50+ and proud of it.

Last week door lock bust on the smart roadie. And it went back in under warranty. Now, not that I'm going to libel Drake & Fletcher of Sutton Road, Maidstone, no no, far from it. They've always been most courteous and helpful all the many times I've had to ring them up since April when I picked up the Brabus. However, the following things were noticed when I got the car back from the "lock-fix":- The outer door handle wasn't as flush to the door skin as the passenger side. Only 1mm as opposed to 0.5mm, different none-the-less. The two black stickers that hide the screws weren't replaced, meaning that the screw heads are now visible every time you open the door. OK, they're only 6d for a thousand, but... The door seems to be slightly harder to pull open. Two of the clips that hold the screws that hold the front wing on were broken. To be fair, they may have already been bust, but they should have replaced them shouldn't they? This morning was th

1. Attempt to repair a Windows XP laptop. Let me explain: Daughter comes back from university for the weekend. I manage to grab her laptop to install her new printer and notice that the Windows Updates are failing - like, all of them. Time & wine pass. Seems like a good idea to repair Windows using my genuine 1 XP Pro CD. The install fails for some reason with a CRC error on D:\I386\NT5.CAT. I scan the internet and get advised to rename CATROOT & CATROOT2 directories and try again. I reinstall and it works but I now get asked to put in the product key. And here where it all goes wrong due to Mr Merlot. I enter *my* product key from the disc. Bill says no and I'm stuffed. Whenever I try to log on, I get "please activate your copy of XP" and I can go no further. (lots of stuff deleted here about trying illegal keygens etc etc...) I panic (she needs the PC for uni) and buy a copy from eBay from the same bloke that I bought my copy from. My internet goes T/U 2 when

The smart roadster last week decided that it liked me an awful lot and showed its affection by not letting me out of the drivers door. A quick phone call confirmed it was under warranty. "Just drop it in and we'll take a look", they said. Great, but they then followed that with "if we can't fix it we'll have a word with the Mercedes dealer next door". Four days later I got it back, fixed and with a new door lock. However, they charged me for a new door handle which wasn't under warranty - go figure - but at least it was the upgraded version with the plastic bit that stops the pin falling out. Did you know, that to get to the lock (and everything else including the speakers) you have to remove the door skin ? Yes, the outer piece. There is no door card. To get that off you need to remove the door. To get that off you need to remove the front wing. To get that off you have to remove the Brabus side skirt. To get that off you break the clips... see prev

Sooo, Lewis managed another spectacular cock-up this morning by coming 12th in Japan . Fortunately, Massa only managed 8th. The fish pond however was completed yesterday and finished off with a 25%-off-fountain. We formally opened the pond by throwing in a floating ceramic frog. " I declare this pond open " I said in a fake royal accent. "Don't worry", said my wife, "we can get the pieces out later." I also noted that a Ukrainian radio-telescope has sent out a message to a nearby planet from the users of Bebo. Two things here: Assuming 1) ET is listening - " wtf was that? I just got some signal from somewhere but now it's gone ". 2) That they actually manage to decode it - " Err, it's from some social networking site or other ". " Bloody hell, for heaven's sake, don't send anything back.., shut down the transmitter..., turn off the lights... ".