Nearly £120 fine and 6 points on my licence!!

Couldn't believe it when a letter arrived a couple of days ago telling me I had been captured on a speed camera doing 67 mph in a 50mph zone on the M4. It was at 00:20am in the morning, not another car in sight!! We were coming back from the ferry after crossing the Irish Sea from our holidays. The ferry was 4 hours late, and I was trying to get back home as quickly as I could... Ah well a fair cop I guess. So I sent a cheque for £60 and my licence away yesterday for them to put 6 points on it for me.
Imagine my horror this morning when I get a letter from the Northumbrian Police saying I got tagged by another camera on the same day but in Sunderland, and driving a Vauxhall Astra !! Someone is seriously taking the piss...It was my company car unit gave the rozzers the wrong information...but it made the old sphincter twitch I can tell you.!!

Audi and the Fireplace

I've got a brand new Audi A4 2.0 TDi on the driveway for a couple of days. I'm due to change my company car in January, so I am having a look at three possible candidates for the new vehicle. The Audi is nice....it's a 7 speed multi-tronic diesel. It goes like asteam train, and using the steering wheel paddles to go up and down gears is fun. It looks and feels great from a driver's perspective, and the boot is ginormous!! BUT.....the ride is a bit harsh with very stiff rear suspension, making it a bit bumpy for rear seat passengers. My Mondeo is bigger accross the back seat, and has a tad more leg room, so with three hulking boys in tow, we need all the room we can get... Next month I'm trying a BMW 320i...I'll keep the blog posted...
Oh and the fireplace is finished...here's a photo...just got to get on and decorate now...

The week-end is gone, and the fireplace is not finished.

I nearly made the fireplace completely this weekend, but had a little problem with the mantel. I want it to be big ie. 6 inches square, by the width of the chimney brest. Trying to pick which sides of this long skinny box, were going to be the top, and the front proved difficult..also how am I going to plug the ends.??? It looks really good, and I'll upload a photo when its finished. Then there is the walls to prepare. Must find the steamer we bought a while ago. it should help us strip the wallpaper off quickly. I'm not looking forward to cleaning and painting the ceilings and skirting boards, but it will have to be done...

The Fireplace

Well it sort of 'came off in my hand'. Two screws were all that held the fire surround on, and no sooner they were out, the surround was broken up into it's constituent parts. I remember fitting it some years ago. I made the top as smooth as glass, by rubbing the varnish down with 1200 grade wet and dry between coats, and a final cut with 'T Cut' and car polish.
I've started building the replacement. The two columns are built, with three vertical flutes on each. I am going to build a hearth, using a wooden frame, and a marble effect laminate to fill it. It will match the marble fire surround which I need to cut, to go around our fire. Once that is done, I can concentrate on putting the top on and finishing it all off. Then it's on to decorate the room. Ho Hum we do have fun!!

Babylon 5 aka AC DC and the Data Terminal

I'm really into Electronics, ever since my dad made me an electric motor out of a lump of cork, some copper wire, drawing pins, and a horseshoe magnet. Anyway I've discovered PICs. They are programmable MicroProcessors. I've learnt how to program them etc, and have found a practical use for them. I am building an RS232 data terminal, with a 4x20 LCD display. The prototype is built and works fine. I've stopped developing the software temporarily, so I can build a prototype Printed circuit board. I've designed the board on the PC with PCB123 software, and now I need to create the board itself. I've ordered some board, some ferric chloride etch, and some photo-resist spray. Hopefully it'll arrive in the next few days.....
The Babylon 5 & AC DC bit is funny. I ordered a Babylon 5 special edition DVD from Play.com and it arrived this morning. Or rather AC DC 'Jewel in the house' DVD came instead...OOPs...I've posted it back, and they are going to send me the right one in the next couple of days..

GCSE Results Day for Jamie

I took Jamie up to his school to pick up his exam results. He is in year 10 and took ICT and Business studies, and Statistics. He got an A, and a B. What a smartypants!!! His first words to me after getting his results were 'I got more than you!!' This is a direct reference to me failing all 8 of my O levels in 1968. I got 4 grade 7s and 4 Grade 9s. My Mum and Dad were not happy!!
So this month has been a good one for the academics. Jamie with an A & B and Chris with enough to get to Uni. Wow they are some great kids. It'll be a few years until Joe takes his, but he has a couple of class acts to follow. I hope Jamie remains focussed and works hard this next year.

