50+ and proud of it.

We were watching the national news last night and were disgusted to hear that the so-called compassionate Animal Liberation Front (ALF) had targeted the makers of Savlon (that well-known antiseptic and healing fluid) by allegedly tampering with 250+ bottles of the same. (Aren't we all animals? So, why target us too?). After the item, a representative of the company said that there was no evidence to suggest that the bottles had actually been affected and we should continue to use the product. "Anyway", says my sister-in-law, "if you're really worried that it's been contaminated, you could try it on the guinea pig first..."

Last week, I thought I'd go up-market and buy a wireless router to replace the wired network I had installed previously. No problems, just plug it in and Bob's Your Auntie. My daughter came upstairs and asked "Have you just done something, my laptop has just spotted a wireless network?". "This is easy", I thought, "now I'll just turn on my wife's laptop and away we all go". That was last Wednesday. I tried everything I could think of to get the damn thing to work, but each time, the "gui" thing kept saying "no network, RF OFF" and the like even though Winwods could see the card etc etc. I downloaded the latest drivers - even taking the back off the laptop to get the chip serial number off the w/lan card. In a fit of pique, I by-passed the problem and bought a USB dongle and, hey presto, it all worked. However I was still annoyed that a new laptop should be bust. I mailed the Laptop Support People yesterday (Sunday) to se

A bit of history. When my wife was little (about 6 years old) her Nan (grandmother) took her to Margate and they went on the beach where the donkeys were giving rides 1 . They queued up it the sun waiting for their turn. After about 20 minutes of waiting the man started to lift her up into the saddle 2 . She turned round to him and said quite firmly: "Me, no donk!" Last weekend we all went camping. "It'll be fun", I was told, "We'll be in a cold small tent, everyone else will be in their warm large caravans". So, after ruining my back on a blow-up bed, eating barbecues in the dark, walking across wet fields at 2:00am to go to the loo, and rowing with the in-laws, it's definitely "Me, no camp!" 1 No longer I believe - something to do with the Human Rights Act For Donkeys. 2 No longer I believe - something to do with Common Assault Laws...

Can you believe that the people I work for want to count all the lines of code used in their systems? And, to make matters worse, they got some damn consultants to write a few pages on how to do it - "don't count blank lines or comments", "for each library routine count it once per system", "include form generation code", and so on... I wanted to just make up a number - "Err, it's about 3/4 million", I said. "No, do it bloody properly", I was told. OK, after about 9 hours of dragging the individual project's source code from back-up (SourceSafe) and using an automatic line counting program 'wot I wrote', I came up with 725,433. No - really. I had to fill in 6 spreadsheets relating to the 6 major functional areas. I was given numbers "A179", "A435" and so on. I sent them back, filled in, and called "A179_FBLOC.XLS" etc. I've forwarded them to my team leader who has, in turn,

I get a phone call from my sister (in Turkey) who herself had a call along the lines of "your mother's in hospital, here's the number". I rang the number. "Hello, have you got a old woman there at all? Admitted today? (repeat three times, to different extensions) "Hold on sir, I'll check" ... "I've just spoken to the ambulance crew who says she's still at home" "So, she's not been admitted?" "No" Ring a lot of other people, including the Doctor's Receptionist. "Your mother fell off the bed and bumped her bottom, so she pressed the red alarm button 'cos she couldn't move. The carers who turned up thought she'd broken her hip and called the ambulance - she's fine, but refused admission, so the Doctor's given her some pain killers and she's fine now" In an attempt to explain an hours worth of calling and to cut down on international telephone calls, I text'd my sister: