, jobsworth didn't see it that way and came over to me to get me to stand in front of my seat. I tried to point out to him the error of his ways, but he was having none of it. There may have been a time in my life that I would have pressed this issue further, but on reflection I guess I'm really just a 40 odd year old chartered account from Leicester ... and not a hard man of rock living life on the edge without a care ..... I returned to my seat quietly and sat down.

Hobo
I lied at the beginning, I'll give one more hint to make the penny drop. I don't understand what's wrong with the word “hobo”? One of Whitesnake's biggest hits “Here I go again” contains the line “like a hobo I was born to walk alone”. My guess is that somewhere along the line, somebody thought this line was either being misheard or that people didn't know what a hobo was and the line was changed to “like a drifter I was born to walk alone”

There's been several posts on this site as to my creativity (or lack thereof) around setting up bird feeders, most recently in the bird feeder antics article that features a video of my spinning feeder. A really bad thumbnail of that picture shows how it startedbut I strongly suggest watching the video if you have the time.

So, in that last article I pointed out that it was likely that the spinning feeder solution would not work for long and I was correct. It spun and fell off. Time to create the pulley system. I don't have any video or pictures of the initial pulley system that was put into place unfortunately. That said, it worked extremely well.

Not being satisfied with a working feeder, I decided to make some modifications to it. You will already note the slinky that's around the pole. This is to stop squirrels climbing the pole and getting to the bird food. Believe it or not, this works extremely well and is very funny to watch (shame I never have my video recorder when it happens). The squirrel climbs to the slinky, pauses to try and figure it out, then proceeds only to be lowered slowly to the ground. Alright, squirrels sorted, it was time to take on the jays. We have both scrub and Stellar's jays in the garden that seem to hog the feeders. They have access to the big feeder, but I wanted to make this one exclusive for the little birds, so I came up with the idea of encasing the feeder in chicken wire. I created a prototype and it worked, so I decided to go into production and create a case.

Works great, until one day I was looking outside the office window and saw ....Sorry about the angle as the picture seems to highlight the bushes, but if you look closely you will see that there's something missing. Yep, my contraption had collapsed under its own weight.

Refusing to be deterred, I've decided that it only needs stronger rope to hold it up. I've therefore strung it up. Next problem was the feeder looked like it was going to drop through the bottom of the chicken wire, so I've strung up the feeder inside the case that is stung up to the pulley (i.e. the feeder house is now suspended inside the cage. I haven't taken another picture of this yet).

My guess is that the pole will snap next with all the weight on it, but we will have to wait and see ...

Well, it's finally come to it. I had to go to my first concert on my own yesterday as I couldn't find anyone to come with me. Now, I have to admit that the reason I was going was to see Slayer that, even for some metal fans, may be a little heavy. That said it was a festival (Mayhem Festival) with Marilyn Manson, Slayer, Killswitch Engage and Bullet for my Valentine on the main stage and Trivium, Cannibal Corpse, Job For a Cowboy, God Forbid, Behemoth, All that Remains, The Black Dahlia Murder and Whitechapel also performing. Surely everyone could find someone in that list that they have on top of their minds to go and see. And if that wasn't enough, there was the Metal Mulisha freestyle motorcross team performing stunts .... how could you say no? (I may have the lineup slightly wrong as I have to admit I was a little late getting to the event so only really caught Trivium and the guys on the main stage).

I'm probably biased, but I thought it was a fantastic event. Was really impressed with the bands I saw. The only slight nag I have is that I would have liked to see Slayer perform last rather than Manson but that's probably because I'm more of a Slayer fan although some of it is down to the fact that it's not going to get any louder or faster than Slayer, so it does seem a little like it's a wind down at the end.

Anyway, the place was packed, but not with people I know. “Billy no mates” rides again! Does this mean I'm forever condemned to be the last of the headbangers or is there hope out there? I think this will be the subject of this week's vote. I guess I'm happy regardless .... so long as I can reign in blood.

This is something I meant to write weeks ago. Totally forgot about it, but then saw it again on the Premiere League season review. During the game near the end of the season between Liverpool and West Bromwich Albion, the commentator made the following comment about The Baggies - “They're playing Russian Roulette ...” - Liverpool then scored and the commentator added - “... and they've just shot themselves in the foot.”

Given the alternative, I think I'd happily take one in the foot.

As we head into a long weekend here in the good old US of A, I found myself home early on the Friday putting up another bird feeder. Seemed like a golden opportunity to get out the video camera and create another masterpiece.

Look for the “Bird Feeder” video options on the Other Videos Page.

The big question is how long it will last before it breaks? You know it's going to. The next question is whether I should create a pulley system for the next generation bird feeder? This seems to be the more sustainable solution. Finally, bonus points if you can name the theme tune.

No sooner had I written the previous article about my camera being cool, as it offered the potential of exploding batteries, than I turned on my xBox 360 to find that it had broken. Nothing so dramatic as blowing up, but it put three of the red lights on the front of the console which, after much googling, turns out to be a general hardware error. I can bore you with details about how to get the xBox to show you sub error codes, but you can find that elsewhere if that's your cup of tea. What is relevant here is the fact that this display of three red lights is knows and “the three red rings of death” which sounds to me like some homosexual Russian roulette game.

Still, far be it from me to turn down a challenge, so I decided to probe the three red rings of death further. Soon to learn that you can abbreviate this to rrod (red rings of death). OK, so I'm on top of the lingo, but what about the actual problem? Some further googling identifies a large number of potential fixes from wrapping your xBox in towels in order to over heat it to microwaving it. I actually think all fixes are valid as it seems that the problem is due to M$ using cheap parts in the xBox that last about long enough to see you through the warranty period. It appears the chip design and the way the heat sinks are attached are not the best and cause the motherboard to warp. I suspect the towel or microwave trick work as they temporarily bend the board back - don't know as I didn't try either of them.

Instead, I went with a solution provided by P!nk Thr3@t from i-hacked.com/360fix. Far more fun as this involves dismantling your xBox and changing parts out (well connections rather than parts). Also, the name of the game is to be left with spare parts that you take out of the 360 - now how many times have you taken something to bits, put it back together and had bits left over?

I have to admit that I was a little skeptical, however, I guess if I were to do a video, my name would be “f@t 0ld Bl0k3” which probably doesn't have the same punch as P!nk Thr3@t - maybe 30 years ago ....

Here's my series of pictures until I got bored and stopped taking any:


In case you're wondering though, it did work. Or so far so good anyway, my 360 is back up and running.

I decided to take the plunge and buy myself a new camera. I know the economy's not doing too well and there's a lot of uncertainty out there, but here's the deal - applied to the government for some bail out money, paid myself an obnoxiously large bonus and still had enough to buy the camera. Just doing my bit to make the world a better place :)

Anyway, what's cool is that I read the manual and in it there was a note for the remote control - "warning - battery may explode if abused." How cool is that?

I spent an hour or so yesterday calling it names and telling it that it would never amount to much, but nothing's happened so far. I intend to subject it to a lot more abuse over the weekend and we'll see what happens.

Wow - what an exhausting week. Really busy at work, not going to bore you with the details of that, but one thought that keeps crossing my mind is that the effect of this economy is to take the same amount of work and give it to fewer people. Anyway, before I get dangerously close to talking about something important, time to get back to the inane.

First, was on a call at home in the evening and whilst pacing around, I looked out the window and saw what I thought was a male downy woodpecker doing what woodpecker's do - pecking wood. It was climbing up one of the pine trees merrily woodpeckering away.

On closer inspection, it seems that this is actually a red-breasted sapsucker. The photo above is a bit blurry as the light was fading, but at least I now have a photo of him.

Next was a quick visit to the hospital again. Yep - couldn't quite make it a quarter without popping back in for a visit. Not a recurring problem - this visit was for a new and exciting problem. I've heard a few people say that a boil on the bum is one of the most painful things you can have. I don't know whether or not that's the case as I seem to have got something like that on my inner thigh rather than my bum. Bloody painful though, but appears to be healing so I won't dwell on that.

Right, next to the little one - he's been poorly. Some kind of bug I think. The only real knock on effect to me is occasionally waking up in the night and having to say “Karen - I think you need to go see if William's OK again.”

Then there's the birding society that I joined to see if I could find where interesting birds are. Managed to get a tip on a tufted duck that we were able to get out and see this Saturday.

Now, the interesting challenge is trying to find a single bird in a huge lake with absolutely thousands of ducks on it. Thankfully, it was more or less the first bird I saw as I walked to the lake (I'd started walking down whilst Karen got William out of the car). I caught site of it just before it went out of view under the near bank. Karen's approach was more interesting and that was the process of elimination. All I could here as she approached was “is that it? No. Is that it? No. Is that it? No .... ” seemingly answering her own questions. My fallback approach, had we failed to find tufty, was to look for the other people with binoculars and camera's at the lake (rather than the local residents) and see where they were looking. If you are interested you can see more pictures of this and other birds from this visit to Lake Merritt.

A busy week, but what has all this got to do with the title? Well, one of the birding messages came through with a link in it to someone's site. Being the nosey kind of person that I am I decided to go check it out. I was pretty impressed with some of the stuff that this guy's done and put together. See what you think voicewhiz. If you're a Simpson's fan like myself, I'm sure you've made the connection to the title. (Either that or I'm just way off base again).

Probably not that interesting to many of you out there, but there's a couple of things I've caught on TV that have reminded me about a couple of things from the road trip. The first was an episode of King of the Hill where Buck Strickland was being inducted into the Hall of Flame at a convention in Memphis. Long story shot, Buck meets up with his illegitimate son and they hit the town. Buck turns to his son and says “lets go out and get some women ... what's the bad area of Memphis called again?” His son looks at him quizzically and replies “Memphis.”

The next was an episode of Knight Rider. No, I've not gone retro on you - there's a new series of Knight Rider which, as I understand it, is not yet available in the UK. I think it's great - it's one of those things that's so bad it's good. It's also very Simpson like in its references to other shows. This latest episode had Billy dress up in a military uniform to pull a scam to free Michael and also ended with him getting a date with the pretty girl. Sound familiar? Well, the military character is introduced as Lieutenant Benedict and later in the episode, we find that his name is Templeton Benedict. Maybe it's just me, but you have to give credit for that.

I was debating whether or not to write this article under the Road Trip section as technically I'm on the trip now. I decided against that as I've got some thoughts as to how I'm going to organize my share of those blogs which you will see in due course. So, “The Knowledge”, for those of you that don't know, is what a London Taxi driver has to pass in order to get a license to serve in the City. Basically, you need to memorize the streets of London, so when someone gets into your cab you can take them to their destination - pretty complicated given the intricacies of London's road network. But it's achievable as there are many taxis working in London.

Now, I don't expect everybody to know everything, but I do kind of expect a taxi driver to have some sense of direction and have roughly an idea of where they're going. Not so in Florida. My faithful cabbie happily picked me up from the airport - I told him the name and location of my hotel and he drove off. As we're driving, he then tells me that he didn't know where the hotel was so I read out the address. Still no joy. He asked me if I had the phone number to call the hotel and get directions - seriously! Thankfully I have GPS on my phone, so I put in the hotel address and successfully navigated him to my destination. What we'd have done if I hadn't got GPS I don't know - I'd probably still be wandering round the suburbs of Orlando.

So I paid the driver when we got to the hotel and he had the cheek to ask me for a tip. “Yeah - buy a GPS .....tw*t”

I doubt it's escaped the notice of anybody in the world that the US has a new president. All eyes are on President Obama to see what changes he's going to bring about. And I think we're all hoping that these changes will help turn the economy around.

OK, so with Obama coming in, it's time to say goodbye to George W. I think The Sun newspaper ran an article “So Long George, Thanks For All The Laughs” and it does seem that, if nothing else, President Bush provided a lot of materials for the comedians. Well, with Bush leaving office, I have to give full marks to Veet for running a “Goodbye Bush” advertising campaign starting on the day of inauguration.

A friend of mine shot me a picture of a page from the Daily Telegraph in the UK showing the ad. I particularly like the placement of this, just under an Obama article.

Daily Telegraph Goodbye Bush. (Scroll to the bottom of the page).

So, for most of you that have been following the vote questions each week, you will know that we're going ahead with the cross country road trip. We'll be in Florida for the Daytona 500, then heading back across to Vegas for the Shelby 427. White trash or what!?!

Anyway, the map below outlines our currently proposed route. I'd be more than happy to hear from anyone who has any thoughts or comments. Any ideas of things to see on the way that we've not got mapped out.


Key
A - Daytona Beach
B - Kennedy Space Center
C - Atlanta
D - Graceland
E - Bald Knob
F - Springfield
G - Cawker City (World's largest ball of twine)
H - Lebanon (mid point of the US from New York to San Francisco)
I - Kinsley (mid point of the 48 states)
J - Roswell
K - Four Corners (only place in the US where four states touch each other)
L - Grand Canyon
M - Hoover Dam
N - Las Vegas

So, we find ourselves in 2009 with a whole year of excitement watching the economy collapse ahead of us. Guess it's time to start blogging again to at least shed some light on things that have interested me. The first of the year is a big shout out to Curt, a friend of mine, and the Drunken Clams, the band that he plays in. I went to see them play for the first time on Wednesday at Grant and Green in San Francisco. Now, even though I freely admit that I have less musical talent than the Spice Girls and therefore my opinion may not be worth too much, I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the band. Even considering the fact that Luis, the lead singer was suffering from an awful cold, it was still a good show - even if it was to watch Luis drink shots of Tabasco sauce in an attempt to ease his throat. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next gig to hear the band in full form. Couple of quick links if anyone's interested:

DrunkenClams.org
Drunken Clams on Facebook

Interesting tactics being deployed here to score a goal from a free kick. Simply get three of your team members to run forward and moon the keeper. Very debatable as to whether this would be considered “gentlemanly conduct”, but it worked.

I feel I need to explain how I came across this before I dive into the details as I don't want anyone to think that I was looking for anything related. So, I was on the photography challenge website that I look at to get ideas for photos and see what some of the other folks have done. There was a link to a forum thread on Halloween that someone had just posted to so I thought I'd have a read. Anyway, this one person had posted a picture of his dog that he'd dressed up as a bee (as he didn't have any kids - apparently he and his wife dress their dog up instead). A few posts later and someone had commented on the picture saying that there was a site dedicated to people who like to dress their dogs up as bees. Yep - apparently this is something that many people like to do. If you don't believe me, take a look Beedogs.

After being in the States now for over seven years, I've finally had my UK music collection shipped over. Anybody who knows me understands how near and dear my music is to me, so I'm one happy little puppy at the minute. In a complete blast, I've ripped all the CDs as they really don't take very long to do. I've purchased a record player (turntable) that I've connected up to my sound card and am slowly working my way through the vinyl. As the music gets processed, you'll see it appear on the Ragbox if you're interested in hunting for it, but my guess is that you're probably not.

It is very interesting taking a trip down memory lane. The one thing that seems to be sticking out to me is how truly awful the “B” side of singles really are. The Bone frequently does a “B” side request show, but they just use the phrase in the context of old classic songs that you haven't heard in a while. Not to mean the complete and utter garbage that some bands came up with that ended up on the back of their main hits. I sort of have this picture of the band in the recording studio working on a new album and one of the members is real stuck on a song. The producer clearly hears it for what it is and is desperately trying to think of a way to stop the band insisting on it being included on the new album. Everyone's agreed on what the main single is going to be and the producer turns round and says “ I've had a great idea - I know what will make that single really fly - if we put this song on the back of it. If we leave it off the album then people will have to buy the single to hear it.” And the drunk/stoned baned look round and go “Yeah!”

That said, there are some gems out there. I've very biased when it comes to Iron Maiden as I think they're the best band ever and I really like listening to some of their “B” sides where they've covered other songs.

The other thing that made me laugh is looking at some of the albums and knowing what I went through when I bought them. There's the obvious heavy metal band striking a pose to look hard (normally with the photographer lying on the ground looking up at the band to make them appear bigger than normal) which, at the time, I thought looked cool. But the one that cracks me up the most is back to the “B” side discussion, but this time on albums. Now, I do really like some of Hawkwind's songs, but I do remember picking up a record and thinking they've made a mistake as they're only listing one song for the “B” side. Then realizing that they haven't made a mistake and that there is a 30+ minute song. Now the first time I came across this I thought that the song must be good if the band put that much effort into it. Hmmm. You get home to find something that doesn't really make much sense and you realize it's the band doing one of their “experimental” songs (a.k.a. getting stoned and playing the notes that seem to match the colors that the band is seeing). Once bitten, twice shy as the saying goes. Not so. Trouble is that the next time you come across it, you know it's going to be painful, but if you want the songs that are on the “A” side you're going to have to buy the album anyway. Or buy the singles, but that just cost more money.

I suspect there may be more to come on this topic as I unearth many more gems. I estimate that it's going to take about a year to work through all the vinyl and convert to digital. I'm in no rush, so this seems like a nice hobby to have bubbling away in the background.

Well, it's been really quite for a few weeks, so what have I been up to. Nothing much really, sad to say, however, September is somewhat of a milestone month for me. September the 11th is the date that I quit smoking. No connection to the tragic events of 9/11, it just happened to be that day that I put my last cigarette out. This year was my second year without smoking, so still fairly recent, but appears to be on track.

This month is also the six month marker since anyone has looked up, probed or otherwise shoved an implement up my arse.

Now, whilst the former landmark of giving up smoking would seem like the bigger achievement, I can tell you that I'm much more grateful for the second. I'm not saying that things are perfect in the internal plumbing department, but there hasn't been anything serious that would warrant another trip to the hospital and provide cause for someone to go poking around again. (Although I'm in there every week for a problem with my leg, but that's pretty boring stuff).

Anyway, this is something I feel I need to celebrate. I doubt (and hope) that nobody else out there has cause to celebrate the same thing, but as the month draws to a close and you find yourself in a bar - feel free to raise a glass to the health of my bottom. Just don't push it up there.

Time for another blast from the past as I went to see the Metal Masters concert last Sunday. Judas Priest, Heaven And Hell (a.k.a. Black Sabbath with Dio), Motorhead and Testament made the line up. Testament being the mere babies amongst the acts having only been around for 25 years where the others have well over 30 years under their belts. Great concert, but something does seem ironic to hear Ronnie James Dio singing “Die Young” even though it sounded good. Rather than look like a complete idiot with my DSLR camera I decided to join the younger generation and try and take some pics with my mobile phone. I did actually get one shot off where you can see what the intended subject was rather than a blur. The image, I'm sure you'll figure out, is of the Motorhead set.
The only annoying thing about the evening was the bloke that sat next to me. He insisted on talking to me and telling me lots of irrelevant facts. The trouble was, they were all wrong. I decided not to correct him as he was about 6'6" and had hands the size of dustbin lids - I was quite happy with my seat near the front and one punch from them and I'd have been in the back row. So, he started going on about Birmingham being the best place in England. Yeah, I know what you're thinking and this isn't even one of the things I was going to correct him on. Anyway, the reason for this liking of Birmingham was his belief that most of the best heavy metal bands have come from there and he started to name them with Judus Priest then Black Sabbath. OK - I'm with you so far, not a problem. But, the next band he names was Def Leppard. Hmmm - Sheffield must have moved since I was last there. Well, not the worst thing anyone could have said and I wouldn't expect his UK geography to be great. Then the bombshell. Now, when I came home and told Karen the story, I said - “you'll never guess what band he said next” and, of all the bands in all of history, she got it right. Have you guessed it? He said “The Beatles!”

At that point, being quiet is probably the best course of action. So, onto annoying point #2. During the shows he seemed intent on “doing the horns” but rather than simply putting his arms in the air and pointing the horns towards the band, he was doing some kind of swirly motion dance thing that he seemed really proud of (perhaps he'd been practicing in front of the mirror). Unfortunately this dance thing frequently resulted in hands appearing before my face doing strange things.

Oh dear. Last, but not least, was the fact that his air guitar was a little too big for the space we were occupying between the seats and I got hit with it several times. Another kind of irony there that I felt like I'd been beaten up with an air guitar. Wouldn't have thought that possible ....

Still, I did actually really enjoy the concert.

Sadly it has been brought to my attention that, since taking on semi-retirement, one of my parents has taken to “beering it up.” It appears that the call of the pint has become too much and they spend a lot of their time seeking one out. Pictured below at recent family get together (wedding I think - I wasn't invited, but that's another topic), the offending parent can be seen “sneaking in a quick one” leaving the other to follow round finding something else to do (appears to be photography).
When asked about the problem, we unfortunately mentioned the term “bag lady” and got the reply “Bag lady. I'll give you bag lady. When I ran a charity shop I used to sort through a hundred bags every day. And that was in the morning before my first cup of tea or any of the help had arrived.” Clearly knowing that we'd said something wrong, we decided to tread lightly, but were then growled at with something that sounded like “geroffmeangingbaskets”

Those who know me will be aware that I have a deep rooted background in fashion. Once upon a time I was part of the design team for my father's empire designing high quality fashion items such as acrylic cardigans. You hear about all the cut throat activities around the catwalks of London, Paris and Milan, but let me tell you, designing for the blue rinse posse of Skeggy is just as hard.

So, what's all this got to do with the price of cheese. Well, I remember many years ago as a lad, we'd sit there and people watch (as everyone does from time-to-time) commenting on what people wear. Many a time would we say of folk older than ourselves “at what point did you think you would look good in that?”

Which leads me to the big question of “at what point did you think it would be OK, let alone look good wearing a cowboy hat?”

Well folks, the answer to that one is 38 years, 5 months and 18 days. I can't really say when the transformation occurred. What I can say is that I was innocently in a hardware store buying some drill bits and they had some cowboy hats on a rack. I picked one up and tried it on, then put it back. Strange that somewhere in the back of my mind was this nagging thought that I bet I look good in that. So I searched for a proper shop - yep, I used and Internet search engine to find my local cowboy hat and went out and bought one. And sadly, yes, I'm wearing it most of the time I got out (with the exception of for work).

The big plus side is that William really likes it. Also strange to think that he likes it now, but wait until those teenage years when he's embarrassed to be seen with me and will just hate me for everything I wear, let alone the hat. Can't wait - it's going to be so much fun, especially as I've saved a bunch of compromising photos from his childhood that I will put up on a projector when he brings his first girlfriend home. (We have a lot of out of work therapists around here so I'm sure I'll get a good deal). Anyway, here are a couple of images of Billy the Kid in my cowboy hat.

Couple of things to note. First is that the hat doesn't look big on him (little fathead). Second, Mum, I wasn't joking when I said we'd got some pretty good cactus plants.

There's not a lot to say other than congratulations to Michael Phelps for a feat that may not be beaten for a very, very long time (if at all). Amazing to think that he's won more gold medals than some countries will.

After everything that's been going on with me I can probably be forgiven for asking myself the question “am I dead yet?“ (the title of a song by GBH) particularly when I woke one morning this week with several vultures circling overhead.
Turns out that one of the deer featured in the Bar-B-Que article I wrote a couple of weeks ago has died in the garden. It's actually in the open part of the garden, not the bit that's fenced off. Very difficult to tell what happened - it may have been hit by a car and then crawled down to the bottom of our garden where it died. Anyway, I thought about taking a photo of it, but thought that too grim. The photo below was a great idea, but it didn't come out very well. It's of the two turkey vultures in the photo above sitting on a branch above half a dozen wild turkeys. You're kind of going to have to take my word for it as you can't really see either the vultures or the turkeys very clearly. If it came out well, I was going to put it up on the caption competition page with something like “Mother: I've told you not to play with your food. Child: It wasn't me - it just got up and walked off.”
Anyway, even though I didn't get the photo of the turkey vultures above the turkeys to come out, I did spot my little offspring on the sofa in my office when I grabbed the camera and here's what came out with a one off shot:

Many times over the last few weeks I've challenged Karen over the ability to picture things dimensionally. A good example of this has been when we've been cabling the house and I've said that all you need to do is drill through this wall and it comes out in the garage and then you just run the cable down and through the wall into the crawl space here ... and she's kind of looking at me with a blank stare of “if you say so.”

So why is it that when I just went to Home Depot to buy some piping to use as an umbrella stand (long story - I've mounted a pipe on the railings of the balcony so that we can put an umbrella in it to keep off the evening sun so we can eat outside) ... so why was it that when I bought the piping that comes in 10 foot lengths did I get to my car before I figured out that it wouldn't fit inside. To give me a little credit, I have a convertible and I'd thought that I'd just take the roof down and have it hanging out a little - I just hadn't realized how much. Thankfully nobody had a camera (that I'm aware of) and I just went back into the store to get the pipe cut in half.

About the only thing more embarrassing would have been to be walking down the street and to look up, at all things, at a Macy's sign such that I walked into and tripped over a fire hydrant. But that would never happen ... would it?

Spam, spam, spam, spam ....

As well as being a cool song and sketch for Monty Python, it's also the name given to unwanted mail - particularly electronic mail. I'm not telling you anything you didn't know.

When I was in hospital my doctor emailed me and it got blocked by my spam filter. Ever since then I've gone into my “spam box” to check that other important mail is not being filtered out.

I do find it interesting how some of these mail messages are being titled. I commented somewhere about getting a message to “increase the size of my banana” which was one that caught my attention. And I have to say with my lack of musical talent, I have no idea why I'm receiving a bunch of emails offering me a bigger organ. I dread to think what noise I'd make if I was let loose with one.

Anyway, sticking with the same theme, I had a bout of emails with the title “update your penis” like it's some sort of software. Maybe even a piece of hardware that's now due for a firmware update which, if you read in all the puns, is probably what they're getting at. But it did get me to thinking what if you could just update your penis? Would you see someone in the toilets taking a quick glance to the side and exclaiming “oh my god! You've got the new penis 2.0”. The person with the update being really happy that somebody noticed but not really wanting to let on - “err, yes”. Then you'd get into some surreal conversation around “well, how's it working for you? I'm thinking of getting one myself.”

Then I thought - that's probably why someone invented spam filters - to stop me having stupid thoughts.

I posted some pictures last week of some of the visitors to the garden. Well, we've had three deer (mother and two babies) decide to pop round and eat some of the plants and trees in the garden.And the number of wild turkeys have increased to about 15.So don't be surprised if you stop round and get offered venison or a turkey burger.

As I've moved into the new house I've started to do some DIY jobs in order to get things sort of looking how I want them. Basically an excuse to play with power tools. Probably not the most sensible thing given I'm on blood thinners, but it's boys with toys and you just can't suppress that urge.

Now, most people probably grew up with their fathers passing on the philosophy that if you're going to buy a tool, spend the money and buy a decent tool that will last you a life time. Well, me being me, I've completely ignored that advice and gone with the theory that a) I'm really not going to be doing much DIY and b) so long as the person who I pay to come out and fix the mistakes I make has the decent tools that's all that matters. Just so you can get a sense of the quality of products I'm buying, I bought a jigsaw for $15 the other week. Mr O asked whether it as a 700 piece floor jigsaw, but, joking aside, a jigsaw puzzle would cost a lot more that $15.

Anyway, armed with my new jigsaw I set about cutting back a cabinet to fit a new TV that I'd bought. This lasted all of two minutes until I realized that I couldn't fit the jigsaw in to cut round the bit I wanted, so I ended up using a sawzall which is even less refined than a jigsaw. Good job I didn't want an even line - I'm sure that would have been easy to do. I've gone for a more wibbly-wobbly look so that it looks a little more creative.

The other thing I've done is Cat-6'd the house so that I can channel TV through the house over a computer network. Very clever setup, I've got two networks - the primary takes the main computing so this server, work computer and Karen's computer to the Internet (and the phone as we use VOIP). There's then a secondary network for the TV to keep the streaming separate from the Internet Traffic. I've got two digital TV feeds into a computer (with the new ATI TV wonder digital decoders so that you can get premium channels) through Windows Media Center (by far the best thing Microsoft has produced). This computer is hooked up to the main TV and then I've got two linksys media center extenders and an XBox 360 feeding another three TVs. One of the connections is wireless and, for the most part, seems to stream HD OK. Really just means I can use a computer as a DVR and feed TV, music etc. through to any room in the house. (With the ability to change channel in any room of the house and not having to buy a digital decoder for every room). With the house being on the side of a hill, this kind of made it easy to do the cabling as you can stand up in the crawl space under the house. Below is a quick picture of the cat-6 between the two routers and a printer.As it happens, he is the sixth cat I've had although technically he's the seventh I've been around as my folks had a cat when I was born (many, many years ago).

So, what's gone on since the site was last up? Well, one of the things that's happened is that it's now against the law to talk on your mobile phone in California. Something that's been against the law in the UK for many years ... apparently as nobody really seems to take it seriously.

Well, it's caused a little stir over here as some people are complaining that it targets only one specific distraction. Some people have also made the point that it's OK to use a computer to send an email, but not to talk on a mobile. That said, I doubt there's really that many people on the roads checking email otherwise they may have targeted this.

Anyway, not one to want to break the law, I've thought I'd give a go at shifting things around. It's not illegal to eat in your car so I thought why not get all my calls done, then take lunch whilst I'm driving - should still be able to get the same efficiencies. Obviously it needed to be something simple, so I thought a sandwich would fit the bill. Nice thought, but I cut myself twice whilst trying to cut the baguette, got butter smeared all over the passenger seat when I had to slam the breaks on as I nearly ran a red light and lost a piece of cheese somewhere behind the seat as I was trying to grate it. And if you think that's bad, you don't want to know how much mess just having a drink caused. Freshly squeezed orange juice maybe good for you, but it's a nightmare to keep the squeezer steady whilst you're driving.

The housing woes seem to continue. I suppose woes is too strong a word as it's really not that bad. Our buy seems to be fairly straight forward - we got ready to go on that a while back - sorted the mortgage out and removed all the contingencies etc. etc. Really just waiting for the cash from our sale to seal the deal and move in.

The sale of this house has been problematic in the sense that our buyers struggled to get a loan (apparently due to the banks imposing more restrictions post the sub prime collapse, but I'm not really in a position to comment as we didn't see this ourselves) and then there seems to have been some confusion over the actual close date. We'd been working off the one in the contract which strangely is the right one. Anyway, it seems as if it's all worked out. The close date on the contract should be tomorrow on Monday and it looks like everything's going to work out on that date. So really it's getting exciting.

We were over to sign our documents on Saturday and decided to go out for one of our walks. For anyone interested, I'm using the Bay Area Hiker website to find these trails. It's a great site that gives you details on what to expect. So, why was I surprised when I ended up absolutely knackered after walking a trail for 1.7 miles with a 500ft elevation change? I don't think I actually realized what I was embarking on until it was too late.

The trail was at the Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve and is really nice. It's a path about a foot wide wandering through the thick wooded area of a hillside. Great trail to walk and we heard lots of birds, but unfortunately you couldn't really get any clear pictures as they were just jumping from branch to branch inside the trees. In fact I only managed to capture two birds.

Interestingly though, the first one is a Spotted Towhee - something I've not seen before. The second is an American Tobin which is very common.

OK - so any of you that have been following all the entries on this site, the photos as well as the blogs, will know that I've taken to hobbling off on walks and taking photos of animals (birds really). I like being outside and the photography gives me a bit of a challenge as well as a reason so it works quite well. I seem to have become interested in it since Karen and I went on safari last year.

Anyway, the avid reader will know that I wandered round a some ponds at a sewage plant. As I noted in the text above the photos it was actually a really nice place and definately one of the best when it came to wildlife. Still, if you looked at the photos you may wonder why I took a picture of the warning sign letting you know that “ponds contain waste water effluent.”

Well, it was for this article. Personally I think the sign should simply say “beware floaters” as it hits home a little better. You do have to look at the water carefully to see if the shadows under the water are carp or someone's second hand steak with a side of sweetcorn, but that's not the point of this article either. It is to tell you of the words I've been teaching my little boy. Examples of words I've used are:

• log
• skid mark
• dump
• trump

You get the idea. That said, I've typically been using these in their true sense of their intended meaning, but in that double entendre type of way, so, for example, whilst watching the auto racing on the TV I may comment that a car left behind a rather large skid mark when it crashed. William then picks up the word so when he plays with his cars he crashes them round the floor and says that they left a large skid mark. The joy then comes when Karen's not in the room as I can then look at him and tell him that he needs to tell his mother what happened. Next thing, he runs off to tell his mum “I've just left a big skid mark on the floor” to which I can't stop laughing and Karen gets really annoyed.

There is a rumor that one day I will grow up, but in the meantime - beware floaters.

But it's even further to get your car serviced!

I was randomly clicking away and found myself on the Nascar.com website looking at the standings after Kyle Busch came second in the Craftsman Truck series at the start of his "triple header" weekend where he races in three states in three days. I think it says he'll cover about 800 miles between races as he attempts to do this. (And I hope he does and continues to get good results).

Anyway, whilst watching the various NASCAR races, the commentators, from time-to-time, plug the fact that you can go onto the website and search for NASCAR approved services - such as getting your car serviced. So I saw the link for this and thought I'd take a look to see what local garages have signed up. Well, local is probably not a good word to describe it. The closest fuel / auto service to me is a mere 2,241.95 miles away in Washington. Seems that Sunoco (the official race fuel of NASCAR) are the only approved fuel / auto service vendors of NASCAR and they are only on the East Coast.

I think I'm supposed to service the car every 5,000 miles, so it's good to know that when I got back from this service I would have an entire 8 miles to enjoy before having to do it again. It also made me wonder whether this would be a more difficult challenge for Kyle Busch - to get my car serviced.

Iron Maiden that is, although I doubt anyone who knows me would think that I was a maiden of any other description. The first concert I went to was Iron Maiden in 1982 to see them on the Number of the Beast tour at Leicester's DeMontfort Hall. My mother was kind enough to take me and one of my friends as we were only wee nippers at the time. Rather fitting that the row in front of us at the concert last Wednesday was occupied by a mother and two young kids (possibly one or both being her sons).

The interesting thing though was the fact that the tour was called “Somewhere Back In time” which featured songs of the past - most of Maiden's greats from the '80s. So what's interesting is that the kids in front of us would not have been born when any of the songs were written. What's pleasing is that a new generation is getting to hear and like the music for the first time ... whilst us old folks rock on in the background.

I have to say, this was an absolutely fantastic gig. I've never been to a bad Iron Maiden gig, but this one was really well put together with a great stage set and accompanying pyrotechnics. And what's more, they played Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner - a song I didn't expect to hear, but was extremely pleased that I did.

It's going to be difficult to tell exactly when this website started as there were bits that were done to prepare and get something going, but today marks the one year anniversary of the domain registration. So I guess today is as good a day as any to celebrate the the fact that this wondrous site has been up and running for a year.

It's quite amazing when you think about it - a whole year without producing anything of any use or interest whatsoever. That's quite difficult to achieve when you think about it. You'd think that from time to time you would accidentally produce something of value.

Many thanks to Mr O for his continued support and completely irrelevant contributions. Unfortunately there is an illness with one of Mr O's family members so we wish him and his family all the best.

Finally, thanks to all of you out there that continue to read and contribute to this site. Here's to both of you. Actually, I'm getting really excited as my mum has decided to take a computer course which means that my audience may go up by 1 (or 50%).

I just got an email from my beloved Leicester City to see if I wanted to take advantage of an early bird discount and buy a season ticket for next year. Hmmm - let me think about that and get back to you.

I just landed at Houston IAH and as I was walking through I saw a sign for the “pet relief area.” The sign (which I should have snapped a photo of with my mobile) had a picture of a dog on it. If it were me, I'd have added the Mr Whippy steaming pile at the back of the dog so that it would be clear what kind of relief was going to be afforded to your pet, but that's just me. Also, my mind did wander briefly to wonder how many pets they actually catered for and whether there had ever been any problems with someone going there with a strange animal. But again, that's just me and it was only a brief thought.