Washing Machines & Guitars

A couple of days ago, our washing machine came to a grinding halt. The program clock just clicked around the dial aimlessly. My wife suggested I look at it, as I am a dab hand at getting drums out and replacing weights. It was full of washing and water, and I didn't fancy trying to lift it up to pour the water out! (pump not running at all). I suggested we get the engineer in. It turns out we have an extended warranty (good thing) so the guy was booked to come today. He arrived a while ago, and extracted two coins, a small nail, a paint can securing clip, and a metal plectrum. Now you see the connection. What you don't see is the link between Jamie's electric guitar, and the washing machine. It is in fact Jamie's trouser pockets...Oh well, at least it's working again...Bravo Indesit, and what a great idea I had to take out an extended warranty....

Fasthosts and Customer Service

Well I lost my temper over the weekend, mainly because the jerks at hosttoday.co.uk refuse to even acknowledge my service difficulty. I pay annually by WorldPay, and a payment had been taken in May 2005. I wrote to WorldPay, explaining what had happened with Hosttoday, and asking for a refund...I don't reckon I'll get it, but at least I can try...I was thinking of billing them for my new hosting service, but is it worth the hassle?..
Anyway I enrolled with Fasthosts, who are absolutely brilliant. My service is hosted on a Windows 2003 machine, in the UK with Telephone, email, fax, and MSN support 24/7. I managed to find my last site backup, and was able to rebuild it on the new host over the weekend...everything works fine....so Hosttoday...shove it up your ass!!! If anyone reads this and wants a laugh.... the wannabe suit who tries to run hosttoday.co.uk, has an email address of:- mailto:adam@isamillionaire.com Is that pretentious or what !!!!

A Levels and Hosttoday

Well Chris got his A level results today....He got enough to get him into Southampton Solent to study criminology...I think he is planning the perfect robbery!!! Well done that boy...We are very proud of him..
This week's 'Piss Off Award' must go to the owners/operators of www.hosttoday.co.uk . They have been taking my annual fee for a web hosting package which defies belief...performance is about 50 - 55 % ....that is how bad it is...55% of the time it is unuseable....I am now looking for an alternative supplier... It really annoys me when I am on the end of poor service. I work for a service provider, and if I behaved the way they do, I'd lose most of my customers as well.

Still that's my Piss Off for this week.

The Case of the devious VCR Clock

Had a good day at work today. Very busy but managed to get a lot done. Looking forward to a meeting tomorrow which should help ease my understanding of profile control, but that's a story for tomorrow. I got home and my wife asked me to visit her parents, as they have had a problem with their VCR. Her mum programs it using VideoPlus and numbers from the listing mags.. for some reason she has programmed correctly, but the machine hasn't switched on!!! This happened about 3 months ago, and it turned out that the VCR's clock had an incorrect date...ie yesterday's date..The videoplus sets the timer up perfectly, it's just the vcr is running a day behind. Well sure enough today when I check it shows the date as 16th August 2005, when it is 17th August 2005.
Something is a bit fishy here...I don't think it's misoperation on their part, but I'd like to know why the machine is a day behind....anyway I corrected the date, and the program started recording as per normal...spooky eh!!

Fixed it day!!

Chris, my son has spent a couple of hundred quid on a new PC (bits) and we have been putting it together. Yesterday was switch on day, and the little blighter played up. After a lot of messing about, and a considerable amount of help from some great guys on the AMD Processors forum, I at last got it going today. I might add I crawled into my pit at 01:45am this morning after giving up...at least I posted a 'help' on the forum first...also good that my wife didn't wake up and quiz me about the time....Work today was a little tiring...I am in front of a PC all day with email and mainframe access running data extraction reports from SQL Server. Sounds a dream doesn't it?!! Not when you have problems with systems it isn't, but at least today was not too strenuous.
This is just my second day back from my holiday in Southern Ireland with my Wife and 3 boys. The picture is of Chris on his transparent skateboard on the beach in Ireland. We had such a brilliant relaxing time in Co Wexford, I thought I'd find it difficult getting back into the work ethic. I surprise myself sometimes...it was easy, and I really got into it over the last two days... It was Joseph's 12th birthday yesterday, so we took him out for a meal in a local Chinese restuarant. He likes Chinese food a lot. I'm not going to play PCs again tonight...I've just about had enough...