FA Cup Final :)

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Despite my many years of maintaining that

a) I must have been really really bad in another life or

b) I was some sort of northern hemipshere experiment to see how much stress and misfortune one individual could support (Big John down under being my southern hemisphere counterpart)

it would appear, after all, that rather than being historically responsible for shooting the last dodo or for starting the black plague, I was in fact some sort of saint. Either that or the experiment has finished and I am being rewarded for not going completely postal.

How do I deduce this? Because my mate Vern T (pool and snooker shark extra-ordinaire) has only wangled me a ticket to go with him to the FA Cup Final, at Wembley, this Saturday 😀 And not only that, it is the inaugural final at our new national stadium. AND it is between my team (Man U) and the most hated team in the league (cheating diving moaning big girl’s blouses – aka Chelsea).

It is a good day today. The level of goodness I must have demonstrated to get karma like this must have been on par with the idiocy needed to become a Barclays relationship manager. I think I was Batman or something.

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Brief Update

Filed Under News, Rants

Hey all,

Just a quick update with where we are at atm.

New Rants:

Barclays :

Took 14 days to change a fax number – a freakin’ fax number. How hard is it – really? Not one, not two, not three … not even SIX different people could solve this monstrous conundrum within a fortnight. In the end the seventh person I spoke to, in a completely unrelated department said “Oh, your fax notification number is wrong then … let me fix that up for you now”.Tappity-tap-tap.

WTF? Seriously. WTFF? 6 other people… including my relationship manager could not manage this. How freakin’ stoopid do you have to be to get a job as a relationship manager at Barclays?

Inability to return calls – check.
Inability to answer any question – check.
Inability to locate correct field on Customer Details form – check.
Inability to walk and chew gum … You’re hired.

Dumbkopfs.

Sky :

Sky Sales : Yes Mr bb … no problem … we can do that for you.
Sky Installer : Not a freakin’ chance pal.

Spot the difference? And if you think I’m phoning you on your national rate line to tell you that my direct debit information is incorrect, you can guess again you idiots. You’ll call me soon enough when the money doesn’t go through.

Mr Half-Screw :

I fear Mr Half-Screw may become a bit of a regular in my blog. For he is the gentleman whose house I bought. For he is the gentleman who thinks that the fact that the number of holes equals the number of screws supplied is a bizarre coincidence. Photos will be uploaded to shame you … I promise. DIY to Mr Half-Screw is a complete mystery – a dark art practiced by those with ties to the Devil himself.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick – you even managed to put the front door knocker on upside down! And there is a good 10″ of screw hanging out the back. And at NO POINT did this strike you as even slightly odd! I have yet to find one thing with the required number of screws. What were you doing with them? Eating them? Hording them to construct a spaceship? Maybe you were going to construct a large pyre to make a sacrifice to appease the God of DIY? Did you think they were secret spy things that transmitted radio waves that were the voices you heard in your head?

I swear I think you administer the OneTel mail servers.

You’ll be getting your own post soon. And Mrs Half-Screw, the hyperactive lady who seems to think that Mr bb is a cash machine who has moved into their new house. Not content with raping me over the price of the heating oil you left, you have now tried on 3 separate occasions to sell me your tumble drier. For £50. Without telling me anything about it. ANYTHING. Just “do you want it then?”. “Ummm … no. Randomise(age, model, type, condition, size) returns NO”. Now stop asking! And switch to decaf or something. Maybe Valium.

And Mr Half-Screw left a freakin’ tag on my line so I am now driving 60miles a day to work since I can’t get broadband at home. Cunswup.

OneTel:

Why bother. Please see other posts. You need to fire Mr Half-Screw, Network Admin extraordinaire and find someone who has a clue. Well at least more of a clue than your current admin. Maybe try asking some Amish – they are already light years ahead of your current admin. Seriously.

British Telecom :

When I call up to ask about purchasing a second business line into the house, perhaps the best way of serving this request is NOT to leave me on hold for 45 minutes and then transfer me to the wrong department. Just guessing though. I’m basing it on the fact that I am now NOT getting that line from BT. But I am just guessing – as I say.
That is that for now – unfortunately blogging on a tiny laptop keyboard is harder than it should be … especially when you are frothing about what you are blogging about 🙂

See you soon.

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Thank You Very Much

Filed Under News

I just wanted to say a big thank you to the people who helped me move.

Mrs bb … without you I couldn’t have done this. I am so lucky to have you in my life and I hope one day to make you as proud of me as I am of you. I cannot say thank you enough. I love you each day more than before.

