50+ and proud of it.

I've had a small fish pond in the garden for about three years now and have never had to cover it with netting to stop the herons, which, incidentally, have never been seen in our area. Last week however, my neighbour informed me that he had "frightened off a heron which was sitting on the garage roof." Sadly it looks like the heron had snuck in a day or two earlier and had a sumptuous meal of four goldfish with a tench for afters. If catch that heron, I'll hold its beak under water until it's had enough...

I had a phone call yesterday from the Care Worker for my Mom. "Hello, your Mom will be home next week. We'll put the care package back in place and we'll let the neighbours know." "So, I don't have to do a thing?" "No, bye" *click* Thank you, Wolverhampton Social Services.

I went to visit Mom in the rehabilitation hospital this Sunday to find her in good health, though a little down. "Hiya, how are you?" Before she could reply, my wife came back with - "Where are your teeth!" "In this pot here that they gave me. They're ever so nice here, especially the little nurse who...." "No, listen, why haven't you got them in?" "I have, I never take them out" "No, that's your top set" "Yes, that's right. I got them from Dr Shaw down the Tettenhall Road..." "...in 1950, yes, I know" I went to see the Ward Sister. (I've left out the guilt-trip conversation she had with me about living 200 miles away for the sake of brevity.) "She broke them Friday afternoon so we've emailed the NHS Dentist to see when they can come out and take a look. She's a little down because of it." "I'll see if I can contact the dentist I spoke to last time, they seemed

FreeCell Game #11982 is the Holy Grail of FreeCellers. It is unwinable. Oh no it isn't: And no, this isn't PhotoShopped.

Today is my daughter's 21st and my son's 18 th birthday party. Earlier this week my wife promised to take the daughter to a "salon" in town for a small make-over as part of her present. The conversation went along the lines of: "How about taking you to town for a facial and get your nails down at the same time?" "Oh lovely! Thanks Mom! I've never had a facial before." My son drew breath, paused and said, "On the grounds that Dad's not here, I'll say the obvious!" Yes, I know, it's too late. PS. Try "Googling" in images for "facial makeover cucumber". It took a while to get this one.

Following on from the teeth saga of the weekend, I rang up the "Teeth PCT 1 " today to keep them up-to-date with the state of play. "Hello, let me explain about my Mom and how's she's found her bottom set of teeth." "Err, yes?" "Can you still come out to check her out please?" "Yes, of course, we'll come out to check that they really are her own bottom set and we can then..." "...what?" "Oh yes, happens all the time..." (weakly) "what?" "...also, I think that you get her name engraved on them so we know for next time." "Right, so, let me get this straight. There are 4,000 old people in Wolverhampton and 3,990 sets of bottom teeth and they rotate between them when they come into hospital?" "Yes" "So. You're suggesting that I engrave Mom's name on her teeth so they don't get lost?" "Yes" "Isn't this the NHS equivalent of dog t

Yesterday (Saturday) should have gone like this: "Hello Mom, how are you feeling after your second fall in a week? Are they treating you alright in hospital?" "Yes thanks love, thanks for coming up. How was your 180 mile journey up to see me?" "Very good thanks, OK, take care, see you soon. Bye". What actually happened: Last Friday Mom fell over (for the first time) and they took her into hospital for a check up. Whilst there, she was, um, unwell and her bottom set of teeth fell into the bowl and was promptly discarded into the hospital waste unit. The following conversation occurred with Dept "A" of the PCT 1 : "Oh, it's our fault, we'll pay for them." "So, you'll organise for them to be replaced then?" "No, that's up to you, we'll only pay for them." "But she's really distressed that she can't eat properly, I need something sorted" "Sorry, you need to sort it out." &q

Since this has taken me four days to solve this one and, with almost no help from Google, I thought I'd log it here in case anyone else has this most bizarre problem. Scenario: You retrospectively install Reporting Services to an existing installation of SQL Server 2008. You try to configure it using "Reporting Services Configuration Manager" and as soon as you click "Find" you get "Invalid Class" 1 and no other information. These two links gave me the clue, they're essentially both the same. What they say is to run WBEMTEST 3 and connect to the Reporting Services WMI thingy. Then run the query, " SELECT * FROM __NAMESPACE ". When I did this I got: Note: TWO entries. The second one was a test database I had installed months ago and had removed at some point when I worked out that using the default instance of MSSQLSERVER was more convenient - but the registry(?) entries were still hanging around. I selected it by clicking o

