Swingball Wizards

Gran and Grandad had a Swingball at their house. The boys really enjoyed it. Guess what I'm going to have to buy for the back garden soon...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Angel of the North

I've admired this sculpture since it was erected over 10 years ago, and have passed it by car and train, but have never stopped off for a closer look until last week.

It's pretty easy to get to it by car. Travelling North up the A1, after your first glimpse take the A167 sliproad and follow the brown signs until you reach a small car park at the side of the road (for about 20 cars, plus a couple of coaches and with 4 disabled bays in addition).

Up close you can really appreciate what an awesome piece of work this is. You feel dizzy just looking up at it. Everybody seems to get the urge just to stand their with their arms out for a bit.

Our little angels enjoyed the experience, and were particularly impressed that they could slide down the Angel's foot. Samwise (Desert in a cultural Oasis) was amused that you could see it's bum from a particular angle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easter Holidays

Spending this Easter relaxing at my parents place in the North Yorkshire countryside for a week.

Even more relaxing than usual, as we've spent two days with my parents, helped them pack their caravan and waved them off to their Caravan Club rally.

We now have the house to ourselves, and are planning a few trips out and about over the next few days. So it's a bit like having a holiday cottage.

Free Beer

Had a work night out last night, to celebrate the succesful completion, delivery and release of a couple of high profile projects.

They had a free bar from 17:30 to 22:00, plus snacks, so I thought it would be worth attending.

I had a parents evening for Samwise (his teacher said that he's working well at school, and is starting to get a bit cheeky), and had to pick Frodo up from his first session at a new After School club for kids with Special Needs (which he enjoyed), so I didn't get there until 19:15.

Managed to make up for lost time all the same. Had a good night drinking, munching and gossiping - those of us who were left when the bar was closing all threw in a fiver each, to tip the barman. Rolled into a black cab with dodgy suspension and bounced all the way home.

Red Nose Day

Watched the celebrity team struggle up Kilimanjaro last night, which inspired me to get off my backside and drive to Sainsbury's to spend a few quid on a red nose for each of us, plus one for the car.

Watching the main event tonight and after a few laughs, and a few tears, I bunged off our main donation. Pleased to see that last years record total was broken just after I did this.

World Book Day

It was World Book Day on Thursday. The boys school asked all of the children to come in dressed as their favourite book characters. It was quite a sight seeing all of the kids, and the teachers arrive in fancy dress. Our two both went as Dirty Bertie.




They got a WBD book voucher each entitling them to a quid off a new book each. Went out to Borders today and bought two more Dirty Bertie books and a two about a new character for us Zac Power - a boy Secret Agent / Rock Star. We read the first chapter of "Poison Island" tonight, which ended with Zac jumping out of an aeroplane.

For Those About To Rock

On Saturday, we dropped the boys at their Grandma's and headed off to Nottingham for an old friends 40th Birthday bash, which was also a bit of a Wolves Poly Rock Soc re-union.
We had a splendid time, swapping stories, catching up, tattoo admiration, "where did your hair go?", "where did your hair come from?", sinking bevvies, boogie and bacon butties. Pushed the boat out and sank it again.

Break Step

On day 4 I got so brassed off with the reset button on the pedometer constantly resetting my step count that I ripped off the button. After this, about half a day later the pedometer missed so many step counts that I gave up on the cheap, promotional piece of junk. I'm still going to carry on the walking though. Hiked out to Zavvi's today and picked up a pile of CD's in their "everything must go" closing down sale.

Steps

No not the terrible popular singing group!

I've entered the Get Active challenge at work, to get up to walking at least 10,000 steps every day.

Every entrant who signs up is issued with a small, cheapo LCD pedometer (badly designed as the Reset button is a great big thing on the front, so you keep accidentally resetting it as you wear the thing).

You then measure the number of steps that you take each day, with a view to building up the number that you take on average to be 10,000.

According to the blurb that we were given most people take 3 to 5000 steps a day.
On day 1 (Monday) I got the pedometer around 10am and by the time I went to bed around midnight I'd done 4,900 steps.

On day 2 I went for a walk at lunctime to buy fruit, and buy the end of the day had notched up around 10,300 steps.

Today I went shopping at lunchtime. Checking the pedometer now I've done 9,300 steps.

So going for at least half an hour walk every day, and using the stairs rather than the lift seems to be the key. I'm feeling a bit fitter too.

Day Off Work

It's half term, so I took a day off work today.

Spent the morning with the kids in UnderWaterStreet.

Then we went for a walk around town to view an oversized Spider, "Turning the Place Over" and SuperLambBanana.

Walkie Talkies

For a Valentine's day treat I bought Frodo and Samwise a set of decent little Binatone Latitude 100 walkie-talkies.

They've been running round the house on rescue missions all weekend calling each other up and ending every sentence with "Over", or "Over and Out".

Wii Fit Obsession

I'm becoming hooked on Wii Fit.

I'm at the -starting to hallucinate whilst jogging around the Wii Fit island- stage.

Why do I find myself waving back at the Mii's who wave at mine on the roadside?

Why do I laugh as other Mii's fall on their faces?

Did that cute blonde Mii really flutter her eyes at my Mii as she went past? Look she did it again! Why did she ignore me the third time?

Why do I start to loathe the supercilious grins on the faces of the faster Mii's who overtake mine?

I'm not the only person with connectivity problems...

I picked this little gem up from a tweet by cha0tic

No Twitter for Hitler


There's loads of different interpretations of the same scene on YouTube
including
Hitler is invaded by Mexicans
Hitler gets banned from World of Warcraft
Somebody Stole Hitlers Car
etc.

And Now, The Gallery...

First of all Oliver Postgate* takes the music boat to the Iron Chicken and dies just before Christmas, and now Tony Hart packs up his paint box.

There's a lot of obituaries out there saying how he inspired a generation of children. Far from inspiring me to artistic achievements, he made me realise that I would never, ever be as good as that, so why bother trying :)

* Something I never knew before. I spotted a link on Oliver Postgate's wikipedia page that looked like it might be out of place, but discovered that in fact it wasn't.
Oliver Postgate had a hand in creating Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines!!

Disconnected (2)

I spoke to soon in my Disconnected post - the broadband connection went down the day after, just after midday.

Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support, back through the "diagnostics" umpteen times again. They told me to wait for the replacement router that was in it's way, and the callback that was due on Tuesday 13th at 7pm.

8pm on Tuesday 13th. No replacement router and No callback! Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support who passed the buck to Customer Services. Customer Services, who also sounded like they might be in India, told me that there didn't appear to be an order for a router. They passed me to the escalation team.

The chap on the escalation team sounded very sheepish when I asked him why there had been no callback at 7pm. He told me that not only had the callback been missed, but they hadn't ordered the replacement router! (What a bunch of numpties?) He said that he'd immediately ordered the router, which should arrive on Friday.

Thursday morning and the new router arrived. Tried it out on Thursday night, and as I suspected no connection. Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support - ran through the usual diagnostics. Tried to pass me back to the escalation team, who tried to fob me off as a courtesy callback was due on 19th Jan. I demanded to speak to them so I was put through. The lady who answered told me that all diagnostics had been done, so she couldn't help and that I should await the callback on the 19th Jan. I demanded an earlier callback, so the best she could do was 09:30 on 17th Jan.

09:30 am today and I found myself speaking to the chap who had forgotten to call on Tuesday. He said that he would now ask BT to investigate and arranged a follow up callback on Monday 19th to let me know what they had found out.

10:45 am and we noticed the internet connection come back online for a minute or so. Looks like somebody is doing some testing on the network.

13:00 and we're back online, and have been so since then.

Why oh why oh why can't the numpties at Orange involve BT at an earlier stage? I explained to them the history of this case. They should have been able to see for themselves that we'd had a similar situation in May last year, where the Orange customer equipment and connection diagnostics all check out OK, but the BT line tests show "no fault".
They seem to have a reluctance to escalate to BT. It should not take 15 days to get to this stage.

