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I have been using picasa from google for some time. It is a great wee windows tool for organising and archiving your photos. It does a full scan of your hard drive and displays every .jpg on your system when you open it up. I am sure this could prove embarassing and amusing at the same time.
It's very useful to set up for friends or relatives who want basic no brainer image editing.
My pumpkin carvings always look a little sinister.
We had our first firework boom this morning at 6.25 am, anything to create as much of a nuisance as possible. The firework ban seems to have no effect on the availability of fireworks in East Belfast. On the contrary the fact that they are banned seems to make them more available.
Surely the most disgusting flavour of sweets I have ever tasted. Like Lime Pickle with extra chilli. So bad I keep having to try another to see how bad they really are.
Since buying a new car recently I searched for forums devoted to the particular car. There is a very active community at http://www.mini2.com. The problem with these websites however are the horror stories that people post. If your car explodes or if the steering and brakes fail simultaneously you are going to tell people about it. Reading the forums you start to feel like all minis are falling to bits and start to question your sanity in ever buying one in the first place.
The forum regulars swap stories about the smallest of details, squeaks from the dashboard or minis pulling slightly to the left etc. They trade tales and then bring their cars back to their dealers and demand that these things are fixed on warranty. I am not surprised that extended warranties cost so much, most of the dealers seem to spend time fixing imaginary faults.
I recently posted about my experience with a noise going over bumps, I am not sure why, I think I was hoping that someone would say oh yes that's fine it's a known issue just live with it. One of the replies cracked me up and I could live to regret posting this in a mocking fashion but here was the reply:
" hi there, I had exactly the same strange sound (Mini Cooper, Oct 2001, 55.000 km), coming from the right front while driving over bumps or tracks. Get it fixed quickly, I am still waiting on news from my garage why my car went on fire several days ago, flames crawling from below the motor after I had parked it. Now I'm thinking, perhaps I should have gone to the garage earlier with that sound? Probably the fire was caused by something else but you are warned now. "
I was chatting to one of my friends by phone over the weekend. He lives in Glasgow so we would speak every few weeks, we realised what little we have done since the last time we spoke. It feels like we work and live for the weekend. Perhaps this is s symptom of age, it maybe happens to everyone approaching 30.
I found out at the weekend that my parents now read this blog. With that in mind I'll admit to having had a fantastic weekend filled with hookers and cocaine, I had to make something up, I think their weekend was probably more hedonistic than mine.
Rebecca's granny went walkabout on Sunday morning, last spotted walking down her road in thick fog at 8.10 in the morning. 90 years old and decided to walk to church, her church is about 6 miles away. She must have decided that was a little far and stopped at a church on the way. Luckily one of the parishoners recognised that she was confused and with a bit of luck and detective work this very kind lady managed to track down her house. By this stage the police had just taken a statement and were leaving the house and in she walked. The lady had already been to Rebecca's parents house, left a note on the door and was going to bring her back to her own house if there was no-one at her granny's house. There are some good samaritans out there after all.
Sunday 23rd. October 2005 11am. - 3.30pm.
Ozone Complex,
Ormeau Park,
Belfast.
11.00am to 3.30pm
Collectors Toy and Train Sale (and related material) for old and new items, inc. Dinky, Corgi, Matchbox, EFE, Hornby, Lima, Bachmann etc. etc.
I know a person who works for the Northern Bank. She received a brand new computer, a router and free broadband for a year when Danske bank bought the company. All staff, on all grades received the package.
From a press release:
--------------------------
The agreement, which commits staff to participate in a computer training course, also makes provision for employees to be equipped with a new home computer to the value of £1,500 and one year's free broad-band access.
Each member of staff is due to receive £500, for completion of their training and £500 on completion of the integration process, along with £500 worth of Danske Bank shares.
http://www.iboa.ie/press_danske_ballot05.htm
I have friends who work with the parent company of the old Northern Bank and they tell me the systems which Danske Bank use will greatly change the way the Northern runs. I have been banking online with Northern for a couple of years and like the simplicity of the system, I'm looking forward to the changes though and hopefully the more beneficial opening hours that might follow.
I bought a mini not so long ago, second hand with 17000 miles on it. It got a recall for a wiring harness to be fixed. Whilst there I asked them to have a look at a noise that sounded like it was coming from the front shock absorber. When I picked it up I was told that there was oil leakage from the front right spring strut and that both shocks would need replacing at £68 plus VAT plus fitting for each one. At BMW service rates that seemed excessive. I took it up to Kwik Fit and they tell me there is nothing wrong with them and they don't need replacing. The noise continues on bumpy roads at slow speed there is a loud squeaking and every little while a grinding noise, which seems to happen going up hill and round corners at the same time.
I think the oil leakage they found was wd40 that I had sprayed all over the spring, to see if it eased the squeaking.
Kwik Fit's analysis means one of two things:
Wasn't aware of the ongoing diplomatic incident between the US government and the Lord Mayor's Office. It is nicely covered here.
In an effort to mature slightly, my trumpet is now rechristened blog and I have hacked away at a movable type template to produce this new layout. I'm down with the kids now, got my flickr photostream, and my del.icio.us links and a new way of managing my linkroll, I am all blinged up.
Please let me know what is broken. If anyone subscribes to the feed I am hoping the link to the old rdf feed will redirect nicely to the atom feed.
A lot of links are broken, but I'll eventually tidy things up.
I have put up links to all the blogs I look in on, and would recommend highly the link to Nelly over there, it's a great wee blog.
My grandmother in law has started to do an odd thing as she gets older. Her short term memory is non existent at certain times, and she has taken to calling my mother in law at all times of the night. This is standard practice with elderly people, I saw it with my own family.
However lately she has been coming through via the operator, 3, 4,5 times a night. The phone bill came through and it is over 200 quid for this quarter, over 75% of her calls have come through from 118-500, which is the BT directory enquiries number.
We think we know how she gets through, it's a BT phone and it has 118-500 as speed dial for button 6.
We removed this from speed dial and still she came through via the operator last night. We also blanked out all the numbers except for 1, 2, 3 (the speed dial options for 3 close relatives).
She can't remember what happened 5 minutes ago, so it's very unlikely that she remembers 118-500, it's not written on any piece of paper, the phonebook has been moved, how is she managing to dial it? She claims she isn't and that the nice lady on the end of the phone always puts her through, she says the lady is there whenever she picks the phone up.
It's got me baffled, I had though of getting BT to block 118-500 or maybe looking for a phone that allows only certain numbers to be called.
It brings back memories of my own grandmother, she was partially sighted in her old age, about 90% blind, we used to customise all her gadgets with little bits of cardboard over buttons, tippex on certain buttons, black markers on others, anything to try to make the interface with the gadget more useful.
It's only when you start thinking like that that you realise how badly designed a lot of our everyday items are for people with impairments.
This is an interesting book on the subject: Design of Everyday Things
Excellent resource, I should have read it earlier. 7 common habits of highly successful people.
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