The Prologue I finally got around to getting the back of my smart roadster "fixed" by the local coachworks after some 16 year oik reversed a van into it at the local breakers - sorry - "Vehicle Dismantlers And Recycling Facility" - must be politically correct nowadays. To be fair, the owner was fairly apologetic in the only way that scrapmen can be, thus: "...humph, take it down to Richard..." The rest of the outburst involved a variety four & seven letter words and included statements like "...shouldn't have been ******* driving..." and "...stupid little ****...". I saw Richard a few days later who took one look at it as if to say "what's all the fuss about" and he promptly got some "Paint & Tar Remover" and, in 30 seconds, removed all evidence from the rear valence and wheel arch. "Um thanks, it's the principle y'know, not the damage...", too late, Richard had retreated into th

Assuming anyone it actually reading the drivel, then you'll know that I eventually managed to take out some money from my current bank account. This was for my daughter's new car that was to replace the old Peugeot 106 that some random woman decided to reverse into last month. Usual long story: Her fault, take in for repair. "£1300", "How much?" , please don't write it off. Oh you have. Here's £900. I take that - I only paid £600 for it two years ago. So after much trolling around UCD's 1 I find a nice Corsa on eBay - with aircon, power steering and the like. We collect from the depths of Essex and it's all fine. On the way home the engine management light comes on and the aircon stops working. I pull the codes the next day and it's the " you have a problem between the air intake and the tail pipe (code P0170) " which turns out to the MAF unit - new on eBay for £30, job done. The aircon, err, yeah. One secondhand compressor an

It was Mom's 95th birthday last week and we went up to visit. We took our usual places in the knackered armchairs - y'know, the ones that when you sit in them the arms neatly tuck themselves under your armpit and they're impossible to get out of without the aid of an engine hoist. And, when you do finally manage to stand up you have to reset the positions of the fabric throws that were put there in 1940 1 to "save the upholstery". My sister had previously warned me that they'd finally given up the ghost but Mom had refused to let her swap them with the good pair that were now languishing in the garage. We put them there after we'd turned the front room into Mom's downstairs bedroom. "You see if she'll let you swap them, you're her favourite..." Thanks. To digress a little. Every since I've been little, I'd always noticed that the chairs in the front room never matched the sofa and the chairs in the back room were only ever a

After 11 months and two previous failed attempts my youngest son finally passed his driving test today. I'm not sure who was more nervous, me him or the DSA Examiner. I did find it rather strange that he (the examiner) came straight into the Test Centre afterwards and disappeared quickly behind his locked door without pausing to say "yes he's passed" or something equally helpful. Maybe it was something to do with me earlier ringing the door bell furiously 18 minutes after the test was due to start at 12:30 and then berating him about time-keeping. To be fair he did keep his cool and mention that the test wasn't due until 12:48 and that they weren't "on strike" as I'd politely suggested. I remember when I took my test. My Dad said it was the longest 45 minutes he'd ever spent. I now know what he meant. My son ceremoniously tore up the "L"-Plates. It took me ages to get the sticky tape off the rear window...

When my Dad was alive: "Hello" "Hello Sir, I recognise you because you've banked with us for 30 years. How can I help?" "I'd like £1,300 please" "Certainly. There you are. Good day." "Thank you, good day" Today: Go onto www.satander.co.uk, click "Contact Us", spend 10 minutes scanning the page and eventually find " To talk about >Bank Accounts ", click that. Eventually find " Managing your account ". Dials number. "This is Satander. Please press '1' for Bank Account. Press '2' for Credit Card. Press '3' for other bollox. Press '4'....! 1 "...please enter your 16 digit card number and then your Telephone Banking Number..." "Thank you. Press '1' if you want to hear your balance. Press '2' to transfer money. Press '3'...." I don't want any of those, so I pressed '0' a lot of times. "Sorry, we didn'

