If it's not one thing, it's another

I ventured out of the house on Monday in sub-zero temps to clear the snow off the car and drive to the local Tesco for milk and bread. The car was covered in 4 inches of snow and a layer of ice beneath that. But I did manage to get the door open and the engine started right up - what a relief. But after I'd carefully and thoroughly cleaned all the snow and ice off the car and was ready to leave for the store, I decided to just give my wipers a little flick to check that the washer fluid was working ok. I worried that it might have frozen, even though I filled it with winter -20 C type washer fluid. So I turned on the switch and - nada. No washer fluid, no wiper movement,  and no wiper motor sound; just silence. Checked that the bit where the wiper arm mechanism attaches was ice free - but still no joy. Thought I was give it a chance to warm up from the fierce car heater blowing air onto the windshield.  Nada. No front wipers, no rear wiper.

The car just passed its MOT perfectly last week. This is out of the blue and frustrating. Because of the chaos from snow and freezing temps and Christmas holidays almost on top of us, all the local Honda dealers are over-booked for repairs. Same for the couple of local garages I trust. My neighbour who usually does my car repairs can't really work outside in sub-zero temps. And electrical repairs are expensive. So this will all have to wait until next week or just after New Years. It's just not safe to drive without windshield wipers. Even if it's not raining or snowing, a car or truck could splash filth or water onto my car when I'm driving and I would be blinded without wipers. Arrgh! Frustrating.

When Wedding Photographers Get Photoshop Insanity

Can you spot the insanity in this photo?

After Death Wishes

A Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a Rabbi
are discussing what they would like people to say
after they die and their bodies are on display in
open caskets.

Priest: I would like someone to say "He was a righteous
man, an honest man, and very generous."

Minister: I would like someone to say "He was very kind
and fair, and he was very good to his parishioners."

Rabbi: I would want someone to say, "Oh look! He's
moving!"

Someday your prince charming will come; unless he took a wrong turn, got lost, and is too stubborn to ask for directions.

Early Birthday Surprise

Tonight, when Alan arrived home from work, he handed me a very prettily wrapped box with a card wishing me a Happy Birthday. Ten days early but I couldn't resist opening it immediately. Yes! It was the 1TB Samsung portable usb hard drive I've been drooling over and wishing for. The perfect birthday present. I'm so pleased he got exactly what I wanted rather than taking me out to dinner or buying me some jewellery. I have piles of jewellery already and going out to dinner at a restaurant is nice but nothing extraordinary. But a 1TB portable HD? Ooooooooh, drool!

I know, I know, but I'm so pleased, so happy.

And it's still snowing. Day 3 now. Everything covered with an increasing layer of white. The road are impossible a third world nightmare. I just hope the Tesco delivery truck is able to bring the grocery order tomorrow. The whole country is in a transportation crisis, near paralysed by the bad weather. We're only taking  few centimeters here, mind you, but it's panic time in Great Britain.

How Computers Can Suck the Joy Out of Life Sometimes

This has been a really bad 6 weeks for me in terms of computer hardware.

To start with, I was talked into exchanging computers with my husband. (Don't let this happen to you, girls and boys! Just say no!)

I won't go into what a nightmare and disaster the exchange was. Nor the massive loss of important files that it caused. 

Then my router died. But my ISP, of course, didn't believe me when I called it in and made me jump through hoops testing everything on their insane check-list for dummies before they finally conceded that I was correct,  she's dead Jim, send the lady a replacement router. OK, that's usually a next day delivery - especially as I had called my ISP before 8am. But no, they neglected to mention that they were out of routers - in the end it was 6 days before the replacement arrived because there was a weekend in the middle of it all. So the replacement arrives - after 6pm of course, meaning I sat home all day waiting for a DHL package that was placed on the local delivery van at 8am and trundled all around London before being dropped off. Mind you, the local DHL warehouse is about a 7 minute drive from my house so I did offer to pick it up but was refused. 

Anyway, it's night and I finally get the new router, connect all the cables and power it up. And....