We are in the middle of a mini heatwave here in the Bay Area. Since Wednesday it's been so hot here. Even in the City which is normally a little cooler than the surrounding areas. Hard to explain what this is like for those of you back home in the UK. Basically, each day there's this big fiery ball that rises in the sky called the Sun. This puts out a lot of light and heat. Try and imagine the UK, but a lot brighter, warmer and no rain. Yeah - told you it was difficult, but if you close your eyes and try really hard you might get the picture.

I've had many comments about the posts I made describing the things that were going on whilst I was ill. Generally along the lines of the fact that they were funny and I should keep them up. Kind of got mixed feelings about that as I'm pleased that people found them fun to read, but I'd rather miss out on the whole being ill thing that led to them being created in the first place.

I do, however, feel rather boring at the minute as I've just slipped back into the drudgery of the rat race and am merrily running around on my wheel. The biggest thing being that we are currently in the process of moving house, but there's nothing funny to write about that - the whole thing is rather annoying and really just leads to a lot of time being spent worrying about what could go wrong. Very unproductive, but I don't seem to be able to stop myself doing it.

So back to the illness. Well, I had to go into hospital this morning to inject myself again. They wanted to watch me do it without any guidance to make sure I was OK doing it. Everything went well and I've now graduated from the jab class and have been let back into the big wide world free to prick myself whenever I choose to do so.

Other than that, fairly boring - but I could do with a bit of boring for a while.

This site was named EastBayRag for a number of reasons:

• One of my nicknames is Rag
• Rag is another name for newspaper
• SFRag was already taken as a URL
• We intended to move to the East Bay

Well, it looks like we are finally going to be moving to the East Bay. We have sold our house in the City and have had an offer accepted on a house on the East Bay. To protect the innocent, I've changed the names slightly (but only slightly). We are selling our house to two gentlemen “friends” Well Hung and Two Stroke. We are buying the house from Mr & Mrs Hairy Mary.

It's interesting going through this process in a different country as it's totally different from the UK. The house buying process in the US is much simpler and much quicker than the UK. Basically, each transaction is separate and you don't really get into chains. Also, solicitors aren't involved as it's a pretty standard contract, so once you've made an offer and it's accepted, you're pretty much done barring anything coming up in any of the inspection reports.

What this does mean is that it's almost impossible to organize a move on the same day - i.e. to have the people complete on your house on the same day that you complete on the one you're moving to. What's more, the county we are moving to has made it illegal to do same day title transfers so we wouldn't be able to do this anyway. Apparently the reason for this is so that chains don't fall through and you're guaranteed to sell your house on the intended day. So, we are trying to time it so that we complete on the sale of our house four days before we complete the purchase of the next one. We've put a rent back clause into the contract of the sale of our house so that we can rent it back (at an extortionate amount I might add) for up to four weeks. All going well, we would exercise four days of this and everything will happen as planned.

So what can go wrong? Well, I guess worst case is if Well Hung and Two Stroke fall through for some reason like not being able to get financing. We have a backup offer on the house, but if that fell through as well, we would end up with two houses and two mortgages as we would still be obligated to purchase the one we are buying. The other scenario is that something goes wrong for us and we can't complete with the Hairy Mary's then we would be without a home. The thought of living with Karen, William and two cats in a cardboard box under the freeway doesn't appeal to me very much.

Still, they say that moving is one of the most stressful things ..... hmmm, now to do this week's vote.

The Owl and The Fox didn't go to sea in a beautiful pea green boat. Instead, the owls came down the M1 from Sheffield to Leicester in order to administer a severe beating to the foxes.

I will be gracious enough to say congratulations to my Sheffield Wednesday friends. It looks like it's going down to the wire this year. Good luck next week - maybe we can both stay up, but I'm not holding my breath.

I heard this on the radio this morning. Apparently this is from a training video or people that make training videos on how to speak English from Japanese. The idea being that they act out a situation and then go through repetition in song to force the learning.

It seems as if they put this together specifically for me. All I need to do is reverse engineer it so I can learn the phrase if I'm ever in Japan. See what you think.

Seems that an ex-pat Brit pub in Azerbaijan is creating a concern for the locals. The pub is named “The Camel's Toe” and apparently the locals have just found out that this has a double meaning. According to the today.az that is carrying the official word, that double meaning is “clear visible presence of a woman's vulva, as a result of wearing overly tight pants.” Part of the concern is that the Brits were pulling the wool over the eyes of the locals by using British slang.

I'm trying to figure out how they get the translation from British slang. First, there's the use of the word pants which, unless they mean underwear, would be American and not British. But most of all I'm trying to picture the origin of the term - a couple of brickies working on a site and some bird walks by wearing trousers that fit too tight and you can make out her nether region. Did the conversation really go - first brickie “look - there's clear visible presence of a woman's vulva, as a result of wearing overly tight pants.” Second brickie replies “you're right, but that'll never catch on. Say, it looks like a camel's toe - lets call it that.” I think the translation may need a little work.

I guess I can't leave this without saying that the pub is known for the camel toe liquor. But that's only because I'm sad.

Interestingly not an article about me or my health for a change, although I'm doing well - two weeks out of hospital with no complaints so far, thanks for asking. This is two articles I got from my local radio station 107.7 The Bone.

Tax Relief
April 15th is the tax filing deadline in the US and there's always talk about the stress around tax season. Which begs the question, if there's a season, when can I shoot tax inspectors? But I digress. NaughtyAmerica.com decided that it would be good to provide “tax relief” by allowing six porn films to be available for free download.

Now, I can't tell you whether these are any good or not as I've not watched any of them. What I can tell you is that I didn't see a link to the downloads from the home page of the site, but in the interest of providing a service to anyone who may want to take advantage of this offer, here's the url to the download page Naughty America 2008 Tax Releif. I don't know how long this site will stay active for, so you may want to go there now if this interests you.

Eau De Toilette Relief
Unfortunately this video has been removed from YouTube otherwise I would post a link. So, a couple of doctors in the Philippines filmed a surgery and then posted it to YouTube. The video showed them laughing and joking all the way through the operation and they are now the subject of an investigation. Quite right you may think - last thing I'd want is to see my operation on YouTube with a couple of surgeons laughing at me. Well, maybe, but would you expect to end up in hospital because you had a perfume / deodorant canister stuck up your arse?

Apparently this man offended his boyfriend by commenting on the size of his manhood. The boyfriend got upset and decided to shove the canister up the man's arse and it wouldn't come out so they ended up in hospital. The doctors then removed the item, but decided to have a laugh in the process. OK, so they probably shouldn't have recorded it and stuck it on YouTube, but I can't blame them for wanting to have a laugh. Also, don't you think the boyfriend that rammed the thing there in the first place should take some of the blame?

There's no good start to a week when you're at work and it doesn't get any better when you find out that one of your good friends died at the weekend. Casey was someone that worked at one of my clients that was a friend as well as someone I worked with. We worked very closely together on a large project that was fairly intense at times, but it ended up being successful.

After completing his role on the project where we worked together, he left to do a two year stint in Angola. He moved house to South Africa as a base for where to spend his time when he was not in Angola (the position is 28 days on, 28 days off). Tragically, he died in a boating accident in South Africa this weekend.

One of my best memories was when he left the San Francisco Bay Area. A bunch of us met up at the Exchange for drinks after work around 5:30 / 6:00. By and large it was one of those events where people stop by to say their goodbye's and then disappear. I was there from the start and, not surprisingly, was there at the end. The bar shut at 10:00, but the two of us decided that we wanted to get some more to drink so went up to the Holding Company. We weren't in the best of states when we got there and it didn't really get any better. The only thing is that we were in a slightly better state than the local nutters. We ended up getting into a conversation with these two guys who thought it was amazing that I was from England and Casey was heading off to Angola. So much so that one of them started writing poetry about it on the back of a napkin. I know it's San Francisco, but they weren't trying to chat us up, they were just genuinely weird. Anyway, probably hard to explain, but it was a great night and we ended up leaving the Holding Company at 2:00am when it closed. This was a Thursday night - Casey had finished, but I had to work on Friday and it was a killer. I've commented many times that I'm too old for this and it's probably true .... But a good laugh all the same.

Many more memories of similar good times and I hope that these continue for Casey in whatever the afterlife holds. I'll break my no alcohol stretch tonight to have a drink to him.

Cheers and RIP!

(Details of the accident on MSNBC)

I think it was Jasper Carrot that did a sketch back in the 80's about being concerned of people that take instructions literally. This was tied to the advent of the gel stick deodorants that you took the lid off and applied instead of using an aerosol. As the gel wore down, you simply push the stick up from the bottom (nowadays they tend to have a knob on the bottom to screw ... oh err!).

Anyway, these early gel sticks came with the instructions "remove lid and push up bottom". Mr Carrott duly pointed out that taking these instructions literally may not lead the correct application of the deodorant.

Anyway, I'm beginning to think that these instructions are specifically designed for me. I'm now wondering whether there's anything that I shouldn't be pushing up my bottom. After having had many, many things poked up there and a lot of stuff coming out all too quickly, seems that this has taken its toll on the old ring piece and we've popped a hemorrhoid or two. So, was in the hospital today to start the new wonder cure (rat dna stuff) which I've had and they said they'd give me something for hemorrhoids. The product is aptly named “anusol” as that's exactly where you need to put it - up your anusol. Seems the cure for having things poked up and out of your bum is to poke more things up there.

The instructions tell me to pop in one of these suppositories at bed time. One hopes that there isn't anything expected to come out after insertion as I normally plan to sleep after going to bed. I also keep reading the instructions and linking it to mouth wash or something and expect to see it say - pop one in at bed time and wake up with minty fresh breath. Somehow I don't think this is going to happen, but it would be interesting if I started doing minty fresh farts.

Everyone hate going to the dentist for when they do the cleaning? Well, seems I've found a little way to subdue the vigorous advances of the enthusiastic dentist / hygienist. Tell them you're on blood thinners and that if they cut you, you won't stop bleeding. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed that I avoided those painful moments when they catch the gums from time-to-time whilst doing the cleaning.

Good news, although I worry about speaking too soon, but I've been dodgy tummy free for over a week now. No diarrhea and no accidents (always a big plus). Seems to be thanks to coming off one of the drugs I was on it looks like they were causing the latest problems - appears I suffer side effects from Mercaptopurine (6-MP) which I think means I'm allergic to it. Anyway, it obviously wasn't doing me any good so I'm not taking it anymore.

I've been out of hospital since late Tuesday afternoon and I kind of have this “on parole” feeling as am wondering when the next thing will go wrong. I start the biologic (rat dna stuff that I talked about in an earlier blog) treatment of Humira next week so I guess there's always the potential that I'm going to get some weird and wonderful side effects from that. Hopefully not, but my run of luck has not been too good as of late. Also keep wondering how critical it is as I seem to be doing quite well on very limited medication at the minute - at least it's worked for a week anyway.

Was nice to Robert Kubica put the BMW Sauber on pole for the first time. And to be the first Pole to get a Formula 1 pole position. Also did well to keep it up there and finish third. Nobody really had anything to challenge Ferrari this weekend and probably a weekend that McLaren will want to forget.

Well, lets see what the week brings. I'm hoping that it will be very boring and not a lot will happen. Maybe a little excitement on Wednesday for my mum as it's her birthday.

Didn't take me long to get round to writing the follow up to the Smokin' Aces article that I promised in the prior blog (Backside of Me). Basically I'm really, really bored. Although I have my computer in the hospital, I can't hit the wireless network and am only able to use my PDA as a modem. Which means I can get online, but can't watch films or do anything that is going to require a lot of bandwidth. But at least I can get some crap written.

And talking of crap, that's what this is all about, so you have been warned! You might not want to read this whilst eating your breakfast (if at all).

So, in the Smokin' Aces article I referred to having a good week being one where I didn't take a dump in my pants. Well, I successfully avoided that, but I can't say that everything went where it was intended. So here's the log of my accidental logs.

First, you need to understand that I was admitted with serious dehydration because I couldn't keep anything down, not even water. Any of you out there that think you've had diarrhea, believe me, there is a whole new level to it that you're unaware of. Something that not even the hottest vindaloo can prepare you for. So they put you on IV fluids to re-hydrate you which is great until you start crapping that out as soon as it goes into you - yep, couldn't even keep down IV fluids either. Well, that right there would be a problem and is why I got admitted as they try to pump the fluids in faster than they were coming out. And believe me, they were coming out fast.

And the diarrhea itself is more like projectile vomit in that it is a violent jet/spray. Then the best of it is that I get between 0 and 3 seconds notice that it's coming - so you can kind of see that this is going to lead to an accident. I explain this to retain some credibility.

Accident #1

In ER I'd been flushed with 3 litres of fluid and had rung the call bell to get the IV disconnected. Nobody came before I needed a poo. Tried to get the IV pole into the bog with me and got sort of stuck in the doorway ... cramp, splat ... pool on the floor. Karen's in the room with me and is killing herself laughing saying “thank god we got to hospital otherwise I'd have to clean that up.”

A nurse comes and, you know you get those people that try to finish your sentences for you, well she was one of them. I tried to say “I called the bell to get my IV disconnected, but unfortunately I needed the bathroom in between and didn't quite make it and have had an accident on the floor.” I tried about four times whilst she kept interrupting and saying something about the IV so finally I just looked her in the eye and said “I've shit on the bathroom floor as well.” This was actually quite amusing as you got to see her face for those few seconds before what I'd said finally sunk in.

Accident #2

Moved to my first room ... a shared one!! Nice for the other person you would have thought. Actually, he had a sinus problem amongst other things which probably helped sharing a room with the turd meister. Now, this one isn't that funny, well not for me as I was seriously, seriously ill at this point. My fever had shot 103 and I was vomiting as well. So I started to poop on my commode, finished and was sat on the side of the bed. Thought I was going to vomit and was stood with my head facing into the bowl. My stomach cramped and all hell broke loose, only not out the front end. What I should have probably done is just stayed where I was and deal with the mess, but my natural instinct was to spin round as fast as I could and sit on the commode. Now think about it. You've added centrifugal force to the mix and the angle you pass through as you sit. This resulted in me created a six foot radius fall out zone that included bits up a wall and under the dividing curtain towards my room mate's bed. Needless to say, I got my own room some 30 minutes after that, so I know what to do next time I end up in the same situation.

Lets sidebar for two seconds on said room mate before you feel sorry for him. He was totally weird. He only spoke in one or two word sentences that he repeated multiple times. Every time a nurse came in he shouted “hey, hey, hey, he” until they looked at him then he'd just say “married, married, married ...” in some vein attempt to try and chat them up. That said, I did find him really funny in the morning when the lab came to draw blood. Most of the time nobody could understand what he was saying. Lab person shows up and says “I'm here to collect your blood” to which he replied “vampire, vampire, vampire bat, vampire bat”

Accident #3, 4 and 5 (aka the nurse that was in the wrong place at the wrong time)

There's only actually one accident here, but the sequence of events is so funny it's untrue. It started with me going for the anal scoping which you need to be prepped for with the go lightly. Well, I couldn't take the go lightly as I was vomiting so they decided to go with a series of enemas. Yep, even though I'm not holding anything down, they want to make sure there's nothing up there. (Another quick fact you need to understand - each nursing shift you get a qualified nurse and a care partner assigned to you). So the nurse tells me to lay on my left side whilst she administers the enema ... standing behind me :) ... I told her that I would poop it out almost immediately and she didn't believe me ... what can I say? No, I didn't get her. What happened was she injected the stuff, as predicted, it started to come straight out. I jumped up to sit on the commode, but she'd moved some stuff which caught on my IV line so I ended up with my arm behind my back on the commode not fully understanding how, but looking down at another soiled floor. The nurse did the brave thing and left the room and got the care partner to come in and clean up.

Fresh and clean. Was going about doing whatever I was doing, probably watching something on TV. Needed to go for another poo so sat on commode and did business, wiped and got back into bed. Pressed call button for someone to come and empty (I'll explain this process later). Next I heard a bang, looked round and the pan had fallen out of the bottom of the commode splashing poo everywhere. Yep, same care partner to the rescue and she wasn't happy as it was right at the end of her shift. On this note, I had a dodgy commode which they later changed after me pointing out multiple times that the bowls didn't fit inside the frame properly.

Ah ha, I hear you say. I thought it was accidents 3, 4 and 5 with the same person, but you've only mentioned two. Yes, you are correct, number 5 was at the beginning of her next shift. So, I had one of these real emergency less than a second notice ones. Jumped out of bed, grabbed the lid of the commode and flicked it up, only it didn't go all the way up and came back down again, so I was sat on the plastic covering and poo'd on that doing a speed boat impression. Actually got quite a good rooster tail going.

Thinking about it, given that I had five days of going at least every three hours, I don't think I did too bad.

So for the last explanation. There is a bathroom in the room, but I can't use it as they either need to collect my offerings for tests or to measure how much there is which is why I have to ring the bell for someone to come and take it away. Don't ask me. But the more interesting thing is that when they are collecting a sample you get a “hat” that fits on the bowl. To the front to collect a woman's urine and to the back for the stool sample.

If you have to provide a sample as an out patient, they give you a kit to collect it in that includes the hat and some pots etc. Now the best bit is that one of the samples has to be frozen immediately so you poop in the pot, put the pot in a sealed bag, put the sealed bag in another sealed bag with ice in it and put that in the freezer.

Just thought you'd like to know. Not sure why this comes to mind now, but next time you're round, you must try my new hot dogs. If you're really lucky I may have some Cumberland sausages in too!

So, after posting the Smokin' Aces blog last week that indicated everything was going well, it went backwards rather quickly. At 12:30 that night everything went south and in a big way. Vomit, Diarrhea and a fever. Nice - symptoms now worse than when I went in the first time.