After all the panic about my son's missing-and-now-found passport had subsided, we were left with the fact that we had two padlocked, but openable, suitcases. Not a problem during the week, but at some point we would have to zip them properly for the journey home. I went to reception (again). "Hola, have you got a set of...". I stopped at that point thinking that maybe "bolt-croppers" wouldn't translate too well into Spanish. "Um, I need to cut some padlocks off a suitcase" and proceeded to make a gesture that looked like I was beating a small child in both ears at the same time. The woman behind the desk looked at me blankly for a while and then the light dawned. "Come back at 4 o'clock, the man weel be ere weeth 'is chopper" "Hokay, thank you" Eventually at about half-four a young bloke turned up at the apartment sporting a manic grin and holding a *huge* DeWalt cordless angle grinder. It was brand new and he was obvio

After remembering something I read on the Internet about how to break into a suitcase we all managed to get a few hours sleep before my son's phone went off with a "you have a voicemail" alert. "...my area fund jackeet wit sport ...ssss...'ere...airaporta you collect cold air...ssss..." click. "WTF?" "Sounds like they've found your jacket & passport mate." "Can I drive?" "If you must". We got to a *very* hot and crowded Palma airport at about midday having spent a while getting "satnav lost" again in the very same town from a few hours earlier. Nowhere to park near the terminal, we ultimately parked back in the rental bays on the other side of the terminal building. We had no idea where to go. So we guessed and headed for the information desk in Arrivals where my son played the message to the man. "That sounds like Maria. She ees on the Goldcar desk wheech is just there.&qu

Before we came away on holiday, my eldest son confided in us that he was going to "do it properly" and propose to his pregnant girlfriend whilst we were all away on holiday. He went shopping with my daughter (for her advice and approval) and he bought a lovely engagement ring which he showed to my wife and I just before we got into the cars to drive to the airport. "I'm not going to let this out of sight", he said, "I'm going to keep in on me at all times." "That's really lovely, Just you be careful with it.", my wife remarked... and he put it in his buttoned 1 jacket pocket along with the keys to the padlocks to his & girlfriend-soon-to-be-fiance's suitcases. We arrived at the apartments at 5:00am and we all had to show our passports to the receptionist. (This presumably is because they think Immigration Control at Palma Airport isn't good enough). "Can I have my jacket please, doll?" "Um,

As mentioned earlier, Cala Ferrera is a maze of twisty passages, all alike 1 . To get from reception (ie the bar) back to our appartment took just 3 minutes to walk the 320 metres (green). If you drive it, it takes 5 minutes to travel the 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometres) due to the fact that that entire route is on a one-way system: ...or you can simply do an illegal left turn at the Spar and save 4½ minutes. It's your choice. 1 ...or is that a twisty maze of passages, all alike? You have to be old to get that one. :-)

Well. Difficult to sum up this brilliant Grand Prix in two words. " Spa, Rain " does quite well but that didn't really affect the overall result, so I think it has to be simply " Lewis Hamilton ". Most interesting part? You mean apart from pretty much all of it? How about this: It's interesting that the unknown man is framing Eddie Jordan rather than David Coulthard, and that it's a right hand which means he's cuddling up to the BBC cameraman!

We've just come back from a very pleasant week in Mallorca 1 . It was one of those holidays that had to be planned with military precision due to the number of people involved. OK, it was only six, but this involved hiring two cars and therefore, finding two working 2 satnavs and that was enough for me. We took night flights 'cos they were a lot cheaper, ending up in Palma at three 3 in the morning. We picked up the cars - one very nice Fiesta diesel which my son hired from Goldcar and one Lancia 1.4i Musa POS 4 I hired from Hertz. We loaded up and set off for Cala Ferrera getting lost in some one-horse town half way due to the crap mapping in the Gamin. At some point in the journey my wife casually remarked, "D'you think someone will be in reception at five in the morning? 5 ". There was a family-pause and a collective "Ah." The satnav took us to the middle of a very quiet rabbit warren of one-way avenues all lined with Fiestas & Lancia Musa PO

My eldest son has just informed me that I'm going to be a Grandad. The baby is due 23rd Feb next year. My wife has taken this rather badly. "I don't want to be a grandmother yet! I've still got one at home!". Yes, and he'll still be at home if he don't pass his driving test next time. How can you not see a "Stop" sign? Quite easily, apparently.