The Internet light doesn't come on. All the other lights are merrily glowing bright green but the Internet light remains sullenly dark. Being an IT person, I start to methodically check everything it could possibly be. Turn router off and then back on, reset router, check that phone line is live, check router control panel in my browser, etc. Finally, I call my ISP. Explain all the troubleshooting I've done but as usual, they treat me as if I was lying, and demand I go through the same routine I've just done to eliminate the obvious possible problems. They finally concede that it MIGHT be something on their end but it would need a 2nd level support tech. I go through to 2nd level support and the idiot woman there who is NOT an engineer or any sort of real tech person by any definition is clueless and tries to get me to go thru the exact same testing routine. I tell her to read the ticket's notes. She demands I unscrew the central phone block and reconnect my router to the test block inside the wall. She refuses to check if the issues are on the ISP end, claims that isn't possible. (Chorus of, "Oh Yes It Is!"). I tell her I have to hang up to disconnect the phone block etc and get the case number. Then I get a drink, light a cigarette and curse incompetent tech support to the depths of hell. 

When I call back the ISP 10 min later, I tell them I have an open case, give them the ticket number, and ask them to pass me on to 3rd level support as the 2nd level tech said she couldn't figure out what was wrong with the router. Finally!! As soon as I spoke to the 3rd level tech support guy, I knew this was a professional at last. He asked to review the ticket first, then asked me a couple of sensible questions - and listened to my answer. He said he thought the problem was indeed on the ISP's side, hang on a moment - I heard him typing, and voila! I was connected to the Internet. And yes, the little green light was now glowing brightly. He said there was an ongoing issue with static IPs and account configurations not being saved properly.  So after only 3 hours of tech support hell, I was back online.

But there was more aggro to come. The new laptop started shutting down randomly. Alan said it was probably just overheating.  Erm, JUST overheating? You just took away my reliable if clunky old PC tower to give me your unreliable laptop? I was assured that if I raised the laptop by putting it on a wire rack, the improved air circulation would prevent it overheating. Ok, it's on the wire rack, it stopped overheating.

For almost a week. Till tonight. Just now. 

Hmmmm. I'm thinking about the agony I went through installing Win7 on this laptop. And installing all the apps, and transferring files. And the lost files. and on and on.

And now, I have no idea if the thing is going to up and die on me. If? More like when.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.

Finally Back Online Again!

Last Thursday at approximately 6am my router died and I lost internet access. Despite calling my ISP, O2 before 8am. it was only finally tonight at 6pm that the new router arrived. And of course when I plugged it in there was still no internet and I was required to call O2 tech support and argue with first line moro//tech support that the issue needed to be escalated to higher support, when I reached 2nd level support they were slightly better but still basically idiots. I finally ended up calling back again and this time I was passed on by sheer chance to 3rd level support who took a look at the files, chatted with me for a moment and then admitted that there might be a config problem on their end. Twenty seconds later I had internet access and the network engineer (yes, a real network engineer NOT a tech-support-droid) was apologising for the 5 day insanity, delat, and aggro.

Anyway, finally! back online. I'm putting off doing my email until tomorrow because I HAVE HAD IT for today. It's a cold glass of white wine and a smoke for me.

When men mess with their wife's computer or Where have all my movies gone?

So, my massive film archive is gone. Into the bit bucket, gone with the wind. A product of 6 years of careful and often difficult collecting, lovingly selected. Six years of films I will probably not be able to collect back in their entirety.

Bastard!

Basically several years ago Alan pressured, whinged, moaned, and talked me into getting a used but powerful development computer from the company he worked for before it went into Administration. Being basically a nice person I finally agreed and carefully transferred all my files to the new machine. My old laptop was then reconfigured for linux. All my films were neatly organised in a folder, cleanly named, and actually regularly watched. But then about 6 months ago Alan started hassling me that the big computer was using too much power and producing too much heat blah blah blah and I should trade it for his laptop that he wasn't using.

After dragging my feet for months he finally got so insistent and annoying that I stupidly gave in. It was one of those things were it was just not worth the cost to our relationship as he was making it into a cause celebre. Because the video files were so huge by this point, he brought home a portable drive for me to transfer my films onto. I copied all my video files onto the drive and then discovered that the laptop wasn't going to be able to hold them all. We agreed that I would get my own portable drive after I got back from NYC and the files could stay on the portable drive until then.Because it was really Alan's work portable drive, I did move 30 GB of files onto my laptop to free up some workspace for him. But my remaining stored files all had names like Barb's files to transfer - do not delete!

So I went away to NYC and when I got home, my computer had been wiped clean and re-installed/re-configured as a linux development machine. So ok, since then I have been sorting out and setting up my laptop and because WIN 7 is so very different than Win XP it wasn't until tonight that I reached almost the end of the alphabet - Videos - and discovered that about 80 GB of classic films, the most irreplaceable, rare, and cherished of my collection were MISSING ! So I went to the portable drive, figuring they were on that but no, nada, not there....

And yes, Alan had deleted them from the portable drive.

That's all I can say about this. I'm just stunned by it all.

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong admit it;
Whenever you’re right shut up.


- Ogden Nash

Lead up to a Wedding

A week from now Astrid & I will depart Heathrow airport for New York and my son Andrew's wedding. I'm pleased and excited for Andrew and Joanna and happy the long wait is almost over for them.

I've made lists of what I need to buy here in the UK to bring to the US for friends and family and another list of what I need to buy while in the US to bring home with me. There are surprisingly many items mutually unavailable in one or the other; usually simple common things we're so accustomed to having available that there's a real culture shock when we find ourselves up against a brick shopping wall.

In the US we're talking about simple things like:
Noxzema
Jiffy corn muffin mix
Jello pudding mix
Bisquick
Jalapeno peppers
Hellman's mayonnaise (The Hellman's mayo sold in the UK uses a different recipe and is revolting)
Neosporin cream

In the UK, there's a few things I'll be buying:
Airwaves gum (brilliant for instantly clearing stuffy sinuses)
Olbas oil
Ribena

This weekend I need to buy a dress for the wedding (which I will reuse for formal dinner nights when we sail home on the QM2). Probably buy other bits and pieces for the voyage home since Cunard makes it quite clear they don't favor jeans at any time on the QM2.

The Politics of Burning Sacred Books

All 1st amendment arguments aside, I find the recent ruckus and international outrage over some rabble-rousing Florida pastor's plan to burn Korans on 9/11 utterly hypocritical and revealing. That's because what's not being said about this situation is that he also plans to burn Talmuds. Why is no one denouncing the planned burning of the Talmud? Is it ok to burn Jewish sacred texts but not Islamic? Is it acceptable to insult Jews but not Muslims?


Why didn't Obama speak out and denounce the intention of burning Talmuds along with the Koran? What about the Pope? Why didn't he mention the Talmuds along with the Koran in his statement? The UN, the UK government, and on and on and on.


Why?
Well, I'm pretty sure I know why. I suspect you know why. I know no one is going to say it because, well it's not politically correct to say these things, is it?


Actually, Fidel Castro says it. Fidel has even spoken out and told Iran's leader Ahmadinejad, "Stop Slandering the Jews". No other world leader has even whispered it.


It is Rosh Hashanah today and although I am a secular Jew, I am in a reflective mood.

Nurse Jeffrey - The Bitch Tapes

I've just discovered this hilarious little digital spinoff of the excellent House MD TV series.
It's available on the Fox website for US based viewers I've been told. I found it on YouTube. A quick search will get you the whole 13 episode series.

Basically Nurse Jeffrey was a very minor bit character on a House episode where House fleetingly mocked him with the old canard about male nurses. The totally psycho but lame disproportional response by Nurse Jeffrey is the basic premise of the spinoff series.

Very clever, very amusing, very evil, and very politically incorrect. Dontcha just love that?

Children

 Children

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of
 Children."

 And he said:

 Your children are not your children.

 They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

 They come through you but not from you,

 And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

 You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

 For they have their own thoughts.

 You may house their bodies but not their souls,

 For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

 You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like 

you.

 For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

 You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are 

sent forth.

 The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He 

bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

 Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

 For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also 

the bow that is stable.

-- Kahlil Gibran

Inception

I've tried 3 times to watch this film and see why people keep raving about it. I'm sorry but I just can't see what they see in it. I think it's BORING crap. I guess I'm not all that impressed with CGI and I've read too much good literature and seen too many brilliant films to be fooled by the Emperor's New Clothes any more.


