50+ and proud of it.

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.