The Memories of an Ordinary Week
Morning All, another week has melted away into the pool of time, another week where life has just meandered on with little measure in the Smith household.
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This "story", if that's the word, has a posting on my "Opinionated Parent" blog, but it also a good example of what families have to put up with. Sundays' are Football days in our house, with Liam playing for a local Kids Team, Park Tigers u13's. This last Sunday they were to play a team at Gainsborough - Marshall Sports. Well we knew little of this team, if fact most of the parents and kids had never even heard of them before the appeared on the fixtures list. Anyway, because Cathy was at work (and Laura is NOT a Football supporter) we had arranged a lift to the match for Liam from the team manager (many thanks again Chris, much appreciated), so , at 08:50 on a Sunday morning (and this is based on the "norm" of Liam not even moving out of his warm bed until at least half past nine) off they went, into the void so to speak.
After passing a couple of hours of "Dad can I play on my bike?", "Dad can I have a biscuit?", "Dad ............", "DAD, DAD, can I ......." (Laura can be very like that sometimes), I heard a Car pull up outside. I looked through the window to see Liam getting out of the Car, and Chris with a face like thunder, boy did he look upset.
Liam came in the backdoor looking like he really shouldn't have bothered getting up at all, sad and dejected.
"Well?" , I asked
"Well what!!!!" came back the answer, in that "mardy" sarcastic voice that teenagers (and trainee teenagers) seem to use to such great effect.
"You know what - how did the game go?"
"IT DIDN'T - we played like we did last year !!!!!!", he retorted, thrusting forward the Man of the Match trophy in his right hand.
When I did get the full, un"mardy" story (and Liam is very like me in that way - if we don't do what we consider our best we are not nice people to be around for the following few hours - I think that we maybe set our standards far to high) the team had indeed gone back to the bad old days. I know this is a bit of a one sided story (but with the look on Chris's face when he pulled up I don't think it was far off) Liam said they were awful. No cohesion, no team work, no idea.
In the end they lost 5 - 1, and five goals past Liam is really a good "mardy" builder, because, even if it didn't happen that way, he will blame himself for everyone of them going in.
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No-dig tech could end traffic jams Traffic jams caused by roads being dug up to fix underground pipes could soon be a thing of the past. Engineers are turning to "no-dig" or "trenchless" technologies to inspect, fix and replace pipes without digging up the road.
It'd be lovely if it really happens, but I am just a cynic when it comes to making traffic jams disappear.[via Lockergnome's Technology News]
I like this story, could you imagine this, traffic running free whilst somewhere, out of sight out of mind, someone is repairing that broken drain without digging up the road. A pipe dream (excuse the pun) however. Even if there weren't any roadworks for this and that, we still wouldn't be going anywhere fast - just too much traffic.
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The kind lady that answered went through the descriptions of what was available , and at what price (if any). I had already discounted the Nokia 3510i, I have seen it and really didn't like it at all. After checking and discussing "what was what" with the lady, I settled for the Nokia 6100.
I have had this now for a few days, downloaded the polyphonic versions of my favourite ringtones (the themes from Blackadder and Monty Python - sad or what), and I do really like the phone. you can also buy a camera that attaches, but , at the minute at least, I personally didn't see the point.
The "Trouble" was Cathy. She does have a phone, as do the kids, but she is normally of the belief "if it does the job, why change it unless you have to", where as I'm a little more the " OHHHHHH Pretty baubles - shiny buttons" brigade.
Anyway, she has said nothing for the past two days since it arrived. But last night she had a proper look, and she quite likes it. Not that she would go rushing out and exchange her phone (even though she could upgrade if she wanted to), so , although I'm still in trouble for getting it, I'm not in as much trouble as I was.
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Lib Dems gather after poll victory The Liberal Democrats hold their annual conference after their surprise victory in the Brent East by-election. [via BBC News | UK | UK Edition]
This is another "nail" in the Blair coffin I believe. This is, apparently, the first time there hasn't been a Labour MP in the Brent East area for many along year. This is, or was, a safe Labour seat. You mention Conservatism here and you would be lucky to escape with your ideological life. The reason for this Anti-Labour reaction. If you believe the news reports - much of it involved the rush to war in Iraq, a seeming move away from the traditional Labour beliefs, and , more telling I believe, they no longer believe what Tony Blair and his government are telling them. For a long time Labour supporter - I sadly have to agree. The Labour party of today no longer has much credibility in my eyes.
The saddest part is, there isn't actually anyone in opposition worth the vote. The Conservatives, under the "invisible" Ian Duncan Smith are still elitist and sidelined, and the Liberal Democrats are just not "big enough" to make a difference.
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Now welcome to technology corner
Virus poses as Microsoft update A Windows virus masquerading as a security update from Microsoft is spreading via e-mail, warn experts. [via BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]
I don't know about you, but I have been very glad of both my virusguard, and the additional protection given by my ISP.For the last couple of days, I have been getting messages from the spam protection system on BT Openworld, saying, that this message has been deleted because the system has detected a virus in this message. The e.mails involved had the tag line "Security Patch required - act immediately" , or something like that,and the sender was supposed to be Microsoft support. It happened to at least 6 messages over the last few days, but I just thought that it was someone else sending me the message as a warning, but they hadn't realised that they had the infection - how wrong I was.
It never occurred to me - why would Microsoft be sending this sort of information directly to me, by e.mail. And then I saw the story above, and for once, I was glad that I actually have Virus guard doubled up so to speak.
I have mentioned before what I think of Virus writers, and certain words are swimming round my mind at this very moment (a lot of them begins with either a "B" or an "F", and I'm sure that many of you could add the rest as required), but what fightened me more was how easily I could have fallen for the TRAP, I would have opened a message from Microsoft without a second thought.
Millions 'confused' by digital TV Millions of people are not using digital TV because they find the technology too confusing, a study says. [via BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]
"Confused" by Digital TV - what a laugh. I know people who have a VCR, but can't reset the clock, or more to the point, are not interested because all they want to do is watch re-recorded videos. I know people who can set the VCR clock, set it up to record a program and that's it.
I personally think that the confusion, if that's the right way to put it, is not because people are in some way inept with technology, but because of the lack of a "standard way " of doing things, along with the addition of "features" that look good in the store, but when you get them home you never ever use, thus complicating things even further.
You can put two or three VCR's together, side by side, and apart from the manual "Play", "Stop" and the like buttons on the machine and the remote, all the other functions are achieved in a slightly different manner. And what's worse, the machine could be different versions of the same manufacturers products, and they will even be slightly different.I have no problem with changing the facias to adapt to the time they are designed for, but most people only want basic operations, and those operations to be achieved in the same was, across the board, by a by Sony or Philips, and be it a VCR , DVD or Sky plus.
People just want things that are simple and straight forward to use
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