Don't get me wrong, I do have a taste for crumby movies sometimes - but the one thing I do demand of them is a coherent storyline. And Inception simply does not have that. Huge plot holes all over and not in any forgivable way. You think blurring the lines of real and not real in a film to deliberately confuse the viewer makes it deep and meaningful? Nah, in this case it's smoke and mirrors to cover bullshit and lousy values. And finally, you should never, never, never need Cliff Notes for a film.


My idea of a film which does a marvelous job of spinning a compelling story where you don't know what is real and what is not, in a dreamlike way, is "Picnic at Hanging Rock". Compelling is the appropriate word for the film, the story, and the experience.  Sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, aboriginal dream-time - beautiful film-making.


So, I'm sorry but I give up on Inception. It's terribly overrated. 

Wedding Invitation!!

Today the invitation to Joanna and Andrew's wedding finally arrived in the mail! It's been a long and fraught process getting them ordered, assembled, addressed, and sent out and I'm very relieved to to see that task completed.

That said, the invitations are beautiful and elegant.

(Of course the idiots at UK Customs/UK Mail felt required to open our invitation before delivering it, just to make sure there was no terrorist threat inside.)

Bussels

Asti and I drove to Brussels early Tuesday morning to apartment hunt for her prior to her starting a new contract there on the following Monday. She was incredibly lucky to find a charming place in a stylish elevator building in the medieval part of the city. The area is filled with cafes offering inexpensive but good food and drinks daytime and music at night. Also a vast selection of excellent restaurants, artisanal shops, antiques, and museums. Streets are cobblestone and immaculate. You can smoke in bars and cafes and outdoor restaurants so it's all extremely civilized.

Photo of breakfast we had at local boulangere:

Frites stand along the boulevard:

You can see the rest of the photos I took in Brussels here

Blame Canada

June 23, 2010, 2:41 PM
Earthquake Shakes New York:

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

A 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck north of Ottawa on Wednesday afternoon, rattling buildings as far away as Vermont, Albany and even New York City.


CNN

5.5 magnitude quake strikes Canada; no major damage

[Updated at 2:55 p.m.] There has been no major damage reported so far from an earthquake that hit Canada today, the city of Toronto said in a press release.

"In our initial assessment, there has been no major damage to City infrastructure. Further investigations are taking place to confirm," the statement said. "The Toronto Transit Commission and Transportation Services have reported that there has been no damage to their infrastructure or interruptions to service.

"The City’s Emergency Operations Centre is up and running in preparation for the G20 so the City is uniquely prepared to respond to the event. We will continue to monitor the situation and will report as necessary."

Wales

Just returned from a holiday/shake-out trip to North Wales in the new car. The Honda handled it with grace and comfort and really good mileage. I think I want to replace the wiper blades but that's fussiness on my part.


The photos can be seen here:     http://www.flickr.com/photos/37159912@N00/sets/72157624253518622/

Shrek Forever After

I just saw Shrek Forever After and it was a happy ending to the series. They pulled the quality back up and regained the snappy humour of the original. Just a good, funny, clever film. Plus, as far as I'm concerned, the kitty still steals the show!

Advice

Hot Tub Time Machine

Since this film was released, I've thought, what a piece of rubbish that must be. But tonight I was bored, so bored that I started watching it. And it was amusing, and a funny ending that I enjoyed. 


::sigh::


Yeah, I'm easily amused. But this film turned out to be surprisingly good.

Holiday in Praia da Rocha, Portugal

Asti and I just returned from a few sunny days in Praia da Rocha, Portugal in the Algarve. Great vacation - great sun, great food, great wine. Beautiful place with lovely people.

Click on the photo to see the whole photo collection.

Flood of Spam Comments from China

I've resisted setting a word verification (captcha) on my blog for several years despite the increasing amount of spam posted as comments. In the beginning, the spam were comments with links to commercial sites ie porn, meds, get rich quick however, that's all changed now and for the past year or so the comments posted were solely Chinese ideogram spam. I'm tired of it and there's no other way to stop it than to require all comments be verified.

I hate spam and profoundly loathe its senders.

Speak Out for Freedom of Speech

Overheard in New York - on the subway

Angry commuter on cell phone ...