Following on from my bizarre fascination with psychic octopuses, I remember talking to a guy who had a very talented octopus in a tank in his front room. He explained that the octopus could play any musical instrument he chose to give it. Naturally, I had to see that. He put the octopus on the table and gave it a violin, with which it played Bach's Violin Concerto in E Major note perfect. He then gave it a bugle and it played Reveille with gusto. I thought, "I'll fox him", and I went to fetch my bagpipes from the car. The octopus looked at them and started to struggle madly with the instrument, not playing a note. "There you go", I said "I knew he couldn't play everything!" "Play?", said the octopus, "Once I get its damn pyjamas off, I'm going to shag it..." Bagpipes with legs in air... boom, boom, I, er, thank you.

I thought " Attempted murder " quite nicely summed up this one. Although " Renault Idiots " came a close second after they released Kubica into Sutil in the pits. Most interesting bit? Dunno, really. Probably the announcement that F1 shuts down for 4 weeks until Spa.

I was wondering who was the smarter animal. A Cat or an Octopus? I figured that Cats were smarter than Octopuses 1 purely because Cats didn't find the need to seek fame and fortune by predicting the outcome of football matches. However, I decided to put it to the test. Could my Cat predict the National Lottery Result 2 ? I seemed a reasonable question. I spread 49 playing cards on the floor and called the Cat. "Cat! Get in here please" "Ah, is my tea ready then?" "No, go and pick 6 cards from the floor first" She sniffed the cards and looked at me. " Hmm , which draw is this for then?" "Um, good point, Saturday?" "I'll tell you Sunday, where's my tea then? 1 octopuses, octopi and octopodes 2 No.

Humph. " Ferrari Cheat " Most interesting part? Turning off the TV and watching my goldfish in the pond. Maybe Paul The Octopus should have accepted that transfer offer after all.

I'd been waiting all season for this race and having watched Webber come first with Hamilton second, I thought that the two-word summary should be " not bad ". However, I feel that I have to echo Eddie Jordan's description of the event as " Poetic justice " after the front-wing-swap fiasco between the Red Bulls. Most interesting part? Possibly Martin Brundle (on his grid walk) saying to Sir Patrick Stewart to "..I don't think even you can beam Lewis up to the top step of the podium today...", but, simply for that "aah" factor, it has to be the crowd wildy applauding Sir Stirling Moss presenting the second place trophy to Hamilton. I wonder if Paul The Octopus predicted that one eh?

I noted with interest that the entire German nation's footballing fate rested within the tentacles of an octopus called " Paul ". Well, no, that was in the hands (or even feet) of the German World Cup Squad really and they didn't perform did they? This poor chap has even had death threats made against him. He did however accurately " predict " a win over England and a load more countries besides. What I notice however is that Paul is, in fact, English, relatives of whom are often found in the local nightclubs where I live... Man the Fish Jokes, all hands to the Punch Lines...

Easy one this - " Webber Airborne ". Most interesting part? Michael Schumacher telling Eddie Jordan to sod off during the grid walk. And, did anyone notice Webber taking out the DHL sign? ...well, it makes a change for someone to break something of DHL's instead.

What a bloody palaver! I've finally got back the Power Of Attorney from the Office Of The Public Guardian. This has taken weeks & weeks. A bit of background - POA gives you the legal right to take control of someones finances etc if you believe they are no longer capable of doing it themselves. That said person needed to have signed a POA in the first place (when they weren't barking mad) and when you as an "attorney" decide the time is right, you have to cough up £125 so some court or other in Birmingham to "register" (ie turn on) the POA. I went to Mom's bank today. "Hello, I want to register this POA on my Mom's account, I'm here but the other attorney is in Brazil at the moment." "What's that then?" "Um, it's a Power Of Attorney ?" "Oh, I'll get someone else" Eventually they find Gundip (nice bloke, has a degree from Liverpool Uni it turns out) who starts the ball rolling. " Questio

At last, something half-interesting. Several "two-worders" sprang to mind this time - "Very Good", "Tyre Choice", and "Very Close". However, I shamelessly settled on "One-Two" (again). Most interesting parts? Hamilton & Alonso making friends in the pit lane... ...and Schumacher not being penalised for his incident whereas the other drivers all got, err, spoken to. So no partisan behaviour there then.

I am bloody mad. Madder than a mad box of frogs on Mad Sunday. Why? I've just had run in with my intransigent boss. I can't even begin to explain, but we've just moved offices (without consultation I might add) and the final email of a long shouting match ended up with "you will sit there in front of the new guy so you can talk to him, you'll be more efficient then". (My boss is located over 200 miles away). You mean, sit under the air-conditioning unit so that cold air goes down my neck? You mean, sit in front of the window so I can't see my screen due to glare? You mean, sit at the desk with a set of drawers that you can only get a pencil and ruler in? You mean leave the nice desk with the large drawers in the corner free as a "hot-desk" so that you can visit every 6 weeks or so? Apparently, yes. The answers were "draw the blinds" and "turn off the air-pack". There are four other people in the office, so, obviously their co

I was mindlessly staring into the goldfish pond today and noticed the slightly fatter goldfish being harassed and chased by the other two. They did some strange stuff that I'd never seen before - weaving in and out of the plants and even breaking the surface of the pond at some point, and rolling from side to side. It then dawned on me. She was of course spawning and the other two were desperate "to get in first". Wondering why I had my head stuck in a goldfish pond, my wife came out to join me. She took one look at the commotion and shouted "Leave her alone!". TBH, I'm still not sure to whom this was directed, me or the fish. After it had all settled down and the two males swam off for a post-coital cigarette, I took a long hard look at the plants hoping to find the goldfish equivalent of a lump of frog-spawn. What surprised me was that almost every single stem had one or two 0.8mm-sized eggs attached to them and therefore the eggs were spread out of a larg

Impossible to sum this race up in two words. I found the prophesy from Legard and Palmer rather amusing:- "...he (Hamilton) wants the two Red Bull to start squabbling a bit..." "...they're not going to do that are they really?" So first thought was to say " Lap 40 ", but then a nine laps later we had Button and Hamilton fighting for the lead. And hence " Lap 49 " seemed appropriate. And then we had the "...by the way you haven't got much fuel left" from the pit wall, so " Low fuel " sprang to mind. However, my finally summary has to be " One-Two " :-) Most interesting part? Lewis Hamilton's girl friend flashing to the camera:- I like the way the McLaren mechanic is completely disinterested...

I've just spent a month over the last 4 days attending an IBM (AS400) "CL" programming course in Northampton. For those of you not in the know, "CL" stands for " Control Language " and is the IBM equivalent of DOS batch files with a bit of database file handling thrown in for good measure. It's about 100 years old and is the equivalent of your local hospital getting tips from Florence Nightingale . The tutor was surprisingly enthusiastic about it all. "I'm going to teach you all about DO-WHILE loops and SUBROUTINES", she gushed. Erm, I vaguely remember learning about them in 1975 and emulating them in assembler code in 1977. "What's your job?" she asked. "I'm a business analyst currently doing a web-based program using Visual Studio and ASP.NET, onto a SQL Server database". There was a slight pause and her eyes widened slightly - "Oh, never mind. Anyway." she continued "this is all new to ver

Day One: Drive to villa in Sicily and find entrance guarded by automatic gates. Hang around a bit wondering how they work and eventually get let in by friends who are already there. Drive 100 yards up the narrow drive to the parking spot at the top by the villa. Gates ^ Day Two: Drive down said long narrow drive and get let out of automatic gates by friend pressing the "open" button by the villa. Get back in later by phoning friend and pathetically pleading for them to open the gates. Day Three: Open gates myself by pressing button by the villa, get in car, drive down long drive to find gates shutting on their own. Can't get out of car because of narrow drive. Reverse back up narrow drive to villa, wife gets out to press button to open the gates, gets back in car and we drive down to find the gates shutting again. Have plan. Reverse back to villa, wife gets out and waits for me to drive down to front of gates. She presses the button and wait for gates to open. They don&#

Ha, " missed it ". I was in Sicily with a bunch of very old - as in long time - friends and, nearly-old in age too. More on this...

Well, all I can say is " did gardening ". Possibly there was some excitement when Hamilton blew a tyre, but overall it wasn't worth the time. If it hadn't been raining I probably would have cut the back lawn instead. Most interesting part? Discovering that my peas had started to germinate. ^ A pea

"bigot" - Brown Is Going On Thursday. ;-)

As you all know, there's something a bit odd about the Amy Pond character in the latest series of Doctor Who - like she doesn't know who The Daleks are and the like. We all know that "Torchwood" is an anagram of "Doctor Who" and Russell T. Davies threw in "Bad Wolf" throughout the earlier episodes, so I thought it would be a bit of fun to run "Amy Pond" through my anagram solver... Amy Pond = Mad Pony... Amelia Pond = Dope Animal, Impala Done, Opal Maiden... Oh, there are hundreds more, including "Apian Model", so, when there's an episode about killer bees, remember, you saw it here first!