Tried to ride it out, but ultimately ended up back in ER on Tuesday morning and being admitted to hospital later that day which is where I am now. I am debating whether or not to post a follow up article to Smokin' Aces as this week was not a “good week” as defined by that article. The article would be funny, but embarrassing - so I probably should post it.

Anyway, this is a weak follow up to the Inside of Me article. Now, I'm really upset that there's no way to get a video of this, but I had yet another probing only this time it wasn't going quite as deep so I had the option to stay awake for the procedure which I did so I could watch. Once you get past the sick worrying bit that you're actually looking inside yourself, it's so cool.

So it's a fibre optic camera. First thing is that it's on before it gets inside so you see it approach you from the back. Now, we've all tried to look at our bums in the mirror, but let me tell you, seeing it how others would see it is kind of very strange. I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about what my bum looks like, but I didn't realize how hairy it is. Anyway, moving on (or should I say probing further?) we enter the forbidden zone (albeit not that forbidden at the minute).

Most of what you see is pretty much what you've seen on TV as the probe moves along tubes. What's really cool is when they do a biopsy. As I said, you need to divorce yourself from the fact that it's yourself that you're looking at and then you can appreciate it otherwise you're going to think you can feel it. So, this little thing shoots out and opens up. Exactly like the jaws of alien. It then closes and bites off a little piece before retracting and sending the sample back to the doctor.

As I said, probably a lot better if they could have video'd it and then you'd see what I mean, but it's totally cool.

Seems that the posting of the “Inside of Me” video got a lot of attention last week resulting in a couple of emails requesting more. Well, I've not had the chance to get out and create something new, but I do have some old material that I've now loaded onto the site. Before creating this site, I made up a couple of DVDs that I sent back to the folks. These mainly consisted of shots of William, but there was also a couple of other stupid things that I decided to do and put on there.

So, what's worth watching. If you're not a family member, the clips in the Other Videos are going to be of more interest. In my opinion, the best by far is still the first one I ever did - Kitty Poos - and I would definitely say this is a must see. Next on the list I'd put Rag Band with Cat Trick close behind it. San Francisco Animated Slideshow is worth it if you're bored and want to see an animated slideshow. Animated just means that the pictures move around in addition to transitioning between each slide. There's some fairly cool effects if you're interested.

Onto the Family Videos which are more interesting if you're related, but most of it are just pictures of William in various slideshows. Top of the list here would be the Wedding video as the running theme through it is quite funny. The problem is that the editing (I admit) is really bad - I left too much in there where nothing really happens, and the video itself is really bad - mainly shots of people legs. If you can put up with that and want to download overnight (yep - the fact that I left too much in has created a huge file which I can't edit anymore as I don't have the source) then this may be worth a watch. The rest of the stuff here is three different slideshows with essentially the same material and some video clips that have been added together. The most interesting slideshow is the Morphing Slideshow of William's First Year so would recommend that if you want to see some cool effects. Then maybe the Video Clips from William's First Year if you want to see something different.

Unlike the “Inside of Me” video that you really need to download the MPEG as you need the definition and size to see the detail, you can get away with the WMV version of these ones, although I'd probably tell you to download the MPEG of “Kitty Poos” because it's quite good and is probably worth the additional wait. Therefore suggest the MPEG for that one and then the WMV for the others. If there's one of the others that you really, really like, you could go back and get the MPEG later.

Have fun and let me know what you think.

I should have probably title this article “things that you take for granted” but wanted to give a quick shout out to Ace Freeley (of Kiss fame) for putting on a great show last night at the Regency in San Francisco. (And I definitely don't want anyone to get confused with the waste of time film Smokin' Aces which at best ... actually it didn't have a best - sending the DVD back was the best thing about it.)

So what the hell am I going on about. Well, got back from the show last night and Karen asked whether I had a good time and I said “yes - show was good, had a good laugh with my mate and didn't shit myself.”

Hmmm - interesting. Now, I'm sure everyone would agree that if you went for dump without removing your clothes, it's probably not going to rank as the best day of your life. And would probably rank as one of the worst and most embarrassing. That said, I also think most people don't really consider the fact that they avoided an “accident” as being a particularly memorable thing and something that contributes to it being a “good day.” But it seems that this now takes up a fair amount of my attention. There seems to be a level of comfort in knowing where the nearest bog is - well, I suppose not just knowing as if it's an hour and a half away, that's probably not that comforting, I guess knowing where it is and that you would be able to make it should the need arise. And there in lies another challenge. Not being the most mobile of people, the proximity of said bog needs to be fairly close in order to provide the necessary level of comfort.

One hopes that this concern wanes as I get better, but in the meantime, here's looking to having a “good week.”

Was back in the hospital on Tuesday to get a blood test to see if they've got the dosage of my pills right, so not for any kind of emergency or significant test. This kind of allowed me to look around for the first time without being too focused on the reason for my visit. It was interesting to see the programs that the health facility is running to help people avoid being hospitalized - healthy living and all that. Also, running seminars on how to deal with various types of illness.

The poster that caught my eye was the ldquo;Reminder for the upcoming Living with Alzheimer's seminar.” Made me wonder how many times they post the reminder and also got to wondering what the attendance rate was as a percentage of people that signed up.

Another weekend and, unfortunately, another setback as some of my symptoms return. Thankfully nothing serious enough to warrant another trip to the hospital, but enough to remind me that it's not over yet. Anyway, pretty much meant that I've been housebound instead of being able to go out house hunting which we'd got all booked up. What that has done is given me some extra time and I've been able to put the video together of the images that were taken of me whilst in hospital.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), there are no images from any of the “rectal probes” that were performed. All that's left are some CT scans and a couple of X-Rays. I've tried to make the video as interesting as I can, but I don't think it gets there (even with the Simpsons take off at the beginning). Also, if you want to watch it and see the detail, you probably need to download the MPEG (.MPG) version as the WMV files are not full screen. I suppose you could watch online and then decide if you can be bothered to download.

So, if you really have nothing to do, go to the Other Videos Home Page and select your viewing choice of the “Inside of Me” video.

Good news. They finally ran a test on me that showed something working properly. Seems I'm processing stuff right and the Crohns isn't as bad as first thought. This means that I don't get the biologics treatment with the rat DNA in favor of Mercaptopurine (6-MP to its friends) tablets. Trouble is, there's a big “Don't Take With Alcohol” warning on the bottle and I'm supposed to be on these for life. Me sees another conflict here that will need to be resolved one way or another. I'm hoping it's because alcohol does the same thing as the 6-MP and that I can just take alcohol after I'm off the blood thinners. No?? Well, it's a thought.

Thursday saw another trip to the emergency room (ER). Nothing to worry about, wasn't too serious - in fact, it was quite convenient - I'd been to a client in the morning to give a presentation that went well, then returned home. Picked up some things on the way back and got in around 1:00. Karen had been to the zoo with William and they got back at 2:00. At about 2:15 I got the symptoms (bleeding) that they told me I need to head off to the ER for. Even though I wasn't happy about it, I felt fine. So much so that Karen had a slow puncture in her car and we decided to take it and pump it up on the way. She then dropped me off at the ER, went to get the tire fixed, did some shopping, dropped the shopping off at home, then came to pick me up. Timed to perfection as they were just releasing me (although they offered to let me stay overnight) when she got there. But not before yet another doctor got the chance to have a quick poke up my arse. I tell you, there's now a sweepstake in the San Francisco medical community as to who's going to be next. Bonus points awarded for the most inventive device.

Anyway, the ironies. I got to thinking about with what seems to be happening to me. First, what brought me to ER - the Crohns makes me susceptible to bleeding, but I have a blood clot that puts me on blood thinners that makes me even more susceptible to bleeding. Hence the need to monitor the thinners on a regular basis.

I've already mentioned that I have both constipation and diarrhea at the same time which is an enigma all by itself. Although many have said that I don't know whether I'm coming or going. Then there's the Crohns and the C-diff infection - I can't start the long-term treatment for the Crohns until I've finished taking the antibiotics for the infection (which I finished on Friday so can start on the next thing on Monday). And now for one that keeps rattling round my head - the treatment for the Crohns is going to be biologic so getting injected with some stuff that's made up of both human and rodent dna. For those who are smart enough, they will have figured out that the irony here lies with the blood thinners (warfarin). For those who haven't got there yet, warfarin is used as rat poison, so it seems like I'm going to be putting something into me then killing it.

On another note, the biologics have a few potential side effects (and no, growing a tail and squeaking is not one of them) that are a little worrying, but my biggest fear is getting home one day and looking across the room to see the cat sit up with a glint in his eye then having him chase me round the house.

Another fear is that this treatment involves injections and they kind of want me to inject myself which I'm trying to get my head around. I know that millions of diabetics do it everyday, so I'm sure I'll get there. They did suggest one option though and that was to teach Karen to do it. We both agreed that probably wouldn't be a good idea - not because she wouldn't be capable, more that I'd probably wouldn't be a very good patient for her. Still, not wanting her to feel left out, they gave me some suppositories for the constipation and I've told her she can help me with those if she wants.

The last thought before I post is an old saying when I was younger to “make sure you always have on clean underwear as you never know when you're going to end up in hospital.” In my case I can't help think that this is tempting fate and maybe I shouldn't change my underwear for the next few weeks.

OK. Now I'm back home it's time to catch up on some stuff, but first things first, lets give the run down on what happened.

Saturday 16th Feb
Went to hospital ER with chronic diarrhea and fever circa 7:00pm. Was already being treated as an outpatient, but rather than getting better, symptoms got worse. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the results of previous tests were through and I was told I had Crohn's disease. Had series of tests from CT scans to EKGs in order to determine whether I had an infection in order to start the treatment for Crohn's. Oh yeah - and something shoved up my bum so they could take a look round. I think the concept is similar to those boats with glass bottoms, but the view's probably not as nice.

Sunday 17th Feb
At 5:00am completed tests from previous evening. Everything looked OK - good to go with starting Crohn's treatment. Anticipated stay in hospital 3 days.

Monday 18th Feb
Everything still looks good, but Gastroenterologist wants to perform a colonoscopy. Yep, more things to push up the back door. And this after I'd already had a flexible sigmoidoscopy as an outpatient. I suppose I only have myself to blame as I did choose to live in San Francisco so what did I really expect?

Tuesday 19th Feb
Now, in order to do the colonoscopy they have to clear you out. And when I say clear you out, they really mean it. You have to drink 4 liters of this stuff called "go lightly" which makes you do anything but go lightly, I can tell you that for nothing. So, here's the first contradiction - although I had diarrhea, I was also constipated. Go Figure. The way it works is that the block is higher up so that was preventing anything from coming through, but when it let go, it let go. Anyway, I took all this stuff on Monday night and it didn't clear everything so the colonoscopy was postponed for another day.

Wednesday 20th Feb
After another evening of drinking go lightly - yep, I had to go through it all again, they finally got round to pushing the biggest thing they could find up my ring and indeed confirmed that I had Crohn's. Fortunately I was put out for this procedure, but when I came round I had some difficulty breathing (odd!!)

Was allowed to eat after the procedure, so went back to eating. Felt fine in the afternoon, but early evening felt really bad. The poor nurse that came in to draw some blood for one of the many blood tests they do daily was greeted by me sat on the side of the bed holding the commode advising that this was probably not the best time to try and stick a needle in me. She went to get the nurse that was assigned to me and when she walked in I "popped" as they described it in the Matrix. Now for the crowning glory. No sooner had I vomited than I needed to poop - the old coming out of both ends trick. So, dropped the underwear and spun round (all very delicately as I was hooked up to an IV) sat down and let everything flow so to speak. Next thing I've got one nurse injecting morphine into one arm and another taking my blood pressure on the other arm. I have to say, even for me, that's a first.

Thursday 21st Feb
Woke up not feeling too great (unsurprisingly), but all that I had to do was go for a series of x-rays on my small intestine an then would be let go. Trouble was, kept feeling worse. Went for the x-rays - and not just your run of the mill x-ray, this is a time delay series after you drink barium so they can see it go through your body. Whole thing from start to finish took about 4 hours. You get an x-ray every 30 minutes to an hour but can go back to your room to watch TV in between.

After final series of x-rays got back to my room and they were concerned that my legs had swelled up and was still having difficulty breathing. Additionally, they thought that they had seen fluid round my lungs from the x-rays. Great news - apparently there are only 3 things that can cause this - heart, liver and kidneys and they had done every test on my liver and kidneys and they were fine. They suspected a blood clot. In turn, I informed the doctor that if I hadn't been admitted with diarrhea, that would be another symptom he could add that to the list. Was sent for another CT scan that confirmed not only blood clot, but one in my chest (aka pulmonary embolism).

Thursday 22nd Feb
Started on heparin to thin blood and address clot. Now for a little something for you to try back at home. Don't worry, it won't hurt. They moved the IV from one hand to the other. No big deal, but it's interesting what you use each hand for. Your little challenge is the next time you go for a poo, try and wipe only using one hand (being the one you don't normally use). It's possible, but it feels really weird. But, the diarrhea gave me lots of chances to practice this. Although I was fearful that I'd look down and see clean toilet paper in one hand and something else in the other hand, thankfully that didn't happen.

Friday 23rd Feb and Saturday 24th Feb
Not much change as was just responding to the Heparin. The big news though was that they had managed to get a better sample from me when doing the colonoscopy and subsequently found an infection (Clostridium Difficile or "C Diff" to its friends). I think this was found on Thursday, but it didn't seem like a big deal compared to everything else that was going on. So, treatment stopped for the Crohn's to fix the C Diff first.

Monday 25th Feb
Happy birthday to me (or what's left of me at this point). Actually, by now had turned the corner and was starting to feel much better. Downside being that I'm in hospital, it's my birthday and I was supposed to be on holiday. Still, mustn't grumble.

Tuesday 26th Feb
Everything as good as can be expected. Need to complete the injection stuff, but should be released tomorrow.

Wednesday 27th Feb
Given the all clear and discharged. Well, when I say all clear, I have a ton of pills, so if you hear a rattle, it's probably me walking up the corridor. I still need to get a lot of treatment sorted out, but I'm not critical anymore. Which is a good thing.

And there you have it.

Good News!!! I'm going to be discharged from hospital tomorrow morning. Obviously with having had something that's put strain on my heart I asked the doctor whether I'd be OK for sex. He said yes, so I told him there's a nice little Italian restaurant nearby that maybe we could go to first.

What could be more fun than spending your birthday in hospital hooked up to an IV? Presumably nothing as that's what I'm doing. So, to my loyal fan base that's been wondering where my blogs have gone, now you know.

Normal service should be resumed shortly as I expect to get out of here in a couple of days. I have a backlog of stuff to put on the open forum blogs which I will get to and also want to do an article titled "up my arse and beyond" that gives a guided tour of my body as per the scans that I've had whilst I've been in hospital. Unfortunately there's no footage from the rectal probe which is a shame as I'd quite like to have had a look at that. There are some good x-rays and CT scans though.

Wow! My inbox has been inundated with one email asking about the Fan Fare of Daytona. Actually, it was to explain the Budweiser shoot out, but I feel the entire thing needs some explanation, so here it is.

In typical American style, somebody obviously thought about - “how can we prolong the event and get more money from the punters?” And here's what they came up with. Ordinarily, a NASCAR race has 43 competitors. To keep it simple, the top 35 in the standings pre-qualify and the next fastest 8 get in. What this means is that all the drivers not in the top 35 come to each track with a car setup purely for qualifying and tend to qualify at the top of the heap, but then go slowly backwards during the race as their cars aren't setup for the long haul of say a 500 mile race. The order the drivers start in is the order they qualify in.

Not so for Daytona. That would be far too easy. So, the top 35 in points from last season automatically qualify. Qualifying is then held and this determines another 2 drives that get into the race (35 + 2 = 37). It's actually 3 that qualify, but we'll come back to that. The field in its entirety is then split in half - odd numbers and even numbers. Each half then enters what's called a “duel”. Two more cars qualify from each duel (37 + 2 + 2 = 41). The next spot goes to a former (Sprint) Cup Champion if there is one in the pack who has not yet qualified. Any remainder is filled up with the next fasted qualifiers. (As I said earlier, the third place in qualifying gets in on the basis that there would always at least one more spot to fill, but the third place in qualifying may also get in via the duels thus pushing the next people to get into the race from further down the qualifying list).

As for the starting positions for the race, only the top two positions from the qualifying session are locked in. The remaining positions are determined by the duels to create forced racing in each of the 150 mile duels (one duel filling the odd numbered spots and the other the even numbers). Otherwise, presumably the previously qualified drivers would drive one lap and then pull into the pits. This means that you could be unlucky enough to qualify third, but have a bad duel and end up starting 43rd.

All very well, but what does this have to do with the Shootout? Nothing really, other than to give you an idea of what's going on. The Shootout is a special event race. Not really sure what purpose it has other than to get the season started. Now, bearing in mind all the rigmarole above for the Daytona 500 qualifying, what is the Shootout? The Shootout is a race for all of the previous season's pole sitters (those people who started the race first by qualifying first). Oh no, if this is a race for the best qualifiers, how complicated have they made the qualifying for this race? Any idea? No, well, believe it or not, there is no qualifying, it's done on a random draw.

And America wonders why nobody else follows its sports.

As Daytona week kicks off with all the fan fare that accompanies the Daytona 500 we bring you the top story so far. Most people are reporting on the alleged “punch up” between Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch. Certainly a news worthy discussion, but not what we feel is truly reportable. Instead, we focus our attention on the effects of the big last season news - that of Dale Earnhardt Jr. moving from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsport.

This has caused a lot of concern with fans, in particular the problem that he was going to lose his number 8 car and Budweiser sponsorship. Why would this be of such a concern to his loyalist fans? Apparently it's because they're worried about how they're going to have to change their tatoos! (Seriously - they even covered this on the tv.) So Dale has managed to secure the 88 car and has written the eights the same way as they were written on the 8 car. This is to help the troubled fans and allow them the option of just adding an 8 to their previous tatoo.