I'm going to wait for their callback on the 19th and ask for an explanation as to what BT said the problem was. My own suspicion is that maintenance work in the exchange around Bank Holidays causes a configuration change that affects our service. There's probably a special set up for our line, or for Orange customers (and I bet that there's not many left in Liverpool) that they keep resetting and forgetting to reconfigure.

I'd like to know as I believe the root cause lies with BT. This is compounded by Orange's inability to quickly establish that the fault is not with the customer's setup or equipment, and not with them.

Then I'll be calling Orange Customer Services and asking for my MAC code.

Originally we used Demon, but when free dial up access became available, we opted for Freeserve. Freeserve were OK and then were taken over by Wanadoo who gave us our first taste of broadband. We had no problems with Wanadoo. Our experience of the service has gone downhill since Orange took over.

We're now both suffering from online access withdrawal and need a heavy fix of email, web and download time to feel normal again :) It's actually a little scary - you don't realise how much you depend on something like the internet access from home, until it's not there. The local library and work is no substitute.

Tired and Emotional

Novelist Supermum came back from hospital today after her operation

She went in on Monday and had the op on Tuesday.

Frodo and Samwise were in tears when we left her in the ward on Monday night. When I asked in the car why they were crying the reply was "because we wanted Spaghetti for tea!"

Disconnected

I've only just got the internet connection back after a 6 day outage.

This time it took me 5 days to exhaust all of the possibilities for a fault at my end with the Indian call centre before I finally persuaded them to pass the case onto the "Escalation Team" i.e. the technical staff in the UK.

Went through a set of diagnostics, and a couple of router reboots, with a helpful chap last night, who then told me that someone would call this morning. At 11 am today a pleasant lady informed me that the technicians could not identify the fault, as the line test showed 'no fault' (as it has done on other occasions) and could only conclude that my router might be faulty. They have despatched a replacement router to me.

Just after this phone call I thought that I'd give my current router one last reboot - and it connected! Hmmmm.

I immediately rang the call centre and got them to update the case with this information.

So either the router has an intermittent fault, or (as I strongly suspect) it's a case of good old Orange or BT not admitting that they've screwed up something on the network again, and have quietly corrected it. It's notable that I seem to get these issues around, or just after a Bank Holiday.

My 12 month contract with Orange is now up, so I think that it's time to switch broadband suppliers. Might not make any difference if it's BT who's causing this, but at least I might get the same amount of frustration for a cheaper price :)

Happy New Year

Whoosh! What was that?"

"2008 mate".

"Do I get another one?"

"'Fraid not".

Happy New Year everybody! All the best for 2009.

New Years Eve - Snow

It's been a foggy New Years Eve today.

Got back a little early from work to find that it's been snowing all day, but only in a square mile or so around our house.

Samwise said that he'd wished for Snow at Christmas, so I guess that he's got his Christmas Wish. Slightly late, but close enough, and just for him, as the rest of the city appears to be frozen, but doesn't have snow!

Christmas Day (just)

No point in going down the pub after work, as I'm on the late shift/on-call, so I took the car in to work today. I was allowed to leave early at 15:30, but only after all but 3 of us had gone.

Got home to a mega-excited Frodo and Samwise. They are usually allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve (which usually turns out to be pyjamas). This year they went up to bed to find that Ben 10 and Dr Who bed covers had been magically put on their beds.

They both had real trouble going to sleep. They went to bed early around 7 pm. Samwise didn't get to sleep until about 9 pm and Frodo was still awake and trying to spot Santa at 10 pm. They were both fast asleep at 11pm.

Santa finished delivering his presents around midnight. (Check out the Norad Santa Tracker if you don't believe me) ). All wrapped and under the tree, with an extra surprise of a Nintendo Wii and a new TV set up in the playroom (they'll find that one last tomorrow).

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas time again. Lots of work places wind down for Christmas - my place as usual winds up!