Where to begin? Let's start with the Astra - 100k miles on the engine and a while ago it started leaking oil. "Hello sir, you're leaking oil, we need to look at it." "Ok" "Well, we've looked at it and we think it's coming from the main oil seal. But don't worry we've checked for ring blow-by and that's fine so we'd like to charge you £700 to fix it." "Ok" "Here's you car back sir, that'll be £700." "Ok, I notice that it still leaking oil from the same place." "Well, we need to look at it." "Ok" "Well we've looked at it and we think it's coming from the sump gasket." "It that the same sump gasket you replaced a while ago?" "Ah, well that was over a year ago and Vauxhall only guarantee a year yada yada yada, and it might be blow by." "Is this the same blow-by that you said was fine last August when all this lot kicked off? L

Hmm, I think " interestingly wet " sums this one up. Made much better by the fact the Jensen won with Lewis second. Most interesting part? Possibly all the shenanigans in the pits. "You can't overtake in the entrance to the pits!" "Just watch me..." and "You move over!" "No, you move over!" "I really think you should move over." "I'm the pit wall, your call."

Hmpf. It's my birthday today, not a significant one mind but a birthday nonetheless - and still miles away from a bus pass. My wife recently suggested that I take one of my oldest friends to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford as we've been "meaning to go" for about three years. He's a mine of information, particularly about WWII and good company to boot. So, yesterday, we took the roadster up the M11. We got to the entrance and waited in line. "Two please" The lady took a long hard look at me. "Are you concession?" My mate was still laughing at lunchtime.

Well, the only thing I can say about this is " boringly dry ". It had all the makings of a great race after qualifying and promises of "it always rains at 5:00pm" and the like, but it failed to deliver. Most interesting part? Ferrari and McLaren getting Q1 wrong.

My two-word summary for this race is " Much better ". It was going to be " Somewhat better " up to point where Vetell's Red Bull brakes failed. Not that I don't like Vettell, not at all, but it did allow Jenson to win... Most interested part? Hamilton getting done by the Melbourne Police for doing wheelies in the car park. I admit to being on the edge of my seat at one point, but this was only as I was trying to get up to make a cup of tea.

We went to Paris over the weekend and I got conned into visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie to see the "really nice paintings" in there, when all I wanted to do was to sit in a nice warm Parisian bar with a bottle of red. The entrance had an airport-style scanner manned by a rather large guard. Presumably in the past they had problems with people smuggling in "really nice paintings". Predictably it went 'beep'. "Emptee yur pokeets please" "Ok, certainly" 'beep' "'Av you got a belt?" "Yup, I have" 'beep' "Put yur camera ovur there" "Ok" 'beep' "Take off yur jackeet" "Hmpf" 'beep' I was now nearly down to socks, shoes and underwear. The queue behind me started to mutter somewhat. " Mon Dieu, les fou Anglais ". The security man furiously glared at me. " What 'av you got that makes eet go 'beep'? " " I do nit kn

I thought I'd try and come up with a two-word précis for each Grand Prix of this season - in the same sort of way that the Hitchhikers Guide described the Earth. Sadly, I could only come up with " Disappointing Anti-climax " for the much-anticipated opener. The most entertaining part of the BBC's coverage was watching the tumbleweed and listening to the wind whistling gently while Martin Brundle waited to catch Alonso's eye on the grid. Assuming I haven't died of boredom in two weeks after the Melbourne race, I'll give it another shot.