What consideration! Actually, most people interviewed (yep they interviewed people on this) said they were just going to take the opportunity to get another tatoo done and not bother changing the old one.



Seems that I've picked an appropriate sport to follow. Although my die hardness ends with wearing a baseball cap.

So the news story from the US is that United are going to start charging $25 per additional bag. The news from France, however, is that flight attendants are stripping for the pilots. Probably a fair reflection on the difference in service.

The video of the strip tease can be found on The Sun's website. The think I like best about the article is the fact that it isn't possible to squeeze in another pun. Starting with the title across the picture “ hello ... this is your captain tweaking” to the old favorite of finding somewhere to abuse the term “joystick”

Saturday morning and time to head out to go house hunting. But not any ordinary Saturday morning to go out for a drive. No, brother Hog ordered himself a car public address system that you connect up and it plays noises (like the noise of a cow) so that you can surprise unsuspecting people. Or so it says on the box. This product is, apparently only available in the US and will only ship to a US address so my brother had it shipped to me and I can then arrange to pass it on to him in the UK - either on my next trip home or by mailing it.

Obviously I couldn't resist the urge to test out this ingenious invention. So I thought, why not video it, so I did. You too can see how amazing this product isn't by clicking on the “Hog Horn” link from the Other Videos page.

Things to look out for:

• Between the break when I connect it up, I'd practiced using it. Note William's expression when I flash to him
• On the animal noises, it seems like those that we actually take a guess at (chicken and pig) are actually wrong.
• Is it me, or is the car's indicator the loudest thing on the video?

Now, what you don't see is that after I turned the camera off, there was actually someone at the side of the road. I hit him with the duck noise and he totally didn't hear it.

Now, now, the other bit that you didn't see was the effort that went into putting this together. We head off on our journey and the windscreen wipers on Karen's car were just leaving a smeary mess on the windscreen. I couldn't see a thing out of my side. Karen claimed she could see out of hers, but appeared to be peering between the streaks akin to looking out of a pillbox. I seriously thought this gadget was going to work, so I made her drive back to the car parts shop. I bought two new windscreen wipers and stood in the rain for about 30 minutes getting soaked trying to figure out how to fit them. It really wasn't worth it.

Now, now, now, did you know that there is a left and right windscreen wiper. No? Well, nor did I. I guess I had a 50% chance of getting it right when I put them on, but odds like that never seem to work out. I believe Murphy's Law intervenes somewhere along the line to considerably reduce the odds below 50% which is why I fitted the new wipers the wrong way round. You can't actually tell from the video as most of the video is just a shot of the speaker on my knee. We drove round for about 4 hours before I realized that I was looking through a brand new widescreen TV and Karen was again peering though the old 14" black and white. I guess I could see so that's all that matters really.

Press release:

“EastBayRag, the Bay Area company headquartered in San Francisco, announces that it is going to cut 1,000 jobs throughout it's global operations. The company is feeling the pressure of all the other software companies being bought for obscene amounts. In an effort to realize the EBR Business Plan, and to entice even higher bids (hopefully up to $44.6 billion), the company has decided to take the drastic measures.”

I mean, come on Microsoft - $44.6 billion for Yahoo! I only want $10 million. It's a drop in the ocean and look what you get. So Yahoo's got a bigger customer base, more intellectual capital and a couple more assets, EastBayRag has a logo with a bloke fishing on it. And one that I ripped off from some clipart somewhere. What more could you want?

Following the theme of the previous article of random irrelevant facts, here's one for you. If you go to Google and type in EastBayRag, it will find this site and display entries to hit the relevant page. If you go to Yahoo and try the same it will not find anything and will ask you if you meant to try something different. Now, if you look at the IP address that this website is on and lookup the owner, you will find it belongs to Yahoo. Although I host this site myself, Yahoo is my ISP and they are the ones providing connectivity to the Internet. It seems that Yahoo's search engine doesn't look at what's going on under its own nose. (I'll leave you to deduce the rest for yourself).

Is it just me or do I have a right to question the units of measurement used on the news this morning? They were discussing the fact that January has had a significant amount of rainfall. And I quote, the amount of rainfall was “eight and thirty nine hundredths of an inch.” It was even written as 8.39"

Last time I checked, inches were typically broken into sixteenths or multiples thereof so you could go to 1/32 or 1/64 etc. I don't recall ever hearing an imperial measurement having a metric (or decimal I suppose) end to it.

Maybe the US is not content with just altering the rules around language to make it more phonetic (as opposed to correct [he hypocritically says typing and spelling in English US]) that they decided to bastardize (noting the spelling with a “zee”) the measurement system.

(And I know the measurement systems aren't the same in the sense that things like the fact that a US pint is different from a UK pint, but at least there's a reason for that. That reason being that the UK changed its system to imperial in 1824 which is post some irrelevant July 4th date so America didn't adopt it. If you really want to get you head in a spin, America uses English Units. English units are outlawed in the UK by the 1824 Weights and Measurements Act, so the UK uses imperial, a.k.a. British Imperial System. I guess the US is more traditional than the UK).

Congratulations to Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates for winning the Daytona 24hr race for the third year in a row. Second year in a row for Scott Pruett and Juan Pablo Montoya at the wheel. (Not at the same time, obviously, otherwise it would have been a little crowded in the drivers seat). And first time for Dario Franchitti and Memo Rojas who were the other two drivers to take the wheel for stints.

In other news, beware the little people. Whilst most people are focused on the recession, The Sun ran an article this week about gangs in Sweeden putting dwarves into bags and putting them on buses. Whilst in transit, the dwarves would crawl out of their hiding place and loot the belongings of other passengers. Full story Cops Hunt Dwarf Thieves

“A view or outlook” normally associated with something of beauty or worth looking at. Bought a new computer at the weekend for Karen as I seem to be taking up the others so she needed something to use. It came with Windows Vista on it. Turned the computer on and it spent several hours unpacking itself (metaphorically speaking as I mean unpacking of files, not unpacking itself from the box - that would be pretty cool if it did that) then it spent the next two days patching itself which resulted in it not being able to run the pre-packages software that came with it.

Seriously! Now when you boot the computer it tells you that it has compatibility issues with the webroot (anti-spyware) software that came with it. There's a button to click to fix - click it and it goes off to the internet, spends a couple of minutes searching, then tells you it can't fix it but you'll be notified when a fix is available. In the meantime contact the application vendor. You go to webroot's website and it tells you that the Windows Vista upgrades are causing problems with their software but they are “aggressively” working with Microsoft to fix the issue and as a workaround, you should consider uninstalling the Vista upgrades.

And that's progress!!

(Yes, I know all you Mac fans are laughing, but you really don't know what you're missing. Where's the fun in having a product that works as you expect it to?)

After doing some general housekeeping to tidy up some bits and pieces that I've been meaning to do for a while, I got to thinking about changing the intro to the site. It used to start by quoting the opening line from the WASP song Electric Circus - welcome, I bid you welcome, to life inside the electric circus - and I thought probably about time for a change. So I moved the intro text off the home page and created a page that gave an overview of the genesis of this site.

Whilst doing it, I got to thinking “what do I want to get out of this?” so I wrote a business plan to define my long term strategic objectives. It took me a long while to put this together, factoring in global economic conditions (strength of dollar, price of oil etc.), looking at my career plans and growth opportunities on my current career path, performing a SWOT analysis layered onto PEST analysis multiplied by Porter's Five Forces. Finally, considering Maslow's hierarchy of needs to establish my desired end state and help determine what I would need to climb to that level of the pyramid.

Anyway, the business plan is linked from the genesis page, but to save you from searching, you can access it from the link below:

EBR Business Plan

2008 certainly seems to be the year of the tit so far. As many of you avid readers may know, I've developed an interest in photography. You may not, however, be aware that my folks put nuts out in their garden for the local birds. What that means is that this Christmas holiday presented itself with the opportunity to take a few photos of the birds in my parents garden. And, as the title suggests, the most common was the tit. First off, there's the common pair of tits (Great and Blue). These are your bankers, those that you can gaurantee to see on any day. “The pair that keeps popping out.”

Now, ordinarily, most people would leave it at that. And I have to admit, at first, that's all I thought was there. Now I think the problem is that typically you get into the “can't see the tits for the bush” syndrome. Basically, getting caught by the other features and not staying focused on the tits. But if you look carefully, there's always another pair lurking in the background. In this case the Coal and Long-Tailed Tits as shown below.

Well, there you have it ..... “ddddrrrrrrr” ..... What was that? ..... “ddddrrrrrrr” ..... There it goes again. Surely it can't be? But yes, it's obvious really. With all these tits about, there was sure to be a large woody somewhere wasn't there. And in this case a pair of Greater Spotted Woodpeckers. Woody's pictured with their nuts below.

I was watching “How William Shatner Changed the World” the other day. Hold on a minute, did I just say that out loud. Ooops! Looks like I did and what's worse, I seem to have written it down. Still, I suppose most people know I'm a geek by now, but if there was any doubt left in your mind, I think I've just killed it.

Anyway, the program was talking about things like the flip phones in use today being designed by Star Trek fans, then moving onto things like whether or not the warp drive concept would be possible (which, apparently some people think it could be). Finally it got onto the transporter system which unfortunately isn't going to be possible given the amoung of energy it would require to work - clearly they haven't seen &ldquoThe Fly” - and the person talking on this section commented on the fact that it would be very desireable as he did a lot of flying and really didn't like it.

I too feel that I'm in the same position. I know all the statistics are there around safety, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I think it's the not being in control bit that bothers me. On my flight over here, we encountered some turbulence whilst flying over the States that made me really want someone to press ahead with the invention of the transporter.

One other random fact, we arrived in the UK too early as we had favorable tail winds. Too early as Heathrow doesn't open until 6:00 am. Odd as I thought it was a 24 hour airport, but apparently not!

Yet again, Mr O met up with Karen and myself to do the local bumpkin quiz. This time, however, it was the big annual Cricket Club quiz which we've never won before. There were about 20 teams that entered the quiz and we came out victorious even though we were one of the few teams that only had three members.

Well, according to everybody else in the pub we may as well have only had one member - Mr O. After we won (on a tie break question as we had drawn with one of the other teams) everybody came over and congratulated Mr O on his win. Nobody gave Karen or myself any credit for our involvement in this (supposed) team victory.

As I felt the need to point out later, it was very much a team effort. Mr O did actually get the answers to all the questions, which probably warrants most of the credit, however, Karen wrote all the answers on the answer sheet and I sat there making fart noises to put off the other teams.

My Christmas present this year was a "Dr Fart." Said items is a keyring thing with six buttons on it that you can press to emit different sounds of flatulence. I've been kept continuously amused with it for two days now, so it was money well spent. The only complaint I have is that it's not loud enough. What that meant is that I needed to time the trumping noises with when it was quiet. Sort of going for the "OK, Question one [slight pause] thbbrrrtttt" Anyway, you get the picture (talking of which, there's a picture below of my wonderful present) and I don't feel that my skill or contribution to the team effort was truly recognized, so I'm going to take the opportunity here to congratulate myself!

In the words of Noddy Holder “so here it is ...” and I'd like to add “so bloody well shut up and enjoy it!” Time to eat turkey, drink beer and have fun!

I was trying to think of an apt meaning for MUNI, but I couldn't quite finish it off. Well, I'll say I gave it all of five minutes and got bored so thought I'd just get on and write the article anyway.

So, we had the British American Christmas Lunch this week. A jolly good affair and a decent piss up even if I say so myself. Being the safe accountant type person that I am, I left the car at home and decided to get public transport so I could have a few beers. It seems that every time I do this I run into some sort of problem or another.

It was an awful day, so it was bad enough walking to the MUNI stop, but I didn't realize how bad until I heard this massive crack and when I looked back saw half of a tree that I'd just walked under come crashing down where I'd been walking. OK, could have been worse. Best get a drink to calm the nerves :)

Onto the train to get said drink and we must of managed ... oh ... at least three blocks before we had to stop because the train in front had broken down. What happened next was really weird. They decided to hook up our train with the train in front and drive it as a four carriage instead of two carriage. Makes sense, but they didn't let us off before they decided to hook up the trains. Then, after about 20 minutes of connecting, we got going and the train just went straight up 20 blocks or so without stopping. Now, didn't bother me as I was heading into town, but there were quite a few people jumping up and trying to get the driver to stop by pulling the bell. The driver of our train had already told us that he was no longer in control of the vehicle (it was being run from the front) and the fact that some people were continuing to pull on the stop cord seemed to enrage one of the other passengers. I was hopeful of a fight, but it didn't happen. Instead, we carried on a bit further, decoupled, went a few more blocks, broke down again and then had to walk four blocks into West Portal where, fortunately there is a larger selection of trains going into town.

Had a great time at the event and time to go home. Surely the MUNI would be nice to me at least once. Wrong! After waiting for a very long time (I think an hour - it was at least 30 minutes as I started timing it after a while) I gave up waiting for an L train as it didn't seem like one was going to come. It seemed like it was just a lady with a child and myself sitting there waiting as people came in and went out on other trains. Thinking back now, it kind of makes sense as we would be the only two people not wanting to (or capable of) walk far so we were waiting. As noted, eventually I gave up and decided to take the N to Sunset, then get the 29 bus across. All in all it took me over 2 hours to do a journey that should be about 30 minutes.

And a thank you to the owner of the house with the big bush at the junction of the N and 29. After eleventeen beers it was muck needed.

When I got home from the Christmas party last weekend I noticed a film on TV called Mr Skeffington. Not really being in a fit state to watch it then, I decided to watch it tonight. Why, you may ask? Well, Skeffington is the name of the village that I come from (circa 40 houses and 100 people), so I thought I'd take a look at the film to see if I could draw any comparisons. Here's a brief overveiw:

Skeffington has an obsession for Fanny. Skeffington marries Fanny and Trippy gets upset. Trippy goes to Europe and dies in the war. Fanny blames Skeffington and divorces him so Skeffington goes to Europe with their daughter (another Fanny!) Little Fanny, as she becomes known, travels back to the States to see mother Fanny. Mother Fanny realizes she is old and no longer wanted by men and gets upset. Skeffington comes home after he's been tortured by the Nazis resulting in him being blind. Fanny is happy as this means Skeffington can't see how old she is so she takes him back and they live happily ever after (which is not very long as they're both old now).

I'll let you figure out the similarities. In the meantime I'm going to flick through the channels to see if there's anything worth watching yet.

Massive congratulations to Matt and Olivia for getting married last Saturday. Looks like it went really well and the reception looked fantastic. Wishing you all the best from the other side of the Atlantic.

Why is it that people feel the need to have inane conversations on their mobile phones. Some people just can't seem to go five minutes without telling their other half what they're doing and that they love them.

Or to argue about something as appeared to be the case today. This lady was strolling out by where I work and what I got from the conversation was “yeah ... huh ... yeah ... ok ... bye ... yes I love you.” All I can say is that what I was looking at was not a face that was conveying love. Far from it. I don't know what this chap had done, but I'm pretty sure he was going to pay for it when his beloved got home.

And then there's those people that phone up to say that they'll be home in five minutes. Is your other half so predisposed to surprises that they couldn't deal with you just turning up at home after a day at work without being announced?

Well, not me. I called on the way home and my message was as follows - “Am on my way home, have been stuck in traffic. I've got a bit of a turtle's head poking through so I'm coming in hot. Clear out an LZ and make a path to the bog!” Essential information that I felt needed to be conveyed.

Now, I know what you're thinking - “I really didn't need to know that.” Some of you may even be thinking that I've painted a really bad image that you would rather not have had. Possibly thinking that you couldn't think of anything worse. Well, you're nearly right. What you really don't need to know is that now I'm back home, I'm sat comfortably and through the joys of wireless internet have just enough time to post this article!

One of the things I've been up to is sorting out the racing for the beginning of next season. Mr O and I have a little trip planned - we're going to the NASCAR race in Fontana (just east of LA) the last weekend in February, then driving over to Vegas to spend the week there and then go to the race in Vegas.

Sounds like a plan to me.

One thing I did realize is that I forgot to do the vote analysis this week. This problem has now been corrected.

So, no entries last week. I'd love to say it's because it was a quiet week, but unfortunately it's the opposite. That thing called work came up and got in the way again. Well that and the fact that I was working on creating an interface between this site and Adobe Photoshop which I've created a forum on if you're interested.

I'm still testing the interface and there's been some other activities that I'll blog about a bit later. In the meantime I'll leave you with my biggest current thought that I can't get out of my head and that's whether or not Research In Motion would ever team with Apple Computers to merge the Blackberry and iPhone. And if they did, would they call the resulting product “The Blackberry and Apple Crumble”?

Karen went out the other day and told William that we were going on a plane soon and that he'd get to see Nanny, Granddad and Auntie Alison. When we went out this morning I told William to hurry up as we were going out and he asked if we were going to get on a plane to see Nanny, Granddad and Auntie Alison. I said not yet, but when we did he'd also get to see Ivan again. He then looked at me rather quizzically and said “Noddy Car.”

I laughed as I thought it sweet that he remembered. The thing that's been bugging me all day though is that I can't remember William seeing the Lotus.

After a few weeks of being without a PDA, I've got myself a new one - a Blackberry 8310 (aka the Curve). There were a few teething problems after the firm got hold of it and destroyed it, but after a second attempt it appears to be working as intended and I'm quite impressed with it.

I've decided to do some little hikes at the weekend to do some photographing as I quite like this taking pictures thing. Anyway, went out this weekend and it was a complete waste of time in that the fog didn't allow you to see more than 20ft in front. As I was walking round I thought about the fact that this new device has GPS on it and so I downloaded a map application and started playing with it. It had the option to do a local search and I thought “what would I really like now?” So I typed in “beer” and it gave me a list of the nearest places that sold beer and asked me if I wanted directions from where I was to any of these. Wow! It actually needed a little refinement as most of the listings under beer were for shops that sold alcohol, but if you put in “bar”, Bob's your uncle!

