Stuff Archives

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 there 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.