This took me ages to find a solution to this one. If you get: Load report failed when trying to load a Crystal Report into a viewer using VB.NET something like this: .CrystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = ReportName .CrystalReportViewer1.ShowFirstPage() ' Blows up here then you should try the following: In Solution Explorer, right-click the project (NOT the solution), Add / Existing Item / "file of type" .RPT / Navigate to, and add the report to the project. Then, in the properties of the (new) report change "Copy to output directory" to "Copy Always". Also, it was suggested that you try using the full pathname in "ReportName". Don't bother thanking me, no one else does... ;-)

I'm only writing this in case someone else has a problem upgrading their PSUS4 Printer Server firmware. If you get the error message: access to the target is in failure when trying to upgrade the firmware using the "BiAdmin Management Utility" program found in your start menu, then use the browser based utility instead (Default IP Address 192.168.1.93). Works for me using Firefox. Download the ".bin" from the Linksys website and extract it to (say) C:\Temp. Run the utility via the browser, browse to the file and job done. It is suggested that you temporarily disable anti-virus software during the upgrade.

I'd just like to point out that Warwickshire Police use an unmarked dark blue/black BMW 750i that they're rather quite good at driving - especially where the M6 joins the M1 southbound. The conversation at the Watford Gap Services last Saturday went along the lines of: "In a hurry sir?" "Um, not really, why?" "We clocked you at 95, but we're not going to take it any further, 'cos everyone else was doing the same." "Err, thank you" "I'm now going to ask you to provide a specimen of you breath, you do not have to say anything...." "...yeah, yeah, I know all about the "legal" speech bit, I've watched Police Camera Action y'know." "That's where I get all of my training from sir, good night." "It's a fair cop, good night".

I was told to go on a course this week - "Introduction to the IBM AS/400". I viewed this with great suspicion as I consider anything non-GUI to be, well, slightly crap and therefore not worth using. Dear Diary: Day 1: Hire car turns up a day early, man throws keys through letter box and buggers off. No probs, it's a new Skoda Octavia, we use one of these at work. Day 1+1 hour: Eventually work out how to adjust the wing mirrors and unlock the passenger door. Day 2: Work out how to use the touch-screen radio and climate control. Drive to course up M1 - really could use cruise control. Day 3: Course starts, can't park anywhere except in very tight spot, get trapped by the wing mirrors. Day 4: Park miles away, at least I can get out of the car. Day 5: Can't remember, brain fried by 3 days of TLA's. That's TEN letter acronyms. Day 6: Last day of course! Hoorah! Discover switch for the powered fold-in wing mirrors whilst driving out of the car park. Drive back d

It suddenly occurred to me today that Gordon Brown will never be able to fully enjoy the movie Avatar. :-)

I've had my family tree on G/Ru for ages and because my surname is quite common, ok very common, I get loads of hits from other trees. I had this one come through today (and it's by no means a one-off): "Dear PeteTheVan, we've found an amazing match on our database with someone who might be your relative - Why don't you pay us squillions to contact that person?" Even I can do the SQL for that one: SELECT .... WHERE MY.FIRST_NAME = HIS.FIRST_NAME AND MY.DOB = HIS.DOB AND MY.PLACE = HIS.PLACE How hard can it be?

Well, not friends, but an impressionable chap in the office who bought a smart roadster because I had one. He's now sold it and sort of regrets it. So, when a chap's down there's nothing like kicking him a bit further is there? I recently discovered that my new Garmin Nuvi (an amazing bit of kit) has a trip log of some sorts that remembers amongst other things, what your top speed is. Similar to this: So with appropriate misleading comments such as "Gosh, look how fast I've been", I showed him the relevant screen - 141mph. "Holy ****". He walked off muttering something about changing tapes in the Server Room. I sort of neglected to say that I'd been on a course the week before and had taken the unit on the the Javelin train on HS1 to St Pancras. I might just forget to say anything.

We ordered a nice display cabinet from Argos last December. We spent *weeks* choosing the one we wanted. Its primary purpose was to hold the drinks that were cluttering up the kitchen worktops - the bottles were moved when the original 25 year old unit fell apart last year. It arrived today, and I watched the men carefully carry it in from the lorry into my lounge. They didn't hit anything and I didn't move it later. You can probably see where this is going can't you? I unwrapped the bottom half, moved it into position and adjusted the bottom doors and fitted the handles to perfection. I unwrapped the top half and upon removing the last bit of protective cardboard found a dent in the top rail. I planned a strategy that went along the lines of "Hello, my unit's bust you bastards, send out another by tomorrow or else, or, you can refund me the price for the top half." **ring** **ring** "Hello, this is Neil, how may I help you with your Argos Order?" &q