Congratulations to Jimmy Johnson, Chad Knaus and the Lowe's/Kobalt Chevrolet team for their NASCAR Nextel Cup Series title. A great season for Hendrick Motorsport taking first and second place with Jeff Gordon - they've been dominant all season and put up a great fight against each other at the end.

Obviously Jimmy owes it all to Mr O and myself as I really thing the turning point in this season was when he took the win at Las Vegas which was the first NASCAR race we went to see. Jimmy pictured below doing his celebration at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Looking forward to next season. Plans are to start with both Fontana and Las Vegas at the end of February / beginning of March.

There was much laughter coming from the office next to me. The team had been performing a review that require tests to be executed and were going through the review comments from the boss on their work. Thankfully they didn't take the comments literally as they had been instructed to “remove these testes!” Now I know we push people pretty hard, but this is probably going a little too far for the cause.

At a party the other weekend, my mate looked round and his kid was trying to unbutton his mum's shirt and he laughs, saying “like father like son going straight for the booby.” I looked round to see William stuffing his third slice of pizza down his face whilst reaching for some cake. Unfortunately I had to agree with the “like father like son” comment. In my defense / experience though, the booby will always be there, but you need to get to the buffet first before all the best bits get taken.

Yep - I've been playing Halo 3. The long awaited sequel to the amazingly named Halo 2 which, in turn was the long awaited sequel to the (you're never going to guess this) original game Halo. So, there hasn't been any confusion around what the game is a sequel to - I think most of the gamers have figured this out. Cool.

The game is what you would expect - brilliant. I've completed it on the most difficult level, Legendary, which took a little bit of work, but not too much. That said, the best part of the game is the online bit. I've just started playing a bit, but not as much as I'd have liked given some work commitments. Still, I've had a few goes at it.

Anyway, the only purpose of writing this blog (as you'll find much better reviews elsewhere on the web) is that I've figured out that you can take screenshots and download them. So here are a few:

This article is a tad late as it relates to an event last Friday, but as happens every now and then, that work stuff has gotten in the way of what's really important. Anyway, went to my first ice hockey game - San Jose Sharks versus LA Kings.

First off, I have to say that I quite liked the game. Unlike the more traditional baseball and American football, this was fast moving and interesting. At least for the first period anyway as unfortunately the Sharks were terrible going down 5-1 which really meant that the second and third periods were very one sided.

Some interesting things though. When there's a break in the play, the TV coverage cuts to commercials. The game doesn't restart until they get the go ahead from the network to make sure that the viewers don't miss anything. Initially this seemed like a really strange concept until my mate who I went with pointed out that it's not like the blatant advertising in the UK where our teams had sold out and put the sponsorship across the front of their jerseys. And I do remember when advertising on shirts first came into soccer and there was the discussion on which teams were selling out and I guess we've just gotten used to it now. I hadn't really thought about it, but other people think it's sacrilegious to desecrate the team jersey.

The next thing (and I'm told this is relevant to Sharks fans only) is that the crowd seemed to be needed to be told what to do. The display boards frequently came up with instructions like "make some noise" and really bad chants like "beat LA". OK so maybe "Blue Army" isn't the most inventive, but we did have a lot of very creative songs as well like "When You're Smiling". Just to sidetrack for a second - I just searched to see if anyone had put these songs up on the web and yep there's a great website ForFoxSake and the songs are on ForFoxSake Songs so now you can see how bad the songs are.

Finally, whenever the Sharks had a "Power Play" which, contrary to what I thought is not when a player runs over a flashing power up and then starts running twice as fast as the other players for 30 seconds, is actually when the opposing team goes a player down after they've committed a foul and been sent to the sin bin. Anyway, at this point the fans are instructed to make this weird motioning with the hands - I guess to look like a shark chomping on something, but it's unfortunately the action I've taught William that you do for a crocodile. Regardless, it looks like some demented version of the Birdie Song.

Don't get me wrong though. I did enjoy it.

A Happy Halloween to all of you! So, what was the most scary thing that happened to you? .... What's that? ..... Oh! That's nothing ..... I had a prostrate exam.

Straight Up!

I suppose if you're going to have one Halloween is as good a day as any to have one. Long story short, we've just changed medical plans and I had to go in and register and do the physical etc. If you're not from the US this won't make sense to you. I haven't figured out the medical system here and I don't really think anyone else has. The essence is you pay money and belong to a group that will treat you. But back to the story at hand I went in to meet my doctor, went through the usual stuff and blah, blah, broken neck, blah, blah, higher risk of etc. etc. and then I get asked, "when was the last time you had a rectal exam?"

I was kind of expecting the question and unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), I haven't had one in a long time. "Well, we should really do one".

At which point I laughed. Not really a lot else I could think of doing and said "I thought you were going to say that. I'd rather not, but if you think I need one then OK". Now, to his credit he said "I'll tell you the truth, when I woke up this morning, this wasn't at the top of my list of things I wanted to do, but yes, we should do the exam".

A quick drop of the trousers, application of the old KY and wham, bam thank you exam.

Then a little surreality. "Did that feel uncomfortable?" My look must have given away the fact I was thinking - you just had your finger up my arse, I'd say that was pretty uncomfortable. So he added "I don't mean the fact that I had my finger up your bum, was there anything else?" To which I replied "if you were doing something else, I was unaware of it because I was somewhat focused on the fact that you had your finger up my bum." Which resulted in further clarification of "no, not any other sensation, but did you feel anything other than my finger like any other irritation".

The answer to that was no and thankfully everything was OK. All the bits that were supposed to be up there were there or whatever it was he was looking for. Although I was tempted to say - I'm struggling to think of anything more irritating than have a bloke poke his finger up my arse, but that wouldn't have been constructive.

So, I at least take comfort in the fact that I keep seeing all these flyers promoting regular prostrate exams as part of good health and the fact that I won't need another one for a while.

Just a couple of days after writing the article that the fun had been taken out of Halloween as it was now a glorified costume party rather than a celebration of the undead, news comes out of New Jersey of a 24 year old man that was caught having sex with a 92 year old woman. And yep, you guessed it - she was also dead!

According to the news articles, Anthony Merino, a lab technician (in the morgue) at Holy Name Hospital was caught in said necrophiliac act by a security guard. Apparently a spokesman for the police said “When you think you've heard and seen it all, something like this happens.” Well, I'm glad you don't come across this every day is all I can say.

Article on ABC News if you are interested.

I knew him well. 'Tis with sorrow that I look back and remember the days when Halloween had something to do with the undead. Time was when you tried to dress up as the most frightening thing you could think of and then try to scare someone. Now it seems that it's just a big commercial fancy dress party.

William had picked himself out a fireman's outfit for Halloween and Karen wanted to go to the zoo to take some photos of him. They had a pumpkin patch and the idea was that it would make for a better picture than just in the front room. And it appears that everybody else in San Francisco had the same idea, so the zoo was filled with many a family and their little darlings dressed as Spiderman, Teletubbies, Fairies ... well, basically anything you can think of except for anything traditional. Nevermind, the kids seemed to love it, including William and I suppose that's all that matters.

P.S. William's the one in the fireman's uniform. Not sure who the witch is! (Maybe I'm wrong, maybe somepeople did get dressed up to frighten other people. Maybe I'll just lie down on the couch to save the hassle of being sent there later).

Link to more photos of William and his shiny helmet.

We've all heard the stupid saying around not "assume" anything as it makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me", but my assumption only really made me look stupid and not anybody else. Quite mundane really, the indicator/turn light on Karen's car had gone on the back of the car. She got a new bulb but couldn't undo the wing nuts in the boot/trunk so asked me to do it. I assumed that chaning the bulb would be the same as it has been on any car I've had in the UK, that you just open a flap and take the old bulb out and replace with the new. I thought it odd that it wasn't just a little door and that there were wing nuts in the first place.

After a failed first attempt that resulted in fetching a pair of plyers, I got the wing nuts off. Based on my assumption above I tried to pull away the plastic housing in the boot/trunk only to find that it was further fixed with a couple of screws. Frustrated and thinking I needed to go back in to fetch a screwdriver, I gave the housing a quick hit. At which point the back light unit shot out. (Kind of like that "Only Fools and Horses" episode when they take the chandelier down to clean it, but on a much smaller scale).

Whether it's just this car or a US thing, it seems that rather than having a simple flap to open to change a bulb, you have to unscrew the back light unit held in with three wing nuts and take the unit out to replace the bulb. Still, I think there was only half the street watching me make a complete hash of doing something so simple as changing a light bulb!

.... such that I am forced to go to a two year old's birthday party? I suppose it has to happen, kind of every year really. Well, not a two year old's birthday as next year it'll be a three year old's birthday party, but each year I'm guessing that we're going to have a party. At least I've got 12 months to prepare for the next one. It really does seem kind of strange that parents would want to hold such an event - between the kids screeming, grabbing toys and shouting “mine” then pushing the other kids away, running away so the parents had to chase them, streaming snot down the front of their faces and pooping themselves it was .... actually there wasn't anything else, that was it.

I'm sure most people who have a kid will say it's great and convince themselves they had a good time. Sadly I missed the denial injections when William was born and am stuck with reality. Which is why I grabbed a couple of mates and headed off out to the pub.

There are some photos of the birthday party if you are interested, but I will say now that they are not the best pictures I've ever taken. There are some better photos of William playing with his toys that I took today. If you're really up for it, however, there are some videos of William at his birthday and opening his presents. I'm quite pleased with the video of the birthday as I think it highlights the screeming and running away, albeit the running away is me to the pub.

First, congratulations to South Africa. Second, contratulations to Kimi Räikkönen. Third, wooden spoons to all of Her Majesty's loyal subjects.

Lets start with the rugby. I have to be honest and say that I really didn't think we were going to get to the final, particularly after the thrashing that South Africa gave us in the group game. We should take credit for the significant improvement we showed and for the wins over Australia and France. South Africa have played consistently well throughout the competition and are worthy champions. Yes, we can keep looking back and saying “what if” the try had been given. It would have made it a different game. Well, it wasn't given and we have to live with it, so lets congratulate South Africa and give ourselves a little pat on the back for at least making the final.



Next it's the Formula 1 Grand Prix. All the jokes I've had over the week on the New Zealand rugby team choking that I haven't had time to publish, I can just change the name and substitute in Lewis Hamilton. Again, it's his rookie year so he should take some credit for having got into a position to win the championship, but we have to worry as he had two bites at the cherry and failed. Lewis obviously has considerable talent and I just hope these last two races don't impact his career. Most drivers start in the lower teams and work their way up after they've gained some experience in order that they don't make the rookie mistakes Lewis made. So, he needs to put it behind him and move on. One person that doesn't let emotion get in the way is Kimi “Ice Man” Räikkönen. I'm really happy that he's won the championship. Kimi is a great driver and has struggled with some of the worst luck I've seen. Well, all the stars seemed to align for him today as he picked up the win (courtessy of Felipe Massa) and the championship.

First, a massive congratulations to England for battling away to earn a place in the final of the Webb Ellis Trophy (a.k.a. Rugby World Cup). This was a fantastic achievement for a team that's not really played that well for quite a while, including a crushing defeat by South Africa in the group stages of this competition.

Trying to watch rugby in the US is like trying to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. The only option you have is pay per view. Fortunately I was in Africa and the UK for the group games so I got to watch those fine, but find myself shelling out $25 for each of the remaining games (the England ones anyway - I'm not paying to see the others).

After the match, I was obviously ecstatic and was really looking forward to the post match interviews, but I didn't make it that far. I have no idea where the feed was coming from or who selected the commentators, but we ended up with a Paddy and an Aussie. The after match analysis consisted of two whining idiots that seemed to be very bitter. The Irish guy kept going on about the fact that Ireland have beaten England over the last four years so if we will the World Cup we should give it to Ireland. The Aussie said that England had cheated through the whole tournament to get where they were. After about 10 minutes of this mindless conversation (seemingly independent conversation) one of them said something about the fact that they should say something positive about England as they'd won and the other said no, they couldn't think of anything.

Now, I freely admit it wasn't the most interesting game I've ever watched. It's the semi final of the World Cup between two rival nations - it's not going to be a spectacular event, it's going to be a hard fought battle. I also admit that England did well to hold the French off and slow the game down sufficiently so that we could win further taking the sparkle and creativity out of the game. But, we went in with a plan, executed it perfectly and won the game - against the host nation. There were a lot of things you could have commented on that England did right to win the game.

After the comment about not being able to think about anything positive to say I turned the TV off as I was in too good a mood to listen to a couple of miserable whining gits. It seems odd that you would want to work in commentary if it's going to upset you that much.

Still, we're in the final. It's going to be an incredibly difficult game as we have to play South Africa again. On current form, you have to fancy South Africa, but lets hope we learnt something from that defeat earlier on and maybe, just maybe we can spring a big surprise.

Well, it's been a few days now since “the event”. Everything seems to be back to normal now so I think I can safely write this article and maybe it will help some of you out there. As with most of you, I've read all the articles on disaster recovery and the need to have an adequate plan, but do you ever really think it's going to happen to you? I certainly didn't. But at least I had a plan (well sort of).

So, as most of you know, I've been traveling and that’s where this story starts. I returned to the US on October 29th all well and good. Actually, better than all well and good as Karen and William were spending another 10 days in the UK which meant I had some peace and quiet and could spend some quality time with my cats. Karen had done her best to prepare for my being alone and had gotten in enough microwave meals to last me until she returned and all of that good stuff. Except for one thing. An underestimation of the increased beer intake that comes with being alone.

In hindsight it’s obvious that this would have been an oversight and I should have known that Karen would not have a true appreciation for the beer intake before she came along, so I totally accept full responsibility for this.

As you can see, that’s bad, but would you really call it a disaster – probably not yet. Now lets add in that it’s Friday night when you open the last beer in the fridge, realize that there are no more and the shops are shut. Yes, it’s panic time. Then ….. it dawns on you that the rugby is on at 6:00 the following morning and you’re not going to have any beers to drink during the match. You really are left with no choice but to declare a disaster.

I’m sure I’m going to get asked, looking back, what went through my mind? What was I actually thinking at the point I realized there would be no beer in the house when the match was on. To be honest, I’ve heard the saying “it was enough to make a grown man cry” and I have to say I was pretty close to being reduced to tears. It was like my whole life’s drinking flashed before my eyes – which, lets face it didn’t take very long as typically you don’t remember much from the nights you’ve been drinking, so thankfully that didn’t get in the way of rational thought. Then the training kicked in. I just thought to myself “you’ve planned for this. You hoped it would never happen, but now it has you need to deal with it.”

I had heard that the stuff in those tall bottles contained something that could be drunk as a substitute for beer, but had never tried it. Now was the time. Weirdest thing though, the bottle was bloody difficult to get into as someone had stuck a cork thing in the neck. I tried poking it out with a knife, but that was just taking too long and didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere. I thought about just breaking the top off the bottle but was worried about the mess. In the end I just pushed the cork type thing into the bottle. It worked – out came something red.

Well, it wasn’t pretty and I’m not sure I want to do it again, but a couple of pints of something called something like “Cabinet Servinyon” and then some white stuff called something like “Servinyon Blonk” managed to get me through the match until the pub opened later on.

I feel luck to have survived this disaster and can only hope if doesn’t happen to you. But you need to ask yourself “are you prepared?”

... oh it goes on and on and on ....
... and it goes on .. and on .. and on ..

it's Heaven and Hell

They'll tell you black when it's really red
I think you should have stayed in bed
'Cus the words you're singing to this song
Are being made up as you go along

It's Heaven and Hell
Fool, fool!

Well, the trip to Concord to see Heaven & Hell (Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio), Alice Cooper and Queensryche unfortunately wasn't the best. I picked Mike up as I wasn't going to be drinking and headed off to pick up Curt, but unfortunately was unaware that it was the Folsom Street Parade.

The Folsom Street Parade is one of the gay, lesbian, transexual etc. etc. dealies that goes on. Basically where blokes walk round wearing very little leather - the “assless chaps” being one of the favored items of clothing. Now, to sidetrack for a second, this to me is not really playing hard to get is it. You're kind of putting it out there on display. Now if only I could get straight women to do the same for straight men ..... Not going to happen is it?

So, back to the story, I'm sat in traffic as they block the roads off for this event with the choice of either staring at the back of the car in front or the back of some bloke showing his arse. Well, I'm now very familiar with what the Chevy Impala looks like from behind.

Finally, we get to the event in time to see the last song that Queensryche played. Which happened to be the only bank Mike was going for. I couldn't say anything, but this happened the last time he went to a gig in San Jose when he got there late and missed the first band (in that case Whitesnake).

Next was Alice Cooper and I have to say totally fantastic. Thankfully this was the one I was really interested in seeing - I've seen Sabbath and Dio many times before. Cooper put on a fantastic show including a medley that started with Welcome to My Nightmare where these strange creatures came on (one of which was a woman), then went into Only Women Bleed where Cooper had a mock fight to beat up the woman, turning into Dead Babies as the woman came back on with a pram from which Cooper pulled out a baby and drove a stake through its heart before being grabbed, put into a straight jacket and then hanged to go off with the band singing I Love the Dead. I'm sure I'm missing another song in there somewhere, but you get the idea. A fantastic rendition of Halo of Flies and Schools Out, finishing with Elected. And don't you just love the bit in the middle:

San Francisco's got problems
Hell, California's got problems
And you know what?
I don't care!

Sadly the night didn't end there. Heaven and Hell came on. To give credit, Tony Iomi, Geezer Butler and Vinnie Vincent were great. Dio really wasn't on top of his game though. Some of the first songs were alright - I got into Children of the Sea, but it seemed to be a really short set of about 45 minutes into which they put about 20 minutes worth of solos in Heaven and Hell. And when Dio came back after the solos he seemed to be singing different lyrics to those which I know. I had the same problem with quite a few songs. I thought it was me at first as I hadn't heard some of the songs for a long time, but it wasn't. Several people said the same thing.

Anyway, it was still worth it - if not just to see Alice.

Well, it's the last full day in the UK before heading back over the pond. It's a lovely Brittish summer day - overcast, grey and drizzling. Unfortunately the sun only shines two days in England each year and we missed both of them. Nevermind, we still managed to get out and about. I've created two more sets of photos:

• A day out at Belton House where we took photos of William playing in the grounds of the stately home.
• Some pictures of houses in and around the village where my parents live. The sun was actually shining on one of the days, but it later apologized and went back in to give way for more drizzle. Didn't get as many photos as I wanted given the poor weather and poor light which also means that some of these are not that interesting. There's also a photo of my parents house in there.

I suppose I better finish by saying that we won the bumpkin quiz last night. As much as I'd like to take credit for this victory, I feel that this needs to go to my co-auther, the mysterious “Mr O.”

My first chance to try out macro photography. This is apparently quite hard and, after my first feeble attempt, I have to agree. A rather large spider was to be my subject. The problem is that this was on my bed at my parents house and Karen doesn't much like spiders. Between the screeming and me fumbling around, my subject didn't stay still for very long and with those legs seemed more than capable of scooting away pretty quickly. Anyway, this is the same photo, just zoomed in a little bit more on the second one.

It's not too bad, but I haven't really got it all in focus. You can see its hairy legs though which is quite cool.

Back in the UK and what could better than a trip to the local steam railway to take the little one on train journey? So off we went for a visit to the Nene Valley Railway to see Thomas the Tank Engine (as, along with many of the other steam railway's, they have one).

Well, it was a great day out, but poor old Thomas was being serviced, so we only got to see him from the back.

For more photos, click here.

Now, where did I leave you? Oh yes, in a hotel room in Kenya. Well, to cut a long story short I made it to Johannesburg and out onto the holiday. Didn't have internet connection (nor did I really want one) so haven't updated any blogs since then.

All I can say is that I had the best holiday ever. I still can't believe the variety of animals we saw and some of the photos I managed to take. Massive thanks to Kenton for recommending this place. Rather than bore you with the details here, I kept a little log of what went on and have posted it with the pictures. Click here to see the pictures and notes from the safari.

I'm currently back home at the in-laws and have just picked up the little one. It's great to see him again and I can play with him whilst uploading the photos to the site.

Next stop is my parents ...... Lets have a quick look at the agenda ....... yep, it's back to beer and rugby (seems to be a running theme here). If memory serves, tomorrow is England against Samoa. Hopefully we will put on a better show than we did against South Africa, but I'm not holding my breath. Instead I shall hold a pint!

Well, this was going to be a very funny entry based on the witty title I’ve come up with, however things have gone (how we say in the trade) “tits up” since I last wrote. My journey back to Johannesburg is through Nairobi, hence the idea behind the title, however, I was never intending to enter Kenya as I only had a two hour transfer window. That was until my flight leaving Lagos was delayed by three hours.

So I’m in Nairobi for “wan” day as there are no other flights today. I’m on a 7:30am flight tomorrow morning that gets into Johannesburg at 10:40 which is going to make it difficult to connect to my 10:30 flight to the safari. I asked if they had a faster plane, but they really didn’t get the joke. I have to be honest, I felt sorry for the folks on the Kenya Air missed flights desk. The queue was about an hour long when I get there. The staff were great, I have to say, pity they have to do the job they are there for. It would seem more efficient to run the planes on time.

Anyway, all is well as I’ve spoken to the people running the little puddle jumper in the morning and there’s another one that leaves about 1:30. Barring another three hour delay, we should be in time to catch that one.

Now, one thing I need to do is map out this journey when I get back. I’ll try and do some whizzy thing where the plane flies over the map to show the route as it’s not exactly logical. If you were going to do this trip, you wouldn’t do it the way I’ve done it. Even I can see that now, so I’ll know better next time. I’ve not just done a loop round Africa, I’ve done an up/down then loop. By the time I get back I will have done 11 flights. At least the next trip will be on air miles.

Hopefully I’ll get to take a photo of something interesting in Kenya. In the meantime, they’ve put me up in this really trendy hotel, but rather than take an interesting photo, I thought I’d take on of the light / phone ensemble. (As I don’t think I’ve taken a photo of a light before).

Stunning isn’t it!

I have four and a half hours before I get picked up for my flight in the morning. I’ve ordered a pizza in my room which will hopefully be here soon so I can decide whether to go to sleep or not (which, given that I want an hour in the morning to grab a shower and all that seems like it’s hardly worth it).

Fingers crossed for tomorrow – or later today really.

Not an article about that fine, upstanding, young man of the Bash Street Kids, but rather an analysis of electrical sockets.

But first, lets start with last night. Went to a fantastic (local??) Lebanese restaurant - good food, great time. Now, I know there are those amongst you who think/know that good wine is wasted on me. Well, let me assure you, you have nothing to worry about here. We had what I was assured was the “good stuff” which normally bothers me because I'm really not that much of a connosseur. Not knowing much about wines, I can't really describe it properlly, but let me say that the first taste in your mouth was unbelievably fruity - like a very suggary Ribena. Then the back taste on your throte was like sulphuric acid .... no, maybe more like diesel. Honestly, I only managed two bottles of the stuff before having to go back onto the beers.

Thinking about it this morning, I think “good stuff” probably relates to its paint stripping qualities. My guess is that if you threw this stuff on the wall it would spread, soaking everything and turning it a bright red before abruptly turning black and making the paint peel right off.

Now to the plug. First, this gives me another opportunity to add to my collection of very boring photos that you can double click if you really want to see a bigger image (which I do think I'm getting rather good at):

So, what this arrangement is showing (from my hotel room) is that the plug socket is a UK socket, there is an adapter and on the bottom left the plug for the TV. Well, the adapter fits into the wall OK. The TV plug looks like it fits into the bottom holes of the adapter and, indeed it does, but the diameter of the plug is about half the diameter of the hole it fits into, so it keeps falling out and you have to wiggle it to get the TV to come on.

On a side note, you may also see that the top hole of the adapter is there for the three pin UK socket. But wait, it's an adapter to get to a UK socket! Yep, this ingeniously designed adapter allows you to convert a UK socket into a UK socket.

And the fun doesn't stop there. Yesterday morning I couldn't get my shower to work. There's actually two in the room, one in the bath and a separate shower so I just used the one in the bath. Being the good person I am, I notified reception so they sent someone up to fix it. Anyway, turns out there are three levers and I hadn't been pulling them in the right order. You have to pull the bottom lever up first, then pull the middle lever out towards you and then pull out the shower handle and turn to the desired temperature.

And then there's the bathroom light switch. Whilst being shown around my room upon arrival, I was informed that the bathroom light had to remain on as they had wired the air conditioning into the light switch - so, if you turn off the light, you also turn off the air conditioning. The porter was kind enough to point out the work around which is to close the bathroom door and, being the helpful chap he was, he demonstrated this for me (just in case I hadn't activated a door mechanism before. Mind you, I couldn't figure out the shower, so I suppose it's fair to wonder whether I'm capable of closing a door).

I really wish I was staying longer here as it's so much fun. You discover new things all the time, it's great.

Well, time to go do some work and then to watch the rugby with the English and South African expats. Should be a laugh.

First, there's a couple of very tired gerbils somewhere after running on a little wheel to power my less than 1mbs internet connection so I could upload these three files. Not really sure what's going on as the connection has a habit of breaking, so I've been submitting each file and keeping my fingers crossed that the connection will last the upload.

Anyway, technical difficulties aside, I had this morning to look round before doing some work. I went to Lekki market which is basically a load of shacks at the roadside interconnected by little alleyways. I don't think the images below really do it justice and they certainly don't capture the number of people running around (all of whom seemed to be rather camera shy).

First thing is that when you get there, all of a sudden hundreds of kids appear from nowhere and start running alongside the car. When the car stops and you get out, you're mobbed like a pop star. A rather daunting experience I have to say. The kids seem to enter into a competition to see who can accompany you around the market to carry your stuff for you. Thankfully I was being shown around by a US expat who just said to shoo them away and proceeded to literally walk through them waving his arms in the air shouting “shoo.” After a couple of minutes they got bored and disappeared. Anyway, the market was really nice and I ended up with a couple of wood carvings (hippo pictured below) and a couple of paintings.

I've been asked a couple of times “is it safe?” to which I wittily reply “it's safe and zipped away in my trousers, but thanks for asking.” (And that probably explains why I didn't try and be a professional commedian). On a serious note though, safety is a concern, but when I think that this time last year my trip was to Asia instead of Africa and I was in Indonesia I feel very lucky given the earthquakes that have hit.

Anyway, time to go out for dinner and beers.

There's my next idea for a film (obviously following the snakes on a plane theme), but first lets start with the journey to Nigeria.

From Cape Town to Lagos, you need to connect in Johannesburg. Seems fairly straight forward you would think. Well, first problem was that I got stuck in loop in the domestic terminal and only after walking a full circuit of the airport did I realize that the sign saying “all departures” really meant all domestic departures. In fairness, it should have been obvious as they do color code the airplane symbols - yellow for domestic and green for internation. Stupidly I was just reading the words though and hadn't stopped to work out their code.

OK - after walking what seemed to be miles, mainly because it was hot I ended up in a building site which was, in fact, the international terminal. Bit of development going on. After stepping past people that were working - well, supposed to be working, but they seemed more occupied with watching all the people trying step over their equipment that doing any work - we got to the check in desk.

Already checked in, so zipped past that bit and onto security. Straight through there. The metal detector beeped as I walked through, but nobody seemed to be worried about that so I just picked up my stuff and carried on to passport control. This is where things went (to use a technical term) tits up! The passport controller shook my passport trying to get something out of it, then turned to me and said “I can't find your residency card” so I appologized and handed him my green card. It was confusing me as to why a) he needed to see it and b) how he knew I was not a UK resident; but not worth the arguing so I gave it to him. “Not that, your South African residency card” he replied. Becoming more confused I told him that I was not a resident of South Africa. Apparently, according to this chap, you need a visa to get into South Africa - I think it's one of those things that they give you, then they take back when you leave. Well, I didn't know that and was not given one when I entered the country. This seemed to be my fault - he kept telling me I should have asked for one and that I was in the country illegally.

Next, I did one of those things where you think you're going to help yourself and you're actually making it worse. I told him (which is all true) that I had been pulled out of the queue on entry, on account of the fact that I'm disabled and sent to a separate line with the residents and maybe nobody had told the person on that line what the procedures were. I then produced my customs entry form and told him that nobody seemed to want to collect this from me. (This is one of those forms that you need to declare stuff on when entering the country). When I produced the form, he just looked at me and said “you're here illegally and I need to take you to the office to sort this out.”

Not good at the best of times, but, as I pointed out to him, I only had 10 minutes before my plane started to board. Obviously then next thing he saw fit to do was to start explaning things to me in a language other than English - maybe Afrikaans, I don't know, but I didn't understand it.

So, we march off across the airport to “the office” when he just turns round and walks back telling me to carry on. I said I didn't know where the office was and this seemed to annoy him further as I just got a barrage of non English back at me. Anyway, he wandered back to log off from his terminal, came back and picked me up, took me to the office. After being asked a bunch of the same questions by more people, particularly the “why didn't you get a visa when you came into the country?” which after telling them that they didn't give me one, they created one for me, gave it to me, then took it back.

Hopefully this hasn't put me on some watch list or anything as I have to go back in a couple of days.

Anyway, hurried along to the plane. The sign said it was boarding, but the sign just comes up with that based on the time - nothing to do with whether or not the plane is actually boarding. Talked to the person on the desk to be informed that the plane was delayed on account of the fact that they had parked it on top of a bees nest and the bees had come out and onto the plane. This is an airport where you walk onto the tarmac and climb the stairs to get onto the plane - not one that you walk across a jetty from the terminal.

Thankfully that was the last bit of fun. After that it was plane sailing and I'm now here in Nigeria. Just about to head off out.

I’ve now been off the fags for a year! Wow, seems like only yesterday when I would be sneaking out from work to have a long hard suck on a fag. But no more. No longer will I be going in and out of the back door to partake in this pleasure. Never again will I long for a butt in my hand. My mouth is now a no fag zone!

I do miss them though, even after a year. Shows how addictive smoking really is.

..... go to the pub.


Poor weather again, so no mountain trip on the last day. Few pints made up for it though.

For those of you that have been reading these blogs over the last few days, I'm sure you're wondering whether or not I've got to the top of Table Mountain. Well, as reported below, the first day was rained/clouded out so we headed out on the beers. Sunday was much the same as Saturday - low cloud and more beers. This morning, however, bright sunshine and not a cloud in the sky! I noticed whilst putting my shirt on to go to work. Bugger!

Well, I've been emailing an old friend of mine, Jackie, who I used to work with back in the London days as she's also coming over here to South Africa on safari and spending some time in Cape Town. Anyway, she suggested that I should duck out from work whilst the weather's good (particularly as it's supposed to be cloudy again tomorrow) to take get up the mountain and see the view.

I thought about it for about .... oooh ..... lets say about 15 seconds and thought why not. My last meeting of the day was a 2:00 to 3:00 and that would give me plenty of time. So, I arranged for one of my colleagues here in South Africa to take me back to the hotel so I could dump my computer and then drop me off at the cable car to go up the mountain. He agreed and dropped me off. We had a quick chat and I thanked him for his hospitality etc. etc. and he left pointing me in the direction of the ticket desk.

There's normally a queue for tickets (apparently), however there wasn't when I got there. Great! But I couldn't figure out how to get into the line as all the entrances seemed to be blocked off. I then looked at all the ticket windows and they said closed. Finally, someone appeared and told me the cable car was closed due to technical difficulties.

I have one last chance tomorrow, depending on the weather, but I'm not holding my breath on this one. Seems I may have to visit the top of the mountain on my next visit.

Below is a picture taken from the foot of the mountain where the cable car leaves from. (I should have probably taken one of the closed ticket desks as that would have been more appropriate, but I didn't think of it at the time).


You will notice how my crap camera has managed to take a perfect photo of the trees in the foreground and leave the whole of Cape Town out of focus. Pretty impressive if you ask me. I don't have my proper camera here until next week (as didn't want to risk taking it to Nigeria) and don't have any photo editing software on my work computer, so this is the best I can do.

Pretty poor really, but given the run of bad luck I'm having with this mountain, it's about par for the course.

On the table this morning were two choices:

• Go sight seeing up the top of Table-Top Mountian
• Watch the rugby and drink beer

Well, it seems the gods have chosen for me. Unlike the photo snapped below that shows Cape Town bathed in sunlight, today is overcast and raining. I got up at 6:00 to play tourist. Had breakfast and went to book my trip only to be told “sorry sir, the weather is too bad, you must watch the rugby and drink beer.”

I've been fighting it. I even went down to the waterfront and wandered around. I have two really bad photos to show for it (I really need to throw this camera away - it's 6 years old and has all but had it. At least my proper one will be with me for the safari). The first is of some “witty” signposts and the second is of the Clock Tower. If you look at the sky you can see it clouding over - not quite raining when I took these but only by about an hour.


I guess the signposts are supposed to tell you how far it is if the crow flies. Well, all I can say is that the crow would be bloody knackered as the plane wouldn't even go that far given I needed to transfer in Frankfurt. So I doubt a crow would be able to make it. The other thing I've not quite figured out is why you would put a signpost up for crows as, to my knowledge, they can't read. Still, gives the idiots something to photograph as I clearly demonstrate.

Oh well, about an hour and half to kick-off. Best head back down to that Sports Bar I spotted earlier.

So, a quick 11 hours and 40 minutes later and I'm in Cape Town. I've had a quick look round and can't see any superheros though. Mind you, I didn't see any frankfurters in Frankfurt either.

Very tired and not much to say at the minute. Snapped this quick picture from the balcony of the hotel before I got some sleep. Me thinks that would be Table Top Mountain (I'm quick like that).

I'm going to see about taking a trip up there tomorrow, so, if you're lucky, I'll have the reverse picture of this one.

So first stop is Frankfurt. We got in early so I have an extra 30 minutes to wander round the airport looking for things to do, so if anyone wants a sausage, just give me a shout.

Whilst you’re thinking about that, lets rewind for a second. San Francisco airport – ended up having a long conversation with the lady at the check in desk as she was asking me about Africa and telling me that she wanted to go. Coincidentally, as if by magic, she managed to find her way over to the gate to ticket me onto the plane and have another chat. Now, my guess is that this was coincidence, or maybe even normal with the cut backs on staff, but I like to think she was following me. Never hurts to flatter yourself, that’s what I say.

Onto Frankfurt and first impression is strange as it doesn’t seem to have an efficient feel about it. There’s a lot of people wandering round trying to figure out what they are doing. Given that we are in Germany, it’s my guess that it’s the people that are wrong and not the airport. And how correct that statement is – there a lot of old fashioned boards around listing departing flights, so bearing in mind I came in through the back door (connecting flight) and am trying to find out where to transfer rather than coming in through the front door and have someone tell me the gate, obvious thing is to look at one of these boards to figure out where my next flight is leaving from. Well, given the number of flights that leave Frankfurt, the list is pretty long and the boards only cover those leaving in the next hour which, when you think about it, doesn’t make sense as if you’re in the wrong place, you’ve likely missed your flight by now or are going to have the sprint of your life to get from one side of the airport to the other.

So, where’s all the help? Ah! There are these stations marked “information” that have touch screen terminals that you can use to find out where your flight is going to be leaving from. See, knew there would be an explanation.