What the hell do you mean my flight has been cancelled?!?!
What kind of dog and pony show are you running with this airline?!?!
Give me one good reason…… did you just say a cloud of volcanic ash is spreading over Europe… seriously?
Okay, that’s good enough for me! Thanks for your time!

I thought Avatar was crap but this review details it so eloquently ;)

I hate Thunderbird

Curses upon Thunderbird and Mozilla! I hate them both. I wish them and all their minions 1000 years burning in hell. I trusted them when they told me I needed to update Thunderbird today, let Thunderbird update itself - and the bastards lost a mail folder's entire set of subfolders - which were where I stored ALL the emails from family and close friends. Arrrghhhhhh!!!!!They completely deleted them, they are gone, disappeared, not there - and yes, I checked in the application date area where Thunderbird stores mail.

Bastards. I hope they fry in hell.

Mothers Day in the UK

Astrid took me to Bath for a Mothers Day outing on Saturday. It's a 2.5 hour drive each way but we'd never been there before, always wanted to, and it combined 2 of my favorite things - an archeological site and a spa.
The archeological site is interesting - a surprising amount of the Roman baths remains including of course, the natural thermal springs. The modern spa built on part of the old site was an interesting experience but more suited to couples. The lavender steam room was really nice and their "lobster pot" style foot baths were amusing - Asti tried that but I don't know that it was a particular sensation. We didn't linger in any of their pools or whirlpools etc as there was too much couple action going on.

The Oscars

I was genuinely surprised and delighted with the Academy Awards this year. Of course, that's because I agreed with almost all their choices, the exceptions being mild and a "fair enough" imo.

I was hoping the Best Animated Film would go to The Secret of Kells - because I'm utterly smitten with this exquisite film. However, I liked Up and it was a charming film of the big-budget/major studio genre. It's just that The Secret of Kells is in the special and unique/haunts you forever genre.

I'm a fan of Sandra Bullock and consider her a class act all the way. So happy to see her get an Oscar.

And then we get to Best Film & Best Director and that was the big but delightful surprise. Hurt Locker is not and never will be "my sort of film" but it was a worthy film and an impressive and touching film. I watched it when it came out because my friend Bo said it was a must see. I trust his taste in films; he's had an almost 20 year successful run in good recommendations to me and hasn't steered me wrong yet. I agreed with his take on the film. I am just so pleased the film and moreso its director received the Best of award.

And now the time has come for my little reservoir of venom. I loathed Avatar and I am immeasurably pleased that neither the film nor its director won the award. When I watched Avatar I had a niggling feeling that it was somehow familiar, a real deja vu feeling. And I was right, it's a tarted up 3D, high end CGI Ferngully - and I loathed Ferngully when that came out, too. I won't continue because I truly thought this film was a piece of crap and the revenue it earned was just one more proof of H.L. Menkin's immortal words, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." Except in this case I would modify it by removing "American" because it applies to all people, everywhere. It was The Emperor's New Clothes. Etc, etc, etc.

Thus ends the lesson.
You may all go.

In other news, my father-in-law is driving down to London at the end of May to spend a few days visiting. We plan to take in a West End musical and have a family dinner somewhere nice afterward. And when he returns home, he will take the coach because he is leaving me his car! Yay! The people rejoice! I will be retiring my little 2 seater Mazda MX5 and driving his Honda from now on. Yay! Comfortable driving. Yay! Easy to get in and out of the car. Yay! It seats 5 in spacious comfort. Yay! It has a truck (boot) that can take an entire major grocery shopping or the normal luggage for 2 people going on a trip (actually it can hold generous amounts of luggage for 4). Yay! It has automatic steering - I'm ok with manual but my daughter only drives auto so finally we can share the driving on our road trips.
Yay!!!!! We can go out and offer friends a lift, we can invite friends to go with us. We can be sociable again.

My little Mazda MX5 is a sweetie. Dependable, thrifty with fuel, pleasant to drive. But we're getting too creaky to climb in and out of its tiny frame. Frankly, it's designed for short people, if you have long legs you are in trouble. And it's a convertible so it leaks a bit in heavy rain and the plastic back window is sort of a dead loss most of the time. I will miss driving with the top down on those rare warm, sunny days but not much else.