Didn't get home until 7:30pm tonight, because somebody was panicking and demanded an unnecessary server reboot, even though we'd agreed earlier in the day not to do it.

Got back just in time to nip out with the boys to a neighbours Christmas Party. They host one every year, just before Christmas - how they manage to do this with everything else that's going on beats me. They lay everything on and ask for a donation to a charity, which I'm quite happy to do.

The boys had a good time, and I got to chat with a few of the neighbours. I also met a couple of mad old ladies, who I've passed before now in the street walking their dog. We found that we had a few things in common, and had quite a laugh.

It's now officially Christmas Eve. I've got one last stint in work - hopefully I'll be allowed to shoot off early. I'm on call Christmas day and Boxing day - I've been assured that call outs are very rare when the systems aren't in use - but there's always a chance that something unexpected might happen. Rumour has it that any Christmas day call outs will be allowed to be responded to the next day - but that has yet to be confirmed.

The Goose is defrosting in the kitchen, and we're almost ready for the main event. The boys have been told that there's only 2 more sleeps to go. So time to wish all of my blog readers - whoever you may be - a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Giant Christmas Greetings

I've just received an E-Christmas card from La Princess. Nice to see that she's not forgotten us (probably because I bought the T-shirt and poster from Artichoke).

Forgetful Santa

Grandma took Samwise and Frodo to see Father Christmas at a local grotto last weekend. Samwise had seen him earlier in the week on a School trip to a different place.

A couple of days later Samwise said to me - "You know what Dad, when I saw Santa again I had to remind him what I'd asked for the first time, because he'd forgotten!".

Magic!

Xmas Do's

The work Xmas party was on Friday. We were at the Crowne Plaza hotel again this year - the usual sort of corporate booze-up, meal and Dad-dancing session that these places put on at this time of year. We were mixed in with a few other companies who'd also booked some tables.

As some sort of team-building exercise the manager who'd booked the do had decided who was going to sit at which table - rather than it being a free for all. Managerial 'hosts' rotated tables between each course. This put a few people off, and there were a few last minute no-shows as a result. Personally I found that this arrangement worked OK, since our department has expanded rapidly over the last year - I got to chat to a few people that I've seen around, but wouldn't normally have spoken too.

I managed to get a taxi home, without too much trouble, as I dived out of the hotel just before the music stopped, beating the rush to get a cab.

Saturday was a "meet the Dad's" night out - a first time get together with some of the other Father's from Samwise' year at school. This was a good night out - a few pints out and a lot of natter - "which one is your child?", "what do you do?" and a mutual agreement on who is the hottest teacher at the school.

Church of the Bright Green Neon Rabbit

Took my own picture of this on the way back from work the other night. Not as good as this one of course. I thought I'd better get a snap, as the Liverpool Biennial public art event is due to finish at the end of November, so they might switch it off soon.

National Blog Posting Month 2008 - Blew It

The target was 30, and I did 17 posts in 30 days, - oh well, there's always next year...

First Reading Book

Samwise brought his first ever reading book home from school today.

It's fairly basic, but he can read all the words in it already - I was really proud.
He read it to me first, and then to his Mum. He's going to read it to Grandma tomorrow.

Eddie Stobart Fan Club - How Much?

Speaking of Motorways - although a family of regular Eddie Stobart spotters, i.e. will shout "Eddie Stobart" whenever we see one of the company's lorries, and will attempt to identify which girls name is on the front of the cab, there is absolutely no way I will pay 12 quid a year just to get some more info from the Eddie Stobart Club Website!

Maybe we should switch to Norbert Dentressangle instead? :)

Motorway Messages

Sighted on the Motorway on the way back from Wolves on Sunday

1. A Tanker, with the words "Succumb to the Darkness" written in the dirt on it's rear.

2. A Mercedes with the registration plate of "B1G B0SS".

Weekend in Wolves

I was in Wolverhampton in the Wild West Midlands last weekend, meeting up with a bunch of old pals from college. After a suggestion in June, we finally got organised enough to meet up in November. Only one last minute no-show.