Only think is, I hadn’t figured this out before deciding to find a Lufthansa desk to ask where my flight would be leaving from. Little sidetrack – my tickets are marked as being booked through Lufthansa, but none of my flights are actually with Lufthansa. The two today are United Airlines from San Francisco to Frankfurt and South African Airways from Frankfurt to Cape Town. Just to make it confusing. Still the Lufthansa person was extremely helpful, insisting on writing the gate number on my ticket. Brilliant, that way I wouldn’t forget to go to the wrong gate as he’d got the wrong one. Fortunately, in the meantime, I’d noticed the “information” stations and decided to play on one. Well, that and the fact that I decided to get a drink in the club lounge.

I note that airlines are now starting to have two lounges – first class and business class. Presumably business class has now turned into common class as there are too many people flying it. The one thing I did note is that the Lufthansa first class lounge in Frankfurt (and maybe for other locations as well) is called the “Senator Lounge.” I wonder if they practice foot tapping in there?

Well, thanks for everything - I'm off!

Not quite disappearing for ever, but I'm going on a trip to South Africa, Nigeria and the UK. Basically means that the entries over the next few weeks may be quite sporadic and may also have a little bit of an African theme to them.

I'm going to try and set vote questions each week, but they may get set a little earlier on some weeks in order that I can make sure the entries are there before the automated email goes out on Monday morning. If, however, I miss the time window, then you will just see the previous weeks question. Sorry, but be safe in the knowledge that I don't care as I will be on holiday.

Right, time to do some last minute packing before 22 hours of flying which I'm not looking forward to. My guess is that by the end of it I will have seen every movie that's out there at the minute.

Had the opportunity to go to one of my friends houses in the North Bay, place called San Anselmo, for a bar-b-que this long weekend. Had a great time, but more importantly it gives me the opportunity to follow up on the aerial photographs bad pun with the following image:

Oh what fun you can have with Photoshop and a couple of hours!

Back to the bar-b-que, it was great as the hosts have this cute dog, Winston. All the kids loved running round playing with him. So did William until the food came out. I'm still trying to figure out which one managed to scavenge the most food, but they seemed to be making a competition over it.

I only had a really old camera with me, so most of the photos didn't come out, but you can see from the shot below that William and Winston are clearly going head to head for Karen's attention to see who can get the next morsel to be offered.

Those of you that know me and have seen the long list of cars that I've let fall to bits on me may be surprised at the title. Don't be, this probably isn't going to result in the most productive automobile maintenance tips.

But first, let me start by saying that I have washed my car this year.

Actually, that's not strictly speaking true. I was rear ended earlier this year and when they repaired the car, they cleaned it as well. Bargain.

In fairness, there's probably another element that needs to be stated here. I got rear ended a couple of years ago. The person who rear ended me didn't want to claim through their insurance so they gave me cash. I decided there were better things to spend the cash on than repairing the car and thought there was a fair chance someone would hit me again. And I was right, so I made a couple of bucks by hanging on in there.

On that note, it's also worth pointing out that I think the lack of money spent on car care far outweighs the additional depreciation. So driving a rust bucket's not too bad.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah! The current jalopy popped one of its warning lights on - “Service Engine Soon.” One quick look at the mileage and it seems we'd done something like 89,790. An odd number, but I figured that I'd tripped some internal clock thing that tells the car to put the light on for the 90,000 mile service.

It's actually quite disconcerting driving round with a warning light on. It got to the point where I was seriously considering buying some black duct tape to put over the light so it wouldn't bother me. Again, being too lazy to go out and buy the duct tape, I applied the “hang on in there” principle. Turns out this was again the right thing to do! The light has now gone out. We're up to 93,000 miles now. I don't know whether I went past the clock trip switch or if the bulb's blown, but the net result is the same - I'm no longer disconcerted about driving round with a warning light on.

Clearly everything's OK as there's no warning light on. And to think - some day, someone out there will buy this well looked after car!

This comes with so many possible titles:

"Who says you can't have brains and beauty?"
"The state of education"

....

I'm sure most of you have seen this. For those of you that haven't, this is South Carolina's answer to a question on "Miss Teen USA"

Enjoy!

Since the inception of this wondrous site, my colleague and author of the OBlogs has pointed out that there is a photo missing from one of the photo sets. I'm happy to report that this problem has finally been rectified. The results can be seen in these photos.

Unfortunately this is another example of two nations divided by a common language. Sadly this joke will be somewhat lost on those that dwell in the larger of the two land masses on each side of the pond.

Really that means that 50% of the people reading this site won't understand the joke. The other 50% will understand it, but not find it funny.

That's what I like about this job. It's like a broken pencil, completely pointless.

I think it's time to go get something to eat before I think of something else totally unfunny!

Went to Seattle on Monday for a meeting. Was supposed to have stayed the night, which would have been great as the weather was fantastic, but had to get back to the Bay Area for work.

Slightly annoying in itself, but not compared to the annoyance of being subjected to idiot queue jumpers at the airport. Particularly after running a vote on the subject of airport queue jumpers. Haven't these people read this website? Don't they know it's now punishable by death? Guess not. Actually, the worst part of it was that the ticket collecting people didn't do anything about it, so this bunch of about 6 people just stood in the line (between the ropes) and blocked anyone else from getting through anyway. They need to start arming these people with chainsaws so they can cut up these people on the spot. No trial - there's no need.

Amazing how you can make it to the airport, yet not be able to read or count to know when your section is being called.

Now where did I leave my valium .....

I'm really gutted that the photos I took of this didn't come out. Anyway, I was following a car up the freeway that had the license plate CUTNDRY. I'm guessing this belonged to a hairdresser or barber. I'm just hoping that they never transpose any letters when writing it down.

A huge week in sports this week in the US. Yep - seems everyone has been glued to the TV/radio waiting for the big event to happen. I am of course talking about David Beckham's ankle and whether or not he's actually going to play any football in the US. Somewhat reminiscent of the Lineker Japan days with his poorly toe.

In other sports news apparently some guy has broken a record in the inter galactic universe championship of rounders. (AKA the world series of baseball). This is one of the most confusing things to have watched. About a year ago, all the discussion was that Barry Bonds (the guy who's hit the ball a long way to get this record) should be thrown out of the sport for steroid use. That said, I found out yesterday that these are only allegations and that Bonds has not actually admitted to taking illegal substances. Anyway, most people seemed to want him gone, but then when he got close to this record it seemed like everyone wanted him to break the record. I certainly did as every time you turned on the TV they were going on about whether or not it was going to happen today. Now that he's broken it, there seems to be a lot of talk about whether or not it should be valid if performance enhancing drugs were used.

In order to clear up this confusion, see the picture below:



This is a picture of Wall Street in New York. Bonds are traded there.

Police following up on the horrific murders in Maryland caught a lucky break after circulating photos of the suspect. Taffy Nojob from Tinnysomething in Wales saw the picture and saw right through the disguise. Taffy was interviewed, but nobody could understand him. Best we know is that he mumbled something about a sheep and then said "that's Hog dressed as a woman".

Regardless, this was enough for police to make some further inquiries. Hearing about the reported "cheeseburger elbow" (see article below under "Serious Family Illness") police soon figured out it was a rouse to hide the truth. Even though Hog is partial to a cheeseburger or 10, it seems that the repetitive strain injury was caused by repeated bludgeoning.



If you're interested in the actual article that accompanies this picture see this site

So, have any of you folks managed to get your hands on one of the new iPhones yet? I got my first look at one on Friday night. I was having drinks with one of my teams at work and the husband of one of my colleagues had one.

I have to say I was very impressed. It's missing a few things functionality wise, but that's a bit like saying a Ferrari is no good off road. So what, if you look that cool, you're not going to worry about the things it won't do. I'm not sure that my son agreed with this review, however. He was being extremely well behaved until his picture was taken with said phone. (Double click to take a closer look). I also like the title that this photo was sent to me with - "like father, like son!" (William had come along for the food, not the drinks in case you are wondering. Although, that said, he tried to steel my beer several times).

On a side note, our firm issued an Alcohol Policy today. I'm told it's purely coincidental that it follows our drinks on Friday night.

My brother was up visiting our parents this weekend. Whilst there it seems he took ill. Apparently his arm became very swollen, so he was taken to the emergency room. He was diagnosed with repetitive strain injury (RSI) - seems he has cheeseburger elbow!

Hog - you're getting old. You need to slow down. Maybe take on a salad every now and then.

An odd little town in the UK. Interesting service providers based on the photo below:

So, I was sent these pictures with the following text:

In a zoo in California , a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth.

The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health,
although physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused
the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate
another mother's cubs, perhaps she would improve.

After checking with many other zoos across the country, the depressing news was that there
were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother. The veterinarians
decided to try something that had never been tried in a zoo environment. Sometimes a mother
of one species will take on the care of a different species. The only orphans" that could be
found quickly, were a litter of weanling pigs. The zoo keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in
tiger skin and placed the babies around the mother tiger. Would they become cubs or pork chops?

Take a look...you won't believe your eyes!!



Seems great at face value doesn't it. Well, would you really say "a zoo in California" without being specific? Probably not. Also, as I live in California, this would be all over the local news if it were true.

That said, if you are happy with the story above and want to live in happy land, then read no further.

A little research shows that this is not even in the US and looks to be from somewhere in Asia. Potentially tied to "Tiger baiting" where tigers are starved and then introduced to various animals for the sake of gambling. Participants have the ability to bet on which animal they think is going to last the longest before they are devoured by the tiger. The photos taken above are apparently legitimate and were a test to see if they could confuse the tiger into leaving the piglets alone for a longer period by wrapping them in the skins of dead tiger cubs. (The tiger cubs having been killed earlier by being introduced to a different tiger family). The purpose of which is to simply extend the amount of betting that can take place.

The email story above the pictures was made up as a joke to see if people would look at sick photos and think they are cute.

Actually, I just made all that up (the bit about the tiger baiting), but you were falling for it weren't you - see you can be manipulated into thinking anything. (Hog - there is no water powered car!) Best we can tell is that these photos were from Sriracha Tiger Zoo just outside of Bangkok in Thailand. The zoo has some kind of circus/carnival thing and these photos were taken at that. They were picked up by someone who decided to make up the story about the zoo in California to see how much spam they could create on the basis that the pictures were cute.

Apparently this story [in today's morning news] was about a manhunt for a home invasion incident that started in Newark and spread to San Leandro. Obviously a very disturbing event for all those involved that doesn't paint a very pretty picture.

I, on the other hand, heard the title on the radio and had somewhat different images come to mind.

Well, the outbound flight from San Francisco to Houston wasn't much fun given that I had to get up at 3:15 am to get to the airport. Used to be a time when I saw 3:15 when it came around rather than getting up to meet it, but those days are all but gone except for special occasions.

Three and a half hours on the plane - what is there to look forward to? Some kids movie or a cut up episode of a not very funny American sitcom? No thank you. It's the Sky Mall magazine! I have to be honest, I try and do anything to resist the urge to look at it, but at some point during the flight I will pick it up and read through. It kills me as I always think "there's no way I'd buy this crap" but always end up thinking "that'd be quite cool." So what's on my list:

- A remote control R2D2 because it would be cool.
- A hot dog toaster because it's called a "hot diggity dogger" and I think it would be so funny to tell people that my "hot diggity dogger" came in the mail or see how many conversation I can bring it up in. (I'm probably going to find that everybody already has one).
- An ice cream making machine because it's ice cream and Mr Whippy doesn't come round these parts.

That said, the best item on the list (and I need to say added recently - yep, I travel enough to have memorized the Sky Mall catalog and now look forward to changes) was a lightening detector. Bear with me on this. This device will apparently detect if lightning is coming, around 40 miles away if I remember correctly, in order that you can get to safety! Don't we have a saying about things that are rare and not going to happen that goes something like "that's about as likely as being struck by lightening"? So it makes perfect sense to come up with a device that warns you of this unlikely event. (Just in case the loud thunder noise didn't give away the fact that there's lightening in the area anyway).

Wouldn't you have liked to have been round the table when someone came up with that idea? Actually, I'd rather have been round the table when the marketing group came up with the idea of selling it on an airplane. Is it likely that someone who's paranoid enough to buy a lightening detector because they think they may get struck by lightening is going to get onto a plane?

I'll leave you with that thought whilst I go and order my hot diggity dogger!

Sprint, one of the US wireless network service providers, today announced that they were cutting contracts with 1,000 odd of their customers who have excessively used the support desk. At first this seems very alarming, however, when you get into it, these people have been calling the help desk between 40 to 50 times a month on a regular basis.

Obviously we don't want companies just deciding who they are going to allow to be their customers on an ad hoc basis, but if the facts provided about excessive usage are true then I'm all for it as these Muppets are just increasing the cost for the rest of us. Don't they have any friends?

I don't know about you guys, but we argue in our house every time we need to call customer service about anything. It usually goes something like "it's your turn because I did it last time" You've got to be really desperate to want to talk to the support desk more than you need to.

No, this isn't an article about that “special place” that you don't get to visit very often after marriage and kids. This is about Houston. That place that you do get to visit on a regular basis after marriage and kids.

Why on earth does anyone choose to live here? It's so muggy. And I'm told it's not that bad at the minute, it will get worse in August. I'm glad I'm only here for a couple of days as the heat and humidity oppressive. I have nothing against Houston - as a city, it's fine. It's just the weather.

Anyway, don't ask how, but whilst here in Houston I came across this YouTube post that I couldn't stop laughing at and I think actually fits the title “Wet and Warm” very well.

As Independence Day draws to a close, time to contemplate being American. Which I'm not, but my son is, so it's probably quite wonderful at the minute as he seems fascinated by any tiny little thing.

I think the best thing I've heard of late was on the local news. San Francisco is hosting the Major League Baseball (MLB) All Stars game. Which, most people are getting very excited about. Wereas I am probably more worried about how much extra traffic it's going to cause. (No, that's not true - it's still a sport, so I will be compelled to watch it). Anyway, back to the American thing, the news presented quoted:


Still, when you name your biggest domestic competition the World Series, what should I expect?

Then again, if I didn't like it here, I wouldn't be here. So it's time to head out and watch some fireworks go bang.

Where do you start? There are some days that are good and then there are some days that are great. Then every now and then one of those days turns up that you won't forget for as long as you live. Maybe not quite as significant as February 27, 2000 watching Matt Elliot put the winner past Tranmere, but June 24, 2007 saw Juan Pablo Montoya take his first victory in NASCAR.

One of the most exciting races I've seen (and probably because the person I was following won), but it really did seem like a great race. JP started a poor 32nd on the grid, but made a great start. Each lap he seemed to gain a place. However, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon were making a charge from the back. Circa lap 30 saw Johnson and Montoya enter probably the best battle of the race. For several laps they traded places and all the time it was painful to watch as clearly they would have been better just working together to move up positions (but, at the end of the day, it's a race so what do you expect?)

Finally pit stops split Johnson and Montoya leaving Montoya open to run his own race. Credit to Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon being the only other two drivers to pass Montoya. Gordon's seemed to be tied in to pit rotations, but Stewart's was clearly in open race. (What does Stewart need to do to win a race this season? At one point he was leading this race by a mile and clearly was the best driver on the track given clean air).

Montoya's victory has to be attributed to a great pit stop call that brought him in on the earliest lap possible to give him enough fuel to run to the end of the race. After his last pit, he exited near the front, chasing car after car and ultimately chasing down Harvick then McMurray to take the lead

After gaining the lead it was plain sailing all the way to the checkered flag. One parade lap, then the most feeble burn out as Montoya's car ran out of fuel. Having been to a lot of football games and watched the clock tick down as Leicester cling on for a victory, I'm no stranger to the last minute nail biter. That said, the last 10 laps of this race seemed to take an age and all the time I was wondering whether the 42 car had enough petrol in the tank to see it through. Fortunately enough to cross the finish line and briefly do this:

So, gorgeous weather, an afternoon drinking beer and watching your chosen driver take his first NASCAR win. Does life get any better?

Congratulations again to Juan Pablo and the Texaco/Havoline team.

For more NASCAR photos of this and other races, see the NASCAR photo page.

Between the final practice for the Nextel Cup and the Blue Lizard 200 race the message board popped up the message:

"Whad'up Cletus and Jeb? Welcome to NASCAR."

There are many questions that pop into mind here. I'll keep mine simle with "how can someone called Cletus have not been to NASCAR?"

Congragulations to David Gilliland for winning the NASCAR Grand National Division, West Series race at Infineon yesterday (aka Blue Lizard 200).


To be honest the biggest challange for Gilliland was to not run into the back of the pace truck. The race had its moments, but was somewhat marred by the number of laps under caution, particularly when there didn't seem to be that many incidents. Gilliland took first place from PJ Jones followed by Boris Said who also put in good performances.

Special mention should go to Jason Bowles in the 22 car that had one of those days where everything was going wrong. Also Carlos Contreras in the 12 car. Although neither Rick or Eric finished in the top 10, it was not for lack of trying. Both these drivers made the race exciting making several excellent passing moves in front of us on turn 7, like the one pictured below.


(Each image can be double clicked to see a larger version)

EastBayRag wishes Juan Pablo Montoya and the Texaco/Havoline Team all the best in tomorrow's Nextel Cup race at Infineon Raceway. After a disappointing 32nd on qualifying, JP took to the tracks today for the final practice to try and get a little more out of the car. Although the performance was better, it's going to be a long race on Sunday and there's a lot of ground to be made up. A couple of photos from this afternoon's final practice. First, JP heading into turn 4


And then next rouding turn 7

Couple of key things to note, first, these are both right turns (as this is one of the track races of the NASCAR series). Second, the clockwise direction (which would lead to more righ turns if you think about it). Anyway, with JP's experience on track circuit's a lot is hoped for this weekend, so go for it ...

.... Leisure Suit Larry?? What a brilliant game that was.

Why does this come to mind you ask? Well, over on the Graffiti Wall "somebody" stuck up something that simply says "Ken Sent Me." Made no sense to me, so I asked what it was. Apparently this was some graffiti that was written on the bathroom wall of the first LSL game. How's that for a random memory.