Stuff Archives

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.