It was great catching up again with folk that I've not seen for a long time. We've all got a bit older, some of us may have got a bit wiser, but mostly not. Some have less hair than they used to, some have more (but in different places). Some have changed gender.

As always we pushed the boat out a bit, then depth charged, torpedoed and sunk it to the bottom of the sea!

Have been feeling the after effects for a couple of days now - unfortunately attendance at work is compulsory - unlike lectures, so recovery time is a lot longer than it used to be. Age doesn't help either. cha0tic is still not right

3 of us stayed in a small hotel on Goldthorn Hill. Quite a nice little place, and only 30 quid a night (plus a fiver for breakfast).

Friday night was a tour of old old haunts (i.e. pubs), taking in a folk duo, and some Pizza on the way round.

Saturday - Kippers for breakfast, and a second kip, then a stroll into town. Wandered around the town centre to see what's changed and what's not. Most of it surprisingly familiar, but smartened up a lot more, with only a few new buildings.

Resisted the "old haunts" until about 3pm, then started on the beer again. Met up with most of the crowd in the second pub. Then a cracking curry, involving wine and champagne, ending up in the last pub that we'd been to the night before, where we met up with some more faces that we hadn't expected to see.

Somehow the last 4 survivors ended up in the Club Night at the Civic rehydrating themselves on coca-cola and water. Lost one of the party (called him the next day to find that he was indeed OK and hadn't gone the way of Elvis and his last burger).

3 of us caught the kind of Taxi that you can only get in the West Midlands back to the hotel - i.e. one where the face at the wheel doesn't match the one displayed on the licence in the cab, and who doesn't have a clue where anywhere is. He overshot the road that leads to the hotel and had to double back.

Full English Breakfast next morning, plus tea and toast before heading home.

Photos below - some may even be in focus.

Pea and Ham Soup

Opened a tin of Baxters Pea and Ham Soup tonight. Had this with a couple of buttered wholemeal rolls. Who needs cookery books?

Macaroni Cheese

Last night's dish was a classic, but the sauce was quite rich as it involved using Craime Freche and Parmesan cheese (or rather a substitute), as well as Cheddar.

The kids tried it, but they weren't too impressed.

It was OK, but far too creamy-rich for my tastes. I've got the remainder in my lunch box today.

I might try it again another time, but stick to a simpler sauce.

Godzilla (Gojira)

There are some films that we can watch again, and again. We first saw Godzilla when it was released - we were on holiday in Las Vegas at the time. It's on Sky 1 at the moment, must be about the 30th time or so that we've seen it.

Don't know why - it's just one of those films that really works for us.

Here's a few others, in no particular order.

The Running Man Only in a re-run!
Total Recall
RoboCop
Strictly Ballroom
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction
From Dusk till Dawn
Gladiator
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (we watch this more than the other two).

There are more. Sometimes (in fact more often than not) the re-viewing is due to what's being put out on TV, rather than say choosing a DVD.

Christmas Shopping

Have done quite a bit of Christmas Shopping already - mostly from the comfort of my armchair. Chosen gifts are on their way to me in the post. Isn't the Internet great!

I'm planning on taking the boys for a trip into town in December, so that we can see the Christmas lights, Carol singers, brass bands etc without the hassle of having to do some serious shopping too.

Ministry of Food - Pancakes

Needed something quick for the kids tonight, so we all had pancakes.

The recipe said to use self raising flour (what - unheard of? surely it's plain flour? No that's what the recipe says so here goes...). Cup of flour, cup of milk and 1 egg to make the batter. Then used a ladle to measure out two or three small dollops into the frying pan. Cooked for a minute or two, turning over with a fish slice, since the thickness means the uncooked side stays runny - so too tricky to toss.

Result - small round, thick tasty pancakes. We had lemon juice and golden syrup on ours. The kids seemed to prefer these pancakes to the big thin ones that I made on Shrove Tuesday.

