50+ and proud of it.

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." ...

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...