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.