Ministry of Food

Last week I picked up Jamie Oliver's new Ministry of Food Book at a booksale for tenner, rather than the list price of 25 quid.

Understandably Novelist Supermum has made me remove the paper sleeve, leaving a rather forties/fifties plain style hard cover underneath, rather than having to put up with the photo of the chubby smirking mockney.

I've decided to get into this learn to cook decent food lark, being particularly impressed with the recipes for busy people.

The book opens with a list of basic ingredients that you should have to hand in your cupboards and freezer, the sort of things that keep for months (herbs, spices, oils, flour, vinegar, syrups, tinned stuff etc) and suggests that you should just go out and buy the lot so that you know that you're likely to have these things to hand when you need them.

I thought that I'd go along with this theory, and went out to buy everything off the list. I came back from Tesco's on Saturday with all but three items. The only problem being that since I'd spent about 3 hours down the shops I'd ran out of time to spend cooking a decent meal, since the kids had to be quickly fed and put to bed.
(so much for cookery for busy people - thanks Jamie!).

To be fair, we had a decent Sunday Roast Chicken today. I made the gravy using a vegetable trivet, which I've never done before, and the result was delicious.

It was also great following the different recipes, and at the points where they say, "season with", "thicken with", "for extra flavour add" etc just reaching into the cupboard and retrieving the appropriate ingredient, rather than thinking "what can I use instead?".

It's only Rock n' Roll

There were still a few star spotters outside the Malmaison hotel at 2 o'clock today, although the numbers had dwindled.

I suggested that we could bait them by shouting "Look it's Duffy!" and running past wearing a blonde wig - but we were fresh out of theatrical props in the office.

Speaking of celebrity impressions, I've remembered an incident from a long time ago...

I went to see the Rolling Stones at St James' park in Newcastle in 1982. They were giving out pink circular foam pads for the audience to use as comfy seats (needless to say most of them got thrown about).

Before the gig was due to start, one joker managed to get onto the stage, folded a pink foam disc in two, stuck it in his mouth and pranced across the stage doing a Mick Jagger impression - priceless! Even the Security were chuckling as they removed him from the stage area.

Star Spotting

There's been a small crowd of star spotters, and more than a few photographers hanging around outside the Malmaison hotel today. The reason is of course the MTV Europe Music Awards, which are being hosted at the Liverpool Echo Arena tonight.

Some of entertainers are staying at the hotel. I watched a yellow Rolls Royce going back and forth this afternoon.

I came across this photo of Leona Lewis leaving the hotel today. See that slightly out of focus red brick building in the background? I'm inside it. So that's me and Leona photographed together :)

Flowers in the Sky

Bonfire Night, or should I say "Organised Fireworks Display Night" - does anybody have a bonfire any more? I haven't seen a single Guy Fawkes go up in flames for years.

Frodo was poorly, so just Samwise and myself went to see the firework display at Sefton Park.
It was the first time for Samwise, although he's seen a few individual fireworks before, he's never seen 20 minutes worth of arial bombardment, so he was suitably impressed.

"They're like Flowers in the Sky Daddy" he said.

Is it Tuesday already?

Well that's messed up 1 post a day already. Maybe that's why the NaBloPoMo exercise is called "30 posts in a 30 days". Perhaps I can still achieve that.

Appreciation

Did a 14.5 hour shift at work on Sunday starting at 1am.

Were my efforts appreciated? They should have been, but were lost in a "witch-hunt" over a couple of separate incidents, none of which were of my making, but I got caught up in them, so nobody said thank-you.

C'est la vie. I'll take my reward in cash.

Quantum of Solace

I'm in work right now exporting and importing database files, so I thought I'd do my 2nd Blog Post this month.

I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Craig's second outing as James Bond at the new Liverpool 1 Odeon cinema earlier tonight.

I'll be lazy and refer you to Impworks Review (who was with us tonight).

This new Bond is a really nasty piece of work... and so he should be - he is an assassin, after all.