The Kersh : Thanks for taking time off from work to help out. I owe you big time. Should you ever leave The House of Two Tales, I will be there for you buddy! Of course, to help out the same way, I’ll have to take up smoking, leaning over the porch observing and poking fun at your driving of the Big Truck in High Winds, but I think I’m up to it!

Splash and Billy : Dudes! Without your extra truck and your experience, this could have all been a bit interesting. No way could I have shifted all that stuff with your help. Cheers. I owe you a drink or 5.

Friend of Mint : Again, with your help at the receiving end we managed to unpack everything we needed to start living, almost by the time the 2nd truck arrived. One bottle of wine awaits as a poor token of my gratitude. And a special thank you from Billy for bending over a lot – he liked that 😉

Mum : Mother’s day was never quite meant to be like that – cleaning and generally getting mucky. You were meant to be being taken out for dinner, wined and dined. Thanks for turning up with cleaning products, vacuum cleaners and tasty treats to keep the workforce moving. I love you too.

Dad : I’m not sure whether to thank you or curse you for the metric tonne of carpet samples you lent us 😛 But for the help on the day, I thank you. Many hands make light work and all that – it made the day much easier. Cheers.

And to my friends, clients and suppliers that have helped me through the last couple of years – my thanks too. Without you all, we wouldn’t be here today. So thanks from Mrs bb too.

Normal ranting will resume shortly 🙂

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bb|AFK

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Just a quick blog update to let everyone know that I will be AFK from this evening until Monday, probably Tuesday the 20th.

The reason – moving house 🙂 Currently I am dismantling everything (well everything I should be dismantling, I think the landlord would take a dim view of me handing the keys back to his pile of rubble) and one of the things that has to be dismantled is the PC.

This weekend, we’ll be sticking everything we own into the back of two trucks and heading out to the country. Time to say goodbye to the big smoke. I will miss some of the fun stuff about being this close to London – ease of access to shops, clubs, pubs, golf courses ( 😀 ) but I won’t miss where we are at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, the house itself is nice enough. No storage but nice enough. The main problem is we are on a main road (noise++ and dirt++) just down from the fire and ambulance stations (for each %f in (emergency_services) do noise^2) and next door to the youth drop-in centre (noise++ and scrotes++).

I hope to be able to post some pictures of the new place when we get it in order (and assuming that My God of CSS helps me with some more of my new plugins 😉 ) and hopefully, next week I’ll be able to post my poll as well.

In short, posting will be sporadic until the broadband and everything is set up. In the meantime, I strongly suggest you pop over to wish Merlijn good luck for his 1st Dan exam.

Have a good weekend all 🙂

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x64 is Dead! Long live XP

Filed Under News

Especially the nice shiny new XP I have now … check out the new desktop

Preview of nice shiny new desktop

Click for full scale shiny goodness 🙂

100% speed of XP, 90% functionality of Vista. Everyone’s a winner! w00t as they say on IRC 🙂

Check out some of the lovely features – the sidebar with nice Aero style icons, the preview of the firefox page (looks like someone is browsing the best blog ;)), natty new icons and the improved information bar at the bottom of each window. All of this for $0, 0€ and £0! How can you go wrong guv’nor?

It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the sale of the freakin’ century!

So what about those gadgets on the sidebar? From top to bottom we have a nice month at a glance calender, a torrent search engine, WMP and a new recycle bin. You can also pin the preview of the page to the desktop so you don’t have to alt-tab to it each time to see what is happening.

You’ll also notice the nice shadows on the windows, and if you see the outlook bar at the top of the picture, it’s reduced to its title bar by a simple right click. I’m loving it. pah dah da da da!

That’s not to say it is without fault but this stuff is still in its infancy. The sidebar is not 100%, it is still a little glitchy, but 1.8 will be out soon (I’m running 1.7.8) and hopefully some of those problems will be fixed. The toolbar also likes to be only 1 bar high, change it to 2 and some windows don’t line up correctly. Auto-hiding the taskbar seems to fix this albeit a temporary fix.

Apart from that, it just looks nicer. I don’t know whether it is because you get bored after looking at XP for so long but I find it quite pleasant to sit in-front of for extended periods of time. The new sounds, the new look and feel, nice new icons and toolbar customisation – all together add up to a really nice user experience. I don’t know if I would have gone to Vista before SP2 (though I’m bloody sure it wouldn’t have been Vista x64) but I know now I won’t be. What for?

<obGeek> Oh – and the little graph … well, those who know, know 😉 